Death and resurrection from the point of view of the cell-theoryBjörklund, Gustaf
Religion
Death and resurrection from the point of view of the cell-theory
Björklund, Gustaf
Biology; Future life
Such a position we occupy with regard to the beings called cells. From
the result of their activities we conclude that they, like men, are
endowed with aspirations capable of the highest conceivable evolution.
What economic necessities are to man, the arterial blood is to the cell.
The blood is an artificial product which nature no more gives to the
cell than it gives clothes, food, houses and the like to man. Nature
provides the raw material and cell and man alike must learn how to adapt
it for the necessities of life. This operation, however, involves great
difficulties. All such artificial products stand in inverse proportion
to the power of the individual. The more perfect they are the more
impossible it is for the individual to produce them. Only as citizens in
a community, that is, through organization, are the individuals able to
produce such products as exceed their isolated forces.
Although we cannot comprehend the inner life of the cell, nor the world
in which it dwells, we are able to judge, from the wonderful perfectness
of the organisms built by cells, that they have reached in their world
and measured by their power a higher state of development than man. It
is not only possible but highly probable that the human individuals will
sometime build an organism of the same perfectness, but as yet they have
not done so. The cells have long ago passed the stage of organization
that characterizes human society at present.
From the fact that the first purpose of every organic structure is to
serve the individuals of which it is composed, it follows that nobody,
except these same individuals, can build the organism in question.
Independently the cells build the human body here in time and they must
do the same in the future life. The organism cannot exist in other
surroundings than those for which its organs are adapted. But this
adaptation can only be effected by the individuals that form the building
material of the organs, because the organs just express their relations
to the world in which they exist. Thus it follows of necessity that man’s
resurrection or transition from one world to another must be identical
with the dying cells’ upbuilding of that organism which man shall possess
in a future life. Any other form of resurrection is neither possible nor
conceivable. It is further confirmed by the relation that exists between
the soul and the cells. This relationship, as we intend to show, is such
that the soul receives its entire individuality, all its forces and
faculties, from the cell-organism, the previous resurrection of which
therefore is an indispensable condition for man’s own rise to another
life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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