William James Human Immortality - Ingersoll Lectures

8/14/2019 William James Human Immortality - Ingersoll Lectures

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^p ti)c ^amc Slutijor.THE LITERARY REMAINS OF HENRY JAMES.Edited, wiih an Introduction, by William James.With Portrait. Crown 8vo, $2.00.HUMAN IMMORTALITY. Two Supposed Objec-tions to the Doctrine. i6mo, $1.00. .

HOUGHTON, MIFFl-IN & CO.Boston and New York.

THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY. 2 vols.8vo. New York; Henry Holt & Co. i8go.PSYCHOLOGY. Briefer Course. i2mo. New York:Henry Holt & Co. 1892.IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? i8mo. Philadelphia:

S. B. Weston, 1305 Arch St. 1896.THE WILL TO BELIEVE, AND OTHER ESSAYSIN POPULAR PHILOSOPHY. New York:Longmans, Green & Co. 1897.


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HUMAN IMMORTALITYTWO SUPPOSED OBJECTIONS

TO THE DOCTRINEBY

WILLIAM JAMESFROFBSSOK OF PHILOSOPHY AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY, ANDINGERSOLL LECTURER FOR 1897-1898

BOSTON AND NEW YORKHOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY(9ti)C mtcxfiitit pre??, CambciDge


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OOFVBIGHT, 1898, BY WILLIAM JAMBSALL RIGHTS RESERVED

SIXTH IMPRESSION


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THE INGERSOLL LECTURESHIPSLxtractfrom the will ofMiss Caroline Haskell Ingersoll^

who died in Keene, Cou7tty of Cheshire, NewHampshire, Jati. z6, i8qj.First. In carrying out the wishes of my late

beloved father, George Goldthwait Ingersoll, asdeclared by him in his last will and testament, Igive and bequeath to Harvard University in Cam-bridge, Mass., where my late father was graduated,and which he always held in love and honor, thesum of Five thousand dollars ($5,000) as a fund forthe establishment of a Lectureship on a plan some-what similar to that of the Dudleian lecture, that is one lecture to be delivered each year, on any con-venient day between the last day of May and thefirst day of December, on this subject, the Im-mortality of Man, said lecture not to form a partof the usual college course, nor to be delivered byany Professor or Tutor as part of his usual routineof instruction, though any such Professor or Tutofmay be appointed to such service. The choice ofsaid lecturer is not to be limited to any one religiousdenomination, nor to any one profession, but maybe that of either clergyman or layman, the appoint-ment to take place at least six months before thedelivery of said lecture. The above sum to besafely invested and three fourths of the annual in-terest thereof to be paid to the lecturer for hisservices and the remaining fourth to be expendedin the publishment and gratuitous distribution ofthe lecture, a copy of which is always to be fur-nished by the lecturer for such purpose. The samelecture to be named and known as '* the Ingersolllecture on the Immortality of Man.

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PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

O many critics have made one andthe same objection to the door-

^ way to immortality which my lec-ture claims to be left open by the trans-mission-theory of cerebral action, that Ifeel tempted, as the book is again goingto press, to add a word of explanation.

If our finite personality here below, theobjectors say, be due to the transmissionthrough the brain of portions of a preex-isting larger consciousness, all that canremain after the brain expires is the largerConsciousness itself as such, with whichwe should thenceforth be perforce recon-founded, the only means of our existencei* finite personal form having ceased.

But this, the critics continue, is the


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vi Preface to Second Editionpantheistic idea of immortality, survival,namely, in the soul of the world ; not theChristian idea of immortality, which meanssurvival in strictly personal form.

In showing the possibility of a mentallife after the brain's death, they conclude,the lecture has thus at the same timeshown the impossibility of its identity withthe personal life, which is the brain's func-tion.Now I am myself anything but a pan-

theist of the monistic pattern ; yet for sim-plicity's sake I did in the lecture speak ofthe mother-sea in terms that must havesounded pantheistic, and suggested that Ithought of it myself as a unit. On page30, I even added that future lecturersmight prove the loss of some of our per-sonal limitations after death not to be mat-ter for absolute regret. The interpretationof my critics was therefore not unnatural ;and I ought to have been more careful toguard against its being made.

In note 5 on page 58 I partially guarded


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Preface to Second Edition viiagainst it by saying that the mother-sea from which the finite mind is sup-posed to be strained by the brain, neednot be conceived of in pantheistic termsexclusively. There might be, I said, manyminds behind the scenes as well as one.The plain truth is that one may conceive themental world behind the veil itt as individ-ualistic a form as one pleases, without anydetriment to the general scheme by whichthe brain is represented as a transmissiveorgan.

If the extreme individualistic view weretaken, one's finite mundane consciousnesswould be an extract from one's larger,truer personality, the latter having evennow some sort of reality behind thescenes. And in transmitting it to keepto our extremely mechanical metaphor,which confessedly throws no light on theactual modus operandi one's brain wouldalso leave effects upon the part remainingbehind the veil ; for when a thing is torn,both fragments feel the operation.


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viii Preface to Second EditionAnd just as (to use a very coarse figure)

the stubs remain in a check-book whenevera check is used, to register the transaction,so these impressions on the transcendentself might constitute so many vouchers ofthe finite -experiences of which the brainhad been the mediator ; and ultimatelythey might form that collection within thelarger self of memories of our earthly pas-sage, which is all that, since Locke's day,the continuance of our personal identitybeyond the grave has by psychology beenrecognized to mean.

It is true that all this would seem tohave affinities rather with preexistenceand with possible re-incarnations thanwith the Christian notion of immortality.But my concern in the lecture was not todiscuss immortality in general. It wasconfined to showing it to be not incompati-ble with the brain-function theory of ourpresent mundane consciousness. I holdthat it is so compatible, and compatiblemoreover in fully individualized form. The


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Preface to Second Edition ixreader would be in accord with everythingthat the text of my lecture intended to say,were he to assert that every memory andaffection of his present life is to be pre-served, and that he shall never in sceculascEcidorimi cease to be able to say to him-self : I am the same personal being whoin old times upon the earth had thoseexperiences.


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HUMAN IMMORTALITYT is a matter unfortunately too

often seen in history to call formuch remark, that when a living

want of mankind has got itself officiallyprotected and organized in an institution,one of the things which the institutionmost surely tends to do is to stand in theway of the natural gratification of the wantitself. We see this in laws and courtsof justice ; we see it in ecclesiasticismswe see it in academies of the fine arts, inthe medical and other professions, and weeven see it in the universities themselves.Too often do the place-holders of such

institutions frustrate the spiritual purposeto which they were appointed to minister,by the technical light which soon becomes


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2 Human Immortalitythe only light in which they seem able tosee the purpose, and the narrow way whichis the only way in which they can work inits service.

I confess that I thought of this for amoment when the Corporation of our Uni-versity invited me last spring to give thisIngersoU lecture. Immortality is one ofthe great spiritual needs of man. Thechurches have constituted themselves theofificial guardians of the need, with the re-sult that some of them actually pretend toaccord or to withhold it from the individ-ual by their conventional sacraments,withhold it at least in the only shape inwhich it can be an object of desire. Andnow comes the IngersoU lectureship. Itshigh-minded founder evidently thought thatour University might serve the cause hehad at heart more liberally than thechurches do, because a university is a bodyso much less trammeled by traditions andby impossibilities in regard to choice ofpersons. And yet one of the first things


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Human Immortality ^which the university does is to appoint aman like him who stands before you, cer-tainly not because he is known as an en-thusiastic messenger of the future life,burning to publish the good tidings to hisfellow-men, but apparently because he isa university official.

