A consciousness of immortality, sometimes dim and vague, sometimes vivid and clear, seems to be characteristic of the human race. However low man may stand he cannot consider death to be the end of his existence. The conviction that he is immortal is innate to him. Annihilation is contrary to the nature and demands of his spirit. It is true that uncertainty and doubt might arise, but man will never be able wholly to uproot either hope or fear as to the possibility of a future life. Experiencing such feelings and presentiments, man finds himself amidst a world where death and dissolution everywhere surround him. He sees the[2] objects of his love or fear pass away, and he knows that sooner or later the same fate will befall himself. When he beholds the lifeless body of some near relative, his presentiment of immortality tells him that the selfsame soul that once animated that body is still alive. In such moments even the man of low cultivation is forced into more or less profound contemplation. The following reflection impresses itself with might and wonder upon him: “I feel convinced that the dead is living, but how can he live without his body and what form does his new life take?”
In all ages and stages, men have asked the same or similar questions, and they will go on asking them as long as belief in a future life obtains.
But man does not confine himself to questioning, he wants answers, and especially must this be true where the reply is so intimately connected with himself. And these answers have not been lacking; we find them formulated in those opinions and theories respecting[3] a future life which throughout the ages have gradually appeared and prevailed.
The critically thinking public of the present day takes a decidedly skeptical attitude toward all these theories. They assert, and not without strong arguments, that it is impossible to know anything. But, however convinced the public may be of the fruitlessness of discussing the topic, no one will succeed in pushing it entirely aside. Time and again the same questions reappear as dark and threatening clouds on the horizon of our consciousness; they occupy our thoughts, take hold upon our feelings and color our sentiments. It would undoubtedly be sufficient at such moments to have, were it only one fixed point to stand upon; one established fact to start from and which we could trust would lead our thoughts in the right direction. But such a basis to set out from we have not hitherto been able to find. Will this remain the case forever? Will science[4] concerning a future life always fail to attain aught but negative results? Let us say at once that humanity will probably be able to ascertain as much as it may be necessary or useful for us to know in this world. This hope is founded on our firm belief that at this time a basis such as that above mentioned really exists. Natural science has furnished this basis, though nobody as yet has happened to reflect that the facts upon which this basis rests may have any bearing upon our attitude toward a future life, much less give answer to questions such as the following: How, and in what way, is man to pass from this life into another?
It will be the object of the following pages, then, to develop further the view just intimated.
In prehistoric times men believed in a close relationship between the soul of the deceased and his body in the grave, and this purely instinctive faith is the more remarkable, as it prevailed during stages of civilization when differentiation[5] between spiritual qualities and physical matter was almost unknown.
The contradistinction between soul and body is certainly a fact, a general experience. But neither the individual nor the race realizes this fact suddenly or all at once. The knowledge of the distinction between the physical and the spiritual sphere, with their different characteristics and qualities, proceeds step by step, being the result of slowly advancing evolution.
The child and the savage remain unconscious of any discrimination between soul and body, and even for the more cultivated man, the border between the two is vague and undetermined. According to the psychologic order of man’s evolution we might therefore expect that the problem as to this relationship would appear at a comparatively late date, and even then be of importance only to a reduced number of more cultivated individuals. But, on the contrary, experience shows that this question occupies the thoughts[6] of men in very low stages of civilization, and, in fact, that it is of the most general interest.
The reason for this evidently lies in the instinctive belief that the body contains something which is immortal, and which in the life hereafter the soul cannot dispense with.
In its first historic form the question concerning the soul’s relation to the body deals with this relation after, not before, the separation of the soul and body. This latter problem emerges only in very high stages of civilization, and even then is of scientific interest to an insignificant minority only, while the question of our existence after death is religious in its nature and of interest to all.
In olden times men were more fully convinced of a continued personal existence after death than civilized mankind seems to be nowadays. The same vivid conviction we find even in our age among people in the natural state. From the prehistoric peoples we have[7] no written communication, but from their graves they speak to the present day intelligibly and plainly of their belief in a life to come. Behold the monuments defying time and decay, which these people have erected in memory of their deceased. The sepulchres of the Egyptian kings to this very day arouse our amazement and admiration.
