--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - N. L. Nelson collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 8 number: 7 published: 1905-05 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'N. L. Nelson, "Heaven versus Nirvana," *Improvement Era* 8, no. 7 (May 1905): 481–499.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0807unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera0807unse start_page: 481 end_page: 499 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1905-05) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0807unse publication_year: 1905 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1905, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Heaven versus Nirvana * Vol. VIII. MAY, 1905. No. 7. HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. BY PROFESSOR N. L. NELSON. [The readers of the Era ought to be made aware of the fact that the presentation of this paper before so critical and learned a body as that of the Professors and Fellows of Clark University, Massachusetts, is no mean triumph for the truths of "Mormonism." Clark University is devoted exclusively to post-college research, and the fifty odd men and women who listened to the reading of the paper all hold college degrees, either bachelor, master or doctor, and are more or less widely known for individual work before entering Clark. Half of them are gray-haired men, whose lives have been spent in science, religion and philosophy. As the reader will discover, the author took an attitude antagonistic to prevailing ideas; yet on the conclusion of his reading, he says there was no adverse criticism such as would lead him to make any material change. He states further: 'After papers, there is ordinarily a free-for-all discussion, which often lasts two hours, and leaves sometimes no shred of a thesis behind.but in my case there was no vital objection,save that one man disagreed with the quotation I make from Spencer, declaring that he held the same notion as Dean Mansel, which to me was too ridiculous to need reply. Also that he could believe in a God outside of space and time, which I regard as equally absurd." Dr. Hall said: "I think we all recognize the deep moral earnestness * A paper read before Dr. G. Stanley Hall's Pedagogical Seminary, in Clark University, Jan. 31, 1905. as well as the marked ability of this paper; if I have any criticism it is that the author has not read widely enough." Since then, we are informed, the author has been reading a dozen or more books suggested by Dr. Hall and other members present. "But," he adds, "the more I read the more convinced do I become of the attitude taken in this paper." A second paper to follow this will give reasons for believing in heaven.— Editors.] I. Leaving out of consideration a large group of merely vegetative beings — men and women too deeply engrossed with living to take one serious thought of- ife —mankind may be broadly divided into two classes: those who .ook forward ultimately to extinction, and those who hope for, or dread, an eternal individual existence. In the first class are three well-marked varieties of belief. There is first the pessimist in science and philosophy, who finds nothing in life to warrant a belief in individual immortality. Even the end of that seeming immortality which is represented by the onward wave of general life, is for him removed only a little be- — yond his own end say a million years or so. Shakespeare expresses well his idea of life: Like the baseless fabric of this vision The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a wrack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. The second variety of belief is represented by the Buddhist, whose ultimate goal is Nirvana; a form of annihilation no less complete than that held by the pessimist above mentioned, but indefinitely removed in the future, and to be reached only after countless reincarnations, during which the soul gradually attains the power to negate the desire to live. The third variety believes in the extinction of the individual, but not in the annihilation of his life-essence. This is the gospel of the man who looks upon human life as merely a fragment of divine life temporarily limited and externalized. Death will break HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 483 down the barrier between him and God— the rivulet will flow into the ocean. Of those who hold to the opposite doctrine, that of individual immortality, the varieties of subsidiary beliefs are numerous enough; suffice it for my purpose to point out that they all agree respecting the persistence of the ego; in other words, the eternal permanency of the distinction between the me and the not me, as manifested in human experience. From such a conception, it follows that post-mortem life must continue to be both objective and subjective, the same as here and now; and consequently that time, space and causation are to be regarded as ever-enduring entities. Eternal life and eternal bliss, when regarded in their relation to the individual soul, constitute the salient aspects of man's conception of heaven; whereby it becomes plain that the two goals of mankind are not to be spoken of interchangeably. On the contrary, they are direct opposites. Nirvana, or the state of human extinction, while it is the highest notion of exaltation to the oriental, becomes to the occidental the lowest aspect of hell; being, in scriptural terms, nothing else than the second death, or death of the spirit. Conversely, the heaven of the Christian, involving, as it