Thinking in this way, I felt at first as ifI ought to decline the appointment. Thewhole subject of immortal life has its primeroots in personal feeling. I have to con-fess that my own personal feeling aboutimmortality has never been of the keenestorder, and that, among the problems thatgive my mind solicitude, this one does nottake the very foremost place. Yet thereare individuals with a real passion for thematter, men and women for whom a lifehereafter is a pungent craving, and thethought of it an obsession ; and in whomkeenness of interest has bred an insightinto the relations of the subject that no oneless penetrated with the mystery of it canattain. Some of these people are known


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4 Human Immortalityto me. They are not official personages ;they do not speak as the scribes, but ashaving direct authority. And surely, ifanywhere a prophet clad in goatskins, andnot a uniformed official, should be called togive inspiration, assurance, and instruction,it would seem to be here, on such a theme.Office, at any rate, ought not to displacespiritual calling.And yet, in spite of these reflections,

which I could not avoid making, I amhere to-night, all uninspired and official asI am. I am sure that prophets clad ingoatskins, or, to speak less figuratively, lay-men inspired with emotional messages onthe subject, will often enough be invitedby our Corporation to give the Ingersolllecture hereafter. Meanwhile, all negativeand deadening as the remarks of a mereprofessional psychologist like myself maybe in comparison with the vital lessons theywill give, I am sure, upon mature reflec-tion, that those who have the responsibilityof administering the Ingersoll foundation


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Human Immortality 5are in duty bound to let the most variouskinds of official personages take their turnas well. The subject is really an enor-mous subject. At the back of Mr. Alger's'Critical History of the Doctrine of a Fu-ture Life,' there is a bibliography of morethan five thousand titles of books in whichit is treated. Our Corporation cannot thinkonly of the single lecture : it must thinkof the whole series of lectures ift futuro.Single lectures, however emotionally in-spired and inspiring they may be, will notbe enough. The lectures must remedyeach other, so that out of the series thereshall emerge a collective literature worthyof the importance of the theme. Thisunquestionably was what the founder hadin mind. He wished the subject to beturned over in all possible aspects, sothat at last results might ponderate har-moniously in the true direction. Seen inthis long perspective, the Ingersoll foun-dation calls for nothing so much as forminute division of labor. Orators must


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6 Human Immortalitytake their turn, and prophets ; but narrowspecialists as well. Theologians of everycreed, metaphysicians, anthropologists, andpsychologists must alternate with biologistsand physicists and psychical researchers,even with mathematicians. If any one ofthem presents a grain of truth, seen fromhis point of view, that will remain andaccrete with truths brought by the others,his will have been a good appointment.

In the hour that lies before us, then, Ishall seek to justify my appointment byoffering what seem to me two such grainsof truth, two points well fitted, if I am notmistaken, to combine with anything thatother lecturers may bring.These points are both of them in the

nature of replies to objections, to difficul-ties which our modern culture finds in theold notion of a life hereafter, difficultiesthat I am sure rob the notion of much ofits old power to draw belief, in the scien-tifically cultivated circles to which thisaudience belong.


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Human Immortality yThe first of these difficulties is relative

to the absolute dependence of our spirituallife, as we know it here, upon the brain.One hears not only physiologists, but num-bers of laymen who read the popular sci-ence books and magazines, saying all aboutus. How can we believe in life hereafterwhen Science has once for all attained toproving, beyond possibility of escape, thatour inner life is a function of that fa-mous material, the so-called 'gray mat-ter ' of our cerebral convolutions ? Howcan the function possibly persist after itsorgan has undergone decay ?Thus physiological psychology is what

is supposed to bar the way to the oldfaith. And it is now as a physiologicalpsychologist that I ask you to look at thequestion with me a little more closely.

It is indeed true that physiological sci-ence has come to the conclusion citedand we must confess that in so doing shehas only carried out a little farther thecommon belief of mankind. Every one


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8 Human Immortalityknows that arrests of brain developmentoccasion imbecility, that blows on ththead abolish memory or consciousness, andthat brain-stimulants and poisons changethe quality of our ideas. The anatomists,physiologists, and pathologists have onlyshown this generally admitted fact of adependence to be detailed and minute.What the laboratories and hospitals havelately been teaching us is not only thatthought in general is one of the brain'sfunctions, but that the various specialforms of thinking are functions of specialportions of the brain. When we are think-ing of things seen, it is our occipital convo-lutions that are active ; when of thingsheard, it is a certain portion of our tem-poral lobes ; when of things to be spoken,it is one of our frontal convolutions. Pro-fessor Flechsig of Leipzig (who perhapsmore than any one may claim to havemade the subject his own) considers thatin other special convolutions those pro-cesses of association go on, which permit


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Human Immortality gthe more abstract processes of thought, totake place. I could easily show you theseregions if I had here a picture of thebrain. ^ Moreover, the diminished or exag-gerated associations of what this authorcalls the Kdrperfuhhphdre with the otherregions, accounts, according to him, forthe complexion of our emotional life, andeventually decides whether one shall be acallous brute or criminal, an unbalancedsentimentalist, or a character accessible tofeeling, and yet well poised. Such specialopinions may have to be corrected ; yet sofirmly established do the main positionsworked out by the anatomists, physiolo-gists, and pathologists of the brain appear,that the youth of our medical schools areeverywhere taught unhesitatingly to be-lieve them. The assurance that observa-tion will go on to establish them ever moreand more minutely is the inspirer of allcontemporary research. And almost anyof our young psychologists will tell youthat only a few belated scholastics, or pos-


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lo Human Immortalitysibly some crack-brained theosophist orpsychical researcher, can be found hold-ing back, and still talking as if mentalphenomena might exist as independentvariables in the world.For the purposes of my argument, now,

I wish to adopt this general doctrine asif it were established absolutely, with nopossibility of restriction. During this hourI wish you also to accept it as a postulate,whether you think it incontrovertibly es-tablished or not ; so I beg you to agreewith me to-day in subscribing to the great

, psycho-physiological formula : Thought is3 afunction of the brain.\ The question is, then. Does this doctrinej logically compel us to disbelieve in immor-\ tality ? Ought it to force every truly con-

) sistent thinker to sacrifice his hopes of anhereafter to what he takes to be his dutyof accepting all the consequences of a sci-

V entific truth ?Most persons imbued with what one may

call the Puritanism of science would feel


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Human Immortality irthemselves bound to answer this questionwith a yes. If any medically or psycho-logically bred young scientists feel other-wise, it is probably in consequence of thatincoherency of mind of which the majorityof mankind happily enjoy the privilege.At one hour scientists, at another they areChristians or common men, with the will tolive burning hot in their breasts ; and, hold-ing thus the two ends of the chain, theyare careless of the intermediate connection.But the more radical and uncompromisingdisciple of science makes the sacrifice, and,sorrowfully or not, according to his tem-perament, submits to giving up his hopesof heaven.2

This, then, is the objection to immortal-ity; and the next thing in order for meis to try to make plain to you why I be-lieve that it has in strict logic no deter-rent power. I must show you that the fatalconsequence is not coercive, as is com-monly imagined ; and that, even though oursoul's life (as here below it is revealed to


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12 Human Immortalityus) may be in literal strictness the functionof a brain that perishes, yet it is not at allimpossible, but on the contrary quite pos-sible, that the life may still continue whenthe brain itself is dead.The supposed impossibility of its contin-

uing comes from too superficial a look atthe admitted fact of functional dependence.The moment we inquire more closely intothe notion of functional dependence, andask ourselves, for example, how many kindsof functional dependence there may be, weimmediately perceive that there is one kindat least that does not exclude a life here-

/O after at all. The fatal conclusion of the\ physiologist flows from his assuming off-\ hand another kind of functional depend-t ence, and treating it as the only imagina-\ ble kind.^/ When the physiologist who thinks that

V. his science cuts off all hope of immortality) pronounces the phrase, Thought is aI

function of the brain, he thinks of the/ matter just as he thinks when he says,


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Human Immortality i^ Steam is a function of the tea-kettle,Light is a function of the electric cir-

cuit, Power is a function of the movingwaterfall. In these latter cases the sev-eral material objects have the function ofinwardly creating or engendering theireffects, and their function must be calledproductive function. Just so, he thinks, itmust be with the brain. Engendering con-sciousness in its interior, much as it engen-ders cholesterin and creatin and carbonicacid, its relation to our soul's life must alsobe called productive function. Of course,if such production be the function, thenwhen the organ perishes, since the produc-tion can no longer continue, the soul mustsurely die. Such a conclusion as this isindeed inevitable from that particular con-ception of the facts.*But in the world of physical nature pro-

ductive function of this sort is not theonly kind of function with which we arefamiliar. We have also releasing or per-missive function ; and we have transmis-sive function.


