J ; 
 t . 
 1 
 
 x 
 
 HHHBBM 
 
 IH^^HHHiH 
 
 ,:   
 
 1 
 
 PJ 
 
 DEATH 
 
 RESURr 
 
 RECTION 
 
 BJoRKLUND 
 

 
 UN IVE«SK* of
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, oM DIEGO 
 
 LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA 3 £ *Vf<X~
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.
 
 GUSTAF JOHAN BJORKLUND
 
 Death and Resurrection 
 
 FROM THE POINT OF VIEW 
 OF THE CELL-THEORY 
 
 BY 
 
 GUSTAF BJORKLUND 
 
 Translated from the Swedish by 
 J. E. FRIES 
 
 Cbiciflo 
 THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 LONDON AGENTS 
 
 Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner &Co., Ltd. 
 19 10
 
 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 in- 
 vestigators of the Society of Psychical 
 Research have taken up the problem of 
 enquiring into the facts of spiritual ex- 
 periences, 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 object- 
 ively valid. Moreover, many reports 
 come from witnesses whose mental con- 
 stitution is under the suspicion of being 
 pathological, and so their value is prac- 
 tically null.
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 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 immor- 
 tality; 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 errone- 
 ous 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 im- 
 mortality. 
 
 Among the men who have done the
 
 PREFACE. ix 
 
 work of a sympathetic reconstruction of 
 the idea of immortality on the basis of 
 science, there is to be mentioned, next 
 to Fechner, Gustave Bjorklund, a Swed- 
 ish scientist who is well known in his 
 own country, but who has been almost 
 entirely ignored in other lands. The ob- 
 vious reason of this is the inaccessibil- 
 ity of his writings, which have not yet 
 been translated into English. 
 
 We do not believe Bjorklund's solu- 
 tion is the right one, but we do be- 
 lieve that he has made a contribution 
 to the philosophy of religion which 
 ought not to be ignored. His case is 
 similar to Fechner's. We have pub- 
 lished Fechner's book On Life After 
 Death and we are glad to present the 
 views of Bjorklund on Death and Resur- 
 rection. 
 
 Dr. Carus has sketched his views re- 
 peatedly in The Soul of Man, in Whence 
 and Whither, and two articles published 
 in The Monist, with special reference 
 to Fechner. They show also why 
 Bjorklund's belief is unacceptable.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Nevertheless we publish Bjorklund's 
 book because we heartily sympathize 
 with his endeavor to justify those senti- 
 ments which instinctively point out that 
 death is not a finality, and that the pur- 
 pose of life is not limited to the span of 
 our days between the cradle and the 
 grave, but that it has a further and 
 fuller significance. 
 
 We hope that Bjorklund's book will 
 be welcomed as the contribution of an 
 earnest and prominent scientific think- 
 er on the important question, "If a man 
 die, shall he live again?" 
 
 THE PUBLISHERS.
 
 TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 JOHAN GUSTAF BJORKLUND was 
 born the tenth of November, in the 
 year 1846. His parents were farmers 
 in very small circumstances. His father 
 seems to have been endowed with a 
 good business head and, ultimately, be- 
 came a real estate owner on a small 
 scale, first in one city and then in Up- 
 sala, the principal university town of 
 Sweden. Poverty was familiar to 
 Bjorklund throughout his life. Doubt- 
 
 For the biographical data of Bjorklund's life 
 I am indebted to S. A. Fries, D. D., well known 
 in continental theological circles as a scientist 
 of rank and founder of the international Con- 
 gresses in the interest of the History of Relig- 
 ion. (See Theologische Literatur Kalender 
 1906; Wer ist's? 1908.) Dr. Fries, who is one 
 of the leading ministers in Stockholm, has done 
 more in speech and print than anybody else to 
 introduce Bjorklund to the reading public.
 
 xii PREFACE. 
 
 less one reason for this was that his 
 consuming interest in sociology and 
 philosophy prevented him from taking 
 those higher examinations, which in 
 Sweden are indispensable for obtain- 
 ing any official position. He studied, 
 however, for several years at the Uni- 
 versity of Upsala, but followed no 
 recognized course, and it was only be- 
 cause of the ardent persuasion of his 
 friends that he took a degree as B. A. 
 
 In 1884, Bjorklund moved to Stock- 
 holm, where he remained until his death, 
 in 1903. At the University of Stock- 
 holm, he took the courses in biology and 
 natural science, and won for himself the 
 admiration and lasting friendship of 
 many of the professors of that institu- 
 tion. During this time he mainly sup- 
 ported himself by teaching philosophy, 
 and among other pupils, afterward re- 
 nowned, was Ellen Key, the well-known 
 Swedish writer on sociology and the 
 woman question. The most absorbing 
 interests during this period were, how- 
 ever, sociology and the peace movement.
 
 PREFACE. xiil 
 
 To broaden his views and study social 
 conditions in general, Bjorklund under- 
 took several protracted journeys to Eng- 
 land, Germany, Belgium, and France. 
 From 1887, Bjorklund began to pub- 
 lish the fruits of his untiring labor. His 
 first work was, "The Fusion of the Na- 
 tions." In that, as in "The Anarchy of 
 Evolution" and "Peace and Disarma- 
 ment," Bjorklund throws his over- 
 whelmingly convincing statistical re- 
 sources and solid scientific learning in 
 favor of an ultimate universal, but more 
 especially European union of the na- 
 tions. Toward this goal it is necessary 
 to steer, according to Bjorklund, if a 
 general "Anarchy of Evolution" is to be 
 avoided; for that is the condition that 
 will prevail, if the state neglects to 
 carry out an organization of society that 
 shall keep step with the degree of ma- 
 terial culture reached. "Because dur- 
 ing the most profound peace, a nation 
 suffers from its own army the same im- 
 peding influences that in time of war is 
 due to the hostile army."
 
 xiv PREFACE. 
 
 The last mentioned book, "Peace and 
 Disarmament," at once made Bjorklund 
 famous. It was translated into French, 
 German, English, Polish, Dutch, Hun- 
 garian and several other languages, and 
 would no doubt have brought its author 
 a Nobel prize, had it appeared fifteen 
 years later. Bjorklund was now elected 
 an honorary member of the Swedish 
 Peace Society. At the Peace Congress 
 in Bern (1892) his treatise, "The Armed 
 Peace," was distributed in English, Ger- 
 man and French, and the Italian Soci- 
 ety, "Unione Operaia Umberto I," sub- 
 sequently elected him an honorary mem- 
 ber. 
 
 In his later years Bjorklund devoted 
 less time to active work in the universal 
 peace movement. He became more ab- 
 sorbed in scientific research and the 
 problems of philosophy. An important 
 impulse to his later development, he re- 
 ceived from a book, "Significance of Seg- 
 mentation in the Organic World" (Stock- 
 holm, 1890). Here he was brought to 
 serious consideration of the nature of
 
 PREFACE. xv 
 
 the cell and of its place in life. In the 
 organization of the cells in a human 
 body Bjdrklund saw an example of a 
 universal law, governing all life. With 
 this thought as a starting point, he un- 
 dertook to investigate the problem, all- 
 important to his philosophy, of the 
 awakening of self-consciousness in a 
 cell-organization and the relationship 
 between this newborn ego and the cells 
 themselves, each of which, to a certain 
 degree, leads an independent life. 
 
 The result of his studies was first 
 made known in 1894 in a treatise, "The 
 Relation Between Soul and Body from 
 a Cytologic Point of View." In the year 
 1900, he published the volume herewith 
 presented to the American public, in 
 which he has partly rewritten the for- 
 mer book, and further added his latest 
 conceptions of the nature and evolution 
 of life. 
 
 This work is undoubtedly one of Swe- 
 den's most remarkable and interesting 
 contributions to contemporary philoso- 
 phy. It is also the last work from Gus-
 
 xvl PREFACE. 
 
 taf Bjorklund's hand. In July, 1903, his 
 earthly existence was brought to an 
 end, and he was "fully translated" to 
 that spiritual world, the existence of 
 which he was so thoroughly convinced 
 
 It is true that the philosophical struc- 
 ture that Bjorklund so successfully com- 
 menced to upbuild is far from complete. 
 But the basis he laid is solid and will 
 serve as a foundation for many temples 
 of the future, whether they who worship 
 therein believe in Bjorklund's God or 
 not. 
 
 This foundation is the fact over- 
 whelmingly proved by Bjorklund, that 
 life is not a quality in matter or phys- 
 ical force, but must be of immaterial or- 
 igin and substance. Granting that time 
 as well as space are forms in which mat- 
 ter and physical force are comprehend- 
 ed by man on his earthly stage of con- 
 sciousness, Bjorklund has also demon- 
 strated the immortality of life. For if 
 life be a reality, which is not here de- 
 nied, with no roots in matter or physical
 
 PREFACE. xvii 
 
 force, whether these are identical or not, 
 this reality exists outside of the forms, 
 time and space, in which matter ap- 
 pears. But whether matter and phys- 
 ical force exist per se, or are mere tran- 
 sient phenomena or what their origin 
 and purpose is, these are questions that 
 Bjorklund never was granted the time 
 to discuss. 
 
 Bjorklund's grand conception of the 
 relationship between all living beings 
 and their organic upbuilding of larger 
 conscious units, where each individual 
 of higher order is the sum total of all 
 its constituent members of lower or- 
 der, is certainly a most helpful and 
 inspiring addition to our theory of 
 evolution. 
 
 But the question why an evolution is 
 necessary at all for beings that are con- 
 stituent members in The Perfect Being, 
 is hardly satisfactorily answered by 
 Bjorklund. His ingenious explanation, 
 fully presented toward the end of this 
 volume, still leaves us in a dilemma. 
 Bjorklund holds that Perfect Love has
 
 xviii PREFACE. 
 
 left it to time-existent beings to become 
 of Free Will what they of eternity have 
 been to the All-Spirit; much as a child, 
 unless considered merely a mechan- 
 ical toy, must of free will, grow into 
 the man that his father preconceived 
 and all the time sees in it. But 
 even so we are left between Scylla 
 and Charybdis, for either this evolu- 
 tion has a purpose, which must be 
 reached outside of time — that is, it will 
 come to a standstill; an ending in 
 Nirvana — or else evolution is ever- 
 lasting, without final purpose, and its 
 proper name — delusion. Again the 
 time-bound mind meets in this, as 
 well as in every ethical or metaphysical 
 problem, if it be pushed to its ultimate 
 consequences, the same conflict or irra- 
 tionality that is destined to baffle the 
 space-bound man, whether his micro- 
 scope is restlessly at work to solve the 
 riddle of the divisibility of matter, or 
 his telescope sweeps the heavens in a 
 vain search for the utmost star. This 
 irrationality, that everywhere surrounds
 
 PREFACE. xix 
 
 us, is a chasm that only religion can 
 bridge. From a philosophical point of 
 view, therefore, we must be satisfied if 
 our workable hypotheses in philosophy 
 and in natural science do not contradict 
 each other; and Gustaf Bjorklund has 
 shown us a road to reconciliation be- 
 tween idealism and natural science, that 
 for a long time seemed entirely lost in 
 the jungle of the materialism of the last 
 century. ^ E< FRIES .
 
 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Old Conceptions of a Future Life 1 
 
 Man's Spiritual Body 26 
 
 Source of Spiritual Knowledge 37 
 
 Importance of Spontaneous Generation 51 
 
 Materialistic Demonstration of Spontaneous 
 
 Generation 67 
 
 How Is Organic Matter Produced? 87 
 
 Organic Matter as a Product of Art 107 
 
 The Soul and the Cells 124 
 
 Fundamental Qualities of an Organism 138 
 
 Organic Relationship Between the Soul and the 
 
 Cells 147 
 
 Resurrection 166 
 
 Man and Infinity 174 
 
 Recapitulation 188
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION.
 
 All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
 Whose body Nature is, and God the soul; 
 
 All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee; 
 
 All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see; 
 
 And spite of Pride, in erring Reason's spite, 
 One truth is clear, Whatever is is Right. 
 
 — Alex. Pope. 
 Essay on Man, Epistle I.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 Old Conceptions of a Future Life. 
 
