But in spite of all this, the sceptical affirmation of Hume
holds good. There is no way of proving the immortality of the soul
rationally. There are, on the other hand, ways of proving rationally its
mortality.
It would be not merely superfluous but ridiculous to enlarge here upon
the extent to which the individual human consciousness is dependent upon
the physical organism, pointing out how it comes to birth by slow
degrees according as the brain receives impressions from the outside
world, how it is temporarily suspended during sleep, swoons, and other
accidents, and how everything leads us to the rational conjecture that
death carries with it the loss of consciousness. And just as before our
birth we were not, nor have we any personal pre-natal memory, so after
our death we shall cease to be. This is the rational position.
The designation "soul" is merely a term used to denote the individual
consciousness in its integrity and continuity; and that this soul
undergoes change, that in like manner as it is integrated so it is
disintegrated, is a thing very evident. For Aristotle it was the
substantial form of the body--the entelechy, but not a substance. And
more than one modern has called it an epiphenomenon--an absurd term. The
appellation phenomenon suffices.
Rationalism--and by rationalism I mean the doctrine that abides solely
by reason, by objective truth--is necessarily materialist.
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