does, eternal individualized existence, is looked upon as the direst of psychic calamities by the Buddhist. As to the number of people holding these notion? respectively, the overwhelming majority stand for the idea of individual extinction. The followers of Buddha alone are numbered at from three hundred and forty to four hundred and fifty-five millions, or nearly one-third of the human family, principally living in China and Japan. And when to these are added the millions of Brahmaism throughout the rest of the orient, as well as the millions of skeptics and agnostics in the Occident, the ideal for which Christianity stands will seem almost provincial by comparison. The purpose of this paper is to examine the rational sanction for each of these views, — to determine what ideas of God and the cosmos must logically go with each notion; also, granting that reason will never be able to justify either hope, to ask which ideal ought to survive, measured in terms of its effect on human progress. We may begin with Buddha's conception, that of a universe ultimately "without form and void." Let us contemplate for a moment this terrible aspect; let us stand, as it were, in the midst of things glorious to us now, and see the objective world dissolve and pass away; see the sun, moon and stars go out one after another, like the phantoms of a dream; then listen till we hear the last throb of nature's pulse, and afterward the faint and fainter echo till all is still. Darkness and silence reign through the boundless deep — darkness, silence and vacuity! Save for us, in whom this image of nothingness is reflected; for while we survive, darkness is something, and even silence; and because of us there is time yet, and also space. Who, then, are we, that we should withstand the universal pralava? Infinitesimal specks in the pulseless void; which,however, because we continue to exist, still serve to keep time and space intact, a faint skeleton, as it were, of the universe. Let us contemplate, then, the dissolution of ourselves also. At once the all-in-all collapses. Space is no more. There is neither up nor down, nor right nor left, nor out nor in. What was infinitely extended is now infinitely contracted — a point without a centre. Time also is gone. There is neither was nor is nor shall be. Even darkness and silence have passed away, for there is no being left to hold such notions; and if there were there would be no place for him to exist, nor time to think. Nirvana has succeeded being. This last feat of the imagination is, however, evidently impossible; we cannot, in thought even, resolve the universe, including ourselves, to the state of Nirvana and yet remain to contemplate the result; that is to say, it is not possible for a thing to be and not be, at the same time. As long - , therefore, as capacity to conceive, in other words, as long as a me shall remain in the universe, so long will there be time, space, and causation, the permanent elements of the not-me. Buddha's conception of the universe as reduced to nothingness is consequently impossible; and this fact is so glaringly self-evident, that we must believe his Nirvana stood for an infinitely extended void, rather than the absence even of extension. But even this, as we shall see, is equally untenable; for a void must — HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 485 forever remain a void. Nothing cannot give birth to something. To assert such a thing is to violate a primary law of thought; viz., that which is not, cannot also be. Now, however much Buddha might maintain the unsubstantiality of the natural world, he could not doubt the reality of his own soul: an entity which, by his own syst3m of thought, had reappeared for incarnation on the world plane a countless number of times. Here was something which, he must have assumed, came out of nothing, and which, as — he taught, was destined to go baek to nothing a double contradiction of the laws of thought, though the latter, that of something becoming nothing, is not so immediately palpable as that of nothing becoming something. Individual extinction in the sense of entering Nirvana — that is to say, the extinction of something by resolving it to nothing is not, therefore, a rational explanation of the trend of life; and itwould be interesting to know whether among the millions of Buddha's followers in China and Japan, any considerable number really hold to this ultra-negative interpretation. There have always been two schools of interpreters of Buddha's invention. By one school the infinite void of Nirvana has been held to be the negative of all existence; by the other, as only the negative of actual or earthly existence— whence it becomes, in the terms of the idealistic philosophy, the real existence, as opposed to the phenomenal. The latter is the view held by the six sects of Hinduism into which Buddha's religion is divided in India today; and the same idea is being propagated throughout the western world by Theosophists, who claim to be the true modern •disciples of the Hindoo seer. While extinction of man's individuality by annihilation can never be made to appeal to reason, his extinction by absorption into the Infinite, regarded as the only real existence, presents no greater immediate difficulty than that of a rain- drop obliterating itself by falling back into the ocean, its original source of being; and were man's relationship to God as simple and homogeneous as that of the raindrop to the ocean, the ultimate difficulty of accepting such an explanation would be even less. By such a view