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14 Human ImmortalityThe trigger of a crossbow has a releas-

ing function : it removes the obstacle thatholds the string, and lets the bow fly backto its natural shape. So when the hammerfalls upon a detonating compound. Byknocking out the inner molecular obstruc-tions, it lets the constituent gases resumetheir normal bulk, and so permits the ex-plosion to take place.

In the case of a colored glass, a prism,or a refracting lens, we have transmissivefunction. The energy of light, no mat-ter how produced, is by the glass siftedand limited in color, and by the lens orprism determined to a certain path andshape. Similarly, the keys of an organhave only a transmissive function. Theyopen successively the various pipes and letthe wind in the air-chest escape in variousways. The voices of the various pipes areconstituted by the columns of air tremblingas they emerge. But the air is not engen-dered in the organ. The organ proper, asdistinguished from its air-chest, is only an


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1 Human Immortalityof finite streams of consciousness known tous as our private selves.

Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,Stains the white radiance of eternity.

Suppose, now, that this were really so,and suppose, moreover, that the dome,opaque enough at all times to the full su-per-solar blaze, could at certain times andplaces grow less so, and let certain beamspierce through into this sublunary world.These beams would be so many finite rays,so to speak, of consciousness, and they wouldvary in quantity and quality as the opacityvaried in degree. Only at particular timesand places would it seem that, as a matterof fact, the veil of nature can grow thin andrupturable enough for such effects to occur.But in those places gleams, however finiteand unsatisfying, of the absolute life of theuniverse, are from time to time vouchsafed.Glows of feeling, glimpses of insight, andstreams of knowledge and perception floatinto our finite world.\^ Admit now that our brains are such thin


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Human Immortality lyand half - transparent places in the veil.What will happen ? Why, as the whiteradiance comes through the dome, with allsorts of staining and distortion imprintedon it by the glass, or as the air now comesthrough my glottis determined and limitedin its force and quality of its vibrationsby the peculiarities of those vocal chordswhich form its gate of egress and shape itinto my personal voice, even so the genuinematter of reality, the life of souls as it isin its fullness, will break through our sev-eral brains into this world in all sorts ofrestricted forms, and with all the imperfec-tions and queernesses that characterize ourfinite individualities here below.According to the state in which the

brain finds itself, the barrier of its obstruc-tiveness may also be supposed to rise orfall. It sinks so low, when the brain is infull activity, that a comparative flood ofspiritual energy pours over. At other times,only such occasional waves of thought asheavy sleep permits get by. And when


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1 Human Immortalityfinally a brain stops acting altogether, ordecays, that special stream of conscious-ness which it subserved will vanish entirelyfrom this natural world. But the sphereof being that supplied the consciousnesswould still be intact ; and in that more realworld with which, even whilst here, it wascontinuous, the consciousness might, inways unknown to us, continue still.You see that, on all these suppositions,

our soul's life, as we here know it, wouldnone the less in literal strictness be thefunction of the brain. The brain wouldbe the independent variable, the mindwould vary dependently on it. But suchdependence on the brain for this naturallife would in no wise make immortal lifeimpossible, it might be quite compatiblewith supernatural life behind the veil here-after.As I said, then, the fatal consequence is

not coercive, the conclusion which mate-rialism draws being due solely to its one-sided way of taking the word 'function.'


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Human Immortality 19And, whether we care or not for immortal-ity in itself, we ought, as mere critics doingpolice duty among the vagaries of man-kind, to insist on the illogicality of a denialbased on the flat ignoring of a palpablealternative. How much, more ought we toinsist^^as^jovers of truth, wjien.Lhg,dgnialis that of such a vital hope of mankind

In strict logic, then, the fangs of cere-bralistic materialism are drawn. My wordsought consequently already to exert a re-leasing function on your hopes. You maybelieve henceforward, whether you care toprofit by the permission or not. But, asthis is a very abstract argument, I think itwill help its effect to say a word or twoabout the more concrete conditions of thecase.

All abstract hypotheses sound unreal;and the abstract notion that our brains arecolored lenses in the wall of nature, admit-ting light from the super-solar source, butat the same time tingeing and restrictingit, has a thoroughly fantastic sound. What


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20 Human Immortalityis it, you may ask, but a foolish metaphor ?And how can such a function be ima-gined ? Is n't the common materialisticnotion vastly simpler ? Is not conscious-ness really more comparable to a sort ofsteam, or perfume, or electricity, or nerve-glow, generated on the spot in its ownpeculiar vessel ? Is it not more rigorouslyscientific to treat the brain's function asfunction of production ?The immediate reply is, that, if we are

talking of science positively understood,function can mean nothing more than bareconcomitant variation. When the brain-activities change in one way, conscious-ness changes in another; when the cur-rents pour through the occipital lobes,consciousness sees things ; when throughthe lower frontal region, consciousnesssays things to itself ; when they stop, shegoes to sleep, etc. In strict science, wecan only write down the bare fact of con-comitance ; and all talk about either pro-duction or transmission, as the mode of


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Human Immortality 21taking place, is pure superadded hypothe-sis, and metaphysical hypothesis at that,for we can frame no more notion of thedetails on the one alternative than onthe other. Ask for any indication of theexact process either of transmission orof production, and Science confesses herimagination to be bankrupt. She has, sofar, not the least glimmer of a conjectureor suggestion, not even a bad verbalmetaphor or pun to offer. Ignoramus,ignorabimns, is what most physiologists, inthe words of one of their number, will sayhere. The production of such a thing asconsciousness in the brain, they will replywith the late Berlin professor of physio-logy, is the absolute world-enigma, some-thing so paradoxical and abnormal as to bea stumbling block to Nature, and almost aself-contradiction. Into the mode of pro-duction of steam in a tea-kettle we haveconjectural insight, for the terms thatchange are physically homogeneous onewith another, and we can easily imagine


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22 Human Immortalitythe case to consist of nothing but altera-tions of molecular motion. But in theproduction of consciousness by the brain,the terms are heterogeneous natures alto-gether; and as far as our understandinggoes, it is as great a miracle as if we said,Thought is 'spontaneously generated,' or* created out of nothing.'The theory of production is therefore

not a jot more simple or credible in itselfthan any other conceivable theory. It isonly a little more popular. All that oneneed do, therefore, if the ordinary materi-alist should challenge one to explain howthe brain ca7t be an organ for limiting anddetermining to a certain form a conscious-ness elsewhere produced, is to retort witha tti quoque, asking him in turn to ex-plain how it can be an organ for producingconsciousness out of whole cloth. Forpolemic purposes, the two theories are thusexactly on a par.But if we consider the theory of trans-

mission in a wider way, we see that it has


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Human Immortality 23certain positive superiorities, quite apartfrom its connection with the immortalityquestion.

Just how the process of transmissionmay be carried on, is indeed unimagina-ble ; but the outer relations, so to speak,of the process, encourage our belief. Con-sciousness in this process does not haveto be generated de novo in a vast numberof places. It exists already, behind thescenes, coeval with the world. The trans-mission-theory not only avoids in this waymultiplying miracles, but it puts itself intouch with general idealistic philosophybetter than the production-theory does.It should always be reckoned a good thingwhen science and philosophy thus meet.^

It puts itself also in touch with the con-ception of a 'threshold,' a word withwhich, since Fechner wrote his book called'Psychophysik,' the so-called 'new Psycho-logy ' has rung. Fechner imagines as thecondition of consciousness a certain kindof psycho-physical movement, as he terms


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24 Human Immortalityit. Before consciousness can come, a cer-tain degree of activity in the movementmust be reached. This requisite degreeis called the ' threshold ; ' but the heightof the threshold varies under different cir-cumstances : it may rise or fall. When itfalls, as in states of great lucidity, wegrow conscious of things of which weshould be unconscious at other timeswhen it rises, as in drowsiness, conscious-ness sinks in amount. This rising andlowering of a psycho - physical thresholdexactly conforms to our notion of a per-manent obstruction to the transmissionof consciousness, which obstruction may,in our brains, grow alternately greater orless.^The transmission-theory also puts itself

in touch with a whole class of experi-ences that are with difficulty explained bythe production-theory. I refer to those ob-scure and exceptional phenomena reportedat all times throughout human history,which the * psychical - researchers,' with


