And to this same necessity, the real necessity of forming to ourselves a
concrete representation of what this other life may be, must in great
part be referred the indestructible vitality of doctrines such as those
of spiritualism, metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls from star
to star, and the like; doctrines which as often as they are pronounced
to be defeated and dead, are found to have come to life again, clothed
in some more or less new form. And it is merely supine to be content to
ignore them and not to seek to discover their permanent and living
essence. Man will never willingly abandon his attempt to form a concrete
representation of the other life.
But is an eternal and endless life after death indeed thinkable? How
can we conceive the life of a disembodied spirit? How can we conceive
such a spirit? How can we conceive a pure consciousness, without a
corporal organism? Descartes divided the world into thought and
extension, a dualism which was imposed upon him by the Christian dogma
of the immortality of the soul. But is extension, is matter, that which
thinks and is spiritualized, or is thought that which is extended and
materialized? The weightiest questions of metaphysics arise practically
out of our desire to arrive at an understanding of the possibility of
our immortality--from this fact they derive their value and cease to be
merely the idle discussions of fruitless curiosity.
Pages:
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326