Creed and Deed: A Series of Discourses

I. IMMORTALITY

"not by the Creed but by the Deed."

The Spciety which I have the privilege of addressing, has been organized with the above for its motto. Some of my hearers have entirely abandoned the tenets of the positive religions; others continue to hold them true, but, are discouraged by the lack of spiritual force, the prominence given to mere externals, the barren formalism in the churches and synagogues. We agree in believing that theology is flourishing at the expense of religion. It seems to us that differences in creed are constantly increasing, and will continue to multiply with the growth and differentiation of the human intellect. We perceive that every attempt to settle problems of faith has thus far signally failed, nor can we hope for better results in the future. Certainty even with regard to the essential dogmas appears to us impossible. We do not therefore deny dogma, but prefer to remit it to the sphere of individual conviction with which public associations should have no concern. Far from believing that the doctrines of religion as commonly taught are essential to the well being of society, we apprehend that the disputes concerning the "author of the law" have diverted the attention of men from the law itself, and that the so-called duties toward God too often interfere with the proper performance of our duties toward one another. It were better to insist less upon a right belief, and more upou right action.

In order to find a common basis whereon good men, whether believers or unbelievers can unite, we look to the moral law itself, whose certainty rests in the universal experience of civilized Humanity. We shall hold questions of faith in abeyance, shall endeavor to stimulate the conscience and to this end shall seek to awaken an interest in the grave social problems of our day, which need nothing so much as a vigorous exertion of our moral energies, in order to arrive at a peaceable solution. To broaden and deepen the ethical sentiment in ourselves, and to hold up to the sad realities of the times, the mirror of the ideal life, is the object with which we set out. We do not therefore delude ourselves with the hope that the ideal will ever be fully realized, but are convinced that in aspiring to noble ends the soul will take on something of the grandeur of what it truly admires. Starting with the assumption that the doctrines of religion are incapable of proof, it behooves us to show in one or more instances the fallacy of the arguments upon which they are commonly founded, and we shall begin with the doctrine of IMMORTALITY.

In approaching our subject we are first confronted by the argument from the common consent of mankind. Like the belief in God, the hope of immortality is said to be implanted in every human heart, and the experience of travellers is cited to show that even the most barbarous races have given it expression in some form, however crude. Aside from the fact that the statement, as it stands, is somewhat exaggerated, we will admit that the belief in a future state is widely current among savage tribes. But the value of this testimony becomes extremely doubtful on closer inspection. A brief account of the origin of the conception of soul among our primitive ancestors, will make this plain.

If we observe a child in its sleep, some half articulate word, some cry or gesture occasionally reveals to us the vividness of the dreams with which the little brain is teeming. It is hardly doubtful that the child mistakes the visions of its dream for actual occurrences, and attaches the same reality to these miasmas of the stagnant night as to the clear prospects of daylight reason. Even the adult sometimes finds it difficult to clear his brain of the fancies which occupied it in the hours of sleep. And the test of large experience can alone enable him to distinguish between fact and phantom. I call attention to these facts, because the phenomena of sleep and dreams seem to offer a satisfactory clue to the naive theories of the lower races concerning death and the after life. The savage indeed is the veritable child-man. His ardent emotions, his crude logic, the eagerness with which he questions the how and wherefore of nature, and the comparative ease with which his simple understanding accepts the most fanciful solutions, all combine to place him on the level of the child.

Aware that the body in sleep is at rest, while at the same time the sleeper is conscious of acting and suffering, visiting distant regions perhaps, conversing with friends, engaging in battle with enemies, the savage reasoned that there must be a man within the man, as it were, – an airy counterfeit of man which leaves its grosser tenement in the night, and in the course of its wanderings experiences whatever the fortunes of the dream may chance to be. Instances are related where the body was prematurely disturbed, the inner man was prevented from returning to his envelope, and death resulted. The shadow cast by the human figure, an attenuated image of man, connected with the body and yet distinct from it, afforded a curious confirmation of this artless theory. The Basutos* affirm that a person having on one occasion incautiously approached the bank of a river, his shadow was seized by a crocodile, and he died in consequence. The story of shadowless or soulless men has been made familiar to modern literature by Chamisso's well known tale. The spectral man who severs his connection with the body during sleep, remains concealed within it during the hours of waking, and in this manner, the idea of a human soul as distinct from the body, takes its rise.** It is easy to see how by extending the analogy, what we call death must have appeared as only another form of sleep, and how the theory of dreams gave rise to a belief in the continuance of life beyond the grave. That sleep and death are twin brothers, was to the primitive man more than mere metaphor. As in sleep, so in death, the body is at rest, but as in sleep, so also in death, a shade was supposed to go forth capable of acting and suffering, and yearning to return to its former condition. The apparitions of the deceased seen at night by the friends they had left behind, were taken to be real visitations, and corroborated the assumption of the continued existence of the departed. The ghosts of the dead were dreaming phantoms, debarred from permanently returning to their abandoned bodies.

