PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS.
By Prof. B. L. Aldrich
To resume our examination of the philosophical props that sustain the erroneous doctrine of the immortal soul, we shall bring to the test the much-emphasized visions of dying people. Ordinarily, the judgment of men in that condition, especially on questions of theology and science, is not considered very reliable. They frequently have strange and delirious fancies. A criminal that had been hung but whose life was, from a small spark, fanned into a flame again, stated that he had had the most transporting visions of bright and beautiful scenes. His sensations, doubtless, were caused by the change produced on his nerve system. The brain of a sick person in the worse states of disease is considerably affected, and it must be so in a dying condition. It is then, if ever, liable to cause phenomena unknown in the time of health. Even in a high fever, the fancies of delirium unfold strange scenes. Children in a state of health, by pressing the eyes into a pillow seem to be looking into a kaleidoscope where bright and shifting forms elaborate to their sense of perception. The brain is not always dependent on external objects for the apparently palpable figures. It is capable of reflex action. Some persons are peculiarly liable to this action of the brain. Under such a condition it throws out before itself things which have no reality, but which are convincing to the mind producing them. This fact, well known to metaphysicians, is sustained by many notable instances. Dr. Clark, author of a book on this subject, asserts that to this peculiar action of the brain must be assigned the visions of dying people. They see their departed relatives standing before them, and are affected with many other hallucinations. Must we, then, base our faith of an immediate transit to glory on an illusion of the diseased brain? Such a theology would be imbecile indeed. Christians sometimes are depressed with spiritual doubts because they have the dyspepsia, or their hopes are dull because they ate too much cheese. Revelations of eternal realities, transmitted through the deranged brain of a dying mortal, are to be accepted with great caution. The last transports of some faithful Christians are the inevitable outcome of a life driven in one direction, and under the force of one great hope. The whole life anticipated and forged the last vision. As other objections I submit: First, that many people who did not have any hope of eternal life, and no faith in Christ, had these visions. Jews that rejected the Messiah had them; Buddhists, and Mohammedans, had them; second, that many good Christians did not experience any such transporting scenes when dying; and third, the descriptions which dying persons give of the hereafter in Heaven are all suspiciously like those which they have been taught before. It was no revelation, but a reproduction. The fact is, men cannot get out of themselves. They are bound to be human in spite of all their struggles. They cannot escape from those laws of their being which all the while restrain them within the educational influences of their lives. They cannot paint what is not earthly. They may combine these material elements under different relations and in different forms, but man is forced to reproduce the impressions he has received, in some shape or other. Christ gave no description of Heaven, evidently because it was so unlike earth, being a spiritual realm; and we could not have comprehended him if he had. Let those teachers who are trying to keep alive one of the most egregious errors of religion, explain why Lazarus did not give some account of his heavenly experience when he was resurrected. The ancient Greeks must have perceived the idea of the incompatability of human nature comprehending the nature of the unseen, when they invented the fable of the Titans stealing holy fire from Heaven. If man actually had a soul as it is commonly interpreted, which at death came out of the body and spoke independently, in its spiritual language, its descriptions could be credited; but so long as it acts (as it is said) through the brain, its intuitions must be biased by the affections of its medium. So long as the power runs the machine, so long will the peculiar noise of that machine be heard. The man of dark fancies will die floundering in clouds and surf; the cheerful visionary, like Ponce de Leon, will expire in the transport of discovering the immortal spring. Wild savages die, welcoming with a smile, the happy hunting grounds. A Napoleon will die at the head of the army, and a Galileo will hear the music of rolling spheres. Thousands of Khaled’s warriors perished on the fields of Syria with arms outstretched to greet the black-eyed houris, the reward of fidelity to the crescent. What are you going to do with such dying visions as all these? Hallucinations of this kind have not only strengthened Christians in a false theory, but have been employed by pagans in all ages to maintain the genuineness of their religions. This argument, then, of the visions of the dying, as a proof of an immediate transit to glory after death, philosophically considered, is wholly valueless as it is so shown to be by the facts of science and history. Still this argument will be used, no doubt, like a great many other false reasonings, for the human mind is full of error.