What was it, then, that induced these peoples of early times to bestow such extraordinary labor on the places of their last rest? It certainly was their belief that the graves contained not only the lifeless body, but also the living soul. The funeral ceremonies evidently show, as Fustel de Coulanges says, that when the body was laid in the grave it was thought that something yet alive was placed there at the same time. The soul was born simultaneously with the body; death did not separate them; they were both enclosed together in the grave. In olden times people felt so fully assured that a man lived in the tomb, that they never[8] failed to bury with him the things of which he was thought to be in want. They poured wine on the grave in order to quench his thirst; they brought food to his tomb in order to appease his hunger; they killed horses and slaves, believing that, if enclosed with the dead, these would serve him in his grave as they had served him during his life.
It was also in this conviction that the positive duty of burying the deceased originated. In order to bring rest to the soul in the subterranean dwelling that fitted its new existence, it was necessary that the body, to which, in some way or another, it still clung, should be covered with earth. The soul, denied a grave, had no dwelling. Drifting about, it sought in vain the desired rest after life’s fitful struggle. Without shelter, without offerings or food, it was condemned to everlasting wandering. Therefore, because the deceased was unhappy, he became ill-natured. He tormented the living; sent[9] them diseases; destroyed their harvests; haunted them in uncanny visions in order to remind them of their duty to bury the body and thereby secure peace for himself.
The old authors give evidence of the degree to which people were vexed by fear that proper ceremonies would not be observed at their burial. It was a constant source of grievous irritation. The fear of death was less prevalent than the fear of being left unburied. Naturally so, for it was a question of eternal happiness. It should therefore not surprise us so much when we see the Athenians execute generals, who, after a naval victory, had neglected to bury the fallen. These generals, disciples of the philosophers of their time, did not believe that the fate of the soul was dependent on that of the body. They had therefore decided not to challenge the tempest for the empty formality of gathering and burying the fallen. But the masses, even in enlightened Athens, still clung to the old[10] conceptions, and accused the generals of godlessness, sentencing them to death. By their victory they had saved Athens, but by their negligence they had brought perdition upon thousands of souls. “These conceptions,” says Fustel de Coulanges, “have governed man and society through many generations, and have been the source from which the larger part of ancient domestic and public institutions were derived.”
But this is not all. The primitive ideas, referred to above, obtain even today among various nations and tribes all over the earth. From the islands in the Pacific Ocean all the way up to the Polar regions we meet with the same creeds among uncivilized peoples, the same or similar manner of burial as among the ancients.
If we were going to illustrate this, the Chinese probably would be the first to attract our attention, not only because of the antiquity of their civilization, but because of their great numbers.[11] As is well known, a third part of the world’s population is Chinese. Most of the characteristic peculiarities of this enormous community must be attributed to their death-cultus.
Every family in China lives in continuous communication with its ancestors, upon whom are bestowed offerings of fruit, grain, rice or vegetables, according to the products of the soil of their home. The soul will lose none of its qualities through the separation from the body. In company with other souls of their kindred it hovers over the family, partakes of their sufferings, rejoices in their happiness. If forgotten, it grows melancholy and ill-natured, it complains in doleful voice and its moans are ominous. Woe unto him who ignores these obligations. The offerings to the souls of his forefathers must not be neglected. Their memory must not be allowed to fade away. But who is going to attend to these sacrifices and memorial observances if the family dies out? Matrimony, therefore,[12] becomes a sacred duty, the foremost of all duties.
To the Chinese mind there is no grievance greater, no punishment more terrible, than expulsion from the family. What would become of a man’s soul if his nearest of kin would curse his memory? To rid himself of such a sickening dream he is ready to sacrifice everything, even life itself. But only when the body is brought to rest in the family grave can the soul enjoy the care of its kindred. It is obvious, then, that emigration is looked upon with great apprehension by the faithful Chinaman. He must either return home during his life or else arrange that his body be brought back if death should overtake him while abroad. We know that the big transoceanic steamship companies faithfully carry out this part of their contracts with those of their Chinese passengers who meet with unexpected death in America.
Similar ideas are to be found among the negroes of Africa and Australia,[13] and among the Indian tribes of America. These also supply their deceased with such tools and provisions as they are supposed to need in another world.
Among the Arctic peoples the same customs and usages prevail. When an Eskimo is about to die, he is dressed in his best clothes and his knees are drawn up under him. The grave is lined inside with moss and a skin, over which stones and peat are spread. If the dead is a man, his boat, weapons and tools are laid beside the grave; if a woman, her knife and sewing utensils; if it is a child, the head of a dog is placed on top of the grave, that the soul of the dog may show the helpless child a road to the second life. If a mother dies while nursing a babe, it is, as a rule, buried alive with her.