one may indeed understand how the life-essence may live on forever. But the life-essence is not the ego, and the being so immortalized could never be made aware of the fact, since the "I am" of the new unity would not be his any more than it would be that of any other individual among the billion-billions of infinitesimal contributions which once were men. To a being who desires immortality above all things else in the universe, what satisfaction could there be in eternal life on this basis? What practical difference between that and the annihilation taught by Buddha? If man could believe that his extinction were necessary to the immortality of God, or even contributed to it in the least degree, then there is that in his heart which would find rest in contemplating the sacrifice. But an infinite being cannot be thought of as needing finite enlargement; as, for instance, we might suppose the ocean in need of calling back all its wandering dew-drops in order to maintain itself. God is immortal, without need of me; to take from me, therefore, that which can at best be but indifferent to him, is to plunge me into a hell, than which I can conceive none more exquisite in its torture. Only to think that I shall be no more! which means that I shall see and hear no more, that I shall know, feel, and will no more —what possible satisfaction to contemplate by comparison that God will so continue to know, feel and will forever, and that swallowed up in him, will be that spark of life which enabled me once upon a time to do these same things! Can I possibly be grateful that so much of me — which after all is not me! shall — have immortality? The bare thought of it is like dying slowly for want of air to breathe. So far from contemplating such an end with love and gratitude to the Father of your life, the uttermost depths of your soul must be aroused to opposition. If you must perforce believe in the inevitability of such a fate, then life becomes tolerable only on the basis of fighting the dreaded issue to the very verge of extinction. After that, what matters anything, since you will no more be here to know or feel the eternal throb of things, nor even to remember that you once were ? But can you ever come to believe that such an issue is inevitable? Is there not something in you which says that no power can so absorb you as to obliterate you? Would you not be there, a voice deep beneath the wreckage, after all the forces of the uni- HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 487 verse had done their utmost to quell forever that essential thing which is you? And does not your reason reinforce this cosmic cry of your heart? For can that which is real, that which actually is, ever be made not to be? And what is real in the universe, if you should think your ego unreal? Is it not the only thing which you do not need to cognize in terms of phenomena? That three-fourths of the human race should long for that to happen, which to me is excruciating only to think of, is credible only on the supposition that they gloss over its real significance by some imagined felicity which I have never hit upon. Nor am I willing to believe that my view of the matter is pathological. I prefer to regard the notion ofhuman extinction as a disease of philosophy — an inevitable outcome from wrong premises, and, — therefore, one which, because of its very subtlety, is confined to the esoteric few; rather than to believe it the wholesome expression of the millions who accept the exoteric doctrines of such philosophy. Be this as it may, to realize how wide- spread is the negative view of life, it may be well to trace the thought involving it, from Buddha down the ages to our own day, Buddha died B. C. 472, after half a century of active proselyting. That his doctrines early found their way to Greece is evinced among other things by the fact that Plato taught the transmigration of souls; even going to the extent of fixing 10,000 years as the interval of reincarnations before the spirit's final return to God. Weber mentions the fact that Hegel found evidence that Plato believed in the pre-existence and immortality only of the World-soul. If this is correct, it points out the fact that the return of the soul to God means nothing else than its extinction by absorption. "But," cautions Weber, "while it is undoubtedly true that Catholic mysticism borrows extensively from Platonic theology, and equally certain that Plato's dialectics contain the rudiments of the Hegelian system, still we have no right to make him a Christian or a modern philosopher." But setting aside the question as to whether there is an historical connection between Buddha and Plato, it is nevertheless evident that the conception of God as the world-soul, is not necessarily either Christian or modern. It is merely Nirvana positively considered, — Buddha's infinite void filled in with spirit. As such it is held everywhere in India today, and perhaps for the mast part throughout the rest of the orient. It was engrafted upon Christian thought through the Greek dialecticians of the third and fourth century. "The Latin Fathers," says Weber, "Tertullian, Arnobius, and Lactantius, rejected philosophy as a heathen product, contact with which must be avoided. The Greek and Egyptian fathers, however, never ceased to cultivate it. Indeed, the attacks directed against the gospel bv philosophy itself, compelled them to study it. Owing to the successful pressure thus exerted, the Christian faith was reduced to dogma; it was formulated and systematized. The authors of the dogmas