PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS.
By B. L. Aldrich
TO CONTINUE: It is said we do not become cognizant of the qualities and conditions of ourselves by the same process as of material objects. This fact is not wholly denied. But we do affirm that for such a reason there is no evidence of an immortal, separate being, within us. No cause can be assigned to any phenomena, unless the proper steps are taken to show their connection. We can perceive abstract qualities, as truly as tangible objects, although the former are not to be told by their dimensions. I do claim, however, that there is a real sense of physical feeling within, as when the chest feels pent up with swollen grief. But sense or no sense, there is not, in consciousness of states and qualities, any correct inference of an immortal soul. Great caution is required in reasoning, in order to avoid the common mistake of inventing causes. Such things must be discovered. Phenomena must be clearly derived from, or traced back to, the cause assigned. Indifference to this principle has exposed all the philosophical arguments in support of the immortal soul doctrine to easy attack. It is not satisfactory to show consciousness of qualities and states of feeling, and then, ignoring all laws, leap to the unwarranted conclusion that they originate in a hypothecated essence. Causes are not ascertained in that way. Causes are determined by deduction, laws by induction. After having discovered the laws by induction, we reason for the origin by the aid of analogy. It is one thing to co-ordinate facts under laws, and quite another to find the antecedent agent, which, through the laws, produces the facts. All which the argument under review proves is the existence and operation of certain laws; but whether they are the result of physical organism created by God, or are enacted and administered by an internal inhabitant, is the real question. Getting the fact of the laws is the second step, and must follow immediately the consciousness of conditions and qualities. The laws, however, are not the soul. The fact, to illustrate, that a red flag will enrage a bull, betrays a law of that animal's organism; namely, if it sees a red flag, it will get mad. Does this law prove that this animal has an immortal soul? No; it proves the fact that some power made the law—it might have been this power or that, either of which is the very object of proof. God stands behind law, and projects the display of all its phenomena. If the soul, so called, is the sub-ordinate legislator, ruling the moods of the man, it occupies the position of a veritable god. Why should the poor, victimized body be made to suffer the penalty of a merely mechanical service in the cause of a wholly reprehensible and morally accountable soul, if God is just? The body, as a mere instrument, should have been created insensible to the punishment of evil, since a tyrant recreant to his office, misused it. The thief should be hung and not his body, the helpless slave. I am, also, of the opinion that men, by assigning an independent soul as the cause of human phenomena, not only confound modes of action with cause, but make it a titular deity or plenipotentiary vicar to preside arbitrarily over this complex machinery while the Creator is absent. Every star, and, in fact, the whole universe, might be managed by similar gods. Out of this total independence of self, no doubt, comes the modern infidel doctrine of evolution, whereby the race will survive through its fittest representatives, all the while improving, until its present conception of God is realized in self-development. A subordinate god granted, and it soon aspires to the44first place. Humanity is full of invidious self-assumption above all that is revealed as God, and his only begotten Son. The very fact that men bring the Bible under criticism, and attempt by sophistry to maintain what it positively denies, is sufficient evidence of this. To sum up, the argument just considered is the non causa pro causa—the substituting of laws for the cause of the facts they exhibit. The sun shines, not because it has a soul, but because such is the law of its nature. So man has thoughts, invention, capacity for development (qualities), envy, anger, fear (conditions), because the law of his nature produces them. God is the soul of all laws. Again, it is said that man's capacity for unlimited development is another proof of his immortal nature. Animals can come up to a certain limit of improvement, and then advance no farther. Man, however, is not thus restricted; he can go on ad libitum. Let it be remembered first, that the assertion that man can go on in unlimited development by the tendency of his own nature, is yet to be proven. We must prove ourselves wiser than the ancients, which has never been done. The arresting force of senility which gradually brings mental acquirements to a stand-still, and then forces them in a reverse direction, and finally, the interposition of death, beyond which to say there is continued existence and progress is the sheerest begging of the question,—these circumstances effectually disprove the argument in question to be true. If man is capable of unlimited development, what have you to say of the "lean and slippered pantaloon which sans taste, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything," when the "grasshopper becomes a burden," when the representative and elaborative faculty, the memory and all, fade away like the hue of the leaf in autumn. The corn-stalk is a specimen of development. First, the blade, then the full corn in the ear, then the ripening, then death. This is a picture of man so far as the impediments of sin allow him to properly complete his course. The development in the latter proves no more than that in the former. Animals, too, are all susceptible of improvement. The elephant, the horse, the dog, the mocking bird, are very tractable to a certain extent, the same as man is. Butler, in his celebrated "Analogy," acknowledges this difficulty of the arguments proving too much, and tries to extricate himself by the nonsense, that animals, while capable of improvement, can never attain to moral accountability. He says they may be immortal, but never in the future moral. Wonderful information! Darwin, and all evolutionists, say they can attain to a sphere of moral sense, but not after death;—that we were once animals, but now we are moral beings. They took up Butler where he left off, and carried him to a perfectly logical conclusion. When a man sets out on a wrong road let him go to the end of it, and see what he will find there; but never let him confess to be wrong. As to the argument that man has more ability, and can do more things than the animal, which fact gives him a soul, it may be said that the beaver can throw a dam across a stream, a feat the musk-rat cannot perform, hence the former is immortal; or that a rose can bloom, and the stone cannot; or India rubber can stretch, and cast iron cannot; hence roses and India rubber have immortal souls. This is all that argument amounts to. It would also make geniuses immortal, and men of small mind mortal, which again is evolutionism emphasized. It is a proof based on comparative qualities which should refer us to law, and not to cause. In the next article will be considered the visions of the dying.