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Human Immortality 25Mr. Frederic Myers at their head, are do-ing so much to rehabihtate ; * such phe-nomena, namely, as religious conversions,providential leadings in answer to prayer,instantaneous healings, premonitions, ap-paritions at time of death, clairvoyant vi-sions or impressions, and the whole rangeof mediumistic capacities, to say nothingof still more exceptional and incomprehen-sible things. If all our human thought bea function of the brain, then of course, ifany of these things are facts, and to myown mind some of them are facts, we maynot suppose that they can occur withoutpreliminary brain-action. But the ordinaryproduction-theory of consciousness is knitup with a peculiar notion of how brain-action can occur, that notion being thatall brain-action, without exception, is due toa prior action, immediate or remote, of thebodily sense-organs on the brain. Suchaction makes the brain produce sensationsand mental images, and out of the sensationsand images the higher forms of thought and


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26 Human Immortalityknowledge in their turn are framed. Astransmissionists, we also must admit this tobe the condition of all our usual thought.Sense-action is what lowers the brain-bar-rier. My voice and aspect, for instance,strike upon your ears and eyes ; . your brainthereupon becomes more pervious, andan awareness on your part of what I sayand who I am slips into this world from theworld behind the veil. But, in the mys-terious phenomena to which I allude, it isoften hard to see where the sense-organscan come in. A medium, for example, willshow knowledge of his sitter's private af-fairs which it seems impossible he shouldhave acquired through sight or hearing, orinference therefrom. Or you will have anapparition of some one who is now dyinghundreds of miles away. On the produc-tion - theory one does not see from whatsensations such odd bits of knowledge areproduced. On the transmission - theory,they don't have to be 'produced,' theyexist ready - made in the transcendental


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Human Immortality 27world, and all that is needed is an abnor-mal lowering of the brain-threshold to letthem through. In cases of conversion, inprovidential leadings, sudden mental heal-ings, etc., it seems to the subjects them-selves of the experience as if a powerfrom without, quite different from the ordi-nary action of the senses or of the sense-led mind, came into their life, as if thelatter suddenly opened into that greaterlife in which it has its source. The word'influx,' used in Swedenborgian circles, welldescribes this impression of new insight,or new willingness, sweeping over us likea tide. All such experiences, quite para-doxical and meaningless on the production-theory, fall very naturally into place onthe other theory. We need only supposethe continuity of our consciousness with amother sea, to allow for exceptional wavesoccasionally pouring over the dam. Ofcourse the causes of these odd loweringsof the brain's threshold still remain a mys-tery on any terms.


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28 Human ImmortalityAdd, then, this advantage to the trans-

mission-theory, an advantage which I amwell aware that some of you will not ratevery high, and also add the advantage ofnot conflicting with a life hereafter, and Ihope yon will agree with me that it hasmany points of superiority to the morefamiliar theory. It is a theory which, inthe history of opinion on such matters,has never been wholly left out of account,though never developed at any great length.In the great orthodox philosophic tradition,the body is treated as an essential conditionto the soul's life in this world of sense ; butafter death, it is said, the soul is set free,and becomes a purely intellectual and non-appetitive being. Kant expresses this ideain terms that come singularly close to thoseof our transmission-theory. The death ofthe body, he says, may indeed be the endof the sensational use of our mind, but onlythe beginning of the intellectual use. Thebody, he continues, would thus be, notthe cause of our thinking, but merely a


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Human Immortality 2gcondition restrictive thereof, and, althoughessential to our sensuous and animal con-sciousness, it may be regarded as an im-peder of our pure spiritual life.^ And ina recent book of great suggestiveness andpower, less well-known as yet than it de-serves, I mean * Riddles of the Sphinx,'by Mr. F. C. S. Schiller of Oxford, lateof Cornell University, the transmission-theory is defended at some length.^But still, you will ask, in what positive

way does this theory help us to realize ourimmortality in imagination ? What we allwish to keep is just these individual restric-tions, these selfsame tendencies and pecu-liarities that define us to ourselves and oth-ers, and constitute our identity, so called.Our finitenesses and limitations seem to beour personal essence ; and when the finitingorgan drops away, and our several spiritsrevert to their original source and resumetheir unrestricted condition, will they thenbe anything like those sweet streams offeeling which we know, and which even now


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^o Human Immortalityour brains are sifting out from the greatreservoir for our enjoyment here below ?Such questions are truly living questions,and surely they must be seriously discussedby future lecturers upon this Ingersollfoundation. I hope, for my part, that morethan one such lecturer will penetratinglydiscuss the conditions of our immortal'ity, and tell us how much we may lose,and how much we may possibly gain, ifits finiting outlines should be changed ?If all determination is negation, as the phi-losophers say, it might well prove that theloss of some of the particular determina-tions which the brain imposes would notappear a matter for such absolute regret.But into these higher and more tran-

scendental matters I refuse to enter uponthis occasion ; and I proceed, during theremainder of the hour, to treat of my sec-ond point. Fragmentary and negative itis, as my first one has been. Yet, betweenthem, they do give to our belief in immor-tality a freer wing.


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Human Immortality ^jMy second point is relative to the in-

credible and intolerable number of beingswhich, with our modern imagination, wemust believe to be immortal, if immortal-ity be true. I cannot but suspect thatthis, too, is a stumbling-block to many ofmy present audience. And it is a stum-bling-block which I should thoroughly liketo clear away.

It is, I fancy, a stumbling-block of alto-gether modern origin, due to the strainupon the quantitative imagination whichrecent scientific theories, and the moralfeelings consequent upon them, havebrought in their train.For our ancestors the world was a small,

and compared with our modern senseof it a comparatively snug affair. Sixthousand years at most it had lasted. Inits history a few particular human he-roes, kings, ecclesiarchs, and saints stoodforth very prominent, overshadowing theimagination with their claims and merits,so that not only they, but all who were


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52 Human Immortalityassociated familiarlywith them, shone witha glamour which even the Almighty, itwas supposed, must recognize and respect.These prominent personages and their as-sociates were the nucleus of the immortalgroup ; the minor heroes and saints ofminor sects came next, and people with-out distinction formed a sort of backgroundand filling in. The whole scene of eter-nity (so far, at least, as Heaven and notthe nether place was concerned in it)never struck to the believer's fancy as anoverwhelmingly large or inconvenientlycrowded stage. One might call this anaristocratic view of immortality ; the im-mortals I speak of Heaven exclusively,for an immortality of torment need notnow concern us were always an 61ite, aselect and manageable number.

But, with our own generation, an entirelynew quantitative imagination has sweptover our western world. The theory ofevolution now requires us to suppose a farvaster scale of times, spaces, and numbers


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Human Immortality ^^than our forefathers ever dreamed the cos-mic process to involve. Human historygrows continuously out of animal history,and goes back possibly even to the tertiaryepoch. From this there has emerged in-sensibly a democratic view, instead of theold aristocratic view, of immortality. Forour minds, though in one sense they mayhave grown a little cynical, in another theyhave been made sympathetic by the evolu-tionary perspective. Bone of our bone andflesh of our flesh are these half-brutish pre-historic brothers. Girdled about with theimmense darkness of this mysterious uni-verse even as we are, they were born anddied, suffered and struggled. Given overto fearful crime and passion, plunged in theblackest ignorance, preyed upon by hide-ous and grotesque delusions, yet steadfastlyserving the profoundest of ideals in theirfixed faith that existence in any form isbetter than non-existence, they ever res-cued trimphantly from the jaws of ever-im-minent destruction the torch of life, which,


