The Nature of Man: Studies in Optimistic Philosophy

The fear of death has long been recognised as an instinct. Schopenhauer,* for instance, interpreted it in that way. According to him, " from the point of view of intelligence there is no ground for fearing death. Reason, which is the outcome of knowledge, does not present death to us as an evil. It is certainly not the rational, conscious part of ourselves which fears death ; the fuga mortis which pervades all living beings is an emanation of the blind will." This " blind will " is no other than a pure instinct which is independent of our rational will.

I need not pursue the subject, but I may recall that Lord Byron came to the conclusion that the fear of death is an instinctive manifestation of the soul. In " Cain " he expressed this view sufficiently clearly : — But live to die ; and living, see nothing To make death hateful, save an innate clinging, A loathsome, and yet all invincible Instinct of life, which I abhor, as I Despise myself, yet cannot overcome — And so I live. Later on in the same poem Byron makes Cain say of his father Adam : —

It is then indubitable that among the instincts of man there is one which loves life and fears death. This instinct develops slowly and progressively with age. In that respect it is astonishingly different from other instincts. When hunger or thirst or sexual desire is gratified a sensation of satisfaction is experienced, and this readily passes into satiety or even indifference. The mood lasts for a certain time, and then the instinctive needs reawaken. The instinct of life, however, behaves very differently. In most human beings it develops slowly and becomes stronger and stronger as the years pass by. In childhood and early youth we are very anxious to " grow up," but when we are adult we have no desire to grow old. We are greatly disturbed by the appearance of wrinkles and grey hair. Instead of being glad to have finished a great part of our mortal career, we feel sad at being nearer the inevitable end. Old age, as it usually presents itself, is marked by ugly features, and often by repugnant or even horrible characters. Little children are usually terrified by the appearance of very old persons, and it is a familiar nursery threat to send for an old man.

The murder of the aged is a custom widespread amongst the lower races. The natives of Fiji bury their old men alive, on the pretext that they have become utterly useless. The custom is in existence throughout Melanesia, and occurs in New Caledonia and in most of the adjacent Polynesian islands. Old age is universally despised in that part of the world. The natives of Australia respect old people so long as they retain their activity, but once they become unable to take care of themselves they are abandoned. Often they are killed and eaten, and this custom is favoured by their religious beliefs.* The ancient inhabitants of Germany, according to the investigations of Grimm, " killed the old and the sick, and often buried them alive."

The modern civilised world has certainly made considerable progress. The old are no longer killed ; they are tolerated, and accorded liberty to commit suicide. In many countries work is often refused to the old on the plea that they are not strong enough for it, and at the same time they are refused admission to almshouses on the pretext that they are not yet old enough. Dealing with the question of the average life and of the normal life, Paul Bert t expressed himself with regard to the aged as follows : " They deserve congratulations, care and consideration, but the prolongation of their lives does not demand any special solicitude from society"

However, in spite of the characters of old age which make it horrible and useless, and at best no more than to be toler- ated, and in spite of the physical and intellectual weakness that accompany it, the instinctive love of life is preserved in the aged in its strongest form. To make quite certain about this 1 have visited almshouses for the aged, and it was easy to see that all the inmates hoped that their days might be pro- longed. In a Home occupied by fairly well-educated persons, I discovered that one and all felt as if they were

f These words are quoted by Ebstein in his " Die Kunst das menschliche Leben zu verlangern," p. 51, 1891. I have been unable to find Paul Bert's own words, as the reference given by Ebstein is bibliographically incorrect. continually being threatened by death, as if they were convicts awaiting the day of execution. At the Salpe- triere, where there are a number of very old women, septuagenarians are regarded almost as young girls. The great ambition of women of eighty is to live to one hundred, and the desire to live is almost universal.

This seems a contradiction of another fact demonstrated by statistics, that age increases the frequency of suicide. It is certain that more old men commit suicide than young men, but on careful inquiry into the statistics of the sub- ject, it becomes evident that the chief incentive to suicide does not lie in the cessation of the will to live, but in the difficulties experienced by old people of earning a living, and in the frequent presence of disease in the aged. Deprived of the means of existence, refused the shelter of charitable institutions, old men are apt to fall back upon a rope or the fumes of charcoal. Statistics relating to the suicide of the aged show that the greatest number of victims belong to the poorer classes. The suicide of rich old men is generally prompted by the presence of incurable disease. There is, however, need for much wider inquiry into the subject. It would be interesting, for instance, to obtain more detailed information regarding the motives which urge the old to put an end to themselves. In recent times the suicide of Max von Pettenkofer aroused public attention. After a distinguished scientific career, he resigned his post of Professor at the University of Munich at the age of seventy- six. He went to live a little way outside the town on a pro- perty where he devoted himself to gardening and other country pursuits. Although a sufferer from diabetes, his intellect remained unimpaired, but he became a prey to extreme melancholy, owing to the death of some friends to whom he was greatly attached. Moreover, during the

