Life beyond death, being a review of the world's beliefs on the subject, a consideration of present conditions of thought and feeling, leading to the question as to whether it can be demonstrated as a fact, to which is added an appendix containing some hints as to personal experiences and opinion

Front matter

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V. V A*

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Preface

A NEWSPAPER article which I came across the other day suggests the necessity for the kind of preface which is offered to the reader. The writer was a physician, and so might presumably claim to understand the " scientific method." The position he assumed was that there was no possibility of scientific demonstration in the matter of psychical research. The argument was meant to be fair and, by many, might be regarded as conclusive. As some parts of this book will be open to this kind of attack, I wish to state the writer's argument (of course in my own words, but I hope fairly), and then see if it is valid.

He claimed that nothing could be demonstrated scientifically unless the matter involved could be submitted to satisfactory tests by anybody, at any time, and with the certainty of immediate uniform results. This is undoubtedly true of the scientific method when dealing with inanimate forces or things. But is it true in dealing with living beings — with men and women ?

I have been accustomed to think and say for many years that " the scientific method " is the only method of knowledge. What does this mean ? It means that whatever one may feel or think or viii Preface

believe or regard as probable he does not know unless it is capable of demonstration in accordance with the scientific method.

Let us note the steps of progress in the scientific method so that this matter may be made clear to any intelligent reader whether scientific or not.

i. The first step is observation. I open my eyes (whether outer or inner) and see a fact. This proves nothing beyond my own personal impression. If I am colour-blind or ignorant or prejudiced, my seeing may be incorrect and so not correspond to any reality.

2. So there must be repeated observation and corroborative observation on the part of others.

3. Then, after a number of facts appear to be satisfactorily determined, a tentative theory may be formed in accordance with these facts. This is what science means by the " process of induction." But this theory is always open to revision, provided other facts are discovered which are not in accord with the theory. The " law of parsimony " demands also that the nearest and easiest theory which will explain the facts shall have the preference. That is, a strained or far-fetched theory must not be dragged in where the facts can be explained by an easier or more " natural " method.

4. When a large number of facts are satisfactorily established and all or most of them can be most easily explained in the light of some particular theory, that theory is regarded as scientifically established. This, for instance, is the case to-day in regard to the Copernican theory of the universe.

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The theory of evolution and the nebular theory are also cases in point. It is conceivable that either of these might be overthrown or essentially modified by the discovery of a sufficient number of new facts which could not be explained in accordance with them. Professor See, for example, is calling in question certain phases of the nebular theory. But the facts must be many and important before a man is justified in demanding that a well-established theory be given up. He must be sure that he is not misinterpreting his facts.

Now I submit that this, the scientific method, can be followed in observing and proving anything which is real and which touches us, and so comes into the field of observation. But while a man can command the action of certain forces and order the conduct of his observations in his laboratory ; or while he may count on the absolute uniformity of the motions of the heavenly bodies, there are other facts, and those of far greater importance, which he cannot treat in this way, although he may still be true to the scientific method. You cannot order people round, as a chemist may his elements, and yet facts concerning people may be scientifically demonstrated. The same thing is true of the people in the other life — provided there are any. It is conceivable that " a spirit " may be present and communicate in certain circumstances. Identity even may conceivably be established. And yet the precise experiment one may not be able to repeat at will, for the simple but satisfactory reason that, ex hypothesi, another will is concerned ; the person may not be present the next x Preface

time; he is not under orders; and the conditions may not be capable of duplication by anybody who happens to come along.

The Society for Psychical Research is engaged in the task of investigating a large body of facts, whatever may ultimately be regarded as the explanation of them. Several different explanations have been offered. The principal ones are these :

i. Fraud.

2. Auto-suggestion : that is, that the sitter unintentionally " gives himself away" — as the phrase goes. He unconsciously imparts the information which so astonishes him when he gets it back again.

I have seen a great deal of both of these.

3. That the facts are the work of the subconscious mind of either the sitters, the psychic, or all together.

4. Mind-reading or telepathy.

5. The "spirit " theory. This means, of course, that persons who have " died " and are now in the life which is ordinarily regarded as the abode of silence and invisibility can and do (at least occasionally) manifest their presence and communicate their thoughts.

