Continuity and Survival

I

How far docs the past enter into and become and be part of the present? This query may be put as to the universe or as to the earth and all terrestrial nature. It may be put as to the human race or some portion of it. It may be put as to an individual.

If the past be divided into minute temporal cross sections, any present will consist almost entirely of its immediate past, and the preceding present likewise of its immediate past. But we know that changes have occurred and that the earth and all that lives upon it offer a different aspect from a hundred million years ago; also that the human race is not the same as it was in comparatively recent times, and that an individual alters every moment. It is an obvious inference that no past and present are the same; while, on the other hand, the close approximation of each momentary past to its directly succeeding present indicates a continuity of process from the remotest period. This continuity, as Whitehead urges, is carried into the future by the very nature — the creativity — of the present. That is to say, every present is an activity which presses forward into its immediate future: fastens the future to itself and to some extent determines what it is to be.

Can one segregate the past into currents of causative antecedents with respect to any given event? The ‘present’ of the universe has the whole inclusive past as its antecedent, and I see no objection to adding the word ‘causative.’ The present of our earth has for its past whatever the earth has been, and also whatever concurrent factors may have shaped it. These extend beyond the solar system through the stellar universe perhaps with diminishing cogency. The present of the human race upon the earth looks first to a phylogenetic past of men and organisms passing into man. But the effect of the whole terrestrial environment upon this course of evolution must be included, and the influence of the sun and of what stars besides. So the present of a living man, besides some confusedly discerned lines of ancestry, embraces as its past whatever helped to make those very numerous forbears what they were.

With the individual, as with the universe, it is the immediately antecedent phase that most completely corresponds with and constitutes his present, which in turn lays its tentacles upon the future close at hand. The individual’s past falls into divisions according to degrees of cogent and direct antecedence. Such divisions, however, are for convenience’s sake, and do not imply either essential difference or mutual exclusiveness. Many factors might fall in one division as well as another. I call them natural, historical, social, and individual. ‘Natural’ refers to the whole antecedent past, in the course of which some doubtful lines of ancient organisms evolved and developed until rudimentary men, and finally homo sapiens, emerged, with a human brain.

The historical past of the race, and so of our individual, is the last chapter of the story. Its brief course shows little physical change in man, but enormous cultural development. It is a tale of slow beginnings, and then of the checkered progress — or process — of civilization. Does the period indicate a growth of intrinsic mental faculty? ‘Intrinsic’ is the questionable word. The historical period brought incalculable experience to the race; and experience seems to turn to faculty, and thus become part of the most veritable mental growth we know of. Human life combines the mental with the physical. The historical period can hardly be denied its biologic effect upon mankind.

A third division of an individual’s total past is the ‘social’ — the constant effect upon him of the family, the tribe, the class group, or the more widely coördinated nation. Such influences affecting our individual are of historical growth and trail their antecedents. They are history in its present impact.

These natural, historical, and social factors, through which is cast the genesis of the individual, will not cease to work upon him through his life. Under their influence the resultant self will progress and grow, constantly absorbing its prior stages. One may think of this self as an association of the coöperating and mutually conditioning psychic and physical faculties forming the whole man. While it is not easy to imagine them functioning in one and the same act, they are connected and interdependent. All of them are disciplined by their prior activities. These prior activities enter into our faculties as elements of aptitude and growth, and also form an admonishing background for future conduct. Needless to say, this background is itself enfolded in an unlimited concourse of antecedents and concomitants. There is no discontinuity; an identity, or core of identity ever growing, maintains itself. Earlier stages are carried on within this process, which is an unbroken becoming — ein Werdendes.