had to philosophize in spite of themselves and in self-defense, so to speak. Some of them went so far as to regard the teachings of the heathen sages as divine revelations similar to the gospel. Plato was the only philosopher who received serious consideration. The school of Alexandria taught an essentially religious philosophy, differing in this respect from the other schools, which were, for the most part, skeptical. One could not but recognize certain similarities between Plato and Christianity; but how was this relationship, which sometimes amounted to identity, to be explained? Some and they were in — — the majority believed that Plato had drawn from the writings of the Old Testament. The enlightened minority concluded that the philosophers worthy of the name must have been inspired by the same divine reason which revealed itself in Jesus of Nazareth." Among the early fathers thus favoring Greek philosophy may be mentioned Justin the Martyr, Athenagoras, Tatian the Apologist, St. Clement of Alexandria, and Origen; also Athanasius, Basil the Great, Giegory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus, and among the Latin fathers, St. Augustine. "The theodicy of St. Agustine," continues Weber, "is essentially Platonic, and at times approaches the boldest conceptions of the school of Alexandria. God is the being beyond whom, outside of whom, and without whom, nothing exists; he is the being below whom, in and through whom, everything exists that has reality; he is the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things; * * * he is the creator of intelligence, yet superior to it; he is present everywhere without being bound to any place; he exists, and yet is nowhere; he lives eternally and HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 489 yet is not in time; he is the principle of all change and yet immutable." Whoever reads these early patristic discussions will be struck no less by the tendency to put all theses concerning God in the form of antinomies, than by the tendency to gulp down with equal gusto both aspects of the contradiction; a fact which is perhaps explicable on the hypothesis that God in his ultimate essence is incomprehensible; and consequently one may think into the great Mystery whatever doctrines are necessary to theology, even though they directly contradict each other. Thus in the Athanasian creed, which was adopted by the Catholic church, and which . forms the basis of nearly all other creeds in Christendom, it is asserted that there are three parsons in the Godhead — "a person of the Father, a person of the Son, and a person of the Holy Ghost," thus giving form and limitation to the Holy Trinity; but in the next breath it is declared that the "Father is uncreate, the Son uncreate, the Holy Ghost uncreate," thereby making the Trinity formless and limitless. The redeeming fact in this contradiction occurs in the very next sentence. "The Father is incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, the Holy Ghost incomprehensible." From the two horns of this theological dilemma, which represents respectively the Bible conception of Jehovah and Jesus Christ, (with an alteration respecting the Holy Ghost), and on the other the Buddhistic-Platonic conception of the World-soul or God immanent, divergencies arose which served, as was natural enough, to split up Christianity. Arianism, which stood for the Bible interpretation, was the first schism; but there have been others, and the end is not yet. As a more definite statement of the purely metaphysical aspect, consider this from John Scotus Erigena, one of the earliest of the school-men. (Quoted from Weber): "As the world is in God, so God is in it, as its essence, its soul, its life. Whatever living force, light, and intelligence the world contains, is God, who is immanent in the cosmos, and the latter exists only in so far as it participates in the divine being. God is the sum-total of being without division, limit, or measure; the world is limited or divided being. God is inexplicated being; the world is explicated, revealed, manifested being; God and the universe are one and the same being, two different modes or forms of the only infinite being; or rather, the world alone is a mode of being, a modification and limitation of being, while God is being without mode of being or any determination." The latter fact places God utterly beyond comprehension, whence Scotus adds, quite in Buddha's own vein: "He is the absolute nothing, the eternal Mystery." That a Christian philosopher, reasoning from given premises, should thus reach the same conclusion as the Hindoo sage, is evidence rather of mental integrity than of a leaning towards atheism. For manifestly when your theological scruples lead you to postulate only that, as God, which is transcendental, i. e. beyond space, time, or other form of limitation, you have plainly reached what the honest thinker must recognize as nothing, so far as his thought is concerned; since only that which comes within space and time, or at least within limitation of some kind, can be the subject matter for human concepts. Speculation may still lead man to ask: "What would the Transcendent or Unknowable turn out to be provided I could conceive it?" Whether with Buddha, his answer is, "awzcttwra," or with Spinoza, "a plenum," depends perhaps most on whether he regards lifeas a curse or a blessing. Let us not forget, however, that so far as reason is concerned, one answer is as good as the other; for manifestly that of which one can form no concept can be neither affirmed