* The dream theory seems to be the one generally adopted by writers on primitive culture. For an extended account of this subject vide the works of Tylor, Lubbock and Bastian, from which the illustrations given in the text are taken.

** Peter Schlemihl.

*** The soul was believed to be corporeal in nature, only more vague and shadowy than the framework of the body, and distinguished by greater swiftness of locomotion.

The view we have taken of the origin of the conception of soul is greatly strengthened when we consider the thoroughly material character of the ghost's life after death. The ghost continues to be liable to hunger, pain, cold, as before. But the living have shut it out from their communion; in consequence it hates its former companions, persecutes them where it can, and wreaks its vengeance upon them when they are least prepared to resist it. In a certain district of Germany it was believed that the dead person, when troubled by the pangs of hunger, begins by gnawing its shroud until that is completely devoured, then rising from the grave, it stalks through the village and in the shape of a vampire, sits upon the children in their cradles, and sucks their blood. When sated with the hideous feast, it returns to the churchyard to renew its visits on the succeeding nights. In order to hinder them from using their jaws, it was customary to place stones or coins into the mouths of the dead before burial and the most grotesque devices were resorted to, to prevent the much dreaded return of the denizens of the tomb. In the middle ages the corpse was often spiked down to hinder its rising. Among the Hottentots a hole was broken into the wall, through which the corpse was carried from the house, and then carefully covered up, it being the prevailing superstition, that the dead can only reenter by the same way in which they have previously made their exit. Among a certain negro tribe of Africa, the path from the house to the grave was strewn with thorns, in the hope that the ghost would find the path too painful, and desist. As late as 1861, it occurred in a village in Gallicia, that the ghost of a dead peasant was found to pursue the living, and the inhabitants rushing out to the grave fearfully mutilated the body, to prevent it from committing further injury.

The same conception, from a more charitable point of view, led to the institution of regular meals for the ghosts at stated intervals. In North-eastern India, after the body has been consigned to its final resting-place, a friend of the deceased steps forward, and holding food and drink in his hand, speaks the following suggestive words, "Take and eat; heretofore you have eaten and drunk with us, you can do so no more; you were one of us, you can be so no longer; we come no more to you; come you not to us." In Eastern Africa, the Wanicas are accustomed to fill a cocoa-nut shell with rice and tembo, and place it near the grave. In the Congo district, a channel is dug into the grave leading to the mouth of the corpse, by which means food and drink are duly conveyed. The sense of decorum impels certain Turanian tribes to place not only food, but even napkins, on the graves of their relatives. We cannot resist the temptation of quoting the following passage from Mr. Tylor's graphic account of the manner in which the Chinese feast their ghostly visitors. "Some victuals are left over for any blind or feeble spirit who may be late, and a pail of gruel is provided for headless souls, with spoons for them to put it down their throats with. Such proceedings culminate in the so-called Universal Rescue, now and then celebrated, when a little house is built for the expected visitors, with separate accommodations, and bath rooms for male and female ghosts." * In the Alpach Valley of Tyrol, ghosts released from purgatory on the night of All Souls, return to the houses of the peasantry. A light is left burning in the dining room, and a certain cake, prepared for the occasion, is placed upon the table for their delectation, also a pot of grease for the poor souls to anoint their wounds with.

* Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii, p. 34.

Occasionally, to obviate the necessity of continued attendance upon the dead, a single sumptuous feast is provided immediately after their demise, and this is believed to cancel their claims once for all. In this manner arose the custom of funeral banquets. In England, in the fifteenth century, a noisy revel of three days' duration attended the obsequies of Sir John Paston. The so-called Irish wake originated in the same way. After the first outbreaks of grief have subsided, meat and drink are brought in, chiefly the latter, and what was at first intended for a parting entertainment to the dead, often ends in the boisterous excesses of the living.

It is here proper to remark that the savage tribes who believe in an after existence, do not in many instances claim this privilege for themselves alone, but share it willingly with the lower animals and even with inanimate objects. Weapons, utensils, and even victuals – have their ghostly representatives like men. When a great chief dies, his widow is often forced by public opinion to follow him to the grave, in order that the departed brave may not be wifeless in the hereafter. But besides the widow, his horse, his war-club, his girdle, his favorite trinkets are buried or burned with him to serve his use or vanity in spectre-land.

