Individual Immortality
[Professor J. S. Haldane, C.H., F.R.S., has been engaged in scientific teaching and investigation since 1885. His book, Mechan- ism, Life and Personality, was published in 1913, and The Sciences and Philosophy in 1929.] IVHEN we ask whether individual persons survive after death, we seem, at first sight, to be putting a very definite question, admitting an equally definite answer, or at least an agnostic answer. There is, how- ever, a previous question which needs to be put before we attempt to answer such a question. This concerns what we mean by personality and by individual per- sonality.
If we start from the assumption that the world as interpreted by the physical sciences represents reality, we are led by experimental evidence step by step to the con- clusion that conscious activity or personality is a property of our central nervous systems, and that however mysterious this property may be, it is dependent on the physical and chemical conditions existing in the living -nervous system. It thus ceases at death, just as a flame goes out, so that immortality is meaningless.
Acceptance of the physically interpreted world as the Teal world has never been agreed to by the greatest philosophical thinkers in, at least, modern times ; and, as I have tried to show in detail in my recently published book on The Sciences and Philosophy, is inconsistent with the experience with which biology deals, and still more with the experience forming the subject-matter of the branches of knowledge dealing with conscious behaviour. Our world is a perceived world, and perception is no mere passive _ affection, but expresses active interest, and is thus just as much active as voluntary action. As, more- over, interest implies activity so co-ordinated or unified as regards both space-relations and time-relations that it expresses what we call personality, it is a world of person- ality to which analysis of our experience leads us.
Outside this world of personality there is no physical or other world of which we have any experience. It is only a world capable of being perceived that has any 'meaning for us ; and as perceived it enters into per- sonality as a world of interest and values. The world as interpreted by the physical sciences is the same world, but is regarded provisionally in abstraction from its being perceived by us, and from the personal interest implied in this:.
The- The practical advantage of this abstract treatment is very great. • New and imperfectly defined experience is constantly welling up within our world of personality, and by the abstract scientific treatment of it we give it such a form that we can perceive much more completely its interest to us, although in doing so we transform it from abstract knowledge into concrete experience. The same is true of all other forms of science or abstract knowledge. They are essential to us in the more complete apprehension of our experience ; but if we mistake their abstract interpretation for reality the result is confusion, Physical realism, which when carried to its logical out- come amounts to what is called materialism, is an instance of this confusion.
It might seem that we have thus been led to regard our world as one of flickering individual personality, appar- ently originating mysteriously at or about birth and dis- appearing equally mysteriously at death. Such a con- elusion would stamp itself as absurd. When we examine apparent individual personalities we find that they cannot be separated from one another. In social life our interests are also those of others. Our perceptions are likewise those of others, so that we have what can be called objective interests embracing all that we regard as right in conduct, and as truth or provisional truth, whether it be scientific, artistic, or any other form of truth. It is the recognition of these objectively valid actions and per- ceptions that leads us to the conception of God as the personality of personalities, or as the personality in which apparent individual personalities have their being, since apart from personality we cannot consistently conceive of any reality. It is thus the existence of God within and around us, and not the existence of a physical world outside us, that gives objective reality and rational coherence to our world.
Individual personality corresponds, therefore, only to a provisional and abstract interpretation of our experience, like physico-chemical or biological interpretation. It is not coherent except to a limited extent with our 'experience. We cannot dispense practically with this abstract interpretation, but we make use of it in re-inter- preting it in the light of our experience of duty and truth, and thus transforming it into what is no longer abstract and inconsistent with our other experience.
Relations of space and time are not outside but within personality. However far away, or far back, or far forward, therefore, we project our perceptions, God is still present, since it is still an objective perceived- world with which we are dealing. For Kant relations of space and time were forms imposed by the percipient on the raw material of perception, and had thus no meaning out- side perception. His general reasoning is still valid when we regard perception, no less than voluntary action, as a manifestation of personality, and truth in perception or rectitude in action as the manifestation within and around us of Supreme Personality.
When we look backwards in time or outwards in space sufficiently far, we reach a time or • place where there is, or was, no human or animal perception or voluntary action. It might seem that at such a time or place we can place nothing else than a physico-chemical inter= pretation on the existing phenomena. This would be so if we could neglect the unnoticed " potentialities " of the same phenomena. Were we to assume that the potentialities make no difference, this would be equivalent to assuming that a physico-chemical interpretation of present conditions would also be possible. As I have pointed out elsewhere, the Darwinian theory of evolution does not, for example, take us any nearer to a physico- chemical interpretation of life or conscious behaviour, since the very basis of the theory is the existence of hereditary transmission, including transmission of varia- tions. When We • assume hereditary transmission we assume just the fundamental character which makes a phy.sico-chemical interpretation of life impossible.
Since mere individual personality is only a partial and unreal interpretation it seems evident that individual immortality is only a shadow. If we regard religion as the realisation of our oneness with God, a belief in indi- vidual immortality is not really consistent with religion.
To seek for individual immortality implies doubt as to the omnipotence of God. We are doubting this if we assume the 'ultimate reality of other individual persons, and particularly if, as is almost always also the case, we at the same time assume a physical world of self-existent bodies. In any case, we can form no clear conception of individual immortality unless along with the individual his whole environment is also immortal. Personality apart from spiritual environment means nothing.
Individual immortality and personal immortality are two different things. We are personally immortal in so far as we have identified our wills and perceptions with what appears as God's will—as what is right and true. It is in God's personality, and this alone, that we are immortal : of individual immortality we can form no coherent conception, since we arc much more than mere individuals.
To many persons anything less than individual immor- tality would seem meaningless. I think this is because we arc so accustomed to the prevalent physical realism of our times that we cannot help looking for a soul which can dominate the real physical body which we have assumed. Such a soul must be individual, since it is In localized contact with the individual, and self-existent, units of matter, which are assumed to be present in the body. This paper has been written from the standpoint, not of physical, but of what may be called spiritual realism ; but it was not possible, in so short a paper, to do more than barely indicate the reasons which, as it seems to me, make physical realism an impossible standpoint. Physical realism is, however, the prevailing popular standpoint of our times, and so long as this is the case discussion of immortality is very difficult. There are now many indica- tions that popular physical realism will not last much longer, and that our successors will sooner or later look back at it with wonder ; but for the present its influence is widespread, and particularly in orthodox theological • and biologicaLJiterature. The argument I have used has been that in the recog. nition of objective truth and right we are at the same time realizing the existence of God, freedom as person- ality, and immortality. This argument is essentially the same as that which Kant used, though he was much hampered by the compromise which, in his Critique of Pure Reason, he had made with physical realism, through not realizing the distinctive nature of biological and [Next week we shall publish an article by Rev. R. J. Steuart, S.J.; entitled " The Beatific Vision." Previous articles in the present series have been : " The Attainment of Immortality," by Professor J. Y. Simpson ; " Immortality and the Value of Personality," by Dr. J. K. Mozley, and -" Organic Resurrection," by the Dean of Chester.]
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