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^4 Human Immortalitythanks to them, now lights the worldfor us. How small indeed seem individ-ual distinctions when we look back onthese overwhelming numbers of humanbeings panting and straining under thepressure of that vital want And howinessential in the eyes of God must bethe small surplus of the individual's merit,swamped as it is in the vast ocean of thecommon merit of mankind, dumbly andundauntedly doing the fundamental dutyand living the heroic life We grow hum-ble and reverent as we contemplate theprodigious spectacle. Not our differencesand distinctions, we feel no, but ourcommon animal essence of patience undersuffering and enduring effort must be whatredeems us in the Deity's sight. An im-mense compassion and kinship fill theheart. An immortality from which theseinconceivable billions of fellow - striversshould be excluded becomes an irrationalidea for us. That our superiority in per-sonal refinement or in religious creed


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Human Immortality ^5should constitute a difference between our-selves and our messmates at life's banquet,fit to entail such a consequential differenceof destiny as eternal life for us, and forthem torment hereafter, or death with thebeasts that perish, is a notion too absurdto be considered serious. Nay, more, thevery beasts themselves the wild onesat any rate are leading the heroic lifeat all times. And a modern mind, ex-panded as some minds are by cosmic emo-tion, by the great evolutionist vision ofuniversal continuity, hesitates to draw theline even at man. If any creature livesforever, why not all 1 why not the pa-tient brutes ? So that a faith in immortal-ity, if we are to indulge it, demands of usnowadays a scale of representation so stu-pendous that our imagination faints beforeit, and our personal feelings refuse to riseup and face the task. The supposition weare swept along to is too vast, and, ratherthan face the conclusion, we abandon thepremise from which it starts. We give up


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5(5 Human Immortalityour own immortality sooner than believethat all the hosts of Hottentots and Aus-tralians that have been, and shall ever be,should share it with us itt secula seculorum.Life is a good thing on a reasonably copi-ous scale ; but the very heavens themselves,and the cosmic times and spaces, wouldstand aghast, we think, at the notion ofpreserving eternally such an ever-swellingplethora and glut of it.

Having myself, as a recipient of modernscientific culture, gone through a subjec-tive experience like this, I feel sure thatit must also have been the experience ofmany, perhaps of most, of you who listento my words. But I have also come to seethat it harbors a tremendous fallacy ; and,since the noting of the fallacy has set myown mind free again, I have felt that oneservice I might render to my listeners to-night would be to point out where it lies.

It is the most obvious fallacy in theworld, and the only wonder is that all theworld should not see through it. It is the


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Human Immortality 57result of nothing but an invincible blind-ness from which we suffer, an insensibilityto the inner significance of alien lives, anda conceit that would project our own inca-pacity into the vast cosmos, and measurethe wants of the Absolute by our ownpuny needs. Our christian ancestors dealtwith the problem more easily than we do.We, indeed, lack sympathy ; but they hada positive antipathy for these alien humancreatures, and they naively supposed theDeity to have the antipathy, too. Being,as they were, 'heathen,' our forefathersfelt a certain sort of joy in thinking thattheir Creator made them as so much merefuel for the fires of hell. Our culturehas humanized us beyond that point, butwe cannot yet conceive them as our com-rades in the fields of heaven. We have, asthe phrase goes, no use for them, and itoppresses us to think of their survival.Take, for instance, all the Chinamen,Which of you here, my friends, sees anyfitness in their eternal perpetuation unre-


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^8 Human Immortalityduced in numbers ? Surely not one of you.At most, you might deem it well to keep afew chosen specimens alive to represent aninteresting and peculiar variety of human-ity ; but as for the rest, what comes in suchsurpassing numbers, and what you canonly imagine in this abstract summarycollective manner, must be something ofwhich the units, you are sure, can have noindividual preciousness. God himself, youthink, can have no use for them. An im-mortality of every separate specimen mustbe to him and to the universe as indiges-tible a load to carry as it is to you. So,engulfing the whole subject in a sort ofmental giddiness and nausea, you__driftalong, first doubting that _th., mass can be_immi^ltal. then losing all assurance in theimmortality of j^r own particulfir petgo rij,precious as you all the while feel ajid reaLize~nie latter to be7 ThisTlam sure, isthe~attitu3e of mind of some of you beforeme.But is not such an attitude due to the


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Human Immortality 59veriest lack and dearth of your imagina-tion ? You take these swarms of alienkinsmen as they are for you : an externalpicture painted on your retina, represent-ing a crowd oppressive by its vastness andconfusion. As they are for you, so youthink they positively and absolutely are. /feel no call for them, you say ; thereforethere is no call for them. But all thewhile, beyond this externality which isyour way of realizing them, they realizethemselves with the acutest internality,with the most violent thrills of life. 'Tisyou who are dead, stone-dead and blindand senseless, in your way of looking on.You open your eyes upon a scene of whichyou miss the whole significance. Each ofthese grotesque or even repulsive aliens isanimated by an inner joy of living as hotor hotter than that which you feel beatingin your private breast. The sun rises andbeauty beams to light his path. To missthe inner joy of him, as Stevenson says, isto miss the whole of him.^^ Not a being


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Human Immortality 41mind brings its own edition of the universeof space along with it, its own room to in-habit ; and these spaces never crowd eachother, the space of my imagination, forexample, in no way interferes with yours.The amount of possible consciousnessseems to.be governed by no law analogousto that of the so-called conservation of en-ergy in the material world. When oneman wakes up, or one is born, another doesnot have to go to sleep, or die, in order tokeep the consciousness of the universe aconstant quantity. Professor Wundt, infact, in his ' System of Philosophy,' hasformulated a law of the universe which hecalls the law of increase of spiritual en-ergy, and which he expressly opposes tothe law of conservation of energy in physi-cal things.^i There seems no formal limitto the positive increase of being in spir-itual respects ; and since spiritual being,whenever it comes, affirms itself, expandsand craves continuance, we may justly andliterally say, regardless of the defects of


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42 Human Immortalityour own private sympathy, that the supply _of individual life in the universe can neverpossibly, however immeasurable it may.become, exceed the demand. The de-mand for that supply is there the momentthe supply itself comes into being, for thebeings supplied demand their own con-tinuance.

I speak, you see, from the point of viewof all the other individual beings, real-izing and enjoying inwardly their own ex-istence. If we are pantheists, we canstop there. We need, then, only say thatthrough them, as through so many diver-sified channels of expression, the eternalSpirit of the Universe affirms and realizesits own infinite life. But if we are theists,we can go farther without altering theresult. God, we can then say, has so in-exhaustible a capacity for love that his calland need is for a literally endless accu-mulation of created lives. He can neverfaint or grow weary, as we should, underthe increasing supply. His scale is infinite


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Human Immortality 4^in all things. His sympathy can neverknow satiety or glut.

I hope now that you agree with methat the tiresomeness of an over -peopledHeaven is a purely subjective and illusorynotion, a sign of human incapacity, a rem-nant of the old narrow-hearted aristocraticcreed. Revere the Maker, lift thine eyeup to his style and manners of the sky,and you will believe that this is indeed ademocratic universe, in which your paltryexclusions play no regulative part. Wasyour taste consulted in the peopling of thisglobe .'' How, then, should it be consultedas to the peopling of the vast City of God }Let us put our hand over our mouth, likeJob, and be thankful that in our personallittleness we ourselves are here at all.The Deity that suffers us, we may be sure,can suffer many another queer and won-drous and only half-delightful thing.For my own part, then, so far as logic

goes, I am willing that every leaf that evergrew in this world's forests and rustled in


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Human Immortality 4^by other lives, however numerous, howeverunideal they may seem to us to be. Letus at any rate not decide adversely on ourown claim, whose grounds we feel directly,because we cannot decide favorably on thealien claims, whose grounds we cannot feelat all. That would be letting blindnesslay down the law to sight.


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NOTESNote i, page 9.

