CLAUSE XII

The highest of those who have walked the earth reveal to us what we, too, may some day be: they link us with the Divine, and teach us that, however pathetically defaced by our infirmities and distorted by our imperfections, we may yet reflect the image of God.

[Part of the following explanation is based upon a study of certain facts not yet fully incorporated into orthodox science, nor fully recognised by philosophy: it must therefore be regarded as speculation.]

This idea, which permeates literature—that man has a spiritual as well as a material origin—emphasises from another point of view the doctrine of the Fall. For the utilisation of a material body, of animal ancestry, exposes the individual to much trial and temptation, and makes him aware of a contest between the flesh and the spirit, or between a lower and a higher self, which constitutes the element of truth in the otherwise mistaken doctrine of “original,” or inherited, or imputed sin. Vicarious sin is a legal fiction: so is vicarious punishment; vicarious suffering is a reality. The mother of a ne’er-do-well knows it: it is undergone by the children of vicious parents; the highest souls have felt it on behalf of the race of man; but it is not artificial or imputed suffering, it is genuine and real; and experience shows that it can have a redeeming virtue.

The double nature of man,—the inherited animal tendencies, and the inspired spiritual aspirations, if they can both be fully admitted, reconcile many difficulties. Our body is an individual collocation of cells, which began to form and grow together at a certain date, and will presently be dispersed; but the constructing and dominating reality, called our “soul,” did not then begin to exist; nor will it cease with bodily decay. Interaction with the material world then began, and will then cease, but we ourselves in essence are persistent and immortal. Even our personality and individuality may be persistent, if our character be sufficiently developed to possess a reality of its own. In our present state, truly, the memory of our past is imperfect or non-existent; but when we waken and shake off the tenement of matter, our memory and consciousness may enlarge too, as we rejoin the larger self of which only a part is now manifested in mortal flesh.

The ancient doctrine of a previous state of existence, of which we are now entranced into forgetfulness, is inculcated in the familiar lines—

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;The Soul that rises with us, our life’s star,Hath had elsewhere its setting,And cometh from afar:Not in entire forgetfulness,And not in utter nakedness,But trailing clouds of glory do we comeFrom God, who is our home,”

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s star,

Hath had elsewhere its setting,

And cometh from afar:

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home,”

the idea being that the forgetfulness is not complete, especially during infancy; nor need it be complete in moments of inspiration. Myers’ doctrine of the subliminal self is an expanded and modified form of this idea, and is to a large extent apparently justified by a certain range of psychological inquiry: though Myers lays stress, not on memory of a past, but on a present occasional intercommunication between the part and the whole.

The Platonic doctrine of reminiscence exhibits one variety of the idea of pre-existence, though in a necessarily inaccurate and somewhat fanciful form—as though infants were a stage higher in the scale than grown men. Such an idea would involve the old mistaken postulate of initial perfection, which was made long ago concerning the race: whereas the truth was innocency, not perfection. But the idea that nothing less than the whole of a personality must be incarnated—even in the body of an infant—leads to innumerable difficulties;—it does not even escape unanswerable questions about trivialities such as the moment of arrival; and it is responsible for much biological scepticism concerning the existence of any soul at all. Whereas, on the strength of the experience that all processes in nature are really gradual, the idea of gradual incarnation—increasing as the brain and body grow, but never attaining any approach to completeness even in the greatest of men—sets one above innumerable petty difficulties,and to me seems an opening in the direction of the truth. On this view, the portion of larger self incarnated in an infant or a feeble-minded person is but small: in normal cases, more appears as the body is fitted to receive it. In some cases much appears, thus constituting a great man; while in others, again, a link of occasional communication is left open between the part and the whole—producing what we call “genius.” Second childishness is the gradual abandonment of the material vehicle, as it gets worn out or damaged. But, during the episode of this life, man is never a complete self, his roots are in another order of being, he is moving about in worlds not realised, he is as if walking in a vain shadow and disquieting himself in vain.

It may be objected that our present existence is very far from being a dream or trance-like condition, that we are very wide awake to the “realities” of the world, and very keen about “things of importance”; that an analogy drawn from the memories of hypnotic patients and multiple personalities, and other pathological cases, is sure to be misleading. It may be so, the idea is admittedly of the nature of speculation; but the greatest of poets lends his countenance to the notion that phenomena and appearances are not ultimate realities, that our present life is not unlike the state of a sleep-walker—that we slept to enter it, and must sleep again before we wake—

“We are such stuffAs dreams are made of, and our little lifeIs rounded with a sleep.”

“We are such stuff

As dreams are made of, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.”

As to the question whether we ever again live on earth, it appears unlikely on this view that a given developed individual will appear again in unmodified form. If my present self is a fraction of a larger self, some other fraction of that larger self may readily be thought of as appearing,—to gain practical experience in the world of matter, and to return with developed character to the whole whence it sprang. And this operation may be repeated frequently; but these hypothetical fractional appearances can hardly be spoken of as reincarnations. We must not dogmatise, however, on the subject, and the case of the multitudes at present thwarted and returned at infancy may demand separate treatment. It may be that the abortive attempts at development on the part of individuals are like the waves lapping up the sides of a boulder and being successively flung back; while the general advance of the race is typified by the steady rising of the tide.

Soul and Body

The philosophic doctrine of the “self” on this view is a difficult one, and involves much study. As here stated, the form is sure to be crude and imperfect. Philosophy resents any sharp distinction between souland body, between indwelling self and material vehicle. It prefers to treat the self as a whole, an individual unit; though it may admit the actual agglomeration of material particles to be transient and temporary. The word “self” can be used in a narrower or in a broader sense. It may signify the actual continuity of personality and memory whereof we are conscious; or it may signify a larger and vaguer underlying reality, of which the conscious self is but a fraction. The narrower sense is wide enough to include the whole man, both soul and body, as we know him; but the phrase “subliminal self” covers ideas extending hypothetically beyond that.

The idea of Redemption or Regeneration, in its highest and most Christian form, is applicable to both soul and body. The life of Christ shows us that the whole man can be regenerated as he stands; that we have not to wait for a future state, that the Kingdom of Heaven is in our midst and may be assimilated by us here and now.

The term “salvation” should not be limited to the soul, but should apply to the whole man. What kind of transfiguration may be possible,or may have been possible, in the case of a perfectly emancipated and glorified body, we do not yet know.

In a still larger sense these terms apply to the whole race of man; and for the salvation of mankind individual loss and suffering have been gladlyexpended. Not the individual alone, but the race also, can be adjured to realise some worthy object for all its striving, to open its eyes to more glorious possibilities than it has yet perceived, to

“... climb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thouLook higher, then—perchance—thou mayest—beyondA hundred ever-rising mountain lines,And past the range of Night and Shadow—seeThe high-heaven dawn of more than mortal dayStrike on the Mount of Vision!”

“... climb the Mount of Blessing, whence, if thou

Look higher, then—perchance—thou mayest—beyond

A hundred ever-rising mountain lines,

And past the range of Night and Shadow—see

The high-heaven dawn of more than mortal day

Strike on the Mount of Vision!”

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