latter part of his life he suffered from a septic affection of the neck. This disease, not fatal in itself, was the indirect cause of Pettenkofer's death, which occurred by suicide at the age of eighty-three. The post-mortem examination * showed a fairly well preserved organic system, healthy, with the exception of chronic inflammation of the mem- branes of the brain and atheroma of the cerebral arteries. The circumstances relating to this particular case of suicide are unusually well known, and yet there are many obscure points about it which are of the highest importance. The chronic meringitis from which the aged scientist suffered conclusively precluded the theory that the motives which led him to commit suicide were prompted by the phenomena of normal life. On the other hand, instances are not wanting of old men of good education and refined surroundings who cling tenaciously to life, even at a much more advanced age than the Munich professor.

The instinctive love of life resembles the sexual instinct in a great many women. Just as the love of life goes on increasing when the best of life is past, sexual pleasure is often unfelt by women until their beauty is already faded. Another character common to the love of life and the sexual instinct is that they both persist throughout old age, although they can no longer be satisfied. "Edmond de Goncourt relates in his diary that at his reunions of literary celebrities (Zola, Daudet, and Tour- geneff), the conversation turned most frequentlv upon the subjects of love, life and women. " Death or love, strangely enough," says Edmond de Goncourt, " are always what we talk about after dinner." f Old age was even then

knocking at the doors of the distinguished writers men- tioned, and so it is quite natural that their interest should have been wholly absorbed by the two instincts which exhibit such enigmatic and paradoxical tenacity. We saw in the preceding chapter how disharmonious is the sexual instinct which often only develops at, and nearly always persists until, a period of life when its normal and regular functional activity is no longer possible. We saw, too, the ill resulting from this disharmony in the repro- ductive apparatus. The ill, however, although serious, only amounts in that case to an inconvenience which can be endured.

Far worse is the disharmony of the instinctive love of life which manifests itself when death is felt to be near at hand. It is then incomprehensible and particularly terrible, and humanity, from time immemorial, has sought the key to the tragic puzzle, and tried by all the means in its power to unravel the mystery. The religions of all times have been concerned with the problem. " Religion," says Guyau,* " consists for the most part of meditation upon death. If we had not to die there would probably be still more superstitions among men, but there would probably be no systematised superstitions nor religions." Philosophy also has tried to solve the question of death. Some ancient philosophers held the opinion that philosophy is only a meditation upon death. Socrates and Cicero f have well said that " the life of a philosopher is a continual meditation upon death." In our own day Schopenhauer developed the same theory. " Death," he said,{ " is the real inspiring genius of philosophy. . . . Without death it

is doubtful if philosophy would exist at all. It is therefore quite natural that a special essay on Daath should preface the last, the most serious, and the most important of my books." Judging from the facts set forth in the last three chapters, there can be no doubt but that the human constitu- tion, although in many ways perfect and sublime, ex- hibits numerous and serious disharmonies, which are the source of all our troubles. Not being so well adapted to the conditions of life as orchids are, for example, in the matter of their fertilisation by the mediation of insects, or the burrowing wasps for the protection of their young, humanity resembles rather those insects the instinct of which guides them towards the flame which burns their wings.

Even at a time when humanity had attained no definite knowledge of itself, a vague suspicion prevailed as to the existence of disharmonies, and an effort was made to remedy the evil. The following chapters will show what man has done with a view to remedying the natural disharmonies of his constitution. Animism as the foundation of primitive religions — The Jewish religion in relation to the doctrine of immortality of the soul — The religions of China — Ancestor worship in Confucianism — The conception of immortality in Taoism — The persistence of the soul in the Buddhist religion — The paradise of the Chinese Buddhists — Ancestors worshipped as gods — Influence of religious faith on the fear of death — Pessimism of the doctrine of Buddha — The meaning of Nirvana — Resignation as preached by Buddha — Objections to the immortality of the soul- -Irritability of the tissues and cells of the body — Religious hygiene — Religious means of controlling the reproductive functions and of preventing diseases — Failure of religions in their attempts to combat the ills arising from the disharmonies of the human constitution

HUMANITY did not await the discovery by science of the existence of disharmonies before trying to find remedies for them. The will to live, to preserve health, to satisfy the instincts and to make them act in unison, have driven mankind, in the very earliest days of reflection, to invent remedies for the imperfection of the human constitution. I have shown that, even in the case of animals, the instinct as to choice of food does not save them from certain harmful substances. Man himself has for long recognised that this instinct of his is no safe guide, and has tried to discover surer methods of distinguishing between substances that are

useful as foods and substances that may cause disease or death. The best wisdom of primitive man must have been given to the observation of the effects of substances which had been eaten, and to a consequent framing of dietary rules. The reproductive functions, in the same way, must have attracted the notice of man in very early times, as he must have found the harm that came from a blind following of instinctive desire. Above all other reasons, man must have been impelled by his instinctive love of life and fear of death to find some way out of his dangerous situation. To preserve his life, man must have sought wise choice of food and control of sexuality.