or denied— a fact which Kant was perhaps the first to demonstrate clearly. Nor can we decide morally between the fatalism which conceives the Unknowable as Nirvana,and the superstition which erects it into God; for to assume that God is absolute, i.e. transcends all limitation, what is it but putting an eternal barrier between him and man? he has no limitation, then he is inconceivable, and If therefore cannot enter into the life of man. For how can man be influenced by that of which he can form no conception? To pretend that a formulary of doctrine and ritual comes from a Being whom you have just denied the power to enter into man's conception is surely not more moral than to assume that He is pure negation. From such a consideration, it becomes evident that man can — HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 491 have no God save as he is comprehensible; which means, in other words, that God must be in the same universe of time and space with man. Indeed, he is God little or much to man in proportion as he presents aspects which can be reflected in the soul of man. The theological dictum that "a God understood is a God dethroned," should rather read: "A God understood is superstition dethroned;" for if God cannot be understood, what is it but a confession that all things believed in as having come from him, are nothing but the inventions of men, who assume to do in his name what they confess is impossible for him to authorize them to do? To be honest a man must either, like Buddha, be an out and out atheist, or else construct a philosophy in which God shall be within the realm of comprehension. To the extent that he transcends this realm, he is nothing whatever to man nor can he ever be anything; for to be out of the realm of man's comprehension, what is it but to have nothing in common with man; in other words to be nothing, so far as man is concerned? It is a matter of astonishment that Christian philosophers, who might surely have been expected to invent a system consist. ent with individual immortality — since this the central tenet of is Christ's Gospel — should go over bodily to a conception of God and the universe which makes eternal life for man impossible. Surely Christ's saying that the kingdom of God is taken by violence, was illustrated, if ever, when the body of Greek dialecticians above referred to, swooped down upon its theology, decorating Christ's simple doctrines with a background of pantheistic cosmogony such as perhaps no Hebrew mind ever dreamed of, least of all the humble artisans whom he chose to preach his gospel. The Atbanasian creed already referred to is an example of this compromise. On the esoteric side, that is to say, in the schools of theology, the , Father, Son and Holy Ghost are held to be merely aspects of the infinite Being who transcends the bounds of time and space; on the exoteric side the simple personal relationship of Father and Son as set forth in the Bible is dogmatically maintained, and with it an ever enlarging pantheon of saints and angels, all destined to eternal individual existence. Nor have the metaphysical and purely spiritual elements thus forced together, ever coalesced. The immortality promised on the one hand is ever menaced by ultimate extinction as the logical outcome of the other. These contradictories have been united, however, by a magic cement, mystery. — Great has been the role of mystery since the Christian era. Is there need of holding opposite notions as being both true? Let but the copulative be called mystery, and the thing is done. Indeed, this dark matrix comes to be loved on its own account, and tends to develop in the devout reasoner a pride in the prodigious fertility of his method; over that of the mere logician, hampered as he is by the inexorable laws of thought. And so it has come about that intellectual hypocrisy has been glorified into a virtue; whence the mental integrity of the foremost race on the earth has been all but sacrificed to subserve the propagation of a bastard theology, the spawn of an illigitimate union between the pure and simple truths of Christ's message, and the vagaries of heathen philosophy. "All but sacrificed," I repeat; that it has not been quite sacrificed has been due to the dissenters creed and from dogma, the philosophers and scientists who dared to be true to their own intellectual intuitions. "Some do indeed allege," says Mr. Spencer, "that though the ultimate cause of things cannot really be thought of by us as having specified attributes, it is yet incumbent upon us to assert these attributes. Though the forms of our consciousness are such that the absolute cannot in any manner or degree be brought within them, we are nevertheless told that we must represent the absolute to ourselves under these forms. As writes Mr. Mansell, in the work from which I have already quoted largely— 'It is our duty, then, to think of God as personal; and it is our duty to believe that he is infinite.' "That this is not the conclusion here adopted, needs hardly to be said. If there be any meaning in the foregoing arguments, duty requires us neither to affirm nor deny personality. Our duty is to submit ourselves with all humility to the established limits of our intelligence; and not perversely to rebel against them. Let those who can, believe there is eternal war set between our intellectual faculties and our moral obligations. I for one, admit no such radical vice in the constitution of things." Unfortunately, though we may admire the mental integrity of HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 