CHAPTER VIII.

THE

THE SUPERNATURAL.

'A thousand fantasies

Begin to throng into my memory

Of calling shapes, and beckoning shadows dire,

And airy tongues that syllable men's names.'-Comus.

HE belief in the supernatural, however it may be explained, or even be sought to be explained away, appears to be universal among mankind. In the discussions which it has elicited in special reference to the distinctive elements of humanity, the important distinction between actual beliefs and their definition has not always been kept in view. One of the difficulties assigned by Sir John Lubbock in arriving at any clear conception of the religious systems of strange races, is traced by him to 'a confusion between a belief in ghosts and that in an immortal spirit.' Captain Burton notes this nice distinction in reference to the negro, that he believes in a ghost, but not in spirit; in a present immaterial, but not in a future;' and the essential diversity of the two opinions is accordingly assumed. 'The spirit is not necessarily regarded as immortal because it does not perish with the body.' This seems an altogether artificial refinement, based on the dogmatic creeds and beliefs of comparatively modern centuries; and in which the real significance of this admitted belief in a human spirit, or soul, absolutely distinct from the body, and capable of surviving it, is slighted if not entirely ignored. If the spirit is believed

to survive after death, then any idea of its subsequent mortality can only be of a negative kind, the mere result of the incapacity to grasp with any clearness the idea of life immortal. In this respect it may aptly enough compare with our ideas on the limitation or infinity of space. M. Louis Figuier, who has undertaken, in his 'Day after Death,' to solve the mysteries of a future life, defines God as the Infinite in spirit, and the universe as the Infinite in extent; and then he locates this infinite God at the mathematical centre of the worlds which compose this infinite universe: which seems very much like undertaking to construct a circle which shall have no circumference, and yet finding for it a centre! The old doctrine of Anaximander of Miletus, whereby he accounted for the suspension of the earth in the centre of the universe, was that, being equidistant from the containing heaven in every direction, there was no reason why it should move in one direction rather than another. Anaxagoras modified this doctrine, and was accused of atheism, because of the physical explanations he assigned to celestial phenomena. The speculations of philosophy during all the later centuries have not achieved a solution of the problem of limited or unlimited space. Our ideas on such subjects are apt to vanish in the effort at definition, like cloud-castles when we attempt to draw them.

Religion and creed are by no means synonymous terms. The medieval controversies on the special nature and procession of the Holy Spirit, and the hopeless schism of the Eastern and Western Church represented by the single word Filioque, illustrate theological definitions forcing into concrete form such details of belief as no ordinary layman could define, or would probably recognise any necessity for defining, till challenged by the

exactions of ecclesiastical orthodoxy. The modern scientific inquirer is apt at times to be little less dogmatic in his demands for concrete forms of thought than the old theologian. Our elaborated and long-defined ideas of the human soul, a future state, life, immortality, and God, are not only placed alongside the crude, wholly undefined, instinctive beliefs of the savage as to the survival of the spirit or soul of man after death: but a logical consistency of detail is demanded in reference to opinions which have been accepted like any other intuitive belief. So long as the savage recognises an immaterial spirit distinct from the body, surviving its dissolution, and perpetuating the personality and individuality identified with it, the precise conception he forms as to the duration of this immaterial life is of secondary significance. Experience has nothing to teach him in reference to it. While the memory of the dead is fresh, the idea of the surviving spirit will be strongly impressed on the mind. But as the recollection of the deceased fades away, the conception of his immaterial life will grow correspondingly dim, until the two disappear together.

The clearly-defined belief in the life and immortality of the Christian creed is due to the teachings of Christ Himself, and to the doctrine educed and taught by its first preachers, as the great lesson of the resurrection. Sir John Lubbock, after affirming that 'the belief in an universal, independent, and endless existence is confined to the highest races,' quotes, in confirmation of the absence of any belief in a future state, a reported endeavour to enforce the acceptance of this doctrine on a savage. The instructor 'tried long and patiently to make a very intelligent docile Australian Black understand his existence without a body, but the Black never could keep his countenance, and generally made an

excuse to get away. One day the teacher watched, and found that he went to have a hearty fit of laughter at the absurdity of the idea of a man living and going about without arms, legs, or mouth to eat. For a long time he could not believe that the gentleman was serious, and when he did realise it, the more serious the teacher was the more ludicrous the whole affair appeared to the Black.' This narrative may perhaps fairly exhibit the actual condition of a savage mind to which the idea of life apart from bodily existence was absurd. But had the Australian been as subtle as Browning's Caliban, he might have appealed to good authority on the physical theory of another life,' and denied that the active existence of the soul is conceivable apart from some definite relation to space; or he might have demanded an explanation of St. Paul's statement concerning the spiritual body' of the resurrection. Possibly enough, however, the teacher presented ideas which, in the sense in which they were interpreted by the poor Australian, were wholly ludicrous; while, all the time, he held to the belief of his people in an immaterial life after death. The Swedenborgian ideal of a future state is to some minds so gross as to excite ridicule. their mirth, however unseemly, would be very falsely construed into laughter at the supposed absurdity of all belief in a life beyond the grave. There is only too apt a tendency to treat any incomprehensible faith as folly. The doctrine of transubstantiation, or the real presence, appears to thousands not only untenable, but absurd; to thousands more its denial is blasphemy and sheer atheism. The scientific sceptic who laughs at spiritrapping and other kindred follies, exposes himself to denunciation as an infidel materialist. In truth the actual beliefs of the majority of men scarcely admit of

But

logical analysis; and the 'foolishness' of the belief in a future life is neither confined to savages, nor to modern discovery.

In his poem of 'Cleon,' Browning has embodied, in the form of a letter from the Greek poet to his friend Protos, the longings of a pagan Greek of the first century for some revelation of that very immortality which, when presented as the doctrine of the resurrection, he rejects as folly. Reminded that he shall live as a poet, in the immortality of his verse, Cleon repels such consolation as a vain deception of mere words. As his soul becomes intensified in power and insight, the increasing weight of years warns him of life's close :

6

:

When all my works wherein I prove my worth,
Being present still to mock me in men's mouths,
Alive still, in the phrase of such as thou,
I-1, the feeling, thinking, acting man,
The man who loved his life so over much,
Shall sleep in my urn. It is so horrible,
I dare at times imagine to my need
Some future state revealed to us by Zeus,
Unlimited in capability

For joy, as this is in desire for joy,

To seek which, the joy-hunger forces us.

That, stung by straightness of our life made straight,

On purpose to make sweet the life at large

Freed by the throbbing impulse we call death,

We burst there as the worm into the fly,

Who while a worm still, wants his wings. But, no!

Zeus has not yet revealed it; and alas!

He must have done so, were it possible!'

But Cleon, having thus given utterance to the earnest longings of a vain desire, adds a postscript on some trivial matters. The messenger of his correspondent, as it seems, is the bearer of a letter from him to one called Paulus, a barbarian Jew, who has much to say about one. 'Christus' and this very immortality of which the poet