SiR,—Twice in his first article Dr. Geiringer refers to "
religion," and once in the second to " those who believe in the existence of a soul."
These references invite a comment from this other angle. To the doctor human " personality " appears almost as an epiphenomenon, and can be so treated. To the mystic the whole of the doctor's world appears as an epiphenomenon of the only reality, the divine, or, as the Christian would say (firstly), the Creator.
In the world we know we find three primary immortalities, those of the germ-cells, ideas, and institutions. But if there is an immortal soul its real home is not this world of the here and now, but the other world of the always and the everywhere. Would the Hindu agree that the religion of the immortal soul involves personal survival ? No; the individual loses himself in the end in Nirvana. Survival is misfortune. The Christian thinks otherwise. I often Wish that Keble had amended his well-known lines to read: " Till in the ocean of Thy love
We find ourselves in Heav'n above."
I agree that the shifting of a soul consciously and immediately into another body would not seem impossible, but it appears, at first sight at any rate, as a blasphemous travesty of the true hope, an artificial
substitute involving a sacrilegious invasion of another personality. 1.1 knew a Christian minister who was convinced that a member of his
congregation had become a demoniac. With the permission of the medical superintendent he visited the mental hospital and made an exorcism in the manner of the early Church. The patient was dis- charged cured. Would not the escape of a soul from an old body to a younger one be as hideous and as heinous a wrong as any other " possession " ? If not, Dr. Geiringer's suggestion raises an interesting subject for speculation. In biological development a sexual reproduction by fission was succeeded by a higher form of fusion. Can there be a higher term still in the series ? Would the fusion and re-integration of " memories and reactions " hypothecated at the end' of the second article provide on the psychic level a new development-stimulus com- parable with the advent of sexual reproduction on the somatic level ? If so this higher form of personality-formation might lead to undreamt- of development of the human mind and ego. Or would this psychic fornication in excelsis produce the apotheosis of the " Man of Sin " (II Thess. ii, 3, 4.) ? Incidentally one is indebted to Dr. Geiringer for a new word, " Cybernetics." I have not found it in the Oxford Dictionary. From Liddell and Scott there is help, but only a little !—Yours, &c.,
ALFRED HAIGH.
Tunstead, Cheddleton, near Leek, Stalls.
ALFRED HAIGH.
Previous page