Since the dawn of intelligence, man has tried to judge the unknown from the analogies given by what he knows best, that is to say, by his own self. Thus he came to attribute to everything around him qualities like his own qualities, and motives like his own motives. He came to think not only that all living beings were possessed of will and intel- ligence, but that inanimate things conducted themselves like human beings. Such a primitive idea is the basis of what Tylor has called " Animism," the foundation of the philosophy and religion of savage and civilised man alike. When a man was seen to die, it was plain that he did not entirely disappear, but merely became transformed into a new condition. The dead body was not alive as we are, but, none the less, it was alive in a fashion of its own. This was the answer to the desire for the preservation of life, to the fear of death, that is to say, of total extinction. It is practically identical with faith in immortality and a future life.

plain that it afforded the most efficacious palliative for minds revolting against the inevitability of death, and that it harmonised with our intense will to live. " Such child- like ignoring of death," wrote Tylor,* " such child-like make- believe, that the dead can still do as heretofore, may well have led the savage to bury with his kinsman the weapons, clothes, and ornaments that he used in life, to try to feed the corpse, to put a cigar in the mouth of the skull before its final burial, to lay playthings in the infant's grave. But one thought beyond would carry this dim blind fancy into the range of logical reasoning. Granted that the man is dead, and his soul gone out of him, then the way to pro- vide that departed soul with food or clothes or weapons is to bury or burn them with the body."

It is needless to recapitulate the various animistic customs which were in vogue among primitive peoples, and which have left marked traces amongst nearly if not all civilised races. The details may be found in the works of several authors, notably Tylor, Lubbock, and Waitz- Gerland.f I shall mention only a few, choosing those that seem most plain. The Turanians of Eastern Asia bury with their dead all sorts of implements, such as axes and flints, and food, such as meat and butter, believing that the departed will have need of these during the long voyage in the land of the spirits. A Tasmanian, on being asked why spears were buried with the dead, replied, as if the answer were self-evident, " Of course for the use in combat of him who has fallen asleep." The Greenlanders place bows and other weapons in the tombs of their men, and

knives, needles, and other instruments for sewing are buried with their women, in the full belief that such objects will be useful in the other world. In the Congo region, the curious custom exists of leaving a hole in the grave over the mouth of the dead body, and once a month passing into this hole meat and drink. Many races are not content to place merely inanimate objects in the graves. The Caribbeans, believing that the human spirit after death is carried to the kingdom of dead souls, sacrifice slaves on the tombs of their chiefs, in order that the latter may be attended in the next world. With the same object they bury dogs and weapons. The negroes of the Gold Coast, at the funeral of a great man, kill women and slaves that he may be provided for in the next world. Moreover, they bury with him his finest apparel, his gilded fetishes, and corals and pearls, so that the dead man may continue to make use of them.

Tylor states that such animistic conceptions occur amongst all savages without exception. According to Herbert Spencer, if we take groups of the human race, such as tribes, societies, and nations, we find abundant evidence that all, or nearly all, have a belief, vague or clear, in the resurrection of a double of the dead man. It has been suggested that the origin of this widespread belief is the image of the departed that comes to us in dreams. These images are taken as real visits of the dead.

In civilised races there are numerous relics of the old beliefs. The Spaniards set bread and wine on the graves of their relatives on the anniversaries of their deaths. The Bulgarians hold a feast of the dead on Palm Sunday. They eat and drink well, and then leave the remains of the banquet on the graves of their relatives that these may consume them in the night. Saint-Foix * relates that when Bertrand Duguesclin was buried at St. Denis, in 1389, several horses were sacrificed. The Bishop of Auxerre first blessed them, laying his hands on their heads, and then they were killed. At Treves, in 1781, at the burial of General Frederic Casimir, his horse, according to the custom of the Teutonic Order, was led in front of the bier, and when the General had been laid in the tomb, the horse was killed and buried with hiin.-j-

Although the sacrifice of men and animals is no longer made by civilised peoples at burials, many funeral customs have an obviously animistic origin. In Russia, for instance, rice is placed alongside the corpse, and pine branches are strewed along the way to be traversed by the procession. The wreaths of " immortelles," used so largely at funerals by the modern French, have an extremely ancient origin. They were employed by the Romans, and probably their use implied a conception of a future life in a region where plants and flowers grew.

