LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
The Conquest of Death
Sur,—Dr. Geiringer's distinguished articles and the resulting correspon- dence have raised important points which call for some further elucidation, temporis aeterni quoniam, non :anus horae ambigitur status.
Dr. Geiringer writes as a doctor who has the vocation of preserving life and, where possible, mitigating pain and—I should say—unreason- able fear. He is careful to say that to state that the religious method of conquering the fear of death demands faith " does not mean that it rests necessarily on an untruth nor even that its hypothesis is entirely without foundation." But he is certainly not concerned with it, and would appear to let it fall among " magical " efforts to harness reason to imagination. Some of your correspondents, on the other hand, have acclaimed the superiority of the Christian solution: "Christ is risen from the dead . . . even so in Christ shall all be made alive " but have used the words " hypothesis " and even " myth" in this connection. I should be prepared to maintain against any objections that the Resurrection of Christ is not a " hypothesis " or a comforting myth, but an historical fact as certain as, say, the death of Julius Caesar or the Battle of Hastings. But I fancy that Dr. Geiringer, and perhaps Mr. Moore, have felt difficulties which might prevent even an enquiry into the truth of the Christian claim. Perhaps one might try to throw some light upon these difficulties.
Dr. Geiringer considers death from a medical point of view, but— as one correspondent has pointed out—it is too big a reality to be considered purely on that level. It is very evident that a doctor's work ceases when a man is dead. Besides, as Mr. Moore has said, doctors cannot wholly conquer death, and one might, I suppose, reflect on the coincidence of the Lynmouth disaster with the publication of the second part of Dr. Geiringer's article. Perhaps this part should have been entitled not "The Conquest of Death " but " The Conquest of the Fear of Death." Let us now consider this fear. Is there only one kind of fear of death, and is it always a bad thing ? There is the biological fear, involved in the contradiction of our instinct to live, which is not without usefulness, as when it serves the doctor to warn his patient that he will be dead soon if he does not give up drinking. There is fear of the Unknown. There is fear of facing a future life with a bad conscience. Morality will call this a most reasonable fear, if Justice rules the universe, and medicine should take notice of it if only because there is no cure for a bad conscience except to right it, and to get something " off " the conscience may be a very potent psychological factor in recovery of health. I suggest, therefore, that when Dr. Geiringer says that " the fear of death is the fear of personal extinction," he is making an over-simplified deduction from the biologi- cal fear which is encountered without modification in a materialist setting. People may fear death, as Hamlet and Lucretius tell us, just because they fear they will not be extinguished. Dr. Geiringer appears to assume that at _present death involves personal extinction. For the remedy which he advocates is a " change of reality " by medical means—prolongation of life and the possible transfer of personality to another body. Many of us are grateful to the advances in medical science for the fact that we are still alive. But does death mean personal extinction ? We must be accurate about our terms. Is Dr. Geiringer's concept of personality correct ? He thinks that the " self " arises at some undefined point in the early life of each individual, and that "it stands and falls with the faculty of memory." " For the preservation of this illusory self of ours the only indispensable condition is that there should be no complete break of memory at any time." Theitfore complete and irrevocable amnesia, which death seems to involve, means loss of personality. There are good philosophic grounds, based on the spiritual element in cons- ciousness (e.g. the sense of responsibility), for denying that death does involve amnesia. But the fundamental mistake is over the nature of personality, which is deeper than the self-consciousness which manifests it. To deny this is to maintain a hypothesis which fails to account for all the facts. For it is suspicious that on this hypothesis we cannot say when the " self " begins, and more than suspicious that we have to describe as " illusory " an experience of " self " which is not identified with self-consciousness and about which we Are, in fact, very certain. It follows that even in amnesia the " self remains— though it may be atrophied. We must also remember—and this helps to answer Mr. Moore's difficulties about immortality—that the spirituality of consciousness shows that it does not necessarily cease with the cerebral tissues.
Dr. Geiringer's final solution in the conquest of death is the achieve- ment of personal immortality by transference to another body. He says, " those who believe in the existence of a soul as an immortal and individual entity must agree that this soul could conceivably be shifted consciously and immediately into another body." This is to misunderstand the unity of the human being. A negative constituent of personality is incommunicability, and in this the body of the person shares: (I am not speaking of the philosophic possibility which Christianity affirms as the ultimate triumph over death, of the soul again giving life to its own body.) • By " another body " I think Dr. Geiringer means " another's." But suppose Dr. Geiringer's idea possible. What have we gained ? A few more years in the time process before the inevitable end. And even if it were not inevitable, is the personal immortality we desire nothing but continuance in the time process ? When Mr. Moore wonders if we really want everlasting life, one suspects he may be thinking of it as just such a time- continuum: an endless picnic, or sitting on a damp cloud with a lot of dull people playing harps.
No ! Our whole nature, which desires truth, goodness and beauty, is unsatisfied with their limited and temporal manifestations. We cannot but desire (though an evil will may shun) the timeless contem- plation of and total self-giving to the God who is all these in 'infinite perfection. Nor is the desire to continue our personal existence a purely selfish one, for we desire personally to love God who is Love.
These scattered remarks may help to clear the ground for a con- sideration of the truth of the Christian claim that " eye hath not seen nor ear heard what things God hath prepared for them that love him," and for an appreciation of the conquest over death involved in the desire " to be dissolved and to be with Christ."—Yours faithfully, Downside Abbey, near Bath.
RALPH RUSSELL.
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