The gaps between the centres first recognized asmotor and sensory gaps which form in man twothirds of the surface of the hemispheres are thuspositively interpreted by Flechsig as intellectualcentres strictly so called. [Compare his GehirnuJid Seele, 2te Ausgabe, 1896, p. 23.] They have,he considers, a common type of microscopic struc-ture ; and the fibres connected with them are amonth later in gaining their medullary sheath thanare the fibres connected with the other centres.When disordered, they are the starting-point of theinsanities, properly so called. Already Wernickehad defined insanity as disease of the organ of asso-ciation, without so definitely pretending to circum-scribe the latter compare his Grundriss der Psy-chiatric, 1894, p. 7. Flechsig goes so far as to saythat he finds a difference of symptoms in general par-alytics according as their frontal or their more poste-rior association-centres are diseased. Where it is


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48 Notesthe frontal centres, the patient's consciousness of selfis more deranged than is his perception of purelyobjective relations. Where the posterior associa-tive regions suffer, it is rather the patient's systemof objective ideas that undergoes disintegration(loc. cit. pp. 89-91). In rodents Flechsig thinksthere is a complete absence of association-centres, the sensory centres touch each other. In car-nivora and the low^er monkeys the latter centresstill exceed the association -centres in volume,Only in the katarhinal apes do we begin to findanything like the human type (p. 84).

In his little pamphlet, Die Grenzen getstigerGesundheit und Krankheit, Leipzig, 1896, Flech-sig ascribes the moral insensibility which is foundin certain criminals to a diminution of internalpain-feeling due to degeneration of the ' Korper-fiihlsphare,' that extensive anterior region firstso named by Munk, in which he lays the seat ofall the emotions and of the consciousness of self\Gehirn U7id Seele, pp. 62-68 ; die Grenzen, etc.,pp. 31-39, 48]. I give these references to Flechsigfor concreteness' sake, not because his views areirreversibly made out.

Note 2, page 11.So widespread is this conclusion in positivistic

circles, so abundantly is it expressed in conversa-


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Notes 4gtion, and so frequently implied in things that arewritten, that I confess that my surprise was greatwhen I came to look into books for a passageexplicitly denying immortality on physiologicalgrounds, which I might quote to make my textmore concrete. I was unable to find anythingblunt and distinct enough to serve. I lookedthrough all the books that would naturally suggestthemselves, with no effect ; and I vainly asked vari-ous psychological colleagues. And yet I should al-most have been ready to take oath that I had readseveral such passages of the most categoric sortwithin the last decade. Very likely this is a falseimpression, and it may be with this opinion as withmany others. The atmosphere is full of themmany a writer's pages logically presuppose andinvolve them ; yet, if you wish to refer a studentto an express and radical statement that he mayemploy as a text to comment on, you find almostnothing that will do. In the present case thereare plenty of passages in which, in a general way,mind is said to be conterminous with brain-func-tion, but hardly one in which the author thereuponexplicitly denies the possibility of immortality.

The best one I have found is perhaps this : Notonly consciousness, but every stirring of life, de-pends on functions that go out like a flame whennourishment is cut off. . . . The phenomena of


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50 Notesconsciousness correspond, element for element, tothe operations of special parts of the brain. . . .The destruction of any piece of the apparatus in-volves the loss of some one or other of the vitaloperations ; and the consequence is that, as far aslife extends, we have before us only an organicfunction, not a Ding-an-sich, or an expression ofthat imaginary entity the Soul. This fundamentalproposition . . . carries with it the denial of theimmortality of the soul, since, where no soul exists,its mortality or immortality cannot be raised asa question. . . The function fills its time, theflame illuminates and therein gives out its wholebeing. That is all ; and verily that is enough. . . .Sensation has its definite organic conditions, and,as these decay with the natural decay of life, it isquite impossible for a mind accustomed to dealwith realities to suppose any capacity of sensationas surviving when the machinery of our naturalexistence has stopped. [ . Duhring : der Werthdes LebenSf 3d edition, pp. 48, 168.]

Note 3, page 12.The philosophically instructed reader will notice

that I have all along been placing myself at theordinary dualistic point of view of natural scienceand of common sense. From this point of viewmental facts like feelings are made of one kind of


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Notes 57stuff or substance, physical facts of another. Anabsolute phenomenism, not believing such a dual-ism to be ultimate, may possibly end by solvingsome of the problems that are insoluble when pro-pounded in dualistic terms. Meanwhile, since thephysiological objection to immortality has arisenon the ordinary dualistic plane of thought, andsince absolute phenomenism has as yet said nothingarticulate enough to count about the matter, it isproper that my reply to the objection should beexpressed in dualistic terms leaving me free, ofcourse, on any later occasion to make an attempt;if I wish, to transcend them and use different cate-gories.Now, on the dualistic assumption, one cannot set

more than two really different sorts of dependenceof our mind on our brain : Either

(i) The brain brings into being the very stxiffof consciousness of which our mind consists ; orelse

(2) Consciousness preexists as an entity, and thevarious brains give to it its various special forms.

If supposition 2 be the true one, and the stuff ofmind preexists, there are, again, only two ways ofconceiving that our brain confers upon it the spe-cifically human form. It may exist

{a) In disseminated particles ; and then our brainsare organs of concentration, organs for combining


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52 Notesand massing these into resultant minds of personalform. Or it may exist

{b) In vaster unities (absolute 'world- soul,' orsomething less) ; and then our brains are organsfor separating it into parts and giving them finiteform.There ar ^ thus three possible theories of the

brain's function, and no more. We may namethem, severally,I. The theory of production2a. The theory of combinationzb. The theory of separation.In the text of the lecture, theory number 2b (spe-

cified more particularly as the transmission-theory)is defended against theory number i. Theory 2a,otherwise known as the mind-dust or mind-stufftheory, is left entirely unnoticed for lack of time.I also leave it uncriticised in these notes, havingalready considered it, as fully as the so-far pub-lished forms of it may seem to call for, in mywork, 'The Principles of Psychology, New York,Holt & Co., 1892, chapter VI. I may say here,however, that Professor W. K. Clifford, one of theablest champions of the combination-theory, andoriginator of the useful term ' mind-stuff,' considersthat theory incompatible with individual immortal-ity, and in his review of Stewart's and Tait's book.The Unseen Universe, thus expresses his convic-tion :


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Notes 5^ The laws connecting consciousness with changes

in the brain are very definite and precise, and theirnecessary consequences are not to be evaded. . . .Consciousness is a complex thing made up of ele-ments, a stream of feelings. The action of thebrain is also a complex thing made up of elements,a stream of nerve-messages. For every feeling inconsciousness there is at the same time a nerve-message in the brain. . . . Consciousness is not asimple thing, but a complex ; it is the combinationof feelings into a stream. It exists at the sametime with the combination of nerve-messages intoa stream. If individual feeling always goes withindividual nerve-message, if combination or streamof feelings always goes with stream of nerve-mes-sages, does it not follow that, when the stream ofnerve-messages is broken up, the stream of feelingswill be broken up also, will no longer form a con-sciousness ? Does it not follow that, when the mes-sages themselves are broken up, the individual feel-ings will be resolved into still simpler elements?The force of this evidence is not to be weakenedby any number of spiritual bodies. Inexorablefacts connect our consciousness with this body thatwe know ; and that not merely as a whole, but theparts of it are connected severally with parts of ourbrain-action. If there is any similar connectionwith a spiritual body, it only follows that the spirit-


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^4 Notesual body must die at the same time with the natu-ral one. \Lectjtres and Essays, vol. i. p. 247-49.Compare also passages of similar purport in vol. ii.pp. 65-70.]

Note 4, page 13.The theory of production, or materialistic the-

ory, seldom ventures to formulate itself very dis-tinctly. Perhaps the following passage from Ca-banis is as explicit as anything one can find :

To acquire a just idea of the operations fromwhich thought results, we must consider the brainas a particular organ specially destined to produceit ; just as the stomach and intestines are destinedto operate digestion, the liver to filter bile, the pa-rotid and maxillary glands to prepare the salivaryjuices. The impressions, arriving in the brain,force it to enter into activity ; just as the alimen-tary materials, falling into the stomach, excite it toa more abundant secretion of gastric juice, and tothe movements which result in their own solution.The function proper to the first organ is that of re-ceiving \_percevoir\ each particular impression, ofattaching signs to it, of combining the different im-pressions, of comparing them with each other, ofdrawing from them judgments and resolves ; justas the function of the other organ is to act uponthe nutritive substances whose presence excites it,


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Notes ^^to dissolve them, and to assimilate their juices toour nature.

