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
The course of the argument has been somewhat as follows. In the first
place, we have urged the enormous possibilities (disclosed by modern
investigation) of other life than that which we know—thus enlarging the
bounds of the likely, and weakening the argument from improbability.
In the second place, we have pointed out that continuance of _memory_
seems the best test of survival; that even in our law courts (as in
a Tichborne case) it is not so much the facts of feature and form as
the facts of memory which are relied on to prove identity. Thirdly, we
have argued that not only the supraliminal but also the subliminal self
must be considered in this matter, and that probably the surviving self
will arise from a harmony or conjunction between these two. Fourthly,
we have shown that in respect of memory and many other matters the
subliminal self shows a quite remarkable activity even in the hour of
bodily death—which does not certainly suggest its decease and cessation
from existence. Fifthly, we have seen that all through life the soul
has faculties (of clairvoyance, transposition of senses, and so forth)
which point to its independence of the material body. Sixthly, that
through _love_ it reaches a deep conviction of its own duration beyond
the life of the body. And, seventhly, we have suggested that it is
largely through the supraliminal and self-conscious life that the
sense of identity and individuality is educed and finally established.
Proceeding, then, further along these lines, the next and obvious
question which arises is, In what sort of body is this continuing life
manifested? That it must be manifested in some sort of body is, I
think, clear. If we had only arrived at the conclusion that at death
the human being merged in the All-soul, or became an indistinguishable
portion of the ‘Happy Mass’—that his individual memory flowed out
into the great ocean of the world-memory and became lost in it, and
that his power of individual action or perception passed away in like
manner—why then the question of a continuing body could not well arise,
or at farthest stretch such body could only be thought of as something
indistinguishable from the entire universe. But if there is any truth
in the idea of an individual survival, then it seems clear that there
must be some kind of _form_, to mark the bounds of the individual, and
to give outline to his relations to other individuals—whether those
relations be active and invasive or passive and receptive; there must
be some surface of resistance and separation.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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