In a Samoyede grave, Nordenskold found among other things parts of an iron pot, an ax, a knife, a drill, a bow, a wooden arrow, some copper ornaments, etc. Even rolls of birch bark were found in the coffin, in all probability[14] to be used for making fire in another world. Beside the grave a sleigh was placed upside down, evidently in order to provide a vehicle for the deceased, and we may assume that reindeers were slaughtered at the funeral.
The essential, fundamental thought in this conception which causes the uncultivated peoples in our days to treat their deceased in the same way as the ancients did, is the belief that the body contains something which the soul cannot do without in the future life. Soul and body are and remain a unit even beyond the grave. As death means a violent tearing apart of these two factors, the soul cannot be wholly satisfied without its natural relationship to the body.
It is evident, therefore, that to the ancient world life in the lower regions seemed dismal and repulsive. Achilles would rather be a day-laborer on earth than king of the hosts in Hades. Life there passed in a shadowy inactivity amidst all wealth, a desolate emptiness[15] in all superfluity, so that the soul could not help but suffer a ceaseless regret whether it moved in the halls of Valhalla or in the Elysian fields. Glorious meadows, crystal waters, streams of milk and honey, could not obliterate the craving of the soul for its corporeal existence. It returns time and again to the body in the grave to enjoy the sacrifices and cares of the surviving.
This mourning for the body and continuous longing for the sunny life on earth made death seem something terrible that fretted and tormented men. Was it not natural, then, that the mental disharmony caused by the thought of death, should sooner or later bring about a reaction; give birth to the hope of a reunion of the soul with the body on a resurrection day of the dead? At some such conclusion several religions have arrived. We need mention only the Norse sagas, Islam, Parseeism and Judaism. A resurrection, everywhere taught in almost identical terms, is placed at the end of the present system[16] of the world in connection with a cosmic catastrophe out of which new heavens and a new earth with an ennobled humanity will emerge.
The bodily resurrection on the day of judgment is a doctrine also in the Christian faith, as it is interpreted by the orthodox creeds. But this dogma has entirely lost its former authority. It is repeated at each Church burial, but the reading has now become a mere formality. We do not believe any more in a resurrection in the old sense.
What factor in our time has been sufficiently powerful to overturn conceptions so deeply rooted in human nature? It is the scientific spirit as acknowledged even by faithful theologians. Science has shown that man’s body is renewed several times during life and that even the bones, placed in the grave, soon “arise” through nature’s forces themselves and take part again in the universal circulation of matter. In face of all the evidence for this truth, it is impossible to believe[17] in the old doctrine of a physical resurrection.
Another question is, whether this ancient belief could disappear without leaving traces in contemporary consciousness. Can man have changed so radically in a century, or rather in a few decades, that the conviction of the body’s importance to the soul after death will no longer find an echo in his religious instincts? By no means. We are the same human beings and have the same human nature as our forefathers. Forms of conception may go, but not the instincts to which they once gave a satisfactory expression.
We may therefore rest assured that the important change of attitude in this question forcefully reacts on religious life in our day. The reaction does not necessarily mean progress at first. Evolution does not follow a straight line; a step forward is generally immediately followed by phenomena in the opposite direction.
The religious instincts, underlying[18] the conception of the body’s importance to the soul in a future life, must create new expressions, and the logic of the old conceptions themselves indicates what forms they would take.
When the belief in a restoration of the union between the two factors in a human being was suddenly and almost violently shaken by natural science, there seemed at first no other way out of the difficulty than to choose between them and declare either the soul or the body as the essential part.
Those who felt inclined toward the former alternative evidently found themselves confined to a one-sided idealism of little vitality, because an existence without body seems as shadowy and unsatisfactory to man in the present as in ancient times. An increasing weakening of the intensity of religious life would be the natural consequence.
Those again who, because of a more realistic tendency, insisted upon the essentiality of our body, were logically[19] driven to a gross materialism. If science had proved that the belief in a bodily resurrection is untenable, why should it not be able to demonstrate that all religious doctrines were delusions? This reasoning seemed to many so natural that many scientific facts contributed evidence in their favor even when these facts pointed entirely in the opposite direction.