 A CONSCIOUSNESS of immortality, 
 sometimes dim and vague, some- 
 times vivid and clear, seems to be char- 
 acteristic of the human race. However 
 low man may stand he cannot consider 
 death to be the end of his existence. 
 The conviction that he is immortal is 
 innate to him. Annihilation is con- 
 trary to the nature and demands of 
 his spirit. It is true that uncertainty 
 and doubt might arise, but man will 
 never be able wholly to uproot either 
 hope or fear as to the possibility of a 
 future life. 
 
 Experiencing such feelings and pre- 
 sentiments, man finds himself amidst a 
 world where death and dissolution ev- 
 erywhere surround him. He sees the
 
 2 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 objects of his love or fear pass away, 
 and he knows that sooner or later the 
 same fate will befall himself. When he 
 beholds the lifeless body of some near 
 relative, his presentiment of immortal- 
 ity tells him that the selfsame soul 
 that once animated that body is still 
 alive. In such moments even the man 
 of low cultivation is forced into more 
 or less profound contemplation. The 
 following reflection impresses itself 
 with might and wonder upon him: "I 
 feel convinced that the dead is living, 
 but how can he live without his body 
 and what form does his new life take?" 
 
 In all ages and stages, men have 
 asked the same or similar questions, 
 and they will go on asking them as 
 long as belief in a future life obtains. 
 
 But man does not confine himself to 
 questioning, he wants answers, and es- 
 pecially must this be true where the re- 
 ply is so intimately connected with 
 himself. And these answers have not 
 been lacking; we find them formulated 
 in those opinions and theories respect-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 ing a future life which throughout the 
 ages have gradually appeared and pre- 
 vailed. 
 
 The critically thinking public of the 
 present day takes a decidedly skeptical 
 attitude toward all these theories. They 
 assert, and not without strong argu- 
 ments, that it is impossible to know 
 anything. But, however convinced the 
 public may be of the fruitlessness of 
 discussing the topic, no one will suc- 
 ceed in pushing it entirely aside. Time 
 and again the same questions reappear 
 as dark and threatening clouds on the 
 horizon of our consciousness; they oc- 
 cupy our thoughts, take hold upon our 
 feelings and color our sentiments. It 
 would undoubtedly be sufficient at such 
 moments to have, were it only one 
 fixed point to stand upon; one estab- 
 lished fact to start from and which we 
 could trust would lead our thoughts 
 in the right direction. But such a 
 basis to set out from we have not 
 hitherto been able to find. Will this 
 remain the case forever? Will science
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 concerning a future life always fail to 
 attain aught but negative results? Let 
 us say at once that humanity will 
 probably be able to ascertain as much 
 as it may be necessary or useful for us 
 to know in this world. This hope is 
 founded on our firm belief that at this 
 time a basis such as that above men- 
 tioned really exists. Natural science 
 has furnished this basis, though no- 
 body as yet has happened to reflect 
 that the facts upon which this basis 
 rests may have any bearing upon our 
 attitude toward a future life, much less 
 give answer to questions such as the 
 following: How, and in what way, is 
 man to pass from this life into another? 
 
 It will be the object of the following 
 pages, then, to develop further the view 
 just intimated. 
 
 In prehistoric times men believed in 
 a close relationship between the soul of 
 the deceased and his body in the grave, 
 and this purely instinctive faith is the 
 more remarkable, as it prevailed during 
 stages of civilization when differentia-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 tion between spiritual qualities and 
 physical matter was almost unknown. 
 
 The contradistinction between soul 
 and body is certainly a fact, a general 
 experience. But neither the individual 
 nor the race realizes this fact suddenly 
 or all at once. The knowledge of the 
 distinction between the physical and 
 the spiritual sphere, with their differ- 
 ent characteristics and qualities, pro- 
 ceeds step by step, being the result of 
 slowly advancing evolution. 
 
 The child and the savage remain un- 
 conscious of any discrimination be- 
 tween soul and body, and even for the 
 more cultivated man, the border be- 
 tween the two is vague and undeter- 
 mined. According to the psychologic 
 order of man's evolution we might 
 therefore expect that the problem as 
 to this relationship would appear at a 
 comparatively late date, and even then 
 be of importance only to a reduced 
 number of more cultivated individuals. 
 But, on the contrary, experience shows 
 that this question occupies the thoughts
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 of men in very low stages of civiliza- 
 tion, and, in fact, that it is of the most 
 general interest. 
 
 The reason for this evidently lies in 
 the instinctive belief that the body con- 
 tains something which is immortal, and 
 which in the life hereafter the soul can- 
 not dispense with. 
 
 In its first historic form the ques- 
 tion concerning the soul's relation to 
 the body deals with this relation after, 
 not before, the separation of the soul 
 and body. This latter problem emerges 
 only in very high stages of civilization, 
 and even then is of scientific interest 
 to an insignificant minority only, while 
 the question of our existence after 
 death is religious in its nature and of 
 interest to all. 
 
 In olden times men were more fully 
 convinced of a continued personal ex- 
 istence after death than civilized man- 
 kind seems to be nowadays. The same 
 vivid conviction we find even in our 
 age among people in the natural state, 
 From the prehistoric peoples we have
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 7 
 
 no written communication, but from 
 their graves they speak to the present 
 day intelligibly and plainly of their be- 
 lief in a life to come. Behold the mon- 
 uments defying time and decay, which 
 these people have erected in memory of 
 their deceased. The sepulchres of the 
 Egyptian kings to this very day arouse 
 our amazement and admiration. 
 
 What was it, then, that induced 
 these peoples of early times to bestow 
 such extraordinary labor on the places 
 of their last rest? It certainly was 
 their belief that the graves contained 
 not only the lifeless body, but also the 
 living soul. The funeral ceremonies 
 evidently show, as Fustel de Coulanges 
 says, that when the body was laid in 
 the grave it was thought that some- 
 thing yet alive was placed there at the 
 same time. The soul was born simul- 
 taneously with the body; death did not 
 separate them; they were both enclosed 
 together in the grave. In olden times 
 people felt so fully assured that a man 
 lived in the tomb, that they never
 
 8 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 failed to bury with him the things of 
 which he was thought to be in want. 
 They poured wine on the grave in or- 
 der to quench his thirst; they brought 
 food to his tomb in order to appease his 
 hunger; they killed horses and slaves, 
 believing that, if enclosed with the 
 dead, these would serve him in his 
 grave as they had served him during 
 his life. 
 
 It was also in this conviction that 
 the positive duty of burying the de- 
 ceased originated. In order to bring 
 rest to the soul in the subterranean 
 dwelling that fitted its new existence, 
 it was necessary that the body, to 
 which, in some way or another, it still 
 clung, should be covered with earth. 
 The soul, denied a grave, had no dwell- 
 ing. Drifting about, it sought in vain 
 the desired rest after life's fitful strug- 
 gle. Without shelter, without offerings 
 or food, it was condemned to everlast- 
 ing wandering. Therefore, because the 
 deceased was unhappyj he became ill- 
 natured. He tormented the living; sent
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 them diseases; destroyed their har- 
 vests ; haunted them in uncanny visions 
 in order to remind them of their duty 
 to bury the body and thereby secure 
 peace for himself. 
 
 The old authors give evidence of the 
 degree to which people were vexed by 
 fear that proper ceremonies would not 
 be observed at their burial. It was a 
 constant source of grievous irritation. 
 The fear of death was less prevalent 
 than the fear of being left unburied. 
 Naturally so, for it was a question of 
 eternal happiness. It should therefore 
 not surprise us so much when we see 
 the Athenians execute generals, who, 
 after a naval victory, had neglected to 
 bury the fallen. These generals, dis- 
 ciples of the philosophers of their time, 
 did not believe that the fate of the soul 
 was dependent on that of the body. 
 They had therefore decided not to chah 
 lenge the tempest for the empty for- 
 mality of gathering and burying the 
 fallen. But the masses, even in en- 
 lightened Athens, still clung to the old
 
 10 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 conceptions, and accused the generals 
 of godlessness, sentencing them to 
 death. By their victory they had saved 
 Athens, but by their negligence they 
 had brought perdition upon thousands 
 of souls. "These conceptions," says 
 Fustel de Coulanges, "have governed 
 man and society through many genera- 
 tions, and have been the source from 
 which the larger part of ancient do- 
 mestic and public institutions were de- 
 rived." 
 
 But this is not all. The primitive 
 ideas, referred to above, obtain even 
 today among various nations and tribes 
 all over the earth. From the islands 
 in the Pacific Ocean all the way up to 
 the Polar regions we meet with the 
 same creeds among uncivilized peoples, 
 the same or similar manner of burial 
 as among the ancients. 
 
 If we were going to illustrate this, 
 the Chinese probably would be the first 
 to attract our attention, not only be- 
 cause of the antiquity of their civiliza- 
 tion, but because of their great num-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 11 
 
 bers. As is well known, a third part of 
 the world's population is Chinese. 
 Most of the characteristic peculiarities 
 of this enormous community must be 
 attributed to their death-cultus. 
 
 Every family in China lives in con- 
 tinuous communication with its an- 
 cestors, upon whom are bestowed offer- 
 ings of fruit, grain, rice or vegetables, 
 according to the products of the soil 
 of their home. The soul will lose none 
 of its qualities through the separation 
 from the body. In company with other 
 souls of their kindred it hovers over 
 the family, partakes of their sufferings, 
 rejoices in their happiness. If forgot- 
 ten, it grows melancholy and ill-na- 
 tured, it complains in doleful voice and 
 its moans are ominous. Woe unto him 
 who ignores these obligations. The of- 
 ferings to the souls of his forefathers 
 must not be neglected. Their memory 
 must not be allowed to fade away. But 
 who is going to attend to these sacri- 
 fices and memorial observances if the 
 family dies out? Matrimony, therefore,
 
 12 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 becomes a sacred duty, tbe foremost of 
 all duties. 
 
 To the Chinese mind there is no 
 grievance greater, no punishment more 
 terrible, than expulsion from the fam- 
 ily. What would become of a man's 
 soul if his nearest of kin would curse 
 his memory? To rid himself of such 
 a sickening dream he is ready to sacri- 
 fice everything, even life itself. But 
 only when the body is brought to rest 
 in the family grave can the soul enjoy 
 the care of its kindred. It is obvious, 
 then, that emigration is looked upon 
 with great apprehension by the faith- 
 ful Chinaman. He must either return 
 home during his life or else arrange 
 that his body be brought back if death 
 should overtake him while abroad. We 
 know that the big transoceanic steam- 
 ship companies faithfully carry out this 
 part of their contracts with those of 
 their Chinese passengers who meet 
 with unexpected death in America. 
 
 Similar ideas are to be found among 
 the negroes of Africa and Australia,
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 13 
 
 and among the Indian tribes of Amer- 
 ica. These also supply their deceased 
 with such tools and provisions as they 
 are supposed to need in another world. 
 
 Among the Arctic peoples the same 
 customs and usages prevail. When an 
 Eskimo is about to die, he is dressed in 
 his best clothes and his knees are 
 drawn up under him. The grave is 
 lined inside with moss and a skin, over 
 which stones and peat are spread. If 
 the dead is a man, his boat, weapons 
 and tools are laid beside the grave; 
 if a woman, her knife and sewing uten- 
 sils; if it is a child, the head of a dog 
 is placed on top of the grave, that the 
 soul of the dog may show the helpless 
 child a road to the second life. If a 
 mother dies while nursing a babe, it 
 is, as a rule, buried alive with her. 
 
 In a Samoyede grave, Nordenskold 
 found among other things parts of an 
 iron pot, an ax, a knife, a drill, a bow, 
 a wooden arrow, some copper orna- 
 ments, etc. Even rolls of birch bark 
 were found in the coffin, in all proba-
 
 14 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 bility to be used for making fire in an- 
 other world. Beside the grave a sleigh 
 was placed upside down, evidently in 
 order to provide a vehicle for the de- 
 ceased, and we may assume that rein- 
 deers were slaughtered at the funeral. 
 
