RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Immortality
Clement of Alexandria {Stromata, IV., vi. 22) emphasized the immanent righteousness which strikes even the wicked in this world. Spinoza holds that although duty is filled with an infinite content, it does not need to be capped with an endless existence {Ethics, v. 41-42). Kant's moral proof, combined with the Christian estimate of life, has lost none of its validity. (8) Metaphysical proof, derived from the simplicity or the immateriality of the soul. From the mere heterogeneity of the spirit, one could infer (a) with Epicurus indifference to being or not being: " while we exist, death is not present; when death is present, we do not exist" (Diogenes Laertius, x. 27) or (b) an extension of immortality to animals. (9) Ontological. On the ground of a genetic development in language and psychology, one may make use of a metaphysical inference which, in harmony with the total rational view of the world, proves the certainty of the final triumph of life over death, from the immanent eternity of the spirit already manifested in the ethical religious conquest of death (cf. Plato's play on words in the Phaedo: the soul (a) life, accordingly "not-death," hence (b) " not-dead " — a-thanatos).
V. The Original Motives: The original motives of belief in immortality correspond to the natural causes of the idea of God, which may be psychologically traced to a fourfold root. (1) Subjective: wish, fear of death, and hope of life. Quod volumus, credimus. Feuerbach: " Man thinks of his god as of his heaven. God and immortality are identical. "Both originate in the wish " (cf. Rigveda, x. 14, 8). According to the Talmud, Paradise is a place of bliss which surpasses the joy of the Messianic time. " The pious are satisfied with the flesh (of the Leviathan) which was preserved for this end since the first day of creation, and they drink wine from clusters which were prepared since the bringing in of the world " (Wunsche, Die Vorstellungen vom Zustande nach dem Tode nach Apokryphen, Talmud und Kirchenvdtern, in JPT, 1880, p. 449). On the other hand, the wish for reunion with the dead often yields to fear of the dead and to the desire not to be disturbed by them (cf. the words at the obsequies of Bodo in northeast India: " Take and eat; formerly hast thou eaten and drunken with us, but now thou canst no more; thou wert one of us, thou art so no more; we come no more to thee, and come not thou nearer to us "). Like the funeral pyre, the funeral meals often celebrate only the separation as a symbolic agreement with the dead. (2) The influence of striking experiences in dreams on the imagination and the view of the world is noteworthy in the lower stages of culture (see Comparative Religion, III., VI., § 2; and cf. E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. i., London, 1871). The New Zealander thinks that the dreaming soul departs from the body and returns again after wandering in the realm of the dead and there communing with its friends. The land of the blessed reflects the popular ideals. The dreaming Indian visits his hunting-ground, the Greek beholds the Elysian fields, the German thought that life in Walhalla consisted of bloody battles. Still more significant are the associations of ideas by which the character of a dream is attributed to the earthly
life — life a dream; death the moment in which one awakes from the dream of life to its true reality. The Old Testament increasingly discredits the prophetic dream (cf. Deut. xiii.; Jer. xxiii.; Eccl. v. 2-6). Yet the actual present is designated as a " being like those who dream " in relation to a higher form of existence (Ps. cxxvi. 1). (3) In the lower stages of culture the intellectual riddle of death leads to the idea of a brief extension of life beyond the grave. After death there is to be a separation which either completes the death or prepares for a further lifetime in other regions (so the Fijis, the Guinea negroes, the Greenlanders) ; or only the chief men continued to exist (so the Tonga Islanders), or only the souls of the good (so the Nicaraguans) . The funeral-pyre may condition the continued existence of the dead. For the enduring connection between soul and body, cf. Odyssey, xi. 51 sqq., 73; Iliad, xxiii. 71 sqq.; Vergil, Mneid, vi. 325 sqq., 362 sqq.; Job xiv. 22; Isa. lxvi. 24, xiv. 19; Deut. xxviii. 26; Tylor, ut sup. vol. ii. Danger of the future death of the soul is not excluded. The " second death " is the greatest evil. One can imagine neither unchanging continuance nor absolute annihilation. (4) The idea of retribution is expressed by the ethical faith in a supreme righteousness. The fatal crisis which, according to the belief of the Fijis, awaits the souls of those just dead, visits annihilation upon those who have remained unmarried; perhaps a reference to natural immortality by means of procreation. In all stages of religious culture many ethical arguments for immortality appear; the imperfect adjustment in this life between duty and destiny shapes the thought of future retribution. Mosaism is favorable to the idea of retribution, but it deserves no credit for the existence of the hope of immortality. Greek mythology distinguished the regions devoted to retribution ruled over by Minos and jEacus from the shadowy abodes for the undisturbed life of the soul. Hercules' soul prolonged its shadowy existence below while his bodily existence was enthroned in the circle of the blessed (cf. Iliad, i. 4). According to the Greeks, bodily existence is the real existence. The Christian doctrine of hell as Sheol and Gehinnom was made up of two different motives which the Talmud combined in Gehinnom — darkness and fire (cf. Enoch ciii. 8, 9). "Hell" originally signified the dark place, but was gradually blended with the idea of the bright, the fiery. The valley Gehinnom was the place of sacrifice to Moloch, of divine judgment, and of eternal destruction (Jer. xix. 2, 6; II Kings xxiii. 10; Matt. x. 28). Since the exile in connection with the transformation of the Messianic idea, the present life was a vestibule for the future, where the final judgment must assign the proper ethical condition (but cf. Enoch xc. 26, xxvii. 2, 3). The fundamental idea is that of a moral world-order. In the New Testament penal judgment is associated with the continued existence of the departed. Psychological motives for retribution first arose in connection with the Messianic idea, foreign domination, and influences of Zoroastrianism. With reference to the eschatology of both the Old Testament and the New Testa-
Immortality