II

Such a conception of a self follows the current views of nature, wherein science finds process and ever process, but makes no denial of a reality within the unceasing activities discerned. Be it far from me to deny a continuing reality within the living process making the man. It is hard to think of change without something that changes, of thought without a thinker, or of consciousness without a self. If I can find a physical or physiological continuity behind me, I am more directly assured of a continuing vital and spiritual oneness — that I am still the child, the youth, the man, that I have been. Thoughts and feelings which were me so ardently in my earlier life still work. They were my immediate experience and continue as elements in my faculties. They are more than memories. My parents’ care and love live still in me and my responsive love — a responsiveness which has been mine through life. I recognize the early curiosities roused by people and by whatever flew or ran or crawled. Love of nature’s beauties, her clouds and sunsets, her marvelous growths, was a passion that has never left me. I note my youthful impatience ever for wider ranges of study — it has always been my foible to seek to compass too much. My first attempts to formulate my ideas and the substance of my studies come back to me. These early essays are still me, and so are the books which followed on and on. The legal discipline involved in writing my Treatise on the Law of Private Corporations (18821884) continues. The convictions finding voice in Ancient Ideals (1886—1896) are still mine, merely modified in their concrete pointings. Nor have the efforts put into my later work lost their effect. These energies of thought and feeling were not merely experiences of the time, but were to prove lasting extensions of the mind.

There is passion in all intellectual labor. These books were not the fruit solely of mental effort and enlarging scholarly equipment. They issued from a purpose involving my whole nature. Religious faith was in them, and love of art, of every form of harmony perfected in power. My life helped to fashion them, a life which from boyhood always was in love with some living embodiment of loveliness.

The loves and griefs and eventual fulfillment of these elements of my nature were never, as it were, one part of me, while my work was another. Everything worked together to put life in my books and direct my more personal devotions. The gift of loving has never fallen from me, although modifying with the decades, like other natural powers.

The catholic effect of the general factors of human evolution enters the constitution of each individual; but, out of whatever matrix of causation he has sprung, he will carry on his individuality. Resulting from such a manifold of influence, his nature will hold a universality of effect, and will continue as a unified result of all the currents it absorbs. It will never be fully represented by any phase of thought or feeling. Yet its moving pivot will be the conscious nucleus set momentarily upon a present activity of experience.

The self holds types of character and feeling as well as ways of thought which become habits. An integrating force, when it exists, will be a central personal purpose, tending to become clearer and to broaden in requirement and scope. It may absorb the man’s entire facultative nature, make his conduct consistent, and give unity to his life.

Not every strong purpose is to be commended — not that of the miser or of the man who drives all things into the net of his personal aggrandizement. A criterion is needed, and perhaps may be found in the history of the human race. This offers various lessons, not easily reconciled. But it points to the building up of societies both as a fact accomplished and as an end to be desired — family, tribe, eventually nations. The last, with all their horrors, — call them shortcomings, — are the present obvious means of promoting the welfare of their millions. The purposes of individuals should be such as can be carried out with benefit, or without preponderating ill, to others. No individual can live by himself or for himself alone.

Thus the commendable purpose is one that may bring some spiritual or material good to others, in such way as to promote the harmonious conduct of society and make for reasonableness and persuasion. The dominance of these qualities over violence and compulsion is a goal not to be lost sight of, however remote or even impossible it seem. A purpose which even in some small particular may make for this should bring peace to him that holds it. Individuality is integrated and life gains oneness through a feeling of justification, however fragmentary or thwarted the actual accomplishment. The human accomplishment is in the endeavor itself, so far as concerns the man. His happiness will be to relate his will to a broader purpose compassing a universal goal. No harm can come to him as he realizes ‘that to them that love God all things work together for good ’ — the good which lies in love of the divine will.

III

Whether these thoughts belong to the argument for the continuity of the self from infancy to age, they fall in with any realization of the agencies involved in the making of man. Along with the pressure of all the elements of nature, effective and prophetic forms had continually come into action through the evolution of organisms and the final discipline and cultural growth of the historic centuries, when homo sapiens was entering upon his destiny. Throughout there had been progress from lower to more efficient organic forms, with a striking development (in the later geologic periods) of corporeal bases for psychic energies, all pointing to the growth of mind. It is fatuous to find merely materia] chance or material determinism where the total infinite process proclaims purpose, a purpose making for the increase of mental and emotional energy — a growth of mind or soul. The goal lies in the coming of spiritual harmonies to power and sovereignty. Human ideals have always acclaimed such, though animal rapacity keep the goal but a goal — a Kingdom of Heaven, as it were. The Kingdom of Heaven cannot be stormed; gentleness seems a likelier approach.

