The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1904-10-09
PROBLEM GREATER THAN
TELEPATHY.

To THE EDITOR OF THE SuN-Sir: The
last cited case Of telepathy 10 that Of q loving
wife filed with sudden anxiety by the
silence Of her absent husband, whom she
afterward finds to have been sick. In
cidents such as this, dressed up by our
retroactive fancy, become mysterious and
the materials Of new faith. Our minds are
thereby turned from questions really mo-
mentous In the solution Of which we are
called upon to help each other.
One writer In the telepathic discussion
glances at the question Of future state
In way which seems TO imply that he hardly
deems it pressing. Yet surely no question
can be more pressing, II we have any means
Of solving 1t, than that Of existence after
death. I avoid the phrase immortality
Of the soul, because cannot form an idea
OF immortality any more than I can OF
infinity or eternity, both Of which elude
conception
Conscience tells us that according as we
do well or III in this life 1t will be we'll or Ill
for us hereafter. Is the evidence Of con-
science less Trustworthy than that Of our
bodily sensesp II the evidence OF our
bodily senses and the science built upon
them alone Is trustworthy. on what does
their prerogative rest7 May we not be in
universe unseen by Newton or Darwin?
That death wipes out the score Of life and
levels the best with the worst OF men, the
man who has been the benefactor with the
one who has been the curse OF his kind, is
belief from which our moral nature re-
coils as strongly as our physical nature
recoils from anything contradictory Of
sense.
Positivism, in place Of the hope Of per-
sonal existence hereafter, presents to US
impersonal e1istence as factor in the prog
ress OF humanity. But that which Is not
personal is not ours. After all, in what is
the progress to end2 According to science,
in the physical catastrophe of our planet.
What would be the consequence to So
ciety of the belief, II We should be driven to
it, that death is the end? Would there be
any rational inducement to self-sacrifice
or effort for the common good? Would
not struggle for the means Of present en-
joyment be In fact the true wisdom? Is
not tendency Of this kind making itself
felt as religious belief grows weak? Posi-
tivism points to the military self-devotion
Of the Japanese. Is II more than the blind
instinct of surviving tribalism with a sort
Of tribal deity in the form Of the Mikado?
Old arguments of the natural kind no
doubt are failing us. We can no longer
soul Is being distinct from the body, in
discernible. and therefore probably indis-
soluble. We know that what we call the
soul is the consummate outcome of the
general frame. Nor can we, with Socrates,
found our faith on a pre-existence attested
by the presence in us Of innate ideas. When
Socrates points to the distinction between
the Tyre and the melody as analogous to
that between the body and the soul, hearer
replies at once that when the Tyre is broken
the melody dies OF ghosts or spiritualist
apparitions there is no need to speak.
We are met with the cases of idiots,
lunatics, children dying in infancy. savages
and others, who have not seen moral light.
The argument seems conclusive against
universal resurrection, but not against
the survival of responsibility where re-
sponsibility has been.
Conscience implies the existence OF a
deity. to whose tribunal 1t appeals, not the
Deity of Genesis or OF a weak human imag-
nation, but of power which upholds
good. 1t implies, not the freedom Of the
will, II by that is meant exclusion OF ante
cedents. but volition, the reality OF which
extreme materialism seems to deny. The
exact relation between the antecedents
and the voliton We may not be able to
define. The existence of volition, as we'll as
Of the antecedents, Is assumed in all our
judgments on our own actions and those
of our fellows
Now, sir, have done, having already
fear, too often on your COL
umns. Iheve not presumed to put forward
any theory, for, indeed. cannot pretend
to have one. have only tried to call at
tention to certain phenomena, or apparent
phenomena, of human nature which, it
seems to me, evolution has not yet ex-
planned and which appear to point to some
thing beyond our present state. l am
heartily loyal to science; but it is always
possible that the impetus Of great dis
covery may carry us too far.
TORONTO, Oct 8. GOODWIN SMITH.