Creed and Deed: A Series of Discourses. Felix Adler
over our consciousness; sometimes settling into impenetrable night; as the body for a time wears the semblance of death, so also is the mind stupefied or completely paralyzed. Hours pass by; in the interval, the business of the world has gone on as before, but to us there has been only a void and utter blank. And thus it is said shall there be a void and a blank in the tomb; time will pass by, and we shall not know it; men will move and act and we shall be none the wiser for it; it will be all like sleep, only that there will be no dreams.
And again when some malignant fever seizes upon the body and corrupts the currents of the blood, how do the poor disordered thoughts dance about wildly, driven by the lash of the distemper; how does the use of stimulants besot the intellect, so that every higher power is deadened; how in the wild ravings of the diseased brain, do we behold the hideous mockery of mind.
And does not the grave itself testify loudly that the end is an end indeed; the body falls to pieces, the dust commingles with the dust, and nothing remains, nothing at least of which we can ever have experience. Right or wrong, these facts impress the mind, and their leaden weight serves to drag down our aspirations.
It is true, the considerations I have enumerated are based upon a mere surface view of things, but the more accurate methods of science seem, at first sight, to confirm the general conclusions to which they lead. On this point, it would be well to dwell for a moment. John Stuart Mill acknowledges that "the evidence is well-nigh complete that all thought and feeling has some action of the bodily organism for its immediate coincident and accompaniment, and that the specific variations, and especially the different degrees of complication of the nervous and cerebral organism, correspond to differences in the development of our mental faculties."
The prodigious difficulties in the way of the study of the brain may long retard the progress of the investigator, but for the purposes of our argument we are at liberty to assume whatever is within the limits of possible achievement. We may suppose that physiology will succeed so far that the brain will be accurately and completely mapped out, and that the motions of the atoms upon which the thousand varying modes of thought and feeling depend, will be known and measured. In anticipating such results, we have reached the utmost tenable position of materialism.
But now to our surprise we discover that all this being allowed, the ultimate question, what is soul, remains still unsolved and as insoluble as ever. The unvarying coincidence of certain modes of soul with certain material processes may be within the range of proof, but what cannot be proven is, that these material processes explain the psychic phenomena.
If it is urged that the same difficulty presents itself in the explanation of the most ordinary occurrences, this objection is based upon a misapprehension of the point at issue.
The scientist cannot show why heat should be convertible into motion, but how it is thus transformed is easy to demonstrate, and the exact mechanical equivalent of heat has been calculated. But how certain motions of atoms in the brain should generate, not heat, but consciousness, but thought and love, is past all conception. There are here two different orders of facts, having no common principle to which they could both be reduced. There is an impassable gulf between them which can in nowise be bridged over.
Nor would it avail us to endow the atom itself with the promise and potency of intellect; we should thereby throw back the issue a step further, and disguise the problem whose existence it were better to plainly acknowledge. The broad fact of consciousness therefore remains unexplained and inexplicable as before. Arrived at this limit, science itself pauses and refuses to pass further.
Some of the leading naturalists of our day have lately expressed themselves clearly and tersely in this sense. The eminent physiologist Dubois Rey-mond denies that the connection between certain motions of certain atoms in the brain, and what he calls, the primal, undefinable and undeniable facts of consciousness, is at all conceivable. Professor Tyndall in his address on "The scope and limits of Scientific Materialism," explains his views with similar precision.
Were our minds so expanded, strengthened and illuminated as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem. How are these physical processes connected by and with the facts of consciousness? I do not think the materialist is entitled to say that his molecular groupings and his molecular motions explain everything, in reality they explain nothing… The problem of body and soul is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in the pre-scientific ages.
Now since it is impossible to demonstrate that the powers of mind are a product of matter, the possibility undoubtedly remains that these powers may continue to exist even after their connection with the physical organism has been dissolved. If all the arguments that are commonly adduced in support of the doctrine of a future life fall short of their object, it is but just to add that every argument to the contrary is equally devoid of foundation. The doctrine of immortality cannot be disproved. Of the nature of soul we are in absolute ignorance we know nothing; what is more, we can know nothing At this point we touch the utmost boundary of human reason, and must be content to write mystery of mysteries.
In the state of settled uncertainty to which we are thus reduced, the shape of our opinions will be determined by the bias of our natures or the influence of education. The sceptic will remind us of the points in which we resemble all the perishable forms of nature and hold it improbable that we alone should escape the universal law of dissolution. Others will cling to the hope of continued life, even on the brink of the grave, and the strong instinct of self preservation will give tone and color to their religious beliefs. Deep philosophical speculations are possible as to that ultimate source of being, that hidden light of which both matter and mind are diverse reflections. And here too poetry assumes its legitimate office. On the mists that cover the infinite abyss, we may project whatever images, foul or fair, we list. Science you may be sure will never disturb us. Dogmatic assertion however, on either side is totally unwarranted: and the question of immortality (I think we must sooner or later make up our minds to that) will remain an open one. Certain, only, is the fact of our uncertainty.
If the conclusions to which we have thus been led, seem purely negative in their bearings, they are none the less capable of certain positive applications, which deserve our serious attention. The longing for immortality has been developed into a morbid craving under the influence of the current religious teachings, and has become a disturbing element in human society. On more than one occasion it has imperilled the peace of nations, and the doctrines of salvation became the watchwords of contending armies. The doubtful chances of eternal felicity or damnation became the one absorbing topic on which men's minds dwelt, and the wild horrors of the Christian Hell have cast a gloom over many an innocent life, and curtailed the scant measure of its earthly happiness. It were something gained, if by a cool and dispassionate judgment the influence of these dismal fantasies could be lessened, and men be freed from their slavish subjection to phantoms born of their own distempered imaginations.
Furthermore, it follows from what we have said that the belief in immortality should not be inculcated as a dogma in our schools of religion, and above all that the dictates of the moral law should in no wise be made to depend upon it for their sanction. The moral law is the common ground upon which all religious and in fact all true men may meet. It is the one basis of union that remains to us amid the clashing antagonisms of the sects. While dogma is by its nature, open to attack, and its acceptance at all times a matter of choice, the principles of morality have a right to demand implicit obedience, and should rest as everlasting verities in the human heart. Let us reflect well before we imperil the latter by the undue prominence which we give the former. It is not needful to impart to a child the whole truth, but what it learns should be wholly true, and nothing should be taught it as a fundamental fact which it can ever in after years be led to call in question. How often has it occurred that when the riper reason of the man has rejected the tenets of the church in which he was educated, he has been tempted to cast aside all the religious teachings of his youth, the moral with the rest, as idle fable and deceit.
And lastly, friends, as we do not, cannot know, it is presumably wise that we should not know. The vanity of all our efforts to grasp the infinite, should teach us that on this island of