Where are the Dead?

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19258, 20 December 1930, Page 17 (Supplement)

Where are the Dead?

Scientist and Author .Wage Fierce Controversy.

'yVTIERE are dead? When a man dies is he, like a candle, snuffed out for. ever? These questions have perplexed students in all ages, and at present are the subject of an interesting controversy in an English newspaper. The eminent anthropologist and anatomist Sir Arthur Keith, aroused the storm when he published a remarkable article in “ The Rationalist Annual.” Sir Arthur explains that the bulk of this article was originally written at the request of a newspaper editor, who forthwith consigned it to the wastepaper basket, presumably on account of its reassertion of the -writer's belief that there is no after-life. He now develops this belief and expounds his philosophy in many intimate and provocative passages. Rejecting the ancient Babjdonish desire for a future life that should.be a continuation of the earthly one, he points out that; Modern science is searching for an altogether different way of securing immortality for man—a biological way. Is it possible so to change man’s nature that he will retain perpetual youth—that he will escape death and live for ever? Every fact known to me renders such an eventuality impossible; Nature has worked out her highest types—man is one of them—by sacrificing individuals to attain her ideal. Nature’s ideal is immortality', but she gives it to the species, not to the individual. To give immortality to individual men and women would destrov every hope we have of evolutr.narv advancement. The individual who desires perpetual yrnuth has never realised the fact that it would be a sentence of everlasting bondage—an “imprisonment in the present.” Sir Arthur proceeds; “If life is an enjoyable feast —I think that most of us find it to be sc—is it not rather selfish for us old men and women to wish to continue at table when so many are standing behind us waiting for a seat? A brisk turnover is Nature’s way of doing business; and we must, if we are wise, try to see things from her point of view.”

Faith and Reason. The desire to live causes men to seek for immortality along many different lines of endeavour. The poet, the painter, the musician, and the writer of fiction seek immortality by the exercise of talents which birth and training have given to them. . . These are legitimate modes of seeking for immortality, and fit well into the scheme of our modern civilisation. “Far be it from me,” he proceeds, “ to ask any man or woman to accept such an explanation of immortality who has faith in revelation or in the teaching of Churches. If they can believe, I would say to them: Go on believing. But for men and women who, like myself, would be guided by reason, and measure truth as revealed to us by the history of living things, there is no option. We have to attach ourselves to the 4 Church,’ which has faith in reason as the interpreter of the universe. “ I would add to this but one word; A complete faith in the teaching of modern science, that death ends all, far from bringing unrest, brings a mood of perfect repose, and strengthens the desire to make our present life as near a heaven as the limitation of human nature will permit.” “ The Everlasting Sleep.” In conclusion, Sir Arthur Keith asks himself whether he was right “in rescuing these sheets from the editor’s W.P.8.” “There is one sentence, at least,” he admits, “ which may be called in question by men of science of the highest standing. The sentence is: 4 A complete faith in the teaching of modern sciencd, that death ends all.’ “ This belief is the bedrock of my creed, and, as I have said, makes me content to accept everlasting sleep as my reward for the task of life.” On the other hand, “ the popular belief is that all living things are made up of two separate constituents—a materia. 1 and an ethereal—the ethereal entering the material at conception and leaving it at the event we call death.” Sir Oliver Lodge. “No one who is familiar with the facts of generation and dissolution of the human body can have such a belief, and yet it is just this belief that some modern physicists, such as my distinguished friend, Sir Oliver Lodge, wish to reinstate as a working hypothesis in biology. Life, if I understand him aright, is something which comes out of space, and, having matter, becomes manifest to the matter it inhabited then assumes its former state—that of 'death.' "Even if we accept Sir Oliver Lodge’s conception of life—and I have no hope of biologists becoming converts to his way of thinking—his conception of immortality and mine really do not differ very greatly. Sir Oliver believes we return to space when wo die: I believe we return to dust. In this sense we both believe in immortality." Very few modern men of science have stated the case for 44 the snuffed condle ” with such assurance, pertinacity and candour. But there is a growing body of opinion in the scientific world which is directly opposed to the wholly negative theory of Sir Arthur Keith.

