Sre Animals Immortal?

Bruce Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3016, 29 November 1898, Page 7

Sre Animals Immortal?

The Key. Forbes Philips, of Yarmouth, known to novel-readers bs 'Athol Forbe3," aad to a large number of people as the gentleman who lately severely criticised Bishops and Biahop3' vives, has been attracting a great deal of attention by hia recent utterances in favor of the belief that animals are immortal. In the conrse of a sermon he declared that lie believed animals had a future existence and he would rather meet in heaven some animals than Rome people he had met on earth. Interviewed on the Bnbject, he emphasised his views on this question by asserting that though the conceit of man led him to pronounce against a future life for the brute creation, his reason would affirm the probabili y of it though ' ia the majority of people conceit very ofcen takes charge «n<i answers before reason gets a chance.' Mr Phillips opinions excited unbounded ast.on.ta h men t among his parishioners. Some were indignant. Oce of them wrote to him to say tnafc ' he refused to share his hope of immortality with his dog and cat,' and was probably not convinced by Mr Phillips retort that he shared the present life with them. In support of his theory, which it may be said is also held by many deep-thinking men and woman, Mr Phillips adduces the statements of scientists, that ouc bodies are composed of atom 9in perpetual flux, constantly disintegrating, constantly passing away, so that the body of childhood is not the body of early youth. ' "We change the material, but the ego, the true self of man, still remaiDß. Death is the final dissolution of partnership between spirit and body. But the change in partnership on the one part is being constantly made. This argument is sound ; it applies equally to man and beast. We must either accept it or throw it overboard. If we accept it, we muot accept it on behalf of our dumb friends.' Mr Phillips admits, in answer to remonstrances that the Bible says nothing about the fiituie existence of animals, but, he says, ' the Bible omits a number of things which we believe and act upon. The truth is, the men who wrote the Bible no more doubted the future existence of their beasts than they did their own. Job speaks of the spirit of the man, and the spirit of the beast.' The text in ecclesiastes to which Mr Philips apparently alludes does not, however, support hia views very strongly. ' Who knowetb the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth V Another of his arguments is that the scriptural word ' paradise,' denoting the place of future life, is derived from a word which in Sanscrit and many another Eastern language implies ' a pleasure garden well watered and inhabited by all kinds of harmless beaßts and birds.' It if, after all, a pure matter of opinion, and, in the absence of any definite evidence, one that is hardly likely to be settled by argument.