Do you say that the organic movements bywhich the brain exercises these functions are un-known ? I reply that the action by which thenerves of the stomach determine the different oper-ations which constitute digestion, and the mannerin which they confer so active a solvent power uponthe gastric juice, are equally hidden from our scru-tiny. We see the food-materials fall into this vis-cus with their own proper qualities ; we see thememerge with new qualities, and we infer that thestomach is really the author of this alteration.Similarly we see the impressions reaching the brainby the intermediation of the nerves ; they then areisolated and without coherence. The viscus en-ters into action ; it acts upon them, and soon itemits [renvoie'] them metamorphosed into ideas,to which the language of physiognomy or gesture,or the signs of speech and writing, give an outwardexpression. We conclude, then, with an equalcertitude, that the brain digests, as it were, the im-^pressions ; that it performs organically the secre-tion of thought. {Rapports dn Physique et di^Moral, 8th edition, 1844, p. 137.]

It is to the ambiguity of the word ' impressionthat such an account owes whatever plausibility itmay seem to have. More recent forms of the pro-


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^6 Notesduction-theory have shown a tendency to likenthought to a ' force ' which the brain exerts, or to a' state ' into which it passes. Herbert Spencer, forinstance, writes :

The law of metamorphosis, which holds amongthe physical forces, holds equally between themand the mental forces. . . . How this metamor-phosis takes place; how a force existing as mo-tion, heat, or light can become a mode of con-sciousness ; how it is possible for aerial vibrationsto generate the sensation we call sound, or for theforces liberated by chemical changes in the brainto give rise to emotion, these are mysterieswhich it is impossible to fathom. But they arenot profounder mysteries than the transformationsof the physical forces into each other. IF't'rsfPrinciples, 2nd Edition, p. 217.]So Biichner says : Thinking must be regarded

as a special mode of general natural motion, whichis as characteristic of the substance of the centralnervous elements as the motion of contraction isof the nerve-substance, or the motion of light is ofthe universal-ether. . . . That thinking is and mustbe a mode of motion is not merely a postulate oflogic, but a psoposition which has of late beendemonstrated experimentally. . . . Various ingen-ious experiments have proved that the swiftestthought that we are able to evolve occupies at least


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Notes ^ythe eighth or tenth part of a second. {Force andMatter, New York, 1891, p. 241.]Heat and light, being modes of motion, 'phos-phorescence ' and ' incandescence ' are phenomenato which consciousness has been likened by theproduction-theory: As one sees a metallic rod,placed in a glowing furnace, gradually heat itself,and as the undulations of the caloric grow moreand more frequent pass successively from theshades of bright red to dark red (V), to white,and develope, as its temperature rises, heat andlight, so the living sensitive cells, in presence ofthe incitations that solicit them, exalt themselvesprogressively as to their most interior sensibility,enter into a phase of erethism, and at a certainnumber of vibrations, set free {digagenf) pain as aphysiological expression of this same sensibilitysuperheated to a red-white. [J. Luys : le Cer-veau, p. 91.]

In a similar vein Mr. Percival Lowell writes When we have, as we say, an idea, what happensitiside of us is probably something like this : theneural current of molecular change passes up thenerves, and through the ganglia reaches at lastthe cortical cells. . . . When it reaches the cor-tical cells, it finds a set of molecules which are notso accustomed to this special change. The cur-rent encounters resistance, and in overcoming this


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^8 Notesresistance it causes the cells to glow. This white-heating of the cells we call consciousness. Con-sciousness, in short, is probably nerve-glow. [^Oc-cult Japan, Boston, 1895, p. 311.]

Note 5, page 23.The transmission - theory connects itself very

naturally with that whole tendency of thoughtknown as transcendentalism. Emerson, for exam-ple, writes : We lie in the lap of immense intelli-gence, which makes us receivers of its truth anaorgans of its activity. When we discern justice.when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselveS;but allow a passage to its beams. \_Self-Relianct^p. 56.] But it is not necessary to identify the con-sciousness postulated in the lecture, as preexistingbehind the scenes, with the Absolute Mind of tran-scendental Idealism, although, indeed, the notion ofit might lead in that direction. The absolute Mindof transcendental Idealism is one integral Unit, onesingle World-mind. For the purposes of my lec-ture, however, there might be many minds behindthe scenes as well as one. All that the transmis-sion-theory absolutely requires is that they shouldtranscend oiir minds, which thus come fromsomething mental that pre-exists, and is largerthan themselves.


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Notes ^gNote 6, page 24.

Fechner's conception of a * psycho - physicalthreshold ' as connected with his ' wave-scheme 'is little known to English readers. I accordinglysubjoin it, in his own words, abridged :

The psychically one is connected with a physi-cally many : the physically many contract psychi-cally into a one, a simple, or at least a more sim-ple. Otherwise expressed : the psychically unifiedand simple are resultants of physical multiplicitythe physically manifold gives unified or simple re-sults. . . .

The facts which are grouped together underthese expressions, and which give them their mean-ing, are as follows : . . . With our two hemisphereswe think singly; with the identical parts of our tworetinae we see singly. . . , The simplest sensationof light or sound in us is connected with processeswhich, since they are started and kept up by outeroscillations, must themselves be somehow of anoscillatory nature, although we are wholly unawareof the separate phases and oscillations. . . .

It is certain, then, that some unified or sim-ple psychic resultants depend on physical multipli-city. But, on the other hand, it is equally certainthat the multiplicities of the physical world do notalways combine into a simple psychical resultant,


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6o Notes no, not even when they are compounded in asingle bodily system. Whether they may not nev-ertheless combine into a unified resultant is amatter for opinion, since one is always free to askwhether the entire world, as such, may not havesome unified psychic resultant. But of any suchresultant we at least have no consciousness. . . .

For brevity's sake, let us distinguish psycho-physical continuity and discontinuity from eachother. Continuity, let us say, takes place so far asa physical manifold gives a unified or simple psy-chic resultant ; discontinuity, so far as it gives adistinguishable multiplicity of such resultants. In-asmuch, however, as, within the unity of a moregeneral consciousness or phenomenon of conscious-ness, there still maybe a multiplicity distinguished,the continuity of a more general consciousnessdoes not exclude the discontinuity of particularphenomena.One of the most important problems and tasks

of Psycho-physics now is this : to determine theconditions (Gesichtspunkte) under which the casesof continuity and of discontinuity occur.

Whence comes it that different organisms haveseparate consciousnesses, although their bodiesare just as much connected by general Natureas the parts of a single organism are with eachother, and these latter give a single conscious re-


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Notes 6sultant ? Of course we can say that the connec-tion is more intimate between the parts of anorganism than between the organisms of Nature.But what do we mean by a more intimate connec-tion ? Can an absolute difference of result dependon anything so relative ? And does not Nature asa whole show as strict a connection as any organismdoes, yea, one even more indissoluble ? And thesame questions come up within each organism.How comes it that, with different nerve-fibres oftouch and sight, we distinguish different space-points, but with one fibre distinguish nothing,although the different fibres are connected in thebrain just as much as the parts are in the singlefibre? We may again call the latter connectionthe more intimate, but then the same sort of ques-tion will arise again.

Unquestionably the problem which here liesbefore Psycho - physics cannot be sharply an-swered ; but we may establish a general point ofview for its treatment, consistently with what welaid down in a former chapter on the relations ofmore general with more particular phenomena ofconsciousness.[The earlier passage is here inserted :] TheO essential principle is this: That human psycho-

'jN physical activity must exceed a certain intensity^ for any waking consciousness at all to occur, and


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62 Notesthat during the waking state any particular speciftcation of the said activity (whether spontaneous ordue to stimulation), which is capable of occasion-ing a particular specification of consciousness, mustexceed in its turn a certain further degree of inten-sity for the consciousness actually to arise. . . .

This state of things (in itself a mere fact need-ing no picture) may be made clearer by an imageor scheme, and also more concisely spoken of.Imagine the whole psycho-physical activity of manto be a wave, and the degree of this activity to besymbolized by the height of the wave above a hori-zontal basal line or surface, to which every psycho-physically active point contributes an ordinate. . . .The whole form and evolution of the conscious-ness will then depend on the rising and faUing ofthis wave; the intensity of the consciousness atany time on the wave's height at that time; andthe height must always somewhere exceed a certainlimit, which we will call a threshold, if waking con-sciousness is to exist at all.