Now, in the first place, it can be settled as to whether any of these claimed facts are facts. Then, in the second place, it can be determined as to whether any one of these theories can explain the facts. If it can, then it would be provisionally established as a scientific hypothesis, in precisely the same sense that the Copernican theory of the universe is established, and with as scientific a

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validity. Like that, it would still be liable to question or revision, provided new facts should arise which it could not find place for. And conceivably it might be displaced altogether, provided a more satisfactory theory should present itself. But meantime it would rightly claim the intelligent acceptance of all educated and free minds.

I submit then to all competent thinkers that the psychical problems can be scientifically investigated, and that a true scientific theory concerning them can be framed and verified.

M. J. S.

September 16, 1899.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. — Primitive Ideas i

II. — Ethnic Beliefs 19

II

NO one will expect me to undertake the impossible task of compressing, or trying to compress, within the limits of one chapter, any general treatment of so large a theme. My purpose is a much simpler one than this. It is not particularly the belief of Egypt or India or Scandinavia or Greece or Rome that I am interested in. It is the growth and changes in the belief of man ; and I wish to consider these merely as phases of this human belief. And so what I have in hand just now is to note in some general way how far along in its progress the world had come when it reached the culmination of these old-time civilisations. s^

We first treated the ideas of primitive man. This, as you see, is the next step ; and after this we shall leave what we are accustomed to call the pagan world, and take up the line of historic progress that goes under the name of Hebrew and Christian civilisation.

At present, then, we are to consider for a little how far the world had come at the height of the civilisations of these old-time peoples, in its development concerning the belief about death and the life that it supposed was to follow it.

One thing is worthy of our notice. The peoples of these different countries did not look upon this belief as a childish relic of the olden time, as something which barbaric people held, but which was to be outgrown and left behind. We find that the belief among these great nations was practically universal. They all held that death was not the end, but only an incident in life, leading to something beyond. But, when we speak of the belief of Egypt or of India or of any one of these other great nations, we need to keep carefully in mind one fact. Any one of these peoples had had a progress of thousands of years ; and of course its beliefs in regard to these matters, as well as in any other direction, had naturally and necessarily undergone many modifications.

To illustrate what I mean : Suppose I should make some general statement about English belief concerning death and a future life. One might remind me of the fact that there were native Britons on the island before any conquest of which we know ; then that the island was conquered by other peoples, bringing with them their peculiar ideas, which ultimately became amalgamated with the native thought of the old Britons. Then by and by Christianity came and conquered the original Paganism : it was Catholic Christianity. This was followed by the Protestant Revolution ; this by the rise of free thought, the scientific spirit, agnosticism, and all the speculations of modern times. So one might very well ask me, when I refer to English belief, what period of English belief I have in mind ; for there are many English beliefs. But I do not need to do more than take notice of this fact. Let not the reader think I have carelessly overlooked it. It will be enough for my purpose to refer to some general outlines of the faith of these great peoples at certain periods of their most advanced civilisation.

I wish now to make some brief suggestions concerning the nature of the places where the souls of the dead were supposed to have gone. I want, in other words, to bring imaginatively to the eye, if I can, some suggestive and sufficient picture of this other life which these people believed in. I can only set forth a few illustrative hints.

The Egyptian religion is based on and is always connected with astronomical studies ; and, when the Egyptians came to believe in these other worlds for the souls of the dead, they connected them popularly with the circuit of the sun. The good souls either accompanied the sun in his progress or lived somewhere along the course of the sun's daily advance, while the bad were connected with his transit through the world of darkness and shadows preparatory to his daily course again.

The Scandinavians had for their heroes and great fighters the Hall of Valhalla, where the souls fought over again the battles in which they so delighted here. They drank the celestial mead, and celebrated their deeds of renown. But this was not the only heaven that the Norsemen knew. They believed in a Hall of Friends, where quiet and gentle souls found an abode of peace. There was a place where the noble women of the world received the reward for their lives of faithfulness and devotion. They also, of course, with all these nations at the highest period of their development, had their places of sorrow and suffering, and sometimes of torture for those who had offended the gods or who had wronged their fellow-mep

The Indian peoples believed in heavens and hells, both located in some indefinite region of space, — heavens where the good rested during the periods that separated the times of their different births. There were also hells where the bad awaited the new and worse fate that was to come to them by being born into some hideous, diseased, or animal form.