There was, however, no necessity to think and reason as these two main schools in our age have done. One might also from the beginning, have taken the same road and arrived at the same conclusion as, for instance, Granfelt in his “Christian Dogmatic.” “It has been demonstrated beyond doubt by natural science,” says this prominent theologian, “that the matter of a human body is, even here on earth, in continuous circulation, so that in the course of a few weeks all atoms of the whole body are replaced by new atoms. The only lasting attribute of the soul during this process is the spiritual body,[20] which assimilates, typically forms, and again secretes the earthly matter. It must be this spiritual body, then, that constitutes the combining element between man’s earthly body and his glorified body in the eternal life.”
Christianity speaks not only of a material resurrection on the day of judgment; it also says that man possesses within him a spiritual body, which after death immediately arises to everlasting life. This latter conception is not confined to Christianity. In all religions we find two tendencies side by side, the one idealistic and the other more realistic, which indeed are not really opposed to each other, inasmuch as the belief in a spiritual body may be said to constitute the basis even for the realistic conception that places the spirit in co-relation with the body in the grave.
The idealistic tendency may be traced away back even to prehistoric times and has generally been connected with some other burial methods, among[21] which cremation was the most common. The place cremation occupied in ancient thought and the connection fancied by our forefathers between the elements which make up man’s spiritual body, may be gathered from Victor Rydberg’s researches in Germanic mythology.
“The popular ecclesiastical dualism of soul and body,” says Rydberg, “was as foreign to the Veda-Aryans as to the heathen Germanic race. According to the latter, man consisted of six different elements: First, the earthly element of which the visible body is made; second, a vegetative; third, an animal; fourth, the so-called liten (litr), an inner body shaped after the gods, and invisible to earthly eyes; fifth, the soul; sixth, the spirit.”
The earthly and the vegetative elements were already joined in the trees, Ask and Embla, when the gods came and changed them into the first human pair. Each of the three gods gave them separate gifts. From Lodur they received[22] la, that is the blood, and laeti, that is the power of intentional movement inherent in the blood, which attributes have been considered by all peoples as the characteristics that distinguish animal from vegetable life. Lodur gave them further the god-image, liter goda, by the power of which man’s earthly substance receives the form in which it appears to the senses. The Germanic race, like the Hellenes and the Romans, believed that the gods had human form, so that this form originally belonged to the gods. To the Germanic hierologists and bards man was formed in effigiem deorum and possessed in his nature a liter goda, a god image in the literal sense of the word.
This image may for a short time be separated from the other human elements, so that a person may assume the appearance of another without changing his spiritual identity.
The soul, odr, is the gift of H?ner, while the spirit, ?nd, is the contribution of Odin.
[23]
Earthly death consists in the separation of the higher elements, spirit, soul and liten, which form a unity for themselves, from the lower elements and a removal of the former to Hades. The lower elements, the earthly, the vegetal and the animal, continue in the grave for a longer or shorter time to co-operate and form a certain unity, which, from the higher elements, retain something of the living man’s personality and qualities. This lower unity is the ghost, the wraith, which usually sleeps during the day in the grave, but in the night might wake either spontaneously or by other people’s prayers and sorcery. The ghost possesses the nature of the deceased; it is good and benevolent, or evil and dangerous, according to his disposition. Because animal and vegetal elements form part of his nature, he is tormented by a craving for nourishment if he wakes from his slumber.
These conceptions of a dualistic life after death, common among the Veda-Aryans,[24] as well as among the heathen Norsemen, were closely allied with the idea of cremation. Agni, the god of fire, removed the dead man to a better world, while the coarser body, with its faults and defects, was consumed by the flames.
It was a matter of doubt, however, whether liten, the inner body, would suffer injury in the pyre. But this doubt was removed partly by certain formulas, believed to be protective; partly by burning a buck together with the body as compensation to the “flesh-eating fire,” the elementary Agni (the hymns distinguish between the two), so that he should not touch the subtler body of the corpse. Through the combustion, the lower elements were enabled to immediately follow the soul of the deceased, and it was thought that two advantages were gained thereby: First, the second ego of the dead was liberated from its grave-dwelling, which was monstrous if his sleep were disturbed either by craving for nourishment[25] or through the acts of Nirrtis and sorcerers; second, the surviving were relieved from their dread of evil ghosts.