 The essentia], fundamental thought 
 in this conception which causes the un- 
 cultivated peoples in our days to treat 
 their deceased in the same way as the 
 ancients did, is the belief that the body 
 contains something which the soul can- 
 not do without in the future life. Soul 
 and body are and remain a unit even 
 beyond the grave. As death means a 
 violent tearing apart of these two fac- 
 tors, the soul cannot be wholly satis- 
 fied without its natural relationship to 
 the body. 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that to the 
 ancient world life in the lower regions 
 seemed dismal and repulsive. Achilles 
 would rather be a day-laborer on earth 
 than king of the hosts in Hades. Life 
 there passed in a shadowy inactivity 
 amidst all wealth, a desolate emptiness
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 15 
 
 in all superfluity, so that the soul could 
 not help but suffer a ceaseless regret 
 whether it moved in the halls of Val- 
 halla or in the Elysian fields. Glori- 
 ous meadows, crystal waters, streams 
 of milk and honey, could not obliterate 
 the craving of the soul for its corporeal 
 existence. It returns time and again 
 to the body in the grave to enjoy the 
 sacrifices and cares of the surviving. 
 This mourning for the body and con- 
 tinuous longing for the sunny life on 
 earth made death seem something ter- 
 rible that fretted and tormented men. 
 Was it not natural, then, that the men- 
 tal disharmony caused by the thought 
 of death, should sooner or later bring 
 about a reaction; give birth to the hope 
 of a reunion of the soul with the body 
 on a resurrection dav of the dead? At 
 
 m 
 
 some such conclusion several religions 
 have arrived. We need mention only 
 the Norse sagas, Islam, Parseeism and 
 Judaism. A resurrection, everywhere 
 tnught in almost identical terms, is 
 placed at the end of the present system
 
 16 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 of the world in connection with a cos- 
 mic catastrophe out of which new 
 heavens and a new earth with an en- 
 nobled humanity will emerge. 
 
 The bodily resurrection on the day of 
 judgment is a doctrine also in the 
 Christian faith, as it is interpreted by 
 the orthodox creeds. But this dogma 
 has entirely lost its former authority. 
 It is repeated at each Church burial, 
 but the reading has now become a 
 mere formality. We do not believe any 
 more in a resurrection in the old sense. 
 
 What factor in our time has been 
 sufficiently powerful to overturn con- 
 ceptions so deeply rooted in human 
 nature? It is the scientific spirit as 
 acknowledged even by faithful theo- 
 logians. Science has shown that man's 
 body is renewed several times during 
 life and that even the bones, placed in 
 the grave, soon "arise" through na- 
 ture's forces themselves and take part 
 again in the universal circulation of 
 matter. In face of all the evidence for 
 this truth, it is impossible to believe
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 17 
 
 in the old doctrine of a physical resur- 
 rection. 
 
 Another question is, whether this 
 ancient belief could disappear without 
 leaving traces in contemporary con- 
 sciousness. Can man have changed so 
 radically in a century, or rather in a 
 few decades, that the conviction of the 
 body's importance to the soul after 
 death will no longer find an echo in 
 his religious instincts? By no means. 
 We are the same human beings and 
 have the same human nature as our 
 forefathers. Forms of conception may 
 go, but not the instincts to which they 
 once gave a satisfactory expression. 
 
 We may therefore rest assured that 
 the important change of attitude in 
 this question forcefully reacts on re- 
 ligious life in our day. The reaction 
 does not necessarily mean progress at 
 first. Evolution does not follow a 
 straight line; a step forward is gener- 
 ally immediately followed by phenom- 
 ena in the opposite direction. 
 
 The religious instincts, underlying
 
 18 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 the conception of the body's impor- 
 tance to the soul in a future life, must 
 create new expressions, and the logic 
 of the old conceptions themselves in- 
 dicates what forms they would take. 
 
 When the belief in a restoration of 
 the union between the two factors in 
 a human being was suddenly and al- 
 most violently shaken by natural sci- 
 ence, there seemed at first no other 
 way out of the difficulty than to choose 
 between them and declare either the 
 soul or the body as the essential part. 
 
 Those who felt inclined toward the 
 former alternative evidently found 
 themselves confined to a one-sided 
 idealism of little vitality, because an 
 existence without body seems as 
 shadowy and unsatisfactory to man in 
 the present as in ancient times. An 
 increasing weakening of the intensity 
 of religious life would be the natural 
 consequence. 
 
 Those again who, because of a more 
 realistic tendency, insisted upon the es- 
 sentiality of our body, were logically
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 19 
 
 driven to a gross materialism. If sci- 
 ence had proved that the belief in a 
 bodily resurrection is untenable, why 
 should it not be able to demonstrate 
 that all religious doctrines were delu- 
 sions? This reasoning seemed to many 
 so natural that many scientific facts 
 contributed evidence in their favor 
 even when these facts pointed entirely 
 in the opposite direction. 
 
 There was, however, no necessity to 
 think and reason as these two main 
 schools in our age have done. One 
 might also from the beginning, have 
 taken the same road and arrived at the 
 same conclusion as, for instance, Gran- 
 felt in his "Christian Dogmatic." "It 
 has been demonstrated beyond doubt 
 by natural science," says this prominent 
 theologian, "that the matter of a human 
 body is, even here on earth, in continu- 
 ous circulation, so that in the course of 
 a few weeks all atoms of the whole 
 body are replaced by new atoms. The 
 only lasting attribute of the soul dur- 
 ing this process is the spiritual body,
 
 20 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 which assimilates, typically forms, and 
 again secretes the earthly matter. It 
 must be this spiritual body, then, that 
 constitutes the combining element be- 
 tween man's earthly body and his glori- 
 fied body in the eternal life." 
 
 Christianity speaks not only of a ma- 
 terial resurrection on the day of judg- 
 ment; it also says that man possesses 
 within him a spiritual body, which 
 after death immediately arises to ever- 
 lasting life. This latter conception is 
 not confined to Christianity. In all re- 
 ligions w r e find two tendencies side by 
 side, the one idealistic and the other 
 more realistic, which indeed are not 
 really opposed to each other, inasmuch 
 as the belief in a spiritual body may 
 be said to constitute the basis even for 
 the realistic conception that places the 
 spirit in co-relation with the body in 
 the grave. 
 
 The idealistic tendency may be traced 
 away back even to prehistoric times 
 and has generally been connected with 
 some other burial methods, among
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 21 
 
 which cremation was the most com- 
 mon. The place cremation occupied in 
 ancient thought and the connection 
 fancied by our forefathers between the 
 elements which make up man's spirit- 
 ual body, may be gathered from Victor 
 Rydberg's researches in Germanic 
 mvthologv. 
 
 "The popular ecclesiastical dualism 
 of soul and body,'' says Rydberg, "was 
 as foreign to the Veda-Aryans as to 
 the heathen Germanic race. Accord- 
 ing to the latter, man consisted of six 
 different elements: First, the earthlv 
 element of which the visible body is 
 made; second, a vegetative; third, an 
 animal; fourth, the so-called Uten (Utr), 
 an inner body shaped after the gods, 
 and invisible to earthly eyes; fifth, the 
 soul; sixth, the spirit." 
 
 The earthly and the vegetative ele- 
 ments were already joined in the trees, 
 Ask and Embla, when the gods came 
 and changed them into the first human 
 pair. Each of the three gods gave them 
 separate gifts. From Lodur they re-
 
 22 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 ceived la, that is the blood, and laeti, 
 that is the power of intentional move- 
 ment inherent in the blood, which at- 
 tributes have been considered by all 
 peoples as the characteristics that dis- 
 tinguish animal from vegetable life. 
 Lodur gave them further the god-image, 
 liter goda, by the power of which man's 
 earthly substance receives the form in 
 which it appears to the senses. The 
 Germanic race, like the Hellenes and 
 the Eomans, believed that the gods had 
 human form, so that this form origi- 
 nally belonged to the gods. To the 
 Germanic hierologists and bards man 
 was formed in effigicm deorum and pos- 
 sessed in his nature a liter goda, a god 
 image in the literal sense of the word. 
 
 This image may for a short time be 
 separated from the other human ele- 
 ments, so that a person may assume 
 the appearance of another without 
 changing his spiritual identity. 
 
 The soul, odr, is the gift of Honer, 
 while the spirit, and, is the contribu- 
 tion of Odin.
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 23 
 
 Earthly death consists in the separa- 
 tion of the higher elements, spirit, soul 
 and Men, which form a unity for them- 
 selves, from the lower elements and a 
 removal of the former to Hades. The 
 lower elements, the earthly, the vege- 
 tal and the animal, continue in the 
 grave for a longer or shorter time to 
 co-operate and form a certain unity, 
 which, from the higher elements, retain 
 something of the living man's personal- 
 ity and qualities. This lower unity is 
 the ghost, the wraith, which usually 
 sleeps during the day in the grave, but 
 in the night might wake either spon- 
 taneously or by other people's prayers 
 and sorcery. The ghost possesses the 
 nature of the deceased; it is good and 
 benevolent, or evil and dangerous, ac- 
 cording to his disposition. Because 
 animal and vegetal elements form part 
 of his nature, he is tormented by a 
 craving for nourishment if he wakes 
 from his slumber. 
 
 These conceptions of a dualistic life 
 after death, common among the Veda-
 
 24 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 Aryans, as well as among the heathen 
 Norsemen, were closely allied with the 
 idea of cremation. Agni, the god of 
 fire, removed the dead man to a better 
 world, while the coarser body, with its 
 faults and defects, was consumed by 
 the flames. 
 
 It was a matter of doubt, however, 
 whether liten, the inner body, would 
 suffer injury in the pyre. But this 
 doubt was removed partly by certain 
 formulas, believed to be protective; 
 partly by burning a buck together with 
 the body as compensation to the "flesh - 
 eating fire,'* the elementary Agni (the 
 hymns distinguish between the two), 
 so that he should not touch the subtler 
 body of the corpse. Through the com- 
 bustion, the low r er elements were en- 
 abled to immediately follow the soul of 
 the deceased, and it was thought that 
 two advantages were gained thereby: 
 First, the second ego of the dead was 
 liberated from its grave-dwelling, which 
 was monstrous if his sleep were dis- 
 turbed either by craving for nourish-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 uient or through the acts of Nirrtis and 
 sorcerers; second, the surviving were 
 relieved from their dread of evil ghosts.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Man's Spiritual Body. 
 
 IF WE survey the stages of evolution 
 through which humanity hitherto has 
 passed, we find that all peoples, from 
 prehistoric times up to our own days, 
 have believed in a spiritual body which 
 is essential to the soul in a future life. 
 Is humanitv then mistaken in this uni- 
 versal manifestation of religious intui- 
 tion? On this question we need no 
 longer remain uncertain, no longer be- 
 lieve; we know that man possesses such 
 a spiritual body. For many years, even 
 centuries, this has been a fully demon- 
 strated fact, which may be directly ob- 
 served, and which also has been the 
 subject of scientific research. 
 
 But what do we mean by spiritual 
 body? The term conveys something of
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 27 
 
 a dim and vague, and at the same 
 time unmistakable suggestion which 
 characterizes all we comprehend by our 
 emotional faculties. Spiritual body 
 means what the words say, a spiritual- 
 ity derived from, or belonging to, the 
 body. But as no spirituality exists 
 which is not individualized or is not a 
 quality of a living being, this spiritual 
 body must be identical with either one 
 single unit or with a multitude of 
 living units. One single unit it cannot 
 be, because this unity would then be 
 identical with the soul, while on the 
 contrary, the spiritual body should 
 be independent, existing per se. It 
 remains then a multitude of spirit- 
 ual units, which is precisely what 
 natural science has proved to be the 
 case, and these units in marts spiritual 
 hody are identical with the living cells. 
 
 Before the discovery of the cell, our 
 knowledge of the human body was con- 
 fined to such phenomena as could be 
 observed with the naked eye. The or- 
 ganism from that standpoint was neces-
 
 28 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 sarily a unit of members and organs 
 whose functions, and even coarser ana- 
 tomic structure, were beyond any ac- 
 curate investigation. The elementary 
 parts of the organic tissues cannot, of 
 course, be observed in this stage. They 
 appear first under the microscope and 
 it is therefore with the discovery of 
 this epoch-making instrument that the 
 science of organisms enters into a new 
 era. 
 
