The Drama of Love and Death: A Study of Human Evolution and TransfigurationCarpenter, Edward
Philosophy
The Drama of Love and Death: A Study of Human Evolution and Transfiguration
Carpenter, Edward
Death; Love; Personality
Thus in entirely normal cases, both of animals and man, we should
conclude that the animal soul at the time of bodily death may return
perfectly calmly and naturally into its own roots (as fern-fronds die
back in winter), and the whole process may fulfil itself quite simply
and graciously and with a minimum of suffering. But this can only be
expected to happen in instances where instinctively (as in healthy
animals and primitive men) or intentionally (as among a few of mankind)
the perfect unity, physical and mental, of the organism has been
preserved. In such cases each desire and passion, standing in a close
and direct relationship to the spirit or self of the whole organism, is
easily and willingly indrawn again at the appointed time; and there is
little or no struggle or agony. But in the great masses of
mankind—especially in the domains of civilization—where this unity has
been lost, it is easily seen that many of the passional elements, loosed
from the true service of the informing spirit, carry on a mad and
violent career of their own; and to curb these or reduce them to orderly
acquiescence and subordination is almost impossible. On the contrary,
with the general weakening of the total organism they often break out
into greater activity. The ruling passions, “strong in death,” push
themselves to the fore and tyrannize over the failing or ageing man, and
render his actual dissolution stormy and painful; and not only so, but
they sometimes generate phantasmal embodiments of themselves which haunt
the dying man, or even become visible to outsiders.
Frederick Myers, dealing with this subject,[44] invents the term
_psychorrhagy_ for this tendency of portions of the _psyche_ under
certain conditions to break loose from the whole man; and thinks that
this process takes place not only at death, but that there are some folk
_born_ with what he calls a _psychorrhagic diathesis_, who are
consequently peculiarly apt for throwing off phantasms of one kind or
another. He says:[45]—“That which ‘breaks loose’ on my hypothesis is
not the whole principle of life in the organism; rather it is some
psychical element probably of very varying character, and definable
mainly by its power of producing a phantasm, perceptible by one or more
persons, in some portion or other of space. I hold that this
phantasmogenetic effect may be produced either on the mind, and
consequently on the brain of another person—in which case he may
discern the phantasm somewhere in his vicinity, according to his own
mental habit or prepossession—or else directly on a portion of space,
‘out in the open,’ in which case several persons may simultaneously
discern the phantasm in that actual spot.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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