From prehistoric2 times up to our own days all people at all stages of evolution have to a man been convinced that the body in some way and in some form contains an imperishable and essential part which man cannot do without in a future life. With this intuitive and purely3 instinctive4 faith as a basis, the steps in the following historical evolution[189] become fully5 natural and logical consequences.
It is not to be wondered at that this eternal part should at first sight be considered identical with the material body. Therefore it was also natural that a cult6 of the dead would be the stage where all people begin. Man sees however that death as a matter of fact separates the immortal7 soul from that body which the soul cannot dispense8 with. The separation cannot be complete because the ties cannot be severed9. The soul then is attached to the body even after death. Consequently it must be the duty of the surviving to provide the body of the deceased with a dwelling10 as good and suitable as possible and also with the provisions that the body needs.
A man could not, however, find such a condition satisfactory for any length of time, and the thought of death gnaws11 and torments12 him. Shall the soul never regain13 possession of the body without which even the glories of[190] heaven are pale and shadowy? The doctrine14 of the bodily resurrection on the day of judgment15 must be the next great progress in our philosophy of life.
But unusually gifted persons, bent16 towards idealism, had already felt instinctively17 that it was not the exterior18, material covering that was indispensable to the soul. Man possessed19 also another, a spiritual body which the soul could immediately transfer to another life. We gain a glimpse of the vividness of this intuition in large groups of men, when we remember that the survivors20 even sought to annihilate21 the material body by the flames of the pyre in order to liberate22 the deceased from his earthly ties. The great masses of the population could not rise to this ideal conception, and we therefore find the two fundamental ideas prevailing23 side by side.
Here the two first epochs in man’s history end. They show us the intimate connection between religious conceptions[191] and man’s understanding of the exterior world in which he lives and acts. The following stage commences logically with the great advancement24 of the natural sciences. Chemistry partly lifts the veil that hides the innermost nature of matter, and at the dawn of the new science the old ideas concerning the nature of the body disappear like the shadows of night at the rising of the sun.
A bodily resurrection on doomsday is impossible because every dead body sooner or later arises and takes part in the circulation of matter, so that on the day of judgment it might be found that the same materials had entered over and over again into the composition of a variety of human bodies. It is also a fact that man changes his material clothing several times even during his earthly life. But the belief in the essential value of the body is too deeply rooted to give away entirely25 and so we meet it again in the modern materialism26 which perhaps may be said[192] to emphasize the significance of the body even more than the cult of the dead did in ancient time.
But while materialism claims as its own the consequences of the revolutionary work of chemistry, biology lays the firm foundation for a new and higher development of religious conceptions. Biology discovers and proves the existence of that spiritual body which humanity has surmised27 since prehistoric times. It is to this extraordinarily28 important fact that we desired to call attention. We have endeavored to draw its consequences only as regards the cell-generations which successively rise and die in the human body as in human society. Now when it can be shown that these dying generations are eternal and imperishable parts of man’s own nature, the conception of death and resurrection we have here advanced must be the only possible one. The hitherto common ideas regarding the translation of man to another world have upon closer study[193] been found as na?ve as they are unnatural29, because any such direct transposition of man’s entity30 is impossible and unthinkable.
But however simple and scientifically natural the theory here proposed, it could not have appeared at a much earlier date. It requires not only the results of modern cytology but also the widening of the idea of immortality31 which natural science suggests and overwhelmingly proves. It presupposes also the law of evolution we have endeavored to make clear, namely, that beings endowed with common wants and existing in similar surroundings and conditions cannot develop, except by the upbuilding of an organism, and thus entering as organic members in an individual of higher order than themselves. From these premises32 we might have deduced our theory of death and resurrection and yet the whole process would still have seemed mysterious and inexplicable33 but for the work of our great predecessor,[194] Christofer Jacob Bostr?m, that Plato of the North, so often misunderstood by his contemporaries, or at least more known on account of certain possible deficiencies in his system than because of its imperishable merits.
Idealism and materialism have hitherto stood as two absolutely incompatible34 contrasts and the fierce battle that continuously rages, even in our days, between the two world-conceptions can, according to common notions, only be brought to an end through the complete defeat of one of the parties. We have endeavored to show that both these philosophies have common deficiencies, but that each of them possesses an essential part of truth. We cannot deny idealism the merit of having looked far deeper into the nature of things and phenomena35. While admitting this we cannot be blind to the fact that this philosophy has left at least one fact of nearly overwhelming importance totally unexplained. If it be true that the soul is the essential[195] part of man and is that to which alone immortality is granted, how then shall we account for the fact that the soul’s evolution, properly the one principal object of man, must stand aside for the body to such an extent that the body utilizes36, if not all yet at least the largest part of man’s time and energy? To materialism this reply is given, but then again this philosophy has been unable to answer all those questions which idealism alone could satisfactorily explain.