 Toward the end of the seventeenth 
 century, Malpighi and Grew found that 
 organic tissues, placed under the micro- 
 scope, did not consist of homogeneous 
 substance as they appear to the naked 
 eye, but of small particles separated 
 from each other, which particles have 
 been railed cells. But although the 
 cells were discovered, their real impor- 
 tance was far from being understood, 
 or even surmised. This was no doubt 
 the reason for the small interest given 
 to the cell during the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, and the small progress cytology 
 made during this whole period.
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 29 
 
 From 1670 to 1830, or more than a 
 century and a half, the cell was known 
 mainly as a saccate body, resembling a 
 hollow tube, and became the subject 
 of more or less wild speculations. A 
 wider interest for the substance and 
 nature of the cell was evoked in the 
 beginning of the nineteenth century by 
 the works of Brisseau de Mirbel, Trevir- 
 anus, Holdenhaver and several others. 
 Many different parts began to be dis- 
 tinguished within the cells, such as 
 membrane, protoplasm, chlorophyll, etc. 
 These parts were later found to be as 
 many organs in the cell performing- 
 different functions, which are at pres- 
 ent to some extent denned. The cell 
 previously considered as a saccate body 
 proved to constitute a being endowed 
 with organs, a living organism. 
 
 According to modern cytology, the 
 cell is a living individual; an elemen- 
 tary organism. Although these beings 
 are so exceedingly minute that the 
 naked eye can observe them only in 
 combinations of thousands and millions,
 
 30 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 yet each and every one of them not 
 only possesses individual life, but also 
 the organs necessary for sustaining in- 
 dividual existence. Innumerable quan- 
 tities of such tiny beings build up the 
 organisms of plants and animals. As 
 human individuals form the building 
 material of the body of a community, 
 so the cells form the building material 
 of the bodies of plants and animals. 
 Since the cells bear the same relation 
 to plants and animals as human in- 
 dividuals to a community, every plant 
 and animal then may be considered as 
 a community, a cell-state, where the 
 cells are the citizens. 
 
 Every organism, therefore, is a com- 
 munity, and vice versa, every community is 
 an organism. So far as we have knowl- 
 edge of the organisms they are all simi- 
 lar in this respect. Plants and animals 
 are communities of individually living 
 cells in the same sense as nations and 
 states are communities of human beings. 
 The individuals in these different com- 
 munities are of different kinds and
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 31 
 
 degrees of development, but the com- 
 position of the organic edifice is in all 
 essential features exactly the same. 
 The differences are literally only ap- 
 parent, being due as they are to the 
 different aspect they present to our ob- 
 servation. 
 
 While we at first apprehend animals 
 and plants as units, not seeing the in- 
 dividual cells by which they are com- 
 posed, we, in the national organisms, on 
 the contrary, first perceive the cells 
 themselves — the human individuals — 
 but are unable to grasp the nations as 
 individually living organisms. On the 
 one hand we see directly only the so- 
 cial side, on the other, only the organic. 
 
 If there are beings observing the hu- 
 man community as we see plants and 
 animals, they would comprehend so- 
 ciety as a unit composed of different 
 trades and industries, but not as com- 
 posed of men, who are the building ma- 
 terial in these members. If such postu- 
 lated observers made an invention cor- 
 responding to our microscope, they
 
 32 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 would be surprised to fiud the social 
 organism composed of human individ- 
 uals, which fact would seem just as 
 mystical to them as the cells seemed 
 at first to us. So far as we have de- 
 rived from experience a knowledge of 
 organic structure, it reveals itself to us 
 as an individual composed of more primi- 
 tive and elementary individuals. These 
 elementary units of lower kind and or- 
 der might consequently be called a 
 spiritual body in a literal sense. 
 
 From the point of view of the ele- 
 mentary constituent, each organism is 
 a community, a unit of similar, inde- 
 pendently living, individuals; from the 
 point of view of the organs and of the 
 whole, this community itself is a living 
 individual of higher potency and may 
 in its turn enter as an elementary or- 
 ganism in a spiritual body of still 
 higher power, and so on, in a geometric- 
 series. Man enters into the social or- 
 ganism, but is himself composed of 
 cell-organisms, which in turn consist of 
 more primary units.
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 33 
 
 Organic structure shows everywhere 
 the same general qualities, the same 
 fundamental features. Each higher and 
 more complex organism repeats in a 
 more perfect way and in a higher po- 
 tency exactly the same general forms 
 of organization as its elementary con- 
 stituents have shown in their own 
 sphere. Hence the surprising simi- 
 larity in the structure of the organisms. 
 When we know one we know all. This 
 would, of course, be neither possible nor 
 conceivable if the spiritual bodies, 
 which form their corporal structure, 
 did not possess corresponding similar 
 fundamental qualities. 
 
 In what relationship do these cells 
 stand to man? Do they enter into his 
 being as essential or only as incidental 
 constituents? In other words, does man 
 act as organ for the cells and the cells 
 as organs for man only here in time; or, 
 such existence being for the present 
 postulated, is their union extended 
 even to a future existence? This ques- 
 tion is of extraordinary importance be-
 
 34 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 cause it may entirely change our con- 
 ception of death. With this question 
 settled, we should be in possession of a 
 fact from which we could draw reliable 
 conclusions, and this fact is briefly as 
 follows: Within each living being a con- 
 tinuous renovation takes place, a suc- 
 cessive replacing of the individuals 
 which belong to that being's spiritual 
 body. Human beings constitute, as al- 
 ready pointed out, the cells or the spir- 
 itual body, in an organism of a higher 
 order, viz., of humanity. In this organ- 
 ism, an incessant renewal takes place, 
 as we know, inasmuch as new genera- 
 tions continuously succeed each other. 
 The same is the case with man's own 
 spiritual body. As the human genera- 
 tions in the social body, so the cell- 
 generations in man's body replace each 
 other while the man, himself, all the 
 time, remains the identical individual. 
 The same holds good in regard to the 
 cytoplasm, or the lower units that 
 build up the cells. Everywhere we 
 meet with the same phenomenon of re-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 35 
 
 newal and everywhere with the same 
 identity of the complex individual. This 
 latter originates, develops, and passes 
 away with a lifetime that bears a cer- 
 tain proportion to its complexity. While 
 man counts his existence and develop- 
 ment in years, the evolution of society 
 is reckoned in hundreds and thousands 
 of years. The cells in their turn have 
 a lifetime measured in days, and the 
 units forming the cytoplasm possess 
 an individual existence perhaps lasting 
 but a few minutes or seconds. 
 
 The circulation in the body, there- 
 fore, is not confined to the material 
 particles but comprises the spiritual 
 body, the living units, as well. Now, 
 the question is: What is the relation- 
 ship between man living in time and 
 these dying and unborn generations of 
 cells, that form his body? Can we show 
 that these living units, this spiritual 
 body, is as necessary for man in a fu- 
 ture existence as here in time? Then 
 death must evidently be something else, 
 something infinitely more than we have
 
 36 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 hitherto imagined or surmised. The 
 point is to investigate what is mortal 
 in man and what is immortal, and on 
 this problem we will now proceed to 
 concentrate our whole attention.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Source of Spiritual Knowledge. 
 
 THE CRITICALLY thinking public 
 to-day might be said to have long 
 ago relinquished the hope of obtaining a 
 sure and decisive answer to the ques- 
 tion, whether there is an existence be- 
 yond the grave. Some people confine 
 themselves to a faith founded on a 
 smaller or greater probability for either 
 conception. We want palpable evi- 
 dence. To many it even appears neces- 
 sary to have a look behind the veil of 
 visible matter in order to satisfy them- 
 selves as to whether anything exists 
 within the void. "Nobody has returned 
 to tell us how it is," we are often re- 
 minded, and this expression clearly 
 means that complete certainty requires 
 the testimony of eye-witnesses. 
 
 Such a procedure would be at least
 
 38 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 radical if it were possible. But even 
 if it were, should we then be nearer the 
 goal? The whole mode of thinking is 
 naive, but merits attention especially 
 because it demonstrates how uncertain 
 the information would be that we 
 would obtain through this channel. If 
 somebody returned, little or nothing 
 would, in all probability, be gained. 
 
 In the first place how could we know 
 that it was the same person that re- 
 turned? It would, perhaps, be best if 
 the soul took possession of the same 
 body. The absence would then be com- 
 parable to, or essentially analogous 
 Avith, the condition of the apparently 
 dead. But to begin with, we could, for 
 good reasons, only ascribe a small 
 value to experience gained under such 
 conditions, and, further, such an ab- 
 sence would evidently mean no real 
 separation of soul and body, no real 
 death, and therefore no real experi- 
 ence of the very thing under considera- 
 tion. 
 
 But how, and under what conditions,
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 39 
 
 would an event of this kind be con- 
 ceivable? 
 
 Should the person in question sud- 
 denly disappear from our sight and 
 then just as suddenly reappear among 
 us? Endowed with his present organs 
 and senses, which are closely adapted 
 to earthly conditions, such a person 
 could see and comprehend only such ob- 
 jects as differed little or non-essentially 
 from those in the world where we now 
 live. He would possibly be able to ob- 
 serve conditions on other planets in the 
 universe, but he would be utterly un- 
 able to comprehend the things of a 
 world abstracted from the limitations 
 of planetary life. If such a world ex- 
 ists, and some one of us were suddenly 
 removed to it, such a one, amidst all 
 glories with seeing eyes, would yet see 
 nothing; with hearing ears, hear noth- 
 ing; and with feeling senses, feel noth- 
 ing. In order to see and grasp what 
 may exist and happen, the observer 
 himself must have gone through a cor- 
 responding radical change. The con-
 
 40 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 ditions for the functioning of bodily or- 
 gans do not exist there. He must de- 
 velop new and more perfect senses; 
 higher, spiritual and bodily faculties 
 which differ from his present ones as 
 much as the objects of this higher 
 world differ from the things of earth. 
 
 A direct transposition would there- 
 fore be without value. In order to 
 make investigations, a radical meta- 
 morphosis is an indispensable condi- 
 tion. The soul must be separated from 
 its earthly clothing and pass through 
 all the transformations which com- 
 mence with natural death. In order to 
 return here, this person must again go 
 through the same processes in reverse 
 order. At his re-birth upon earth he 
 would not, in all probability, differ 
 from other people. He would know as 
 much or as little as we do. 
 
 But even if we assume the improba- 
 ble and imagine that this person re- 
 turned to us with the memory of all he 
 had lived through and that he tried to 
 relate his impressions and experiences,
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 41 
 
 such a report would be of no use be- 
 cause it would deal with ideas and con- 
 ceptions entirely incomprehensible to 
 us. The explanation of this is that man 
 is unable to comprehend things and 
 phenomena which have not acted upon 
 his present organs. If we take pains 
 to analyze our boldest and most un- 
 realistic fancies, we will find that their 
 substance and ingredients are only 
 greatly enlarged or reduced images of 
 an already experienced reality. We 
 have never possessed that man's higher 
 senses, never experienced the things 
 which those higher faculties are able 
 to grasp, and we are therefore not in a 
 position to form any idea whatever 
 about such a world. His speech would 
 sound like a foreign language that we 
 could not possibly ever learn to under- 
 stand. 
 
 Only in case the person in question 
 could adapt himself to our present way 
 of thinking and understanding, would 
 such a revelation be of any importance. 
 But then again the question arises,
 
 42 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 what confidence could we have in this 
 man who pretended to possess knowl- 
 edge about things entirely concealed 
 from us? We have no means of verify- 
 ing the information thus received. It 
 must be taken in good faith, and so the 
 gates to doubt would again be thrown 
 open. If someone returned, then, little 
 or nothing would be gained. In this, 
 as in other cases, there is no royal road 
 to truth. Only a painstaking research 
 will lead to the goal, if indeed it can 
 ever be attained. 
 