493 secular philosophers in following resolutely where truth seems to lead, we shall not be assisted by their various systems in our search for reasons to support the hope of individual immortality. This fact will appear if we consider the question in connection with the ultimate aspects of the universe as maintained respectively by atheism, deism, theism, and pantheism, the four schools of thought into which metaphysical speculation divides itself. As to idealistic atheism', the question has already been discussed in connection with Buddha and Nirvana. A school which finds no immortality even for a World-soul evidently has no ultimate future for the individual. Materialistic atheism reaches conclusions directly opposite to those of the atheism of Buddha; instead of Nirvana, infinite void, the universe to the materialist is filled with matter. His negation of God results logically from his assumption that mind is only an aspect of matter. To him there is no human soul apart from the body. Man is placed in the same category with trees and animals: they are all phenomena or fleeting aspects of ever-enduring matter. Deism looks upon the knowable universe in practically the same way as atheism. As far as human knowledge can penetrate — i. e., within the bounds of space and time— effect is interlinked with cause. What started the series, —not within the realm of comprehension, but beyond it? In the answer to this question, deism recognizes God,— a transcendent, supra-mundane Being, whom man can never know, simply because he transcends conceivability. Within the realm of the conceivable, where, by the by, the Christian places his heaven, there can, by the deistic conception, be no individual immortality, sirce our senses proclaim the fact that everything, man included, is in constant transition. Immortality beyond the conceivable, even could we get past the thought it means nothing whatever to us, — would be possible only , by absorption into the Infinite, which, as we have seen is extinction. Between theism and pantheism I am unable to draw any thorough-going distinction; for whereas all the varieties of belief classed under these two heads have this in common with deism, that they make God the ultimate cause of the universe, they all differ alike from deism in bringing God out of the transcendent, into the realm of things conceivable. Thus Plato's ultimate Idea is the same as the God of deism, or the so-called Christian God beyond the bounds of time and space; whereas his "mediate ideas" are emanations of the ultimate Idea, spiritual creations or projections of itself, — noumena, dingen-an-sich, which take form and shape in the objective world in the same way that man's soul becomes clothed with a body. When the bodies of things, in other — words, the phenomenal world, shall pass away, do these emanations return to the ultimate Idea, or do they hang in mid-air, as it were, a universe of individualized spiritual entities? The latter would be an approximation to the Christian idea of heaven. Spinoza's system amounts practically to the same thing. His God, the "only real Substance," is the deistic God beyond the realm of the knowable; but among an infinite number of possible attributes which this ultimate Substance may have up there in the transcendent sphere, two of them come down within the realm of comprehension; viz., thought and extension, which become respectively the subjective and the objective world for man. No need to ask the question whether in this system there is immortality for man as an individual entity. There is no individual entity. Man himself, and all that he looks upon as the universe, are merely effluences or emanations from God ; as truly so as that the leaves of a tree plus the mysterious life which puts forth and sustains them, are emanations from the tree. If we could assume that thought and extension are necessary, that is to say, not voluntary, attributes of God, in other words, that they flow out from him with eternal persistency, all that we could assume from such an hypothesis would be the immortality of nature, the perpetuation of life in general, and not eternal existence for the individual. In Fichte's system, the starting point is also impliedly in absolute or unconditioned being; which, as it is beyond the realm of comprehension, cannot be said to exist at all for man. Fichte's absolute Being comes to be God by becoming self-conscious, that is, by "positing the ego." Why it should do this, or how it could do this —being in its nature absolute — is inexplicable. But suppose it to be done; the moment absolute Being posited the ego, it had to posit also the non-ego, one aspect inevitably implying the other. Here then we have again the World-soul plus nature, its : HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 495 objective expression in the universe. Man, to the extent that he is conscious of an ego, is by that much God. Between ego and non-ego there is, according to Fichte, a constantly fluctuating relationship. In the first place, neither ego nor non-ego is a reality, looked at from the point of view of absolute Being. If God should sink back into the transcendent.unconditioned state,both subjective and objective universe would collapse. The "absolute Being" which would result from such a cataclysm seems to me nothing else than what Buddha calls Nirvana. Thus it appears that man has existence, subjective and objective, only so long as God chooses to express himself as ego and non-ego; quite after the same fashion that a dew-drop possesses a tiny sun in