The Persians also had their heavens and their hells. The Greeks and the Romans, with whom, perhaps, we are more familiar than with either of these others, located the underworld always beneath the surface of the earth. It was a place to which descent might conceivably be made. Some living person, as in the case of JEneas and Ulysses, might go down and visit those who were the inhabitants of this lower world. It was then always an underground cavern with the classic people where the good and bad went ; for, except in the case of some highly favoured souls, semi-divine heroes who were transferred to Olympus and were companions of the gods, no one ever " went to heaven " in the sense in which we are at the present time accustomed to use that term.

These realms, then, as I said, were either under the surface of the earth or off somewhere in the interstellar spaces. But we must bear in mind, if we wish to have any adequate thought of these old-time ideas, that the universe up to within four hundred years of the present time has been comparatively a very small affair. The entire universe as it was thought of by the Greeks and Romans, for example, was not so large, not nearly so large as we imagine the solar system to be. The stars were not so very far away. Heaven was just above the dome of blue. And you are aware of the traditions that made people think that it might be possible for some hero to scale heaven and threaten the stability of the throne of Jupiter himself.

(These merely as hints of the comparative size of the universe in the old time and the present.)

Now I wish to suggest further some peculiar facts in regard to the nature of the soul, — the inhabitants of these other worlds. There are persons at the present time who, under the name of theosophy, have resurrected, or suppose themselves to have resurrected, certain phases of Buddha's Oriental ideas, who talk to us about shells and astral bodies as separate possibly from the central soul of man. It is very curious to note that in Greek and Latin mythology, as well as among the Egyptians and some of the other ancient nations, ideas akin to these were held.

For example, when Ulysses goes down to the underworld, among others that he meets there, is the shade of Hercules ; and this shade is able to talk with him. He has indeed a shadowy life, but substance enough to carry on a conversation with the living hero ; and yet, according to the teaching of the thought of the time, the real Hercules, a demigod, had been transferred to Olympus, and was there living in companionship with the gods. So that, in a certain sense, you see there were two of him.

Among the Egyptians also we find there was an unreal sort of shadow that sometimes haunted the tomb, or in some indefinite way was connected with the mummy, while the real soul was in one of the heavens or hells, receiving the rewards or undergoing the punishments of the life he had lived here below the stars.

Souls, therefore, were somewhat bountifully supplied ; and one of them could be in one place, while another was somewhere else. It reminds us of the Scotch traditions concerning the wraith, or apparition, which may be seen wandering over the heather while the owner is alive, and presumably has his body and soul both with him wherever he may be. But this life which they lived was a very shadowy one. Of course, we cannot reconcile it with any reasonable philosophical speculation of the modern world. When yEneas talks with his father Anchises in this underworld, the old man can weep, can speak in a voice that can be heard. He remembers the past, ho forecasts the future ; and yet, when the son endeavours to embrace him, there is no substance there, and his arms pass through the form as if it were merely a shadow.

These people in the underworld, again, are ordinarily supposed to be ignorant of what is taking place on the surface of the earth ; and yet they have not forgotten the past. They are intensely interested in it. They are glad to hear news of their children, their descendants. They are proud if they have attained prosperity. They are cast down with sadness if they do not live lives which they regard as worthy, or, indeed, if anything unfortunate has befallen them. Ignorant then generally as to what has taken place on the surface of the earth, it is still true — and I wish this to be noted as a separate and distinct fact

— that under special conditions it is believed that communication may be established between the underworld and the world up here where the sun shines. The way is usually closed. It is difficult for a spirit to come up to the surface of the earth. It is difficult for a man to go down and mingle with the shades. But there are conditions in which it is possible. This is worthy of attention, because there never has been a time that we can trace from the beginning of human thought on this subject, when a belief like this has not been held. I do not say now that it is important. I do not dwell upon it. I wish simply to call it to the reader's attention.