 The question is, can investigation in 
 this direction accomplish anything? If 
 so, we must at least not entertain or 
 present any unreasonable demands. 
 Such an unreasonable demand would 
 be, for instance, to expect science to 
 explain the concrete forms which life 
 would take in a transcendental world, 
 No man ever has or ever will make 
 such observations. It is even question- 
 able whether such knowledge would be 
 useful or beneficial to us if obtained. 
 We have enough to occupy us in our
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION 43 
 
 daily cares and earthly tasks. A com- 
 plete knowledge of life in a future ex- 
 istence would probably disturb and dis- 
 tract us to such a degree that we 
 would lose interest for our present evo- 
 lution in this existence. It may be suf- 
 ficient for us to know whether there be 
 another life, and if so, whether our 
 dealings and actions in the present life 
 are of any importance for that life. 
 It would, no doubt, suffice if we could 
 acquire a knowledge with regard to 
 that life corresponding to what we know 
 about those distant worlds in space 
 which we discern with our bodily eyes 
 and which we further investigate with 
 our astronomical resources. The fol- 
 lowing conditions must be fulfilled in 
 order to make the cases similar: First 
 of all, such a transcendental world 
 must exist, and emit rays of light. 
 Further, we must be equipped with 
 some special organ, a spiritual eye, 
 which we could direct towards it and 
 by which we could make our investiga- 
 tions here on earth. Do we possess
 
 44 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 such a spiritual eye? We answer that 
 our conscience, our religious intuition 
 and the eternal and invariable laws of 
 thinking are just such organs. That an 
 ideal world exists, radiating a light of 
 its own, we are able to conclude from 
 perceptions received through our con- 
 science and our religious intuition. 
 
 Our conscience gives us rigorous di- 
 rections and commandments, which 
 sometimes seem to counteract our 
 earthly happiness and show themselves 
 detrimental to our present success. If 
 our life were confined to this world, the 
 demands of our conscience were not 
 only useless and injurious but also in 
 themselves inexplicable. That man, in 
 his religious intuition, also apprehends 
 a reality of a different kind from the 
 material one, appears from the fact that 
 all peoples, in all times and in all 
 stages of evolution, have possessed a 
 religion, as we now do, a certain con- 
 ception of supernatural things. It may 
 be granted that a great amount of de- 
 lusion enters into all religions. Never-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 45 
 
 theless, religious errors would be in- 
 conceivable if man did not apprehend 
 something supernatural which he 
 wrongly interpreted. Superstition would 
 not exist at all, because, as we have al- 
 ready pointed out, nobody can think, 
 speak or form any idea whatever of 
 things that are entirely beyond all ex- 
 perience. To argue with a person about 
 such never-apprehended realities, would 
 be like discussing colors with the blind. 
 But now it is a fact that apprehensions 
 of immaterial substance are so common 
 to man's consciousness that if we could 
 find somebody who did not understand 
 what we said and meant in speaking 
 about these things, we should be safe 
 in asserting that such a man was not a 
 normal person. 
 
 But if all men have an immaterial 
 experience, why do ideas and opinions 
 differ so about the same experience, 
 and above all why do some people even 
 deny its existence? The explanation of 
 this surprising contradiction may be 
 understood when we consider that man
 
 46 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 also possesses a special faculty, his rea- 
 son, which he must likewise employ. 
 With his reason, man examines and 
 studies all his experiences and strives 
 to bring them into agreement with the 
 laws of thinking. In other words, he 
 strives to systematize them into a phil- 
 osophy. But this is a hard and labori- 
 ous task. It is difficult as it is to ar- 
 rive at right conclusions in regard to 
 the material world to which our senses 
 are responsive. How much more must 
 this be the case in regard to the im- 
 material world. The evolution of our 
 reason, therefore, is a slowly advancing 
 historical process, presenting a contin- 
 uous change in opinions, although, at 
 the same time, an inner continuity may 
 be traced, an evolution pointing to- 
 wards a definite goal. 
 
 The harmony which man is striving 
 to establish between his reason and his 
 other faculties can obtain only during 
 comparatively short intervals of time. 
 Our reason grows in power and keen- 
 ness; new observations and discoveries
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 47 
 
 are almost constantly made; old ideas 
 and opinions do not, upon closer inves- 
 tigation, satisfy the more developed de- 
 mands of our thinking; doubts arise, 
 and this is a necessary condition for all 
 theoretical progress. Such a doubt, not 
 of the immaterial experience which we 
 all have, but of the way in which this 
 experience is to be explained, has been 
 expressed in the theory called material- 
 ism, which is a widely spread doctrine 
 in our time. Natural science in itself 
 is never materialistic in the sense in 
 which this word is here used, because 
 natural science does not concern itself 
 with anything immaterial. But if this 
 be the case, how is it possible that 
 science can have anything in common 
 with materialism which, strictly speak- 
 ing, is a doctrine about spiritual 
 things? We answer that life in this 
 world is joined to and revealed through 
 the material world. A more complete 
 knowledge of the nature of matter 
 ought, therefore, to bring about a de- 
 cision by and by as to whether the sonl
 
 48 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 is a bodily function or a substance dif- 
 fering from matter. In other words, 
 natural science must sooner or later ar- 
 rive at a stage when it either verifies 
 materialism or gives us tangible and 
 obvious evidence for the truth of ideal- 
 ism. It was to such a point that science 
 arrived in the last century when 
 Btichner presented his well known 
 "Force and Matter," in which he en- 
 deavors to prove that the soul is an 
 attribute of the body, religion, immor- 
 tality and so on being only illusions. 
 
 Had natural science then finally 
 found materialism to be the highest ex- 
 pression of truth? In reality this was 
 so far from being the case, that natural 
 science, just at that time, had given en- 
 tirely new impulses to a higher evolu- 
 tion of religious conceptions. How then 
 could Buchner, with natural science as 
 a basis, deny all religion, and how can 
 materialism, in our days, live with un- 
 diminished force and vitality? No 
 other explanation is possible than the 
 one we have already proposed. When
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 49 
 
 it remained unnoticed that natural 
 science had discovered the inner, spir- 
 itual body, which is the very kernel of 
 the belief in the body as an eternal 
 part of man's nature, then materialism 
 was the only possible alternative for all 
 those who were convinced that the body 
 contained something imperishable. Ma- 
 terialism, in our days, springs from the 
 same instinct as the death-cultus in 
 ancient times. It has, therefore, in- 
 tegrally, something correct and true as 
 a basis, which not only explains the 
 rapid and wide expansion of this doc- 
 trine, but also the fact that the ma- 
 terialists are continually using data 
 and evidence which clearly and plainly 
 disprove their own position, although 
 they do not perceive it themselves. As 
 probably no one has treated this theme 
 in a manner more characteristic of ma- 
 terialism than Buchner, we will, in the 
 following study, use his work above 
 mentioned, which may be said to be 
 typical for the materialist's mode of 
 thinking and reasoning. Tt will here
 
 50 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 be evident, we hope, that the modern 
 natural science does not limit but, on 
 the contrary, widens the boundaries of 
 existence, as we receive from precisely 
 this science the palpable demonstra- 
 tion of the thesis that all life on this 
 earth has its origin in a higher, imma- 
 terial world.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Importance of Spontaneous Generation. 
 
 THE MANNER in which this prob- 
 lem, from a materialistic point of 
 view, can and must be treated, is not 
 so complicated as we might imagine. 
 The central thought in all materialistic 
 discussions and investigations may be 
 briefly expressed as follows: Life is a 
 material force and nothing else. If this 
 be true, then of course materialism is 
 the only true religion. Whether God 
 or some other higher being exists, must 
 then become a question of little or no 
 consequence. Man knows in any case 
 his own origin and fate. The funda- 
 mental religious doctrines will then 
 read: In matter alone dwell all the 
 forces of nature and spirit; in matter 
 alone can these forces appear and re- 
 veal themselves; nature knows of no
 
 52 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 supernatural beginning or continua- 
 tion; it produces everything; consumes 
 everything; is itself beginning and end, 
 cradle and grave; by its own power 
 nature produces man, by its own power 
 it receives him back again. 
 
 Against these and similar statements 
 there would be no objection, if it could 
 be shown that life really has its source 
 in the material world. But if it can be 
 demonstrated that life never does, nor 
 ever could by any possibility, originate 
 in lifeless matter, then it is evident 
 that we must look for some other 
 source. 
 
 Let it be our object, then, fully to in- 
 vestigate this problem. 
 
 If living beings are produced by ma- 
 terial forces, experience must verify 
 the fact that matter really creates life 
 of itself. In other words, the "to be 
 or not to be" of materialism is identi- 
 cal with the old question of gcneratio 
 aequivoca or spontanea, i. e., whether 
 there exists in nature a spontaneous or 
 parentless generation of living beings.
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 53 
 
 Generatio aequivoca covers the entire 
 ground of the materialists. Here the 
 doctrine has not only its principal roots 
 but all of them. 
 
 If the materialists lose this foothold, 
 all their natural science resources are 
 emptied at once, so important is gen- 
 eratio spontanea for materialism. Only 
 under this form and with this sub- 
 stance can natural science have any- 
 thing in common with materialism, 
 which latter, strictly speaking, is only 
 a religious doctrine, although as such 
 purely negative. But just for this rea- 
 son science has for centuries labored 
 to decide whether this doctrine is false 
 or true. 
 
 The question is, does or does not this 
 spontaneous generation exist? Scien- 
 tific research has, in all times, occupied 
 itself with this question in different 
 forms and modes. 
 
 The farther we go back in time the 
 more general we find the opinion that 
 life may arise spontaneously from in- 
 organic matter. That such an idea
 
 64 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 should prevail, is, of course, easy to un- 
 derstand. Very little was known about 
 the propagation of the lower animals 
 and plants. Especially the very pecu- 
 liar and complicated development of 
 the parasites and their passive migra- 
 tions were practically unknown. 
 
 It seemed impossible to understand 
 whence these beings had come, so the 
 nearest explanation was resorted to, 
 that is to say, that wherever they were 
 found, they had come into existence "of 
 themselves." Neither was it so clearly 
 understood then as now that eggs and 
 seeds are living beings as well as the 
 fully developed animals and plants. It 
 was thought that grain must decay in 
 the earth, yea, that this was the neces- 
 sary condition for the growth of the 
 plant. 
 
 Thus people had daily before their 
 eyes cases where living beings were 
 generated by substances that seemed 
 inert and dead. 
 
 But with a better and more complete 
 knowledge of organisms and especially
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 55 
 
 of the extremely complicated mode of 
 propagation characteristic of insects, 
 doubts as to generatio spontanea increas- 
 ingly arose. It was, however, at a com- 
 paratively late time, or in the middle 
 of the seventeenth century, that Harvey 
 formulated his famous thesis, "omne 
 virum ex oro," or, as it has been later 
 said, "omne vivum e.v vivo" which we 
 may translate thus: "Life implies life; 
 all living beings descend from previous 
 existing parents " or negatively, "No liv- 
 ing being is generated from lifeless matter" 
 Thus, for the first time, the idea was 
 pronounced by natural science that life 
 is a specific force; an independent prin- 
 ciple, that has not its roots in the ma- 
 terial world. 
 
 As generatio aequivoca leads to ma- 
 terialism, so Harvey's formula leads to 
 pure idealism. That these consequences 
 should have been seen from the begin- 
 ning, was so much the less to be ex- 
 pected since even today no such dis- 
 covery has been made or could have 
 been made, simply because no atten-
 
 56 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 tion has been given to it. Hitherto the 
 only question has been: Is Harvey's 
 formula a fact verified by natural 
 science or not? In this form the battle 
 has raged for over two centuries, often 
 with great vehemence, and victory has 
 leaned now to one side, now to the 
 other. Finally, it was agreed that 
 parentless generation was not to be 
 found among the higher forms of ani- 
 mals and plants which could be ob- 
 served with the naked eye. Buchner 
 himself says it has not hitherto been 
 discovered that anv higher or more de- 
 veloped organism may be created by 
 inorganic matter and forces alone. 
 
 "Today," he says, "it seems to be a 
 general law of the inorganic world that 
 everything living originates from a 
 parental embryo or else is directly 
 segregated from the mother-body." 
 