its centre only so long as the real sun is shining. Moreover, as God's non-ego, or the objective universe,is not real, but merely a negative reflex from his ego, so likewise man's objective world is an illusion of his senses (quite a la Mary Baker Glover Eddy) . It seems real, but is, says Fichte, in fact only phenomenal space, time, and all the thing3 they seem to embrace, are only emanations, unconscious projections or creations of man's ego. Now, in the constant struggle of the soul to overcome the world, or, as Fichte put it, in the constant cry of the ego "There : shall be no non-ego," this philosopher discovered tne moral character of the world-soul. Righteousness, that is to say, success on the part of the empirical ego (man) in subduing the phantasms of the objective world ; in other words, success in realizing their illusory quality, meant, in terms of religion, salvation; i.e., gradual approach toward, then final submergence into the absolute ego (God). On the other hand, continuance in sin, i. e., refusal to grapple with and overcome the world of sense, meant not only a continued entanglement in God's non-ego or objective universe, but a farther and farther removal from him, by the progressive dimming of the man's empirical ego, so that sense objects should become more and more gross and realistic (hell), till at last all heavenly apperception should be gone (the death of the soul). Here, then, we have the philosophy of Buddha repeated, save that the goal is positive; the struggle being to win the Nirvana of extinction, as opposed to that other Nirvana of annihilation, by works of righteousness and the constant negation of the objects of sense, till the desire to live is finally bleached out of the soul. Small need, therefore, to seek grounds for individual immortality in Fichte's system; and if not in Fichte, then in none of his followers. Schelling begins by making explicit what is implicit in the^'egoism" of his master; viz., the fact that pure being is not the ego, but a state antecedent thereto, a background whence are derived both mind and nature; a state really of indifference, since nothing that man can cognize exists in it, till that movement takes place which divides it into'the subjective and objective universe. Hegel in his turn denied that God, or the absolute, is ever transcendental. Instead of being Schilling's "state of indifference" behind mind and nature, God is the immanency or cause of movement inhering in both; the eternal reason, which transfuses or saturates all things; which comes to know itself in self-conscious mind, but which none the less works unconsciously in notmind or nature. Schopenhauer seized upon this principle of immanency, which is ever shaping the subjective and the objective world, and called it Will. From the point of view of maintaining the personality of God, i. e.,endowing Deity with anthropomorphic attributes, of all these philosophers would be called theists; but from the fact that they all make him co-extensive if not identical with the universe, they are pantheists. Plato, Spinoza, and Fichte found morality, or the triumph of the good, to be the supreme motive in the world-order. For Hegel it was reason, and for Schopenhauer, the triumph of evil, — a bias evidently taken on from a study of oriental philosophy, for after an exhaustive summing up of the manifestations of life, he pronounced existence a curse resulting from the persistence of the will-to-live. This will [quoting from Weber] is the endless source of all life, and hence also the origin of all evil. The world which it produces, instead of being the "best possible world," is "the worst of all." Salvation is attainable only by negating the will; whence it wouldappear that for Schopenhauer as for Buddha, Nirvana becomes the logical goal of all moral effort. From such a hasty glance at the history of speculation, it will be seen that neither in ancient nor in modern philosophy do we find rational sanction for Christ's doctrine of the future ex- HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 497 istence of the soul. On the contrary, the consensus of all systems of thought points to conclusions either adverse to eternal life altogether, or else in favor of immortality for God alone. Nor do prevailing conceptions of speculative theology change this outlook. The modern idea of God is that of a universal spiritual essence, which if not identical with the subjective and objective world, yet permeates all things and becomes the vivifying, lifegiving principle; in other words, modern Christianity, like modern Buddhism, has reached a stage of pantheism, modified, indeed, by Hegel's doctrine of the divine immanency, and imbued with the universal ethical motif of Fichte. Frequently God is defined vaguely in terms of the latter attribute alone, as the "power which makes for righteousness." Now, while the two great religions have thus reached similar conclusions as to the ultimate form of being, Christianity lacks the courage of Buddhism in facing the logical consequences. She still looks forward to an objectified heaven in which shall reside a risen Redeemer with multitudes of other individualized beings, together with thrones, mansions, cities with pearly gates, and streets paved with gold, for all which she claims eternal duration; whereas, under no pantheistic conception of Deity whatever is it possible to maintain the Godhood of Jesus Christ, even as a transient earthly incarnation, let alone the thesis of his eternal existence in the form of man; and if pantheism fails -to sustain the eternal individual existence of Christ, how shall we hope to- draw support from it for a belief in the immortality of his sinful brethren and sisters? Nor is it in the matter of immortality alone that such a conception of God fails to support the religion of Jesus. If any dectrine in religion is more distinctly Christian than any other, it is that of answer to prayer, or the doctrine of divine providence. Yet, where in the whole range of pantheistic philosophy, or even of scientific epistemology, will you find support for this doctrine? We are living in a world of law, says Dr. Jordan. Cast into the ocean on one side of the ship a tramp and on the other side a prophet, and the sharks will make no distinction between them. Take another instance, which I quote from my writings elsewhere.