And now if it be true that purpose integrates an individual and maintains his identity, is it not clear that the working together of the causes that have produced him and set him on his way is reason enough why his own conscious purpose should conform to the immanent purpose of their action a purpose pushing ever to more articulate expression through the energies of organic life? Ardent and loving accord with that insistent and determining plan is the supreme and inclusive sanction of his conduct; within it there can be for him no failure.

If the world is atomic, its atoms are related in their action. In the sphere of life, organisms are the units. They are all individual and all mortal. But their conduct is concerned with other organisms and linked to the world at large. The counters with which organic creation makes its moves are mortal individuals.

Mortality is the keynote of life upon the earth. Instead of deploring the passing of individuals, better recognize this principle as the means by which human interest is constantly renewed. An endless life would weary of experiences apparently changing but generically recurrent. Young people maintain the zest. Organisms of mind and body are obviously unsuited to eternity. Be it given us to see this, even through tears of blinding grief.

But something may be saved; part of the perishing is but apparent. The yearnings and convictions of the ages have busied themselves imagining how this can be. Worlds of intangible spirits have been made, helpless, wretched spirits, and then immortal souls. In mortal life, mind usually is occupied with an obviously perishing body. This is so revolting that the mind devises ideal escapes, sets itself to thinking out (alas! so largely through material analogies) the immortal life of a disembodied soul, an anima separata. Is this whole tale a vast futility?

There are no isolated deeds, ‘dead and done with’ when once they have taken place. Every act has indefinite relations and unlimited repercussions. There is no end to any fact; such seems the dynamic make-up of the universe. The corpse of a man passes into untracked combinations. But organic evolution has clearer pointings, showing the continual emergence of psychic faculties in bodies better adapted to their exercises. The mental elements push forward, enlarging their scope and becoming more distinctive. They are still mainly occupied with the demands of the body. Yet in savagery as well as through civilization there will always be a remnant in whom the exercise of mind is of supreme value. Such men are intellectual lights to themselves and their spiritual kin. They advance religion, philosophy, ethics, science, and art. The course of organic evolution issuing in homo sapiens, followed by the tragically checkered history of civilization, looks to an eventual dominance of mind, and may justify the hope of a social state of sympathy and mutual understanding, friendship and love. These are not utterly visionary words for those who think in millennia rather than in centuries.

There is causal linkage between one stage of the universe and the next; likewise in a human society, where disorders as well as harmonies are carried on. The clearest survival value is with the latter. Without coördination and coöperation of elements within, and an adjustment with whatever impinges from without, the society will perish.

In the individual there is coöperation among bodily functions, and among apparently psychic qualities. The inner balance has also to relate itself to the physical and social environment, and work out this further adaptation. If the individual be thoughtful and contemplative, one whose mind pushes on to broader consideration, his mental peace will insist upon further ideal linkages and adjustments. He seeks a concord with the whole world and the power moving it. His emotional nature is involved in the urge to place himself within this ideal peace. He must endow its ordainer with those qualities which have spurred him on to long for it — will and purpose, beneficence and love. His own broadest impulse and purpose will be fixed in the love of God and the divine purpose. This is the supreme integrating power in an individual life. It maintains continuity and potently carries on. It is life’s consummation and its own reward in the bringing of blessedness. That which is at one with the divine has clearest survival value and the fairest prospect. The obvious fact that the composite organism has run its course need not weaken the conviction that what is fit to survive will not perish. The love of God may be saved in the Eternal Beloved.

IV

There is another way to these conclusions. Life has progressed upon the earth through the evolution of organisms moving toward a more complex efficiency. Mental advance is discerned with the growth of the instrumental bodily parts. In the later geologic periods this advance is so marked as to indicate that the end of organic evolution is the production of mind — which may be accepted as the purpose immanent throughout.

The living organism recoils from whatever threatens it with death or injury; the conscious part of this recoil is fear. But arc organisms, as we know them, the final end of the divine purpose? Can the life of mind, toward which they point, be fully realized in them? For example, is it possible for any society of men and women to attain the goal envisaged in their own highest ideals? The needs and passions of the body block the pat h, the grosser, grasping factors incarnate in the most intelligent and high-minded people. Rage, fighting, war, all manner of violence, are organic in our animal bodies, whatever power of mind t hey press into their service. Perhaps they can pass away only with the disruption of the animal body. Driven by material interests and impervious to the lessons of the World War, civilized nations are arming to the teeth against each other. And within each nation social groups struggle angrily for a larger share of wealth. Societies ruled by sweet reason and persuasion may not be merely remote but logically impossible for organisms whose bodily needs are unquenchable. I do not press this query, but turn from it to seek a clearer path through the emergent dissolution of the organism.