The belief in life after death, so widespread in the world, has been the foundation of all religions. I cannot follow this question here as closely as it deserves. To investigate it elaborately would take more space than this volume affords, and more knowledge than I possess. However, it is important to my argument to insist that, among races that have inhabited very different parts of the earth, that have had very different manners and have passed through different stages of civilisation, the conviction has been strong that death is not the end of all, but only a door leading from one kind of existence to another. Because of the high impor- tance of the existence of this conviction, however, I must

discuss some of the criticisms that have been made as to its universality. It has been asserted repeatedly that the idea of a future life was not a part of the Jewish religion, as formulated in the Bible. Haeckel has recently repeated a common opinion that belief in the immortality of the soul was absent from the oldest and purest form of the Jewish religion. " There is not to be found," he said, " either in the Penta- teuch or in those more ancient parts of the Old Testament which were written before the Babylonian captivity, any idea of the persistence of the human soul." This is true only within limits. No doubt the books of Moses contain no reference to a future life nor to heaven and hell in the sense of modern creeds, but it is no less true that the ancient Jews shared with other races the conception of a survival after death. " Like almost all primitive nations," wrote Renan,* " the Hebrews believed in a kind of double per- sonality, in a shadow pale and thin which, after death, descended underground and passed a sad and colourless existence in the sombre halls of the dead. The dead dwelt there, without feeling, or knowledge, or memory, in a world without light, abandoned by God. At the most the old Hebrews hoped to obtain for themselves a quiet resting-place, a pleasant couch for the time when they would be with the dead. It comforted them to picture themselves as lying amongst their ancestors in quiet communion."

Ancestor worship, which is associated closely with the idea of a future life, appears repeatedly in the Pentateuch. Jacob, when he felt death coming upon him, called his son Joseph and said unto him, " Bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt ; but I will lie with my fathers, and thou shalt carry me out of Egypt, and bury me in their burying-place." According to Chantepie de la Saussaye,* " we are coming to recognise more and more how strongly the children of Israel, and in fact all other peoples, were tinged with animism and ancestor worship."

It is very remarkable how the idea of a future life, which was vague in the early days of Israel, grew more and more clear. Ezekiel (sixth century B.C.), when he had " seen the visions of God," prophesied of things to come, and declared that God would breathe life into the dry bones of the dead. The Book of Daniel (second century B.C.) expressed the same idea in a stronger fashion : " And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to ever- lasting life and some to shame and everlasting contempt (Daniel xii. 2). " It is plain," said Renan,t after quoting these words, " that Israel had now reached the last stage in the secular development of her ideas, and had reached the conception of the kingdom of God, as synonymous with the future world and the resurrection. As the conception of a soul distinct from the body was foreign to her, she could not conceive of a future life apart from resurrection of the body."

Still later, in the Talmud, the conception of a future life is clothed with details. Paradise is depicted as a region filled with sweet odours, while hell is an unclean place, thick with mire and smoke. According to the Talmud, in the life beyond the grave, " there is neither eating nor drink- ing ; the good sit there with crowns on their heads and see God in bliss." J embraced the doctrine of transmigration of souls, and had come to believe that the spirit of Adam had entered David and would pass on to the Messiah. Some human souls passed into the bodies of animals, into the leaves of trees, or even into stones.

It is plain that the idea of a future life was a part of the Jewish religion. It has been said, also, that the idea of a future life was absent from the religions of the Chinese. Buchner,* for instance, who came to be almost the official representative ol the materialism of the second half of last century, asserts that " Buddhism, that famous religion, the most widespread and one of the most ancient, which counts among its followers nearly a third of the inhabitants of the earth, ignores com pletely the immortality of the soul." Haeckel, also, in the " Riddle of the Universe," a volume that sums up the materialism of the end of the last century, makes a similar statement. " The higher oriental religions include no belief whatever in the immortality of the soul ; it is not found in Buddhism, the religion that dominates 30 per cent. of the entire human race ; it is not found in the ancient popular religion of the Chinese, nor in the reformed religion of Confucius which succeeded it." f

This question demands a somewhat closer investigation. It has been thoroughly proved that the basis of the ancient religion of the Chinese was no more than an extreme develop- ment of ancestor worship. Every important event in family affairs was accomplished " in the presence of the ancestors." It was a bond with relatives beyond the grave. As in other cases of animism and ancestor- worship, meats were offered to the dead, and objects were buried with them