MIXED MUSINGS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15482, 13 December 1913, Page 1 (Supplement)

MIXED MUSINGS.

BY J. GILES. I think nobly of tho soul. , ~ -"Twelfth Night." Live in tho Eternal. „ , „ " Light on tho Path." Some time ago a friend asked mo if I could not put something in print upon the doctrine of reincarnation, that is to say, tho theory that our earth life is only one of a series of earth lives which constitute the successive steps in our progress to higher conditions. When this view of the matter was first presented to me I did not feel at all attracted by it, for this life of ours never seemed to me such a rosy and delightful business as to make one eagerly embrace the notion of going through it all again, and that indeed many times. But a little consideration sufficed to show that if this doctrine were true, and it were generally believed, its ethical value must be immense. For it means no less than this, that we are in this life just what wo have made ourselves in past lives, and that we are now busily fabricating, for good or for evil, the selves that we shall be in future lives. It is unquestionable that every action, every word, every thought, contributes in its degree to the moulding and shaping of our character, and if we feel assured that the effects will continue to be handed on, stage after stage, until the character has become what it ought to be, can we imagine a stronger motive to tako heed to our steps? For here is no promise of forgiveness of sins in the sense of applying tho sponge. Such a notion becomes unthinkable. Tho sins must be worked out, not washed out, and they must be worked out here on this earth where they were committed. Verily we shall not come out until we have paid the uttermost farthing. Tho drunkard must learn to resist the craving in the flesh ; in tho flesh the sensualist must conquer his appetites, the irritable and illtempered learn self-control, the selfish learn to live for others. Is not some such gospel as this much needed at tho present time; now that heaven and hell, especially the latter, have so far lost their hold on the general mind that men and women, and even boys and girls, destroy their own lives on very slight provocation, and sometimes commit two or three murders as a preliminary? Civilisation is being swept by a tide of irresponsible anarchy and selfish individualism ; science, detachod as it necessarily is from all contagion of moral emotion, lends itself equally to the most boneficent and the most infernal devices, and the noble art that makes a high road of tho air is beset in its infancy with the clamorous inquiry ho ( best it can be turned to the wholesale destruction of human life. Such a condition of things should surely stimulate us to a fresh consideration of the real end and moaning of lifo on this planet, and of the scope and tendency of the great evolutionary process, and to what goal it is sweeping us. This felt necessity of assigning some intelligible meaning to life is the only answer I have to give to those who have no belief in the existence of any soul that can survive the dissolution of tho body— and among such persons I number very intimate and valued friends. Others there are who seek after a sign, and some seem to find what they want in tho seance room where they have the opportunity of meeting John King, with his bouncing "here we are again," and ; Cleopatra stalking in her Egyptian robes, and Cardinal Newman gliding amongst the audience with a whispered " bencdicite." I think this sort of thing should. be, called " spookism," for the term " spiritualism" I take to imply the belief that spirit is the substance and matter the shadow of reality. But I have no wish to dispute the actual occurrence of the alleged phenomena; I only set them aside as irrelevant generally to my own line of thought, and particularly to the purpose of this paper, which is only to suggest that if there is a life after death the theory of successive earthlives, as many as the evolution of the individual may require, is far and away the most rational that has ever been propounded. Yet I shall be happy to consider a better one whenever it is forthcoming. However this may be, someone is sure to say: " What does it all matter to me, if in my next earth-life I shall not be able to recognise or remember myself as myself, but shall be to all intents and purposes somebody else?" But supposing you were assured that before another year should pass you would lose entirely every trace of memory of the past, would you therefore now feel no interest in what might happen to you next year, and would you neglect to do anything now to promote the welfare of the "you" of next year? But if you reply, as I think you must, that you would feel an interest in this future self, then your objection is answered. And it does not matter to the argument whether the supposed interval is a year, a century, or a millennium. Moreover, even if you should conclude that tho man of the future could not be yourself in any sense, I think you would hardly bo so callous as to be quito indifferent to his welfare if you knew tnat this would be seriously affected by your conduct. But in this sense at least re- , incarnation is certainly a feet, for the character of every generation is surely passed on to make or mar that of its successors. The question of continuing identity is always a perplexing one, and I should have liked, had space permitted, to give extracts from a colloquy on the subject between Lord Buddha and the inquirer Kutadanta, in which the question is discussed of the identity of the personality 'of one life with that of tho previous one ; of a relighted flame with the one that was burning before its extinction, etc. But I prefer to end with one or two of the grand sayings of the "Blessed One," which emerge like majestic rocks from the metaphysical fog. "Live in the truth, and you will partake of the life everlasting, for the truth is immortal." And again, "Practice the truth that thy brother is tho same as thou. Walk in tho noble path of righteousness, and thou wilt understand that, while there is death in self, there is immortality in truth.'" How true an echo do theso oracles find in another gospel—if indeed there can bo more than one gospel for humanity—which was preached five hundred years later, and which says that "to know God is lifo eternal," and that "the truth shall make us free." And surely Spinoza, the hero philosopher, as Huxley truly calls him, means much the same thing when ho saysthat the soul is immortal, or otherwise, as it unites itself with God, the only eternal, or with what is transient and fleeting. And, following these high thoughts, we may surely claim from modern science, which recognises in tho evolutionary process a past pre-human and a present human stage, the right to expect a coming preter-human stage, in which shall emerge the superman, talked of by many, but believed in by few.