Well I know that this will bring us back to the immortal discussion of a soul logically and in reality capable of surviving the body. Biology and physics at present afford scant support for any such hypothesis. Modern psychology also goes into the negative scale. And the alleged communications with spirits of the dead are pitiable. I believe no message has ever come across the grave. Is there any direct evidence of the survival of the spiritual parts of human nature? The favoring arguments lack a tangible basis. They rest upon a sense of ideal proprieties. In this respect they resemble all those reasonings of the soul which are fashioned by desires or aspirations of the thinker’s nature. An outstanding example is the conception of the plenitude and continuity of the world — the chain of being — which from Plato’s time largely dominated the philosophical, religious, and poetic thought of western Europe.¹

Yet for our purpose such arguments have a negative and a positive justification. The negative lies in our ignorance of fundamental truths or principles. Despite actual and prospective triumphs, science continues to furnish only facts of the middle distances, nor does it promise the solution of any vital problem. We still speculate on fundamentals. The positive justification is in the principle that rational consideration holds the ultimate criterion of what is true or real for man. Intellectual consistency, thinkability, is the final test not only of belief, opinion, conviction, but of the acceptability of the facts of direct observation. To-day a task of physics is to set its results in mathematical equations.

So fundamental ignorance leaves room for speculation on some sort of psychic survival, of which the positive test will be its rational thinkability. I have no novel arguments to offer, and must admit that what are valid or hopeful proprieties to me may be vaporish to others. Psychic survival at all events brings no clear break in continuity, since the qualities fit to survive started with the organism’s birth, if not before. But, since fitness and general propriety are the pith of our argument, we may at once reject the survival claim of whatever is not fit. The lower animals are barred out, and even the hordes of men and women, so called, that have passed away or are now busied ignobly on the earth. Yet perhaps Dis aliter visum.

Some pages back I spoke of the indefinite mass of factors going into the making of a man and contributing to the self that asserts itself throughout his organic life — the total self, if that notion is permissible. This is the psycho-bodily self in full relationship with the sum of organic life, including the impulses of our physiological make-up. Such impulses, feelings, emotions, as well as the man’s more distinctly mental activity, all come under the changing focus of consciousness. It is not thinkable that this total organic self can survive the breakup of the body, or pass over as a whole into a disembodied or impersonal existence. And since consciousness, and indeed selfconsciousness, may focus upon each and any of these elements during organic life, one may assume some diminution of its range when loosed from the stimulations of the body in our supposed psychic survival. As those stimulations emphasized the sense of self, they tended to turn consciousness into self-consciousness.

On the other hand, the more distinctively mental faculties may be fully active with no consciousness of self. Unimpeded intellectual labor is conscious of its train of thinking, while thought of self is nonassertive, dim, or absent. Whatever may be the vital basis of such thinking, self-consciousness seems to have no part. Moreover, some of our noblest impulses, especially those not directly relating to our body or individual welfare, may be free from self-consciousness. They may temporarily rise to a pitch of selfless devotion to a cause or to another human being. Such unimpeded thinking or devoted conduct is happiness at the time, and comforts us in meditative recall.

Thus, while organic experience calls for some sort of basis in a self, self is forgotten as the mind becomes absorbed in creative thought or the contemplation of a mental panorama. Is it not conceivable that thought and contemplation may persist without consciousness of self when the mortal organism is dissolved? And even though animal impulses have ceased, possibly their effect may carry on in thoughts once springing from them. Our argument, whatever be its value, points to the conclusion that thought will be less impeded when the body’s strident claims, with their stirrings of self-consciousness, assert themselves no more. Thought will then become clearer, benevolent impulse more absolute, and the love of God take on a purer glow. Such is the thinkable result of emergent dissolution.