From what has preceded, it must be clear that the savage's conception of a ghost bears but a faint and distant resemblance to the idea of soul, as it became current in the schools of philosophy; nor can the latter derive support from the ignorant reasonings, the hasty inductions of primitive man. On the lower levels of culture the idea of immortality indeed is quite unknown. If the ghost continues its shadowy existence after death, it is none the less liable to come to an abrupt end, and then nothing whatever of its former substance remains; it is a pale, filmy thing, exposed to the inroads of the hostile elements, surrounded by numerous dangers, to which it may at any moment succumb. In the Tonga Islands only the souls of the well-born are supposed to survive at all. The common people have no souls worth speaking of, and when they die, are completely extinguished. The ghosts of Guinea negroes are compelled to approach the bank of the terrible river of death. Some of them are thereupon wafted across to lead pleasant lives on the opposite side, others are drowned in the stream, or beaten to atoms with a club. With the Fijians it is always a matter of doubt whether a soul will succeed at all in maintaining its feeble existence after it has left its protecting house of sinew and bone. But they open a peculiarly dismal prospect to wifeless souls. Nanananga, a fierce demoniac being, watches for them on the shore as they approach, and dashes them to pieces upon the rocks. The Greenlanders affirm that after death the soul enters upon a long, lone journey over a mountain full of precipitous descents, covered with ice and snow. The storms howl about its path, and every step is fraught with pain and danger. If any harm happens to the poor wanderer here, then it dies "the other death" from which there is no re-awakening.

In the theories of a future state, as devised by the lower races, we are at a loss to detect the germs of any more spiritual longings. Far from looking forward with pleased anticipation or confidence to the world to come, the barbarian shuddered as he thought of his approaching end, and was loath to exchange the white and sunny world for the dreary companionship of luckless shades. The life that awaited him was not in the majority of instances a better or a higher life than this; not free from the limitations of sense; no larger perfecting of what is here dwarfed and crippled; it was lower, poorer, meaner; it was to the present, what the pressed flower is to the full-blown rose; the same in substance, indeed, but with its beauty perished, and its joyous fragrance evanesced.

The argument from the common consent of mankind in truth deserves no serious attention.*

* The doctrine of spiritual immortality is not common to the human race. The material life of the ghost bears no analogy to what we mean by the soul's continuance. The continuance of the ghost's existence is not an immortal continuance.

The argument cannot be substantiated, it would prove nothing, if it could. The general concurrence of the whole human race in any form of error would not make that error less erroneous, and the testimony of united millions against a solitary thinker might kick the beam when balanced in the scales of truth.

When we behold an ignorant knave squandering his ill-gotten gains on superfluities, while honest people are famishing for want of the necessaries; when we see the unscrupulous politician outstripping the deserving statesman, in the race for fame and station; when modest merit shrinks in corners, and the native royalty of talent plays courtier to the kings of lucre, we are reminded of the complaint of Job, that the bad prosper, and the righteous are down-trodden, yet that they sleep together in the dust and the worm covers them alike.

This evident disparity between virtue and happiness has led men to take refuge in the thought of compensation hereafter, and the necessity of a future state in which the good shall be rewarded, and the evil punished, according to the verdict of a just judge, has been deduced even from the apparent injustice of the present. Thus the very imperfections of our own life on earth, afford a pretext for the most ambitious conceptions of human destiny.

The argument from the necessity of reward and punishment is extremely popular among the uneducated, since it appeals ostensibly to their sense of justice and assures them that by the aid of Divine omnipotence, a full correspondence between worthiness and happiness, though vainly expected here, will be established in another sphere. It behooves us to enquire whether there is anything in the nature of virtue, that demands a correspondence of this kind.