Let us call this wave the total wave, and thethreshold in question t\\t principal threshold.

[Since our various states of consciousness recur,some in long, some in short periods], we mayrepresent such a long period as that of the slowlyfluctuating condition of our general wakefulness andthe general direction of our attention as a wave


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Notes 6^that slowly changes the place of its summit. If wecall this the ufider-wave, then the movements ofshorter period, on which the more special con-scious states depend, can be symbolized by wave-lets superposed upon the under-wave, and we cancall these over-waves. They will cause all sorts ofmodifications of the under-wave's surface, and thetotal wave will be the resultant of both sets ofwaves.The greater, now, the strength of the move-

ments of short period, the amplitude of the oscil-lations of the psycho-physical activity, the higherwill the crests of the wavelets that represent themrise above, and the lower will their valleys sink be-low the surface of the under-wave that bears them.And these heights and depressions must exceed acertain limit of quantity which we may call theupper threshold, before the special mental statewhich is correlated with them can appear in con-sciousness [pp. 454-456].

So far now as we symbolize any system of psy-cho-physical activity, to which a generally unified orprincipal consciousness corresponds, by the imageof a total wave rising with its crest above a certain* threshold,' we have a means of schematizing in asingle diagram the physical solidarity of all thesepsycho-physical systems throughout Nature, to-gether with their pyscho - physical discontinuity.


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64 NotesFor we need only draw all the waves so that theyrun into each other below the threshold, whilstabove it they appear distinct, as in the figure be-low.

a be In this figure a, b, c stand for three organisms,

or rather for the total waves of psycho-physical ac-tivity of three organisms, whilst A B represents thethreshold. In each wave the part that rises abovethe threshold is an integrated thing, and is con-nected with a single consciousness. Whatever liesbelow the threshold, being unconscious, separatesthe conscious crests, although it is still the meansof physical connection.

In general terms : wherever a psycho-physicaltotal wave is continuous with itself above thethreshold, there we find the unity or identity of aconsciousness, inasmuch z& the connection of thepsychical phenomena which correspond to the partsof the wave also appears in consciousness. When-ever, on the contrary, total waves are disconnected,or connected only underneath the threshold, thecorresponding consciousness is broken, and no con-nection between its several parts appears. Morebriefly : consciousness is continuous or discontinu-


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Notes 6^ous, unified or discrete, according as the psycho-physical total waves that subserve it are them-selves continuous or discontinuous above thethreshold. . . .

If, in the diagram, we should raise the entireline of waves so that not only the crests but thevalleys appeared above the threshold, then theselatter would appear only as depressions in onegreat continuous wave above the threshold, and thediscontinuity of the consciousness would be con-verted into continuity. We of course cannot bringthis about. We might also squeeze the wave to-gether so that the valleys should be pressed up,and the crests above the threshold flow into a linethen the discretely-feeling organisms would havebecome a singly - feeling organism. This, again,Man cannot voluntarily bring about, but it isbrought about in Man's nature. His two halves,the right one and the left one, are thus united ; andthe number of segments of radiates and articulatesshow that more than two parts can be thus psycho-physically conjoined. One need only cut themasunder, i. e. interpolate another part of naturebetween them under the threshold, and they breai:into two separately conscious beings. . . . \_Ele-mente der Psyfhophysik, i860, vol. ii. pp. 526-530.]One sees easily how, on Fechner's wave-scheme,


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66 Notesa world-soul may be expressed. All psycho-phy-sical activity being continuous 'below the thresh-old,' the consciousness might also become contin-uous if the threshold sank low enough to uncoverall the waves. The threshold throughout naturein general is, however, very high, so the conscious-ness that gets over it is of the discontinuous form.

Note 7, page 25.See the long series of articles by Mr. Myers in the

Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research,beginning in the third volume with automatic writ-ing, and ending in the latest volumes with thehigher manifestations of knowledge by mediums.Mr. Myers's theory of the whole range of pheno-mena is, that our normal consciousness is in con-tinuous connection with a greater consciousnessof which we do not know the extent, and to whichhe gives, in its relation to the particular person,the not very felicitous name though no better onehas been proposed of his or her * subliminal ' self

Note 8, page 29.See Kritik der reinen Vernunft, second edition,

p. 809. Note 9, page 29.I subjoin a few extracts from Mr. Schiller's

work : Matter is an admirably calculated machin-


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Notes 6yery for regulating, limiting, and restraining theconsciousness which it encases. ... If the mate-rial encasement be coarse and simple, as in thelower organisms, it permits only a little intelligenceto permeate through it ; if it is delicate and com-plex, it leaves more pores and exits, as it were,for the manifestations of consciousness. ... Onthis analogy, then, we may say that the lower ani-mals are still entranced in the lower stage of brutelethargy, while we have passed into the higherphase of somnambulism, which already permits usstrange glimpses of a lucidity that divines the real-ities of a transcendent world. And this gives thefinal answer to Materialism : it consists in showingin detail . . . that Materialism is a hysteron prote-ron, a putting of the cart before the horse, whichmay be rectified by just inverting the connectionbetween Matter and Consciousness. Matter is notthat which produces Consciousness, but that whichlimits it, and confines its intensity within certainlimits : material organization does not constructconsciousness out of arrangements of atoms, butcontracts its manifestation within the sphere whichit permits. This explanation . . . admits the con-nection of Matter and Consciousness, but contendsthat the course of interpretation must proceed inthe contrary direction. Thus it will fit the factsalleged in favor of Materialism equally well, be-


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68 Notessides enabling us to understand facts which Mate-rialism rejected as ' supernatural.' It explains thelower by the higher, Matter by Spirit, instead ofvice versa, and thereby attains to an explanationwhich is ultimately tenable, instead of one whichis ultimately absurd. And it is an explanation thepossibility of which no evidence in favor of Mate-rialism can possibly affect. For if, e. g., a manloses consciousness as soon as his brain is injured,it is clearly as good an explanation to say theinjury to the brain destroyed the mechanism bywhich the manifestation of the consciousness wasrendered possible, as to say that it destroyed theseat of consciousness. On the other hand, thereare facts which the former theory suits far better.If, e.g., as sometimes happens, the man, after atime, more or less, recovers the faculties of whichthe injury to his brain had deprived him, and thatnot in consequence of a renewal of the injured part,but in consequence of the inhibited functions beingperformed by the vicarious action of other parts,the easiest explanation certainly is that, after atime, consciousness constitutes the remaining partsinto a mechanism capable of acting as a substitutefor the lost parts. And again, if the body is a me-chanism for inhibiting consciousness, for prevent-ing the full powers of the Ego from being prema-turely actualized, it will be necessary to invert also


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Notes 6gour ordinary ideas on the subject of memory, andto account for forgetfulness instead of for mem-ory. It will be during life that we drink the bittercup of Lethe, it will be with our brain that we areenabled to forget. And this will serve to explainnot only the extraordinary memories of the drown-ing and the dying generally, but also the curioushints which experimental psychology occasionallyaffords us that nothing is ever forgotten whollyand beyond recall. [^Riddles of the Sphinx, Lon-don, Swan Sonnenschein, 1891, p. 293 ff.]

Mr. Schiller's conception is much more com-plex in its relations than the simple ' theory oftransmission ' postulated in my lecture, and to dojustice to it the reader should consult the originalwork.

Note 10, page 39.I beg the reader to peruse R. L. Stevenson's

magnificent little essay entitled ' The LanternBearers,' reprinted in the collection entitled Acrossthe Plains. The truth is that we are doomed, bythe fact that we are practical beings with verylimited tasks to attend to, and special ideals tolook after, to be absolutely blind and insensibleto the inner feelings, and to the whole inner sig-nificance of lives that are different from our own.Our opinion of the worth of such lives is abso-


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JO Noteslutely wide of the mark, and unfit to be counted atall.

Note ii, page 41.W. Wundt : System der Philosophie, Leipzig,

Engelmann, 1889, p. 315.

THE END.


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William James Human Immortality - Ingersoll Lectures

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