THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL NOT UNIVERSALLY BELIEVED by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 6, 1869

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL NOT UNIVERSALLY BELIEVED.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

It is claimed that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul has been believed by all nations in all ages. This is advanced as a strong argument in its favor. But is this assertion true? Far from it. As an actual matter of fact the great majority of mankind have not believed it. What is meant, now, by the term immortality of the soul? It is meant that every human being when he begins his existence in this world has given him by God a certain spiritual, immaterial, immortal element which will continue to live independent of the body after death in a personal, conscious existence, and that every soul, righteous or wicked, must continue to live as an individual person through all eternity. Such a doctrine it is claimed has been believed by “all nations in all ages.” This we deny, and will offer as much proof as our limits will admit. Mr. Watson, in his “Theological Institutes,” though a believer in the soul’s immortality, makes this candid confession. “Some fine passages on this subject [the immortality of the soul] may be collected from Plato, Cicero, Seneca, and others; but we must take them with others which express, sometimes doubt, and sometimes unbelief. With us this is a matter of general belief; but not so with the generality of either ancient or modern pagans. The same darkness which obscured the glory of God, proportionably diminished the glory of man,—his true and proper immortality, the very ancient notion of the absorption of souls back again into the Divine Essence was, with the ancients, what we know it to be now in the metaphysical system of the Hindoos, a denial of individual immortality; nor have the demonstrations of reason done anything to convince the other grand division of metaphysical pagans into which modern heathenism is divided, the followers of Buddha, who believe in the total annihilation of both men and gods after a series of ages—a point of faith held probably by the majority of the present race of mankind.”

What! the majority of the human race to-day believing in the total annihilation of men? So says Mr. Watson, and so every one knows who is acquainted with the facts. This alone strikes a death blow at the claim of universal belief in the immortality of the soul. Not only is this the belief of modern pagans, but it has always been the doctrine of the whole heathen world. Dr. Davy, after naming “the whole of Tartary, of China, of Japan, and their dependencies, and all of the countries between China and the Burrampooter,” says of the inhabitants, “They appear to be materialists in the strictest sense of the term, and to have no notion of pure spirit or mind.” “Ordinary death is only a change of form; and that this change is almost infinite, and bounded only by annihilation, which they esteem the acme of happiness.” According to this a majority of the human race are gross materialists instead of pure immortal soulists!

The doctrine of emanation and absorption, which was, and still is, held by nearly all the pagan world, is this: Man’s soul is a part of God himself, which emanated from him at some past time; this soul will finally, either at death, or at some future period, return to God and be re-absorbed into his essence, and thus lose all individual existence. True, they talked and wrote poetry about the immortality of the soul, but they only meant that as a part of God it was immortal. But an immortal, conscious, personal existence of any one soul was a doctrine that entered into no part of their theory. This, it will be seen, is utterly subversive of the modern theological doctrine of the soul’s immortality. Of this there is an abundance of proof of which I have room to present a very little. Mr. Henry Howe, the well-known author, says, “Boodhism, the religion of Burmah, has the greatest number of disciples of any on the globe.” “Existence and sorrow are declared to be necessary concomitants; and therefore the chief end of man is to finish this eternal round of changes and be annihilated. The great doctrines of this faith are three; viz., 1. The eternal existence of the universe and all things. 2. Metempsychosis (transmigration). 3. Nichon, or annihilation.”

Annihilation is a prominent article in the faith of the majority of mankind. Says the learned Dr. Alger, “Pantheistic absorption—to lose all imprisoning bounds, and blend in that ecstatic flood of Deity, which, forever full, never ebbs on any coast,—has been equally the metaphysical speculation, the imaginative dream, and the passionate desire of the Hindoo mind. It is the basis and motive of the most extensive disbelief of individual immortality the world has known.” Koeppen says, “Buddhism is the gospel of annihilation.”