We come now to trace three or four very important things in connection with the beliefs of these people concerning the future. And, in the first place, it is worthy of note that the thought of evolution as connected with death had not entered their minds. They did not regard death as a step in advance. They did not have any forward and upward looking idea or hope connected with it. It was a sad necessity to them. At first there was no ethical idea connected with it. They did not regard it as a punishment ; it was only a sad fact that men must die. They did not look forward to it with any anticipation of joy. They pitied those who were obliged to go down into this gloomy and half-unreal world of shades ; and they looked forward to the necessity of it in their own case, as most of us do to-day, as something to be postponed and avoided by every possible means in their power.

I wish to touch on two or three illustrative phases of this belief. There are a good many persons in the modern world who are coming to accept the idea of reincarnation as though it were something desirable, as though it solved the problems and helped them settle some of the practical difficulties of life. Remember, then, that in India, both among the Brahmins and among the Buddhists, it was not a welcome thought. It was held, indeed, almost universally. All men believed that they had existed before, and that they would exist — nobody knew how many times — again. Perhaps in the past they had been kings, or beggars ; they had been diseased and crippled outcasts ; they had been people of wealth and consideration ; they had occupied almost every conceivable position in society. Not only had they been men, perhaps they had been elephants, perhaps they had been apes, perhaps they had been flies or gnats or serpents ; for the kinship of the human and the sub-human was held in India to such an extent that this sort of transformation was not only believed to be possible, but to be actual, and constantly going on. If a man had lived a noble life, he might expect to be born in some higher station after a brief respite in some one of the heavens. If he had lived a bad life, he looked forward to being born in some poorer and meaner condition. And it was not possible for him to balance the good and the bad, to say, " There has been more good in my life than there has been bad," and so have something on his credit account. No matter how good he had been, if he had been bad at all that badness must be expiated to the letter in some rebirth that was to follow.

Dreary, then, was the prospect that awaited them. They could look forward to no rest. There had been thousands, possibly millions, of births in the past ; and there awaited them thousands, perhaps millions, of births in the future. They did not know how many ; and, as they looked forward to it, it seemed an interminable and wearisome round.

The Brahmins and the Buddhists, then, did not anticipate this fate with joy. They did not look forward to it even with resignation ; for the one sole object of the Brahmin religion

So Life Beyond Death

was to live so as to attain such wisdom as to enable the soul to escape this horrible necessity of being continually reborn. The one thing to look forward to was that he might, after nobody knew how long, attain absorption in Brahma, lose the conciousness of personal identity, forget to think, forget to hope, to desire, to fear, and so share in some impersonal way the felicity of the infinite and eternal spirit.

So this fate was what the Brahmin was trying to escape ; and the Buddhist was engaged in the same effort. He had a different philosophy, looked upon the universe in a different way ; but he believed also in this eternal, weary round of rebirths. And the one thing that Gautama was striving for was to show his followers the path — to what ? The path out of this fearful necessity into Nirvana. And what was Nirvana ? Scholars are still disputing over it ; but it was either the loss of self-consciousness, the attainment of eternal calm, or else it was something so near unconsciousness that the most careful students find themselves unable to draw any thinkable distinction.

The Brahmins, then, and the Buddhists did not anticipate the next life, except as they looked afar off with an ever-sustained hope to the possibility of losing individual existence and sharing in the supposed impersonal felicity of the Eternal.

The Greeks and the Romans again looked upon this other life, not as something to be desired, but to be dreaded. It was the loss of all they cared for. If you get the picture of it in your minds, you will see how undesirable it must have been. They went down into this underground, shadowy world. They no longer saw the sun, nor the stars at night. They no longer felt the breezes of heaven fanning their brows. They no longer felt the pulsing of the blood in their veins, the free beating of it in their hearts. There was no longer this real, flesh-and-blood existence. There was no longer glad consciousness of power on the part of the athlete, the ability to engage in the struggles of war or the peaceful strifes of the arena. There was no longer the reality of love and friendship such as they had enjoyed in the olden days. It was a shadowy, unreal sort of world where they lived over again in seeming, their memory of what they had cared for in the olden time.

As an illustration of the way it was looked on, let us read over one brief passage from the Odyssey. Ulysses has been permitted to go down to this underworld ; and he meets there Achilles, the great hero of the ancient world, and in the midst of their conversation he thus addresses him : —

" . . . . ' But as for thee, Achilles, no man lived before thy time, Nor will hereafter live, more fortunate Than thou, — for while alive we honoured thee As if thou wert a god, and now again In these abodes thou rulest o'er the dead. Therefore, Achilles, shouldst thou not be sad.'