 But although spontaneous generation 
 of the higher animals and plants 
 seemed doubtful even to Buchner, noth- 
 ing was at this time settled in regard 
 to the origin of the lower organisms.
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 57 
 
 With the discovery of the microscopi- 
 cal organic world, a new field and one 
 more difficult of access was opened for 
 research. It was now the sudden and 
 unexpected appearance of bacteria, as- 
 pergillus and infusoria in places where 
 their previous existence could not be 
 imagined, that maintained the belief in 
 generatio spontanea. But by and by we 
 learned to understand the propaga- 
 tion and life also of these low 
 organisms, their ability to withstand 
 very high or very low temperatures, 
 and the facility with which they 
 are spread by the air and, above all, 
 their rapid propagation. It commenced 
 to be more and more evident that even 
 in the micro-organic world no parent- 
 less generation exists. The investiga- 
 tions by Spallanzani, and later by 
 Schultze, Schwann, von Dusch and 
 Schroder, were epochal for the estab- 
 lishing of this fact. Their method, how- 
 ever, left some room for criticism 
 which was forcefully pointed out by a
 
 58 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 great number of scientists, especially 
 bv the Englishman Needham. 
 
 During all these disputes Harvey's 
 formula had, however, won such a 
 stability and approbation that Biichner 
 himself under its pressure formulated 
 his position in the following cautious 
 words: "Even if recent scientific re- 
 searches have more and more limited 
 the ground for spontaneous generation, 
 it is nevertheless not improbable that 
 it even now takes place among the lowest 
 and least developed organisms" 
 
 It may willingly be conceded that 
 this assertion was in its time by no 
 means without foundation. But 
 scarcely could Biichner or anybody 
 else at that moment imagine how soon 
 the hour of decision would strike. 
 Shortly after 1860 the many centuries 
 old question was finally settled almost 
 simultaneously by Hoffman and Pas- 
 teur. Through the latter's masterly in- 
 vestigations it was fully demonstrated 
 that parentless generation does not 
 exist in the micro-organic world either.
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 59 
 
 Before Pasteur's simple and clear evi- 
 dence, opposition was silenced even so 
 far that the question has almost en- 
 tirely ceased to occupy our attention. 
 Omne vivitm ex vivo appears now to be 
 an unchallenged truth. Life implies 
 life. 
 
 But although science thus rejected 
 generatio spontanea, the materialists 
 nevertheless occupy a very strong po- 
 sition on the selfsame foundation as 
 formerly, and continue the defense ap- 
 parently not without some success. 
 
 In spite of Btichner's real, or per- 
 haps partly pretended, confidence, he 
 seems to have had a presentiment of 
 how weak the support of generatio spon- 
 tanea was, and we find him therefore 
 suddenly reasoning as if its cause were 
 already lost. Thus he makes the en- 
 tirely sound remark that even if at the 
 present time all animals and plants 
 must have parents, yet nothing what- 
 ever is thereby demonstrated in regard 
 to the very first appearance of life in 
 the universe. "If all organic beings
 
 60 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 have parents, how, then, did the first 
 parents come into existence? 1 ' he asks. 
 "When all outer conditions were favor- 
 able, might they not have appeared 
 spontaneously, accidentally or neces- 
 sarily? Or must the first organisms 
 have been created through the inter- 
 vention of some higher power?" Biich- 
 ner concedes that this question is ex- 
 tremely complicated, and at first glance 
 may appear unsolvable without the as- 
 sumption of some such higher being 
 who of his own will created the first 
 organisms as it pleased him and en- 
 dowed them with the faculty of propa- 
 gation. "Orthodox scientists point with 
 satisfaction also to this state of af- 
 fairs," says Biichner, "and they remind 
 us at the same time of the artful aud 
 complicated structure of the world, 
 and warmed by their conviction they 
 see therein the wise arrangements of 
 a higher, personal creator, who built 
 the world according to his personal in- 
 tentions." 
 
 We might, according to Biichner,
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 61 
 
 dismiss these orthodox thinkers with 
 the assumption "that the first elements 
 endowed with the idea of the race have 
 been present in space from all eter- 
 nity in formless chaos out of which the 
 universe slowly consolidated, and acci- 
 dentally developed after the formation 
 and cooling of the planet wherever con- 
 ditions were favorable." But such fic- 
 titious reasonings or pretexts, Buchner 
 assures us, are not necessary. Scien- 
 tific facts, he says, indicate with great 
 distinctness that the organic beings on 
 our earth owe their generation and 
 propagation to the co-operation of 
 physical substances and forces alone. 
 
 After such an introduction we pro- 
 ceed with interest to learn about these 
 scientific facts, but how great is our 
 disappointment when we find that 
 Buchner here takes up an entirely dif- 
 ferent subject, which, if it has any con- 
 nection with the question at issue, goes 
 to prove just the reverse of what he 
 intended. The whole long series of 
 facts to which he now points is, in a
 
 62 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 few words, nothing but Darwin's theory 
 in a paleontological light. What Buch- 
 ner shows by numerous examples from 
 fossil deposits, is that higher forms of 
 animals and plants have slowly devel- 
 oped from lower forms. But what has 
 this fact to do with generatio spontanea? 
 That higher forms have developed from 
 lower forms only confirms the dictum 
 that life implies life; in other words, 
 supports Harvey's law. But it is some- 
 thing else that Biichner should have 
 demonstrated. He should instead have 
 shown us that the first organisms owe 
 their existence to physical forces alone. 
 But on this subject he uses only vague 
 expressions, void of any real signifi- 
 cance, about the slow cooling off of the 
 earth; about the length of the geologi- 
 cal periods, and about favorable condi- 
 tions; but not a line to explain what 
 this word "favorable" stands for. 
 
 Although Biichner here inadvertently 
 supports something different from what 
 he intended, his remark nevertheless 
 remains true that the present mode of
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 63 
 
 propagation proves nothing in regard 
 to the generation of the first organisms. 
 
 Other scientists have gone further 
 than Btichner and believed themselves 
 justified in extending Harvey's law to 
 cover not only the present time, but all 
 times. And the problem as to the first 
 organisms has been answered in vari- 
 ous ways. Sir William Thomson be- 
 lieves that such might have come to 
 the earth with some meteoric stone, 
 possibly a moss-clad fragment, from an- 
 other planet in the universe that had 
 met with a cosmic catastrophe, and, 
 further, he has even tried to show that 
 this hypothesis does not involve any 
 physical impossibility. 
 
 Opinions seem to be divided, then, 
 as to the validity of Harvey's law. This 
 again indicates a deficiency in the law 
 itself, and it is true that such a de- 
 ficiency really exists. Harvey's formula 
 is not a lair; it is, as yet, only an empiri- 
 cal hypothesis. 
 
 It is true that life presupposes life 
 in all the cases we have been able to
 
 64 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 investigate. These cases are exceed- 
 ingly numerous because on the disbe- 
 lief in generatio spontanea rests a whole 
 modern industry, the art of preserving, 
 which in millions of cases daily verifies 
 the hypothesis. But our experience, in 
 spite of this, does not reach far. If we 
 continue our observations, who can 
 guarantee that we would not finally 
 discover that Biichner, after all, was 
 right, and one single case would suffice. 
 The utmost we can attain by observa- 
 tion is a certain degree of probability, 
 and if we undertook to prove Harvey's 
 hypothesis to be a law in this way, our 
 experiments must be extended in in- 
 finitum. 
 
 In order to reach certaintv onlv 
 under present conditions, we must 
 study the generation of every now liv- 
 ing organism, animals, plants, bacteria 
 and the like. If it were found then 
 that all these beings have had parents 
 it would still be impossible to draw 
 absolutely sure conclusions in regard 
 to previous generations. We should be
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 65 
 
 obliged to extend our researches 
 through antiquity and primeval ages. 
 If then no gap was to be found in the 
 series and we perhaps finally traced 
 life back to the "moss-clad fragment" 
 from another world, we would again 
 face the question, how the beings on 
 that planet, once in time, had come 
 into existence? Perhaps there the ele- 
 ments and forces of nature were such 
 as to create life spontaneously. This 
 question, of course, could not be de- 
 cided except through continued obser- 
 vations, which would be obliged to ex- 
 tend to every point of an infinite uni- 
 verse and back to the dawn of time. 
 First, then, we should know that Har- 
 vey's hypothesis was a law, valid with- 
 out limitations in the past — but also 
 only in the past — and valid with one 
 single exception, namely, the very first 
 organism, of which we presently shall 
 speak. In regard to the law's validity 
 in the future, we should no doubt pos- 
 sess a knowledge that approached cer- 
 tainty, but it could not be called abso-
 
 66 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 lutely sure. Because, even granted 
 that no living being hitherto was with- 
 out parents, it is not logically impossi- 
 ble that sometime in the future, lifeless 
 matter might undertake to create or- 
 ganisms. To obtain certainty we must 
 continue our observations until the end 
 of time.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Materialistic Demonstration of 
 Generatio Spontanea. 
 
 THIS whole method is consequently 
 unsatisfactory. With Harvey's law 
 proved in the empirical way, the only 
 way hitherto tried, we are still unable 
 to decide how the first organism came 
 into existence, and this is probably 
 after all the most important question. 
 Because, as Buchner rightly points out: 
 "If life has a supernatural beginning, it 
 has also a supernatural subsequent ex- 
 istence." Even if we were observing 
 with our own eyes the creation of the 
 first organism we would not be able to 
 say whether it were the result of nat- 
 ural or supernatural forces. The mo- 
 ment our study commenced, the mystic 
 act of creation would already have 
 taken place, an act. which lies beyond
 
 68 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 the boundaries of research, and which 
 we never shall be able to penetrate, 
 however minute or comprehensive our 
 observations. An entirely different 
 method is here necessary. Our en- 
 deavor must be to find the innermost 
 cause of the whole series of generations 
 evolving throughout the ages. In 
 other words, we must derive Harvey's 
 law from the inner nature of matter 
 itself, show that this matter has such 
 qualities that it cannot, never could, 
 and never will, be able to produce 
 a single living being. Only then shall 
 we have demonstrated that Harvey's 
 formula is a universal, natural law, 
 and then it will be not only our right 
 but our duty to draw its logical con- 
 sequences. 
 
 Is it possible to show that matter 
 possesses such qualities? In regard to 
 the matter of which our earth is com- 
 posed we are at least able to closely in- 
 vestigate its qualities. But our earth 
 is only an insignificant point in the 
 universe and we must search the en-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 69 
 
 tire cosmos. Is not this impossible? 
 We answer that in many ways, espe- 
 cially through the spectral analysis, we 
 already know that nature's elements 
 everywhere are the same and that they 
 everywhere have the same qualities. 
 If Harvey's law can be deduced from 
 the matter we are able to investigate, 
 we have at the same time shown its 
 validity for the whole of the universe 
 without limitations as to time and 
 space; because then we may apply in 
 regard to organic substance Btichner's 
 true remark as to the products of na- 
 ture in times past. "The natural 
 forces," he says, "that governed the 
 universe formerly are the same as those 
 whose results we now witness every 
 day and moment. Earth's past time is 
 to our thought nothing but an unroll- 
 ing of its present. The geologists, 
 guided by their knowledge of nature 
 and its present laws, have been able 
 with increasing accuracy to trace back 
 evolution to the most distant ages. 
 Meanwhile it has been established that
 
 70 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 everywhere and during all time only 
 those elements and forces have been 
 active which surround us today. No- 
 where has a point been found where 
 research had to be thrown overboard 
 and an interference of unknown forces 
 substituted; and nowhere and never 
 will this happen. Everywhere the same 
 laws were in force and the same matter 
 was found. Historical research has 
 demonstrated that past and present are 
 subject to the same evolution, rest on 
 the same basis." And different it could 
 not be, reasons Bucbner, since life 
 knows no exceptions, does not shirk 
 any inorganic forces, but is itself only 
 the result of the activity of these forces. 
 To obtain a definite understanding 
 of the origin of life it is therefore suffi- 
 cient to examine the origin of organic 
 matter in our days, and for such an 
 analysis there is at least no lack of 
 material. Wherever a tree or a grass 
 blade grows or a seed sprouts there 
 dead substance is transformed into liv- 
 ing; wherever an animal or a plant is
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 71 
 
 decaying, there organic matter is again 
 turned into inorganic. 
 