Now at last we understand the reason for these contradictions. The two world-conceptions suffer the same essential deficiency of having overlooked the fact that the body contains a spiritual organism, of the same importance to man’s future life as to his present. In the theory here proposed materialism in a purified form melts into idealism, which latter thus receives the supplement it hitherto has lacked as a universal, satisfactory world-explanation. We have barely outlined this[196] new, organic idealism and have treated it somewhat more extensively only with reference to death and resurrection. But also on this point our work, as all human effort, is only piecemeal37 labor38. As soon as we have advanced one step, other entirely new questions arise. We already discern boundless39 expanses of problems in the same direction and shall here point out one example. The organic changes, characterizing old age and preceding the so-called natural death, are comparatively well studied and known. But in spite of this, natural science is unable to tell us the underlying40 cause in the inner nature of the organism, and it is even admitted that we know no reason why the process should not follow an entirely opposite course. From our point of view man has an individual content larger than that included in the successive moments of time, and death should normally enter with the translation of the last cell-generation. It is true that as civilization advances man’s[197] lifetime is constantly increasing, so that we may look forward to a time when most men will die a natural death. But if we meet a premature41 death, as is now generally the case, can this, and other disturbing interruptions in the natural process, afterwards be repaired? Let us hope that this is possible, but a decisive answer we cannot give. Our conviction is that God does not interfere42 to help man either in the transition itself or in a future life in any other way than he does here in time. Certainly the clerical orthodoxy has rightly understood the divine guidance in its teaching of God’s general providence43, comprising the whole creation, His special providence in regard to mankind, and His most particular providence, limited to the faithful; that is, to those that let themselves be governed by the divine will. Critical experience has never discovered any exterior, occasional interference, which moreover is utterly44 impossible. God is present and active in[198] the eternal and unchangeable laws of nature and spirit. Sin and punishment, virtue45 and reward, are connected with each other as reason and conclusion, cause and effect. Man is himself the cause of his acts and they bring their inevitable46 consequences. The man therefore who consciously and purposely distorts his own natural evolution or that of others stands before himself and before his fellow men burdened with a terrible responsibility.
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1
recapitulate
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| v.节述要旨，择要说明 | |
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prehistoric
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| adj.（有记载的）历史以前的，史前的，古老的 | |
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3
purely
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| adv.纯粹地，完全地 | |
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instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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immortal
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| adj.不朽的；永生的，不死的；神的 | |
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dispense
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| vt.分配，分发；配(药)，发(药)；实施 | |
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9
severed
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| v.切断，断绝( sever的过去式和过去分词 )；断，裂 | |
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dwelling
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| n.住宅，住所，寓所 | |
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11
gnaws
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| 咬( gnaw的第三人称单数 )； （长时间） 折磨某人； （使）苦恼； （长时间）危害某事物 | |
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12
torments
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| （肉体或精神上的）折磨，痛苦( torment的名词复数 )； 造成痛苦的事物[人] | |
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13
regain
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| vt.重新获得，收复，恢复 | |
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14
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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15
judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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16
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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instinctively
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| adv.本能地 | |
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exterior
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| adj.外部的，外在的；表面的 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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survivors
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| 幸存者，残存者，生还者( survivor的名词复数 ) | |
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21
annihilate
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| v.使无效；毁灭；取消 | |
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22
liberate
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| v.解放，使获得自由，释出，放出；vt.解放，使获自由 | |
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prevailing
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| adj.盛行的；占优势的；主要的 | |
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24
advancement
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| n.前进，促进，提升 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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materialism
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| n.［哲］唯物主义，唯物论；物质至上 | |
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27
surmised
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| v.臆测，推断( surmise的过去式和过去分词 )；揣测；猜想 | |
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28
extraordinarily
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| adv.格外地；极端地 | |
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29
unnatural
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| adj.不自然的；反常的 | |
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30
entity
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| n.实体，独立存在体，实际存在物 | |
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31
immortality
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| n.不死，不朽 | |
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32
premises
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| n.建筑物，房屋 | |
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33
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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34
incompatible
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| adj.不相容的，不协调的，不相配的 | |
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35
phenomena
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| n.现象 | |
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36
utilizes
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| v.利用，使用( utilize的第三人称单数 ) | |
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37
piecemeal
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| adj.零碎的；n.片，块；adv.逐渐地；v.弄成碎块 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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boundless
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| adj.无限的；无边无际的；巨大的 | |
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40
underlying
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| adj.在下面的，含蓄的，潜在的 | |
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41
premature
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| adj.比预期时间早的；不成熟的，仓促的 | |
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42
interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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43
providence
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| n.深谋远虑，天道，天意；远见；节约；上帝 | |
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44
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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45
virtue
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| n.德行，美德；贞操；优点；功效，效力 | |
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46
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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