Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Volume 6. Charles S. Peirce

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      [Science and Immortality]

      What is the bearing of positively ascertained facts upon the doctrine of a future life?

      By the doctrine of a future life, I understand the proposition that after death we shall retain or recover our individual consciousness, feeling, volition, memory, and, in short (barring an unhappy contingency), all our mental powers unimpaired. The question is, laying aside all higher aspects of this doctrine, its sacredness and sentiment,—concerning which a scientific man is not, as such, entitled to an opinion,—and judging it in the same cold way in which a proposition in physics would have to be judged, what facts are there leading us to believe or to disbelieve it?

      Under the head of direct positive evidence to the affirmative would be placed that of religious miracles, of spiritualistic marvels, and of ghosts, etc. I have little to say to all this. I take the modern Catholic miracles to be the best attested. Three members of the English Psychical Research Society have lately published a vast book of fourteen hundred pages, large octavo, under the title of Phantasms of the Living. This work gives some seven hundred cases of apparitions, etc., of a dying person to another person at a distance. The phenomenon of telepathy, or perception under conditions which forbid ordinary perception, though not fully established, is supported by some remarkable observations. But the authors of the book I am speaking of—Messrs. Gurney, Myers, and Podmore—think they have proved a kind of telepathy by which dying persons appear to others at great distances. Their most imposing arguments are based upon the doctrine of probabilities, and these I have examined with care. I am fully satisfied that these arguments are worthless, partly because of the uncertainty and error of the numerical data, and partly because the authors have been astonishingly careless in the admission of cases ruled out by the conditions of the argumentation.

      But, granting all the ghost stories that ever were told, and the reality of all spiritual manifestations, what would it prove? These ghosts and spirits exhibit but a remnant of mind. Their stupidity is remarkable. They seem like the lower animals. If I believed in them, I should conclude that, while the soul was not always at once extinguished on the death of the body, yet it was reduced to a pitiable shade, a mere ghost, as we say, of its former self. Then these spirits and apparitions are so painfully solemn. I fancy that, were I suddenly to find myself liberated from all the trials and responsibilities of this life, my probation over, and my destiny put beyond marring or making, I should feel as I do when I find myself on an ocean steamer, and know that for ten days no business can turn up, and nothing can happen. I should regard the situation as a stupendous frolic, should be at the summit of gayety, and should only be too glad to leave the vale of tears behind. Instead of that, these starveling souls come mooning back to their former haunts, to cry over spilled milk.

      Under the head of positive evidence apparently unfavorable to the doctrine, we may reckon ordinary observations of the dependence of healthy mind-action upon the state of the body. There are, also, those rare cases of double consciousness where personal identity is utterly destroyed or changed, even in this life. If a man or woman, who is one day one person, another day another, is to live hereafter, pray tell me which of the two persons that inhabit the one body is destined to survive?

      There is certainly a large and formidable mass of facts, which, though not bearing directly upon the question of a future life, yet inclines us to a general conception of the universe which does not harmonize with that belief. We judge of the possibility of the unseen by its analogy with the seen. We smile at Aladdin’s lamp or the elixir of life, because they are extremely unlike all that has come under our observation. Those of us who have never met with spirits or any fact at all analogous to immortality among the things that we indubitably know must be excused if we smile at that doctrine. As far as we see, forms of beauty, of sentiment, and of intelligence are the most evanescent of phenomena.

      “The flower that once has bloomed forever dies.”

      Besides, scientific studies have taught us that human testimony, when not hedged about with elaborate checks, is a weak kind of evidence. In short, the utter unlikeness of an immortal soul to anything we cannot doubt, СКАЧАТЬ