* * See Scientific Aspects of Mormonism, p. 39-42. "John Jones has lost his way in a blizzard. Feeling a sense of drowsiness stealing over him, and realizing its terrible meaning, he kneels down and prays. Will his life, in consequence, be spared from the fury of the storm? "Before answering, take careful account of all the conditions. First, the storm is only doing the duty God appointed it to do; that is to say, it is the legitimate outcome of law. Law, on the other hand, provides that everything in the blizzard's path that is fitted to survive, shall survive — all the rest shall perish. "But John Jones asks in effect that these laws be set aside for his benefit; i. e., either that the storm be so mitigated that his natural strength may save him, or that he be miraculously raised into the rank of things fitted to survive. Suppose, in addition to praying for himself, he entreats mercy and protection for his horse, for the cattle he is seeking, for the buds in his orchard, will the indwelling soul of the universe stop to act upon his petition? "The example fairly sets forth the inner meaning of prayer and also its conditions. If the Christianized god of Buddha can (and will) act the role of Providence, that is, intervene and set aside the operation of his own laws at the request of man, then it is logical to pray — otherwise not. "Is it rational to believe that an infinitely diffused spirit or essence could or would so intervene? Buddhism says emphatically, No. God never acts as Providence, but ever as karma, the establisher of law and dispenser of absolute justice in accordance therewith; and consistently with this view, theosophists, the modern disciples of Buddha, teach that prayer is enervating; that a man can have his way against the universe only to the extent that he himself can influence his environments; to which end let him pray to nothing external, — let him rather assume, not the supplicative, but the compelling mental attitude: so shall the incarnation of — Deity within him, the only God with whom his psychic life can come into contact, —perhaps secure for him his desire. "It is difficult, on a priori grounds, to come to any other conclusion. First there is the bigness of God and the littleness of Jones. Compared with Infinitude the solar system itself is relatively smaller than the smallest microscopic speck discernible to mankind. Where then does the man Jones come in? Secondly, HEAVEN VERSUS NIRVANA. 499 for purposes of answering prayer (as well for all purposes,) this Infinitude must be considered Unity, not Plurality; since otherwise ten thousand antagonistic prayers might be granted at once, to the undoing of the cosmos. "But answering a petition involves hearing it, considering it, granting it, and setting in motion the forces necessary to give it effect — in other words, it involves time. Now Jones' petition is urgent; five minutes' delay may mean death to him. Will the "allsoul" of the universe suspend attention from a million other petitions — to say nothing of temporarily dropping out of mind such trifles as a million solar systems just shaping out of chaos — to listen to a man whose cupidity, perhaps, made him tempt the blizzard? "But even though Infinitude could do such a thing, why should it do so? By the very conception of advanced Christianity, whatever of life is manifested in Jones, his horse, his cattle, and his orchard, is merely the fleeting incarnation of the indwelling life of the universe. What bond of love or solicitude can be imagined — between such a Creator and his creatures merely limitations of — himself that he, the Infinite, should bend down and heed the selfish crv of the finite? Why should it seem better to him for them to remain limited and finite than to be changed back to the unlimited and infinite? "But belief in an overruling Providence does not, as it may here be pointed out, result from a priori but from a posteriori reasoning — that is to say, from experience. 'Ask and ye shall receive,' made the promise seem reasonable by said the Savior, and this appeal to common sense: 'If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to them that ask ye, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him! And millions, testing the promise, have found it true." It is this strange fact which confronts us in a study of immortality: men's hearts beating loyal to a hope which their heads repudiate; beating loyal, that is to say, while the heart still dominates the life. But, alas, there comes a time when the beautiful vision fades away, and a hard, cold skepticism takes its place. Therein lies the pathos of it all. Is it possible, then, that truth can present such contradictions with itself? Paraphrasing the words of Herbert Spencer already quoted: "Let those who can, be.