 The result obtained through such in- 
 vestigations already made, stood in di- 
 rect opposition to the immediate ob- 
 servations. Although Harvey's formula 
 finally was accepted, it was neverthe- 
 less taught that no specific life-force 
 exists. 
 
 This contradiction was never fully 
 understood or emphasized during the 
 last century, and the reason was that 
 the materialistic tendency was so pre- 
 dominant that nobody noticed that the 
 question of life-force is the innermost 
 main point, around which not only gen- 
 eratio spontanea and omne rivum ex vivo, 
 but also their consequences, material- 
 ism and idealism, are centered. 
 
 But in order to deny life-force as an 
 independent principle, some scientific 
 facts to build upon were necessary and 
 these were not lacking. 
 
 Before we state these facts we will 
 in a few words describe the historical 
 situation.
 
 72 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 According to the previously prevail- 
 ing vitalistic doctrine a specific life- 
 force existed, present and active in all 
 organic processes. The conceptions in 
 regard to these processes were, how- 
 ever, very dim, and the reason was that 
 the problem of combustion had not yet 
 been solved. 
 
 This problem may be said to be the 
 very key to the chemical explanation 
 of an organism. The ancient mystery 
 of fire was first solved by Lavoisier 
 after Scheele and Priestly had discov- 
 ered oxygen. The solution of this com- 
 plicated question not only became the 
 starting point for a new and rapid 
 evolution of chemistry, it also almost 
 immediately threw a clear light on the 
 innermost recesses of the organism. 
 
 The elementary constituents of the 
 organism and their origin were known 
 before, and it now became also possible 
 to explain the great store of energy 
 that the living being possesses. To as- 
 sume a specific life-force seemed super- 
 fluous. Life-force, from having been the
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 73 
 
 indispensable explanation of organic 
 phenomena, commenced more and more 
 to be regarded as a "back-way for 
 ignorance," one "of those many side 
 doors that dull heads employ when 
 they find it too laborious to think about 
 something that they do not under- 
 stand." 
 
 It was natural that the materialists 
 would eagerly embrace these ideas. 
 From the few words with which Btich- 
 ner introduces his chapter about life- 
 force, we obtain a clear insight into the 
 opinions that are held on this subject 
 in the world of natural science. "The 
 mystic notions," says Buchner, "that 
 have confused the philosophy of science 
 were invented by a time possessing but 
 a slight knowledge of nature. To these 
 notions, which have been thrown over- 
 board bv a later exact scientific re- 
 search, belongs first of all the so-called 
 life-force. Scarcely has there ever ex- 
 isted an hypothesis more detrimental 
 to the cause of science than this singu- 
 lar organic force presented in contradis-
 
 74 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 tinction to the inorganic forces, gravity, 
 affinity, light, electricity, magnetism, 
 etc. If science were forced to ac- 
 knowledge such an hypothesis, all we 
 have said about the immutability of 
 the natural laws and of the mechanical 
 order of the universe would collapse, 
 and we would be forced to admit that 
 a higher hand interferes in the course 
 of nature, dictating exceptional laws 
 that defy all calculations. A break 
 would be found in the natural structure 
 of the world, science would despair, and 
 all physical and psychical research 
 cease. Fortunately science has not been 
 obliged to yield to the irrational pres- 
 sure of the dynamists, but, on the con- 
 trary, has won everywhere a splendid 
 victory; it has lately gathered such a 
 mass of self-evident facts to its support 
 that life-force nowadays wanders an 
 empty shadow along the boundaries of 
 natural science. All those who have 
 made a closer study of any of the 
 branches of science that deal at all 
 with the organic world, agree, almost
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 75 
 
 to a man, in the condemnation of life- 
 force, and the very word is so detested 
 by science that it is always purposely 
 avoided." 
 
 We may now let Btichner present the 
 real, scientific evidence why life-force 
 must be charged to the ignorance of 
 a time when knowledge of nature was 
 but slight. In this way the reader will 
 perhaps obtain a more direct and at 
 the same time an historic view of the 
 materialistic mode of thinking. 
 
 Above all, says Btichner, it is the 
 province of chemistry to show that the 
 elements of matter are everywhere the 
 same in the inorganic as well as in the 
 organic world, and that life substance 
 is unable to present one single atom 
 not found in inorganic nature and there- 
 fore not partaking in the general flux 
 (Stoffwechsel) of matter. Chemistry has 
 decomposed organic bodies into their 
 elements exactly as it did before with 
 the inorganic. 
 
 All known inorganic forces act iden- 
 tically with respect to living as to dead
 
 76 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 nature. We have seen that forces are 
 nothing but qualities and motions of 
 the smallest particles of matter, the 
 atoms, with which these forces are in- 
 variably and inseparably conjoined. An 
 atom therefore under all circum- 
 stances can only perform the same 
 work, develop the same forces, produce 
 the same effects, whether it belongs for 
 the moment to an organic or to an in- 
 organic composition. Respiration, di- 
 gestion, the process of growing and 
 segregation are all chemical reactions. 
 Oxygen, hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen 
 are composed and decomposed within 
 the organic body in accordance with 
 the same laws that govern them out- 
 side. 
 
 We have also learned more perfectly 
 how nourishment is transformed into 
 organic tissues, and we know that 
 through different channels it leaves the 
 body in precisely the same quantity as 
 it entered, partly unmodified and partly 
 in other forms and compositions. No 
 one atom has meanwhile been lost or
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 77 
 
 become another. Digestion is a purely 
 chemical process. The stomach of an 
 animal may well be compared to a 
 chemical retort, where the substances 
 there mixed are decomposed and com- 
 posed exactly according to the general 
 laws of chemical affinity. 
 
 These facts, which may be multiplied 
 ad infinitum, enable us to understand 
 that the difference between organic and 
 inorganic is non-essential, and that 
 therefore every living being may be 
 considered a chemical laboratory, 
 whence we arrive at the following re- 
 sult: 
 
 Because daily experience teaches us that 
 all organisms consist of the same atoms as 
 does inorganic nature, although in differ- 
 <nt compositions, therefore no specific or- 
 ganic force, no life-force, can exist. This 
 latter is not a principle, but a result. 
 When organic substance assimilates in- 
 organic and brings it into its own char- 
 acteristic condition, this is not done 
 through a specific force, but through a 
 kind of infection, whereby the molec-
 
 78 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 ular conditions in the organic sub- 
 stance are transferred to the inorganic. 
 But not only does organic matter 
 consist of the same elements that are 
 to be found in inorganic nature, but 
 the organism as a whole is nothing but 
 a bodily mechanism not differing from 
 other machines except in its more com- 
 plicated construction. Water, says 
 Btichner, which must be considered as 
 the foremost and most important part 
 in all organic beings, and without 
 which all animal and plant life were 
 impossible, water penetrates, flows and 
 sinks according to the laws of gravity, 
 not differing by the breadth of a hair 
 in its action within and without the or- 
 ganism. The circulation of the blood 
 is as mechanical as we could wish, and 
 the anatomic contrivance that causes 
 it bears a surprising likeness to me- 
 chanical apparatus made by man's 
 hand. The heart is provided with 
 valves just as a steam engine; the valve 
 movements produce audible sounds. 
 The rise of the blood from the lower
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 79 
 
 parts of the body to the heart against 
 gravity can only be made possible by a 
 mechanical arrangement. The bowels 
 convey their content mechanically; me- 
 chanically the muscle movements take 
 place, and mechanical motility charac- 
 terizes men and animals. The human 
 eye obeys the same laws as a camera 
 obscura and the ear catches the sound 
 waves in same way as does any other 
 vault, and so on. 
 
 Science, therefore, entertains no 
 doubt that the living organism is a 
 machine as well as the steam engine, 
 i. e., a system where chemical affinity 
 produces heat, electricity and muscular 
 energy. 
 
 Now, are these facts, pointed out by 
 Buchner, true and correct? Undoubt- 
 edly they are in all essential respects 
 eternal truths, and we may add that 
 they are just as important foundations 
 for idealism as the materialists have 
 claimed them to be for their opinion. 
 But before we take up this subject let
 
 80 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 us see how the materialists derive their 
 philosophy from the facts mentioned. 
 
 There are many other objects in this 
 world, of which we might almost ver- 
 bally repeat what Buchner says about 
 organic matter; for instance, windows, 
 doors, locks, bricks, houses, etc. In 
 these objects also there is not one atom 
 to be found which was not present in 
 the raw material of which they were 
 made. But does the raw material it- 
 self produce these things? So Buchner 
 reasons. He says: "Because all organic 
 matter consists of inorganic raw material, 
 therefore the raw material, itself, has made 
 the organic matter. Because the organism 
 is essentially like a steam engine, the 
 building material itself has made the or- 
 ganism." 
 
 This headlong way of reasoning and 
 concluding is not characteristic of 
 Buchner alone, but applies equally to 
 the whole materialistic school during 
 the past century. 
 
 We have not said that inorganic raw 
 material is unable to produce organic
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 81 
 
 substance spontaneously, which sub- 
 stance later upbuilds the organism, but 
 for the present this remains an open 
 question to which as yet the material- 
 ists have not given an answer. But 
 before we enter the discussion of this 
 extremely important question, we will 
 in this connection mention another dis- 
 covery of natural science which seems 
 exactly to support the materialistic 
 trend of thought, a fact, therefore, that 
 crowns, so to speak, their whole philos- 
 ophy. 
 
 Up to the year 1828 it was thought 
 that organic substance could be created 
 only by the force of life. But Wohler 
 unexpectedly succeeded in producing or- 
 ganic compositions from inorganic sub- 
 stances, a discovery which was fol- 
 lowed by a series of others in the same 
 direction. It is with evident satisfac- 
 tion that Buchner calls our attention to 
 these facts. 
 
 In order to show the necessity for 
 assuming a life-force, he says, people 
 have reminded the chemists that they
 
 82 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 are unable to produce organic composi- 
 tions, that is, the peculiar grouping of 
 the elements into those ternary and 
 quaternary compounds which owe their 
 existence to an organic being, en- 
 dowed with life and life-force, and they 
 have added the amusing remark that 
 the chemists must produce living be- 
 ings in their retorts — make men — if 
 there be no life-force and if life be only 
 the result of chemical processes. The 
 chemists have not been at a loss for 
 an answer. They have made dextrose, 
 several organic acids and bases, and 
 recently they have also succeeded in 
 producing hydrates of carbon. Evolu- 
 tion has proceeded rapidly in this di- 
 rection, and today alcohol and precious 
 perfumes are made from coal, candles 
 from slate, Berlin blue, taurin and in- 
 numerable other bodies — formerly be- 
 lieved to be exclusively of animal or 
 plant origin — from the simple material 
 that inorganic nature offers us. 
 
 The materialists have a custom of 
 not considering themselves under obli-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 83 
 
 gation to do more than point to some 
 scientific facts, without investigating 
 whether these facts support their spec- 
 ulations or not. Faithful to this cus- 
 tom, Biichner stops just where his own 
 researches should have commenced. 
 Biichner has not written a textbook on 
 physics or chemistry. He has under- 
 taken the extremely serious task of in- 
 vestigating whether modern natural 
 science has produced results which 
 show that nothing but matter and its 
 forces, and consequently no soul, no 
 eternal life, etc., exist. Our first de- 
 mand of such an analysis would be, to 
 put it moderately, that the facts cited 
 really prove what they are put forward 
 to prove. But to this demand neither 
 Biichner nor his followers pay any at- 
 tention. Biichner might, for instance, 
 in regard to the facts last mentioned, 
 have taken the following questions as 
 the starting point for his investigations: 
 It is true that the chemists have pro- 
 duced artificially certain organic com- 
 pounds of inorganic elements, and they
 
 84 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 will probably go much further in this 
 direction. But is this really something 
 to be wondered at, when all organic 
 substance is composed of inorganic ele- 
 ments which, wherever they exist, pos- 
 sess the same qualities? The question 
 is how this organic substance is formed. 
 Does it appear spontaneously in the 
 chemist's laboratory while he himself 
 stands idle, observing the phenomenon, 
 or must he interfere, guide and plan 
 the activity of the chemical forces in 
 order to obtain these artificial com- 
 pounds? Why should not something 
 similar take place in the laboratory of 
 inorganic nature? There is, as far as 
 our experience goes, no organic sub- 
 stance to be found due to the spontane- 
 ous action of known natural laws. 
 What is the reason of this? How is 
 organic matter formed in nature? And, 
 further, is there no difference between 
 the organic matter produced by the 
 chemists and that present in living na- 
 ture? And if this difference proves to 
 be that the former is not organized
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 85 
 
 while the latter always is, why cannot 
 the chemists produce organized matter? 
 