Sir Hall Caine*s Answer. 'JHE declaration of Sir Arthur Keith that “death ends all” brought forth a striking reply from Sir Hall Caine, the distinguished author, who asks: “Which of us has yet seen far enough through the dark veil that he can say with certainty that there is nothing behind it?” Sir Hall Caine’s answer to Sir Arthur Keith is as follows: Sir Arthur Keith is understood to be a candidate for the Lord Rectorship of a Scottish University. The Lord Rector of a University is expected to be thei commanding head of a seat of learning, of the education of young students in literature, art, science, and, consequently, in religion. To this exalted position Sir Arthur Keith, eminent anthropologist and illustrious anatomist, offers himself at the moment when he puts forth a manifesto expressing his confident bed-rock belief that: Death is the end of all things. That instantly we die we are snuffed out like a candle. That when man’s life comes to a close he returns to the dust and to the dust alone. On the eve of his election these are the words of the distinguished guide to literature, art, science and religion who expects to command the votes of a great Scottish university. Opposed to God and Man. The least that can be said of them is that they are opposed to nearly everything that has come from the greater part of the wisest and best we can yet call man. They are at least equally opposed to the essence of the greatest words which are believed, rightly or wrongly, by a vast portion of humanity to have come from the heart of God: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.” Here we have an ever living God creating an ever living creature, whereof the dust of the ground from which he is formed is less than the breath that is breathed into his nostrils. What are we to conclude? Unless we reject the sublime and majestic conception of God as an Immortal Being who creates an immortal being, can we conceive of man as a creature w T ho can be snuffed out like a candle, who can be ended when what we call “life” ends, and return to the dust, and to the dust only, at death? We cannot. And if we cannot do that what can we do? We can do nothing; for nothing, neither God nor man, can ever have come into existence. But it is scarcely necessary to scale

these heights, whether in the Hebrew, the Babylonian, or yet the primitive Pagan religions (when man, being without revelation, was alone with nature), to show the shallowness of the thought that man. at his death, must return to the dust. What is man? Is he merely flesh and bone and sinew? Is he dust already from the beginning? Or is he not, firgt and foremost and above all, a living soul ? And if he is a living soul born of a living soul, is he not, therefore, deathless? Can_ it be possible that a great scientist who can probe bv measure the age of the world and the distance of the earth from the suns and the stars, is thinking of nothing in this far greater connection than the life of man’s head, his body, his legs or his arms when he writes of the? length of hi s'life? These ate no more than pai ts of the shadow of man—-the shadow which, i after years of toll, grows weary and longs for rest, and when he thinks of man’s rest is it only of his bodily rest 1 he thinks; not of the deeper and longer rest of his soul? The man’s shadow, indeed, dies, but of the death of man’s soul Science says nothing at all. Therefore of the death of man himself Science knows nothing, and never can know anything; the feebler passage of I Sir Arthur Keith's astonishing manij festo suggests that after ail he is only tilting at what we call the Spiritualists. “Don’t expect the loved ones vou have lost to come back to you; they never will. They are dead, and once dead they are dead for ever.” Is this the whole sum of the professor’s resounding message? If so. was it necessary to proclaim it in the great name of Science, and was it possible for any man to proclaim it with any emphasis at all ? Which of us has yet seen so far through the dark veil that he can say with certainty there is nothing behind it?

None of us has. Therefore, let us humbly say that, whatever his learning, the man who, to serve no good purpose, would prevent hundreds of thousands of humanity from taking the sting out of Death in times of overwhelming calamity like these is not guiding the young in the ways of life but in the ways of death, the death of hope, of life, of heart, and of love, and leaving nothing behind but the rolling stone and the empty grave.