That this doctrine of absorption into Deity is no figurative language, but really means total annihilation of all consciousness and individuality, is proved by the most critical investigation. The learned Dr. Warburton, of England, long ago fully proved that the ancient Greek sages held the same doctrine of absorption and consequent individual annihilation. On this point Watson remarks: “Some learned men have denied the consequence which Warburton wished to establish from these premises, and consider the re-absorption of these sages as figurative, and consequently compatible with distinct consciousness and individuality. The researches, however, since that time made into the corresponding philosophy of the Hindoos, bears this acute and learned man out to the full length of his conclusion.” With this we leave India, and turn a moment to China. What do these people, comprising so many millions, believe on this subject? Confucius was their great teacher, than whom no man ever exerted a greater influence on a nation. But he taught nothing about the soul’s immortality, nor even about a future state. Of the Chinese in general the learned Dr. Horn says, “Religion, as a system of divine worship, as piety toward God, and as holding forth future rewards and punishments, can hardly be said to exist among the Chinese.” Introduction, Chap. I, p. 21. Dr. Morrison says the learned among them do not teach the immortality of the soul. John Leland, D. D., says, “It is observed by the celebrated Mons. de Montesquieu, that ‘the religion of Confucius denies the immortality of the soul.’” “Confucius being asked by one of his disciples what angels or spirits are, answered that they are air. And this is the notion that the Chinese have of the soul. They look upon it to be a material thing, though highly rarified; and that, when the soul is separated from the body, both of them lose their individual being they had before, and nothing remains but the substance of heaven and earth, which had before concurred to the composition of man, and which, as general causes, ever continue in their substantial being, and are only changed in their accidental forms.”

Here then is about one-fourth of the human race who are materialists, and must be counted out as not believing the immortality of the soul. Who then has ever believed this doctrine as now held? The ancient Greeks and Romans are always appealed to as firm believers in the immortality of the soul; but we have good evidence to show that they never did really believe it. Bishop Warburton, Dr. Leland, Mr. Watson, and many other learned men have abundantly proved this. To them the reader is referred, while I can give only a few short extracts. Of the heathens in general, Paul said that they were without God, and having no hope. This could not be true if they believed in the immortality of the soul, for then they would have a firm hope of a future life. The Romans learned their religion from the Greeks, and the Greeks from the Egyptians; hence they all held about the same faith, specially with regard to the soul. Of these ancients Mr. Watson says, “Bishop Warburton proves that this opinion (of absorption, or individual annihilation) was held not merely by the Atheists and skeptical sects among the Greeks, but by what he calls the Philosophic Quaternion of Dogmatic Theists, the four renowned schools, the Pythagoric, the Platonic, the Peripatetic, and the Stoic; and on this ground argues, that though they taught the doctrine of future rewards and punishments to the populace, as a means of securing their obedience

to the laws, they themselves did not believe what they propagated, and in this he was doubtless correct.

When the ancients are said to hold the pre and post existence of the soul, and therefore to attribute a proper eternity to it, we must not suppose that they understood it to be eternal in its distinct and peculiar existence; but that it was discarded from the substance of God in time, and would in time be rejoined and resolved into it again; which they explained by a bottle’s being filled with sea water, that swimming there awhile, on the bottle’s breaking, flowed in again, and mingled with the common mass. They only differed about the time of this reunion and re-evolution, the greater part holding it to be at death, but the Pythagoreans not till after many transmigrations.

What shall we say to these facts? Here are two very learned men, both believers in the immortality of the soul, who say that none of these ancient philosophers believed in the proper immortality of the soul, but on the contrary, all held that the soul would lose its individuality either at death or some future time. Dr. Good, M. D., F. R. S., &c., in his “Book of Nature,” says, “If we turn to the oldest hypothesis of the East,—to the Vedas of the Brahmins and the Zendavesta of the Parsees,—to those venerable but fanciful stores of learning, whence many of the earliest Greek schools drew their first draught of metaphysical science, we shall find indeed a full acknowledgment of the immortality of the soul, but only upon the sublime and mystical doctrine of emanation and immanation, as a part of the great soul of the universe; issuing from it at birth, and resorbed into it upon the death of the body, and hence altogether incapable of individual being, or a separate state of existence.”

This is in harmony with what I have before quoted, and an abundance more that I might quote, showing that none of these heathen nations ever believed in the individual immortality of any human soul. The Arabians did not believe the soul immortal. On this the above author says, “If we turn from Persia, Egypt, and Hindostan, to Arabia, . . . we shall find the entire subject left in as blank and barren a silence as the desert by which they are surrounded; or, if touched upon, only touched upon to betray doubt, and sometimes disbelief. The tradition of a future state of retributive justice seems to have reached the schools of this part of the world, and to have been generally, though perhaps not universally, accredited; but the future existence it alludes to is that of a resurrection of the body; and not of a survival of the soul after the body’s dissolution.” These are facts worth considering. Here is another nation to be counted out as non-believers in the immortality of the soul.