The philosopher Epicurus was perhaps the first among the ancients to take strong ground in favor of the utilitarian view of virtue. Pleasure, he holds, is the purpose of existence, and virtue is thus reduced to enlightened self-interest. There are different kinds of pleasure; pleasures of the senses and of the soul. Epicurus points out that the former cannot be considered true pleasures, since they defeat their own end, blunting the capacity of enjoyment in proportion as they are indulged, and incapable of affording permanent satisfaction. Himself a man of refined tastes and fastidious habits, he shrank from the very coarseness of the passions, and counselled moderation, friendship and benevolence. But he refused to recognize in these virtues any intrinsic value of their own, and lauded them only because in contrast to the lower appetites, the enjoyment they afford is lasting and constantly increases with their exercise. It is easy to perceive that when the moral law is thus stripped of its authority to command, the choice between duty and inclination will be governed by fortuitous preferences, and not by principle. It then remains for each individual to decide what form of pleasure may be most congenial to his temper and desires. The philosopher will value the delights of contemplative ease, and of kindly communion with his fellow-men; the passionate youth may hold that a single deep draught from the chalice of sensual pleasure is worth more than a whole lifetime of neutral self-restraint; "eat and drink" will be his motto; "remote consequences – who knows? To-morrow we may die." Moreover the doctrine of enlightened self-interest has this fatal objection to it, that if consistently applied, at least among the powerful of the earth, it would lead to consequences the very reverse of moral. It is but too true that honesty is not always the best policy; that fraud and violence, when perpetrated on a scale of sufficient magnitude, (instance the division of unfortunate Poland,) are not always punished as they deserve to be. Far from teaching the tyrant to subdue his baser instincts, enlightened self-interest might rather lead him to stifle the accusing voice of conscience, and to root out the scruples that interfere with his ambition. Unless we concede that the moral law has a claim upon us which the constitution of our nature does not permit us to deny with impunity, and that its pleasures differ, not only in degree, but in kind, from all others, virtue, while a necessity to the weak, becomes folly in the strong; and Napoleon, that gigantic egotist, was correct, when he called love a silly infatuation, and sentiment a thing for women.

The principles of Epicurus not only adulterate the motives of goodness with the desire of reward, but they make the reward of desire the very sanction of all virtue, and thus deprive human nature of its best title to nobility.

Truly disinterestedness is the distinguishing mark of every high endeavor. The pursuit of the artist is unselfish, the beauty he creates is his reward. The toil of the scientist in the pursuit of abstract truth is unselfish, the truth he sees is his reward. Why should we hesitate to acknowledge in the domain of ethics, what we concede in the realm of art and science? To say that unselfishness itself is only the more refined expression of a selfish instinct, is to use the term selfish with a double meaning, is a mere empty play on words. We have the innate need of harmony in the moral relations; this is our glory, and the stamp of the Divine upon our nature. We cannot demonstrate the existence of disinterested motives, any more than we can demonstrate that there is joy in the sunlight and freedom in the mountain breeze. The fact that we demand unselfishness in action alone assures us that the standard of enlightened self-interest is false.

And indeed if we consult the opinions of men, where they are least likely to be warped by sophistry, we shall find that disinterestedness is the universal criterion by which moral worth is measured. If we suspect the motive we condemn the act. If a person gives largely for some object of public useful ness or charity, we do not permit the munificence of the gift to deceive our judgment. Perhaps he is merely desirous of vaunting his wealth, perhaps it is social standing he aims at, perhaps he is covetous of fame. If these suspicions prove well founded, the very men who accept his bounty will in their secret hearts despise him, and by a certain revulsion of feeling we shall resent his action all the more, because, not only is he destitute of honorable purpose, but he has filched the fair front of virtue, and defiled the laurel even in the wearing of it.

We do not even accord the name of goodness to that easy, amiable sympathy which leads us to alleviate the sufferings of others, unless it be guided by wise regard for their permanent welfare.

The tattered clothes, the haggard looks, the piteous pleading voice of the pauper on the public highway may awaken our pity, but the system of indiscriminate alms-giving is justly condemned as a weakness rather than a virtue.

On the other hand obedience to duty, when it involves pain and self-abnegation, seems to rise in the general estimation. Clearly because in this instance even the suspicion of interested motives is removed, since hardship, injury in estate and happiness, and even the possible loss of life, are among the foreseen consequences of the act. It is for this reason that the Book of Martyrs has become the golden book of mankind, and that the story of their lives never fails to fill us with mingled sorrow, and admiration, and pride. They are monuments on the field of history, milestones on the path of human progress. We regard them and gain new courage and confidence in our better selves. The blazing pyre on the Campo Fiore, whereon Giordano Bruno breathes his last, becomes a beacon-light for the truth-seeker; the dying Socrates still pours benignant peace over many a sufferer's couch; the Man of sorrows, on Calvary, comforts the hearts of the Christian millions. In the presence of these high examples the inadequacy of the selfish standard becomes clearly apparent. We recognize what a sublime quality that is in man which enables him, not only to triumph over torment and suffering, but to devote his very self to destruction for the sake of honor and truth. Freely must virtue be wooed, not for the dowry she may bring; by loyal devotion to her for her own sake only, can she be won!