I spake. Achilles, quickly answered me : 1 Noble Ulysses, speak not thus of death As if thou wouldst console me. I would be A labourer on earth, and serve for hire Some man of mean estate, who makes scant cheer, Rather than reign o'er all who have gone down To death.' "

Let us now take one more step, and see that at first there was no ethical idea associated with this fact of death. By that I mean something twofold. First, they did not explain the fact of death ethically. It had no moral significance. And, in the next place, they had no developed doctrines of rewards or punishments. Let us consider both of these as briefly as we may and at the same time make them clear.

Men at first took death as a sad fact which they could not avoid ; but they did not attempt to explain it in any philosophical way. They did not believe in natural death. They did not see at first why it should be inevitable ; and they always held to the belief that, when a man died, it was always because somebody had killed him. But by and by, when they saw that death was universal, they began to see that some general fate hung over them. But they did not regard it as a punishment for anything which they had done. They simply accepted it because they must, without explanation.

Again, it is found that in the early thinking of all these peoples there was in the next world no division between the good and the bad. All went to one place. Death was a sufficient punishment for evil ; and it was the same inexplicable thing that also came upon the good. There was no heaven and no hell in the early thinking of these peoples. But by and by, as the moral sense grew, you will see that they inevitably sought some moral explanation of these strange facts. So at last it came about that death was looked upon as a punishment for human sin.

Among the Persians, for example, men were created with the intention that they should live here on earth for some indefinite period, and then be transferred, without dying, to the abodes of the gods.

There was in the Persian theology one great original Power, and under him two gods in age-long antagonism, — the god of darkness and evil, and the god of good and light, — of apparently equal power. They were matched in an age-long contest ; and it was because men took sides with Ahriman, the god of darkness and evil, that they were made, as a punishment, subject to death, which had not been a part of the original creative plan. But in this Persian theology, it is well for us to remember, there were none of the horrors which humanity has imagined in some of these later centuries. There were age-long hells, but all of them were some time to. come to an end. Even Ahriman himself, the bad god, and the prototype of the Christian devil, was to be converted and become subject to the deity of light and of good. So that ultimately peace and purity and blessedness were to reign.

In Egyptian theology we find some of the noblest teaching anywhere to be discovered in the world. In the Book of the Dead, which recounts the trial of the soul and its apportionment either to bliss or to misery, there are some of the highest and finest ethical teachings to be found in any religious composition on earth. The souls are judged with absolute impartiality as to what they are and what they have done, and they go their way into light or darkness as the just assignment of an impartial judge. But again, in Egypt, the hells are not to last forever. Punishment was not eternal.

Among the Greeks and Romans death has not been generally explained as the result of any sin on the part of man. They all at first went down into the underworld. But, when we come to the highest and finest development of their conceptions of the other life, we find that this underworld is divided into two. There is Elysium, where the good are as happy as any of the dead can be ; and there is Tartarus, the place where the very wicked are tortured and punished. But it is worth our careful consideration that generally, — and this, you will see, chimes in remarkably with ordinary Christian dogma, — the bad were punished, not so much because they were bad to their fellowmen, but for some outrage to the gods, some impiety towards them. They had offended some deity or had profaned some altar, some temple, some sacrifice.

You will see, then, that the growth of ethical ideas concerning the next life keeps pace, and very naturally, with the growth of ethical ideas generally here among men.

There is one other thought now to which I must ask your consideration ; and that is that there came a time, and that, the time of the highest civilisation of these ancient peoples, when scepticism began to come in and invade these hitherto universally accepted beliefs. And there is one principle so important that I must ask you to give it your special attention, — a principle of age-long application, the principle which, in changed conditions and in regard to changed ideas, we are facing to-day.

There is always, at any period of human advance, a great belief, a belief like this that the soul continues after death alive. Then what ? Then there is an intellectual way of stating that belief. There is the formal framework of ideas in which the belief is set. There is the imaginative picture of that other world and of the soul that inhabits it, of its conditions there.