THE PEOPLE. It is true that traditions of a future life of some kind were handed down from the earliest period among all men. But many ages, and even thousands of years, passed away before we find any notion of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul held by any one. It first started with a few priests and lawgivers, was taken up by poets and philosophers, and, finally, was acknowledged by the people. Before the time of Socrates, there is no evidence that this doctrine was received by the people, or even by the philosophers, except Socrates, a Greek, who was born B. C. 469, near Athens. He is said to have been one of the first who argued for the soul’s immortality. That this doctrine was then comparatively unknown, and that the opposite was the common faith, is shown by Dr. Leland in the following: “One of Socrates’ disciples, Cebes, tells him that the doctrine he taught concerning the immortality of the soul, and a future state, ‘met with little credit among men.’ That ‘most men seemed to think that the soul was immediately dissolved at death, and that it vanished and was dissipated like the wind or smoke, or became nothing at all; and that it needed no small persuasion and faith to believe that the soul exists, and has some power and intelligence after the man is dead.’ Socrates himself had said the same thing just before, that his doctrine was not believed by the generality. Simmias, another of the dialogists in the Phaedo, represents it as the opinion of many that the soul is dissipated when a man dies, and that this is the end of his existence. And Socrates, speaking of the soul’s being blown away, and perishing with the body, declares that this is what was said by most men. From these testimonies it plainly appears that the mortality of the soul was a doctrine which prevailed among the Athenians in the time of Socrates, who were looked upon as the most learned and polite of all the Grecians.” Plato, Socrates’ disciple, complains that his arguments on this subject met with little credit. So much for the common belief of the people in the time of Socrates.

How long did this continue so? Did Socrates and Plato convert all men to their new ideas of the soul? By no means. Says Leland, “There is no great reason to think that the state of things among the Athenians grew better afterwards, but rather the contrary.”

From the time of Socrates and Plato we come down to the days of Polybius, who was born B. C. 203. Of him an author remarks: “There is a remarkable passage of Polybius, which shows that the disbelief of a future state was in his time become very common and fashionable, both among persons of superior rank, and among the lower kinds of people.” Neither learned nor unlearned believed this doctrine at that time, and hence it is not universally believed as yet. From the time of Polybius we come a little further down to the time of Cicero, the next great advocate of the soul’s immortality, who was born about B. C. 107. Perhaps this doctrine had gained greater credence by his time. Hear Mr. Leland again: “What that great man Cicero says of the philosophers in his time is remarkable. In that celebrated treatise where he sets himself to prove the immortality of the soul, he represents the contrary as the prevailing opinion. There were crowds of opponents, not the Epicureans only, but, which he could not well account for, those that were esteemed the most learned persons had that doctrine in contempt.” Mr. Watson, speaking of this subject in the time of Cicero, says: “Both philosophers and poets regarded them as vulgar fables. . . . Nor was the skepticism and unbelief of the wise and great long kept from the vulgar, among whom they wished to maintain the old superstitions as instruments by which they might be controlled. Cicero complains that the common people in his day mostly followed the doctrine of Epicurus.” Epicurus denied the immortality of the soul. This testimony is worthy of consideration. The mass of the common people followed Epicurus, that is, disbelieved and denied entirely the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. And the poets and philosophers taught them this! Then who did believe it at that time? It was universally disbelieved. Caesar represents the same thing as being true in his day. So it was in the time of Plutarch, who was born about the middle of the first century. “He intimates that these things were not commonly believed.” Not only the philosophers, but the mass of the Roman people had no faith in the doctrines of future rewards and punishments. Of the popular religion Mr. Jones says, “The Romans in general knew the whole to be an imposition, and many of them ridiculed the pretense that the institution was divine.” Again he says, “The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and of a future state of rewards and punishments was but little understood, and, of course, only very partially acknowledged. Hence, at the period when Christ appeared, any notions of this kind found little or no acceptance among the Greeks and Romans, but were regarded in the light of old wives’ fables, fit only for the amusement of women and children.” This being so, what becomes of the assertion that these nations have always believed the soul immortal? Every school-boy ought to know better. In view of these facts, I can but inquire when it was that this doctrine of the soul’s immortality was universally believed? I am inclined to think that there never was any such time. Who will show us such a time, and give us the proof? Surely it was not before the time of Socrates, for no nation had yet received it; nor in his time, for “most men” denied it; nor in the time of Polybius, nor yet in Cicero’s time; nor even in the days of Plutarch, as I have shown. That brings us this side of the Christian era, at least, before any universality of belief can be shown on this point. Perhaps I may say more on this point in the future.

D. M. CANRIGHT. Sigourney, Iowa.