 If Biichner had proposed these or 
 similar questions and taken time to 
 think them over, he would have ob- 
 tained a different result, but instead he 
 breaks off his argumentation just where 
 it should have commenced. 
 
 Consequently the fault in the ma- 
 terialists' process of thinking does not 
 lie in the facts used as foundation for 
 their argument. The premises and the 
 beginning are correct. Just because or- 
 ganic matter consists of the same ele- 
 ments as inorganic, just for this reason 
 natural science can decide whether the 
 physical laws are able spontaneously 
 to produce such matter and such ma- 
 chines. The materialists have stopped 
 after providing the introduction; the 
 continuation and the end are lacking. 
 They have overlooked the whole series 
 of scientific facts that stand in neces- 
 sary correlation to the starting point. 
 We have therefore only to resume the 
 interrupted demonstration and will
 
 86 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 then endeavor to make the latter part 
 as simple and comprehensible as Btich- 
 ner made the former.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 How Is Organic Matter Produced? 
 
 THE ESSENTIAL in matter is 
 force. Strictly speaking, we com- 
 prehend nothing but forces. Every body 
 manifests itself as resistance necessary 
 to overcome if we wish to remove it 
 from its place. 
 
 What remains of the body if we 
 think of it as deprived of this counter 
 force? At least nothing remains that 
 we can touch or by which we may ob- 
 tain palpable evidence of its existence. 
 Neither does there remain anything 
 that we can see, as seeing depends upon 
 resistance to light, reflection of the 
 ether-waves. If the mountain exerted 
 no resistance we would pass through 
 it without feeling or seeing anything 
 whatever. 
 
 True, there is perhaps matter — for in- 
 stance, the ether — which we neither see
 
 88 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 nor feel, but which still exists. This 
 matter is then qualified by some other 
 form of energy by which it manifests 
 itself. Thus we comprehend ether as 
 light, heat and colors, all forces, as well 
 as gravity, electricity, etc. 
 
 Already from these suggestions it is 
 evident that force is the only substan- 
 tial thing in the material world. With- 
 out force, matter is nothing that may 
 be comprehended either by the senses 
 or by the reason. What we call matter 
 is nothing but different kinds of en- 
 ergy.* We have space-occupying en- 
 ergy, chemical, electrical, mechanical 
 forms of energy, and so forth. 
 
 How are these forms of energy re- 
 lated to each other? Between forms 
 so different as tones and light, colors 
 and mechanical work, there is at least 
 
 ♦The latest researches in regard to the newly dis- 
 covered corpuscles show that these "bodies" have a 
 mass proportional to the square of their velocity, thus 
 forcing us to conclude that they at rest have no mass. 
 Perhaps, therefore, the ancient dualistic world of mat- 
 ter and force is merging into a larger unity where 
 life directs force to serve its specific purposes.— Trans- 
 lator's note.
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 89 
 
 no connection apparent to external ob- 
 servation. 
 
 For a long time it was also believed 
 that no such relation existed. It was 
 only after 1840 that several scientists 
 made the startling discovery almost 
 simultaneously that physical forces may 
 be transformed one into another. It 
 proved possible to transform a certain 
 quantity of heat into an equal quantity 
 of mechanical energy, which again 
 might be turned into equivalent quan- 
 tities of electricity, light, chemical en- 
 ergy, etc. It was further found that 
 these processes might be undertaken in 
 the reverse order, so that the original 
 form of energy could be restored in un- 
 changed quantity and with unmodified 
 qualities. Nothing was lost and noth- 
 ing was added. 
 
 Recent science is founded entirely on 
 these facts, which later generations 
 probably will consider as the greatest 
 of all the discoveries of the last cen- 
 tury. 
 
 This law of the permanence and the
 
 90 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 mutability of force is of immediate im- 
 portance to materialism. As long as it 
 was thought that the forces of nature 
 were separate and different from each 
 other, it was easy to imagine that the 
 more inaccessible or mystic forms stood 
 nearer life, yea, were life itself. The 
 absurdity of such an idea is now obvi- 
 ous, since it has been shown that the 
 physical forces may be transformed 
 into one another and therefore are not 
 intrinsically separate, but fundamen- 
 tally the same force, acting differently 
 under different conditions. Now, if life 
 were a form of material energy, any 
 form of physical force might be trans- 
 formed into life and consciousness, into 
 spiritual and moral forces. Life and 
 consciousness might then be artificially 
 produced, and we would rack our 
 brains in order to find the mechanical 
 equivalent of the intellect, try to meas- 
 ure it in amperes and volts, etc. But 
 nothing of this kind is done, simply be- 
 cause it is impossible, as presently we 
 shall see. Life cannot be transformed
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 91 
 
 into any form of material energy, and, vice 
 versa, no form of material energy can he 
 transformed into life. Life and physical 
 force are, as to nature and substance, 
 essentially different principles. 
 
 Although the law just referred to 
 about the permanence and the muta- 
 bility of physical forces thus seems 
 rather to disprove materialism, it was 
 not for this reason chiefly that we have 
 related it. Our purpose is to find a 
 basis in this fact from which the funda 
 mental contrariety between organic and 
 inorganic matter most easily may be 
 explained, and thereafter to enter into 
 this differentiation just as far as is nec- 
 essary to decide the main point as to 
 whether one form of matter can spon- 
 taneously produce another. 
 
 We recollect that the materialists en- 
 deavored to make the difference be- 
 tween organic and inorganic com- 
 pounds as slight as possible. The for- 
 mer consisted of exactly the same ele- 
 ments as the latter and these elements
 
 92 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 had exactly the same qualities in one 
 compound as in another. 
 
 However true this may be, is not 
 meat nevertheless something different 
 from limestone, although limestone may 
 easily be found that contains nearly 
 all the elements present in the meat? 
 In starch, sugar, fat, etc., precisely the 
 same elements enter as in water and 
 carbonic acid, but no materialist denies 
 that there are important differences be- 
 tween these two groups of substances. 
 
 What is it, then, that essentially 
 separates the two classes of matter 
 (nothing but the most essential fac- 
 tors concerns us here)? If we ask this 
 question of chemistry, we are answered 
 that this quality is combustibility. Or- 
 ganic matter is combustible; inorganic 
 is not. 
 
 But why should organic matter be 
 combustible? Because fuel is as neces- 
 sary to the organism as to the steam 
 engine. To both their physical source 
 of power is heat, and even the engine 
 receives it through the combustion of
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 93 
 
 organic substances. All the fuel that 
 is generally used is of organic origin, 
 although we seldom think of this fact. 
 
 But why can we not fire an engine 
 with inorganic products? Because these 
 cannot burn, and the reason again is, 
 that they are already burned. If this 
 be true, they must once have been fuel 
 themselves, must once have been in a 
 burning state. How do we know this? 
 Because the inorganic world consists 
 almost entirely of chemical compounds 
 that are only formed by combustion, 
 when this word is used in its widest 
 sense. 
 
 If these suggestions are correct, or- 
 ganic matter is to inorganic as fuel to 
 the products of combustion. In the in- 
 organic world the latter have been 
 transformed to fuel which in a renewed 
 combustion reproduces the same prod- 
 ucts as those of which it once was 
 formed. 
 
 If this be the case our problem may 
 be thus formulated: Can inorganic 
 products of combustion again form
 
 94 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 combustibles spontaneously? Can car- 
 bonic acid or water through the spon- 
 taneous activity of physical forces be 
 transformed into sugar, starch, fat, 
 etc.? 
 
 In order to decide if this be possible 
 we must first know what combustion is, 
 and we will therefore briefly explain 
 what this term means. 
 
 Combustion is a chemical process, it 
 is said, and this definition may be true, 
 although it may also be misleading. 
 In daily speech combustion is generally 
 identified with the phenomena of light 
 and the generation of heat, which we 
 immediately observe, but chemical proc- 
 esses can neither be seen nor felt, be- 
 cause they take place in the inner 
 world of matter which hitherto has 
 proved inaccessible to human observa- 
 tion. Yea, chemical processes are so 
 foreign to the experiences of our senses 
 that chemistry, the science of these 
 processes, is entirely founded on the 
 deductions of our reason. The prem- 
 ises that our reason uses for its con-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 95 
 
 elusions belong to the physical world 
 which is the outer side of matter that 
 faces us. The phenomena that accom- 
 pany combustion belong to this world 
 and are, therefore, strictly speaking, 
 not chemical but physical phenomena. 
 
 But even if these phenomena of light 
 and heat, of which the latter especially 
 interests us here, belong to the world 
 comprehensible to our senses, they 
 must nevertheless be intimately con- 
 nected with the inner chemical process 
 because heat is developed in nearly 
 every chemical reaction. Heat is not 
 created from nothing; there must be 
 a cause for this force, and the cause 
 cannot be anything but the chemical 
 energy which in the chemical process 
 is transformed into heat. In few 
 words: What we generally term com- 
 bustion cannot be identical with the 
 actual chemical process. The light and 
 the heat must, on the contrary, be con- 
 sidered as the external results of the 
 chemical process, its physical effect. 
 
 By a close study of this physical
 
 96 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 effect we have also been able to explain 
 what happens within matter itself. As 
 it is necessary to understand this in 
 order to comprehend how heat is de- 
 veloped, we will endeavor shortly to 
 outline the present scientific conception 
 of the chemical process called combus- 
 tion. 
 
 From the qualities of matter we have 
 concluded that the bodies we see are 
 composed of extremely tiny particles 
 called molecules, which, however, are 
 so small that with our optical re- 
 sources we never shall be able to ob- 
 serve them. Even the smallest particle 
 of dust visible to the eye must be con- 
 sidered as containing an enormous 
 number of them. With molecules, how- 
 ever, we have not reached the limit 
 of the divisibility of matter. They may 
 themselves be divided by chemical 
 forces into smaller material units 
 called atoms, and these latter are 
 therefore the building stones of which 
 matter is ultimately composed. Now 
 neither the atoms within the molecule,
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 97 
 
 nor the molecules within the visible 
 body, are packed closely together. 
 They are separated by comparatively 
 great spaces. But if these building 
 stones are separated from each other 
 we might expect that they would be- 
 have like the grains in a sand heap. 
 
 How can material bodies then be 
 solid, hard, tough, etc.? The reason is 
 that the spacing in question is regu- 
 lated by other forces of essentially 
 different kind. We have attracting as 
 well as repelling forces, such as tend 
 to increase as well as to reduce the 
 distances between the particles. 
 
 We shall first consider the attract- 
 ing forces, and these are called co- 
 hesion and adhesion when exerted be- 
 tween molecules. The mutual attrac- 
 tion between the atoms within the 
 molecules has been named affinity or 
 chemical energy. 
 
 Turning again to the form of energy 
 acting in the opposite direction, we 
 find just the force we are in search
 
 98 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 of — heat, which is the physical source 
 of energy of all living beings. 
 
 That heat increases the distances be- 
 tween molecules is already evident 
 from the fact that all bodies increase 
 in volume when heated, a process which 
 may be continued by further supply of 
 heat until the solid becomes a fluid, 
 and the fluid a gas. 
 
 In solid bodies the attracting forces 
 have predominance. The molecules are 
 arranged with definite spacing and in 
 definite positions so that the body as- 
 sumes a certain external shape. If 
 such a body is exposed to heat the 
 molecules are removed from each other 
 and the cohesion becomes correspond- 
 ingly feebler. Finally a point is reached 
