_DEATH AND RESURRECTION._ [Illustration: GUSTAF JOHAN BJÖRKLUND] Death and Resurrection FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE CELL-THEORY BY GUSTAF BJÖRKLUND Translated from the Swedish by J. E. FRIES Chicago THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY LONDON AGENTS KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRÜBNER & CO., LTD. 1910 Copyright by THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING CO. 1910 PUBLISHERS’ PREFACE. Never in the history of human thought has the interest in the soul and its immortality been greater and keener than now. The leading investigators of the Society of Psychical Research have taken up the problem of enquiring into the facts of spiritual experiences, telepathy, forebodings and kindred phenomena. The result has been rather negative, for, while we have received innumerable single facts, they all suffer from the common fault that they are too subjective in their nature to furnish a proof that could be objectively valid. Moreover, many reports come from witnesses whose mental constitution is under the suspicion of being pathological, and so their value is practically null. Of much greater importance would be an investigation as to the possibility of immortality on the basis of scientific data, but, strange to say, this method has been almost entirely lost sight of by leaders of the S. P. R. If we could form a definite theory as to the nature of the soul based on exact observation, we would be enabled, first, to explain man’s instinctive yearning for immortality; and, secondly, to form a definite idea of the condition of the soul after death. Thus we could exclude all the many mistakes which are now made, and which originate through an erroneous and partly superstitious notion of the relation of the dead to the living. The result is shown in the reports of the S. P. R., abounding in statements of ghost stories, which can be regarded only as a continuation of folk-lore. As a matter of fact, the work of the S. P. R. has so far provided very little help toward a better comprehension of immortality. Among the men who have done the work of a sympathetic reconstruction of the idea of immortality on the basis of science, there is to be mentioned, next to Fechner, Gustave Björklund, a Swedish scientist who is well known in his own country, but who has been almost entirely ignored in other lands. The obvious reason of this is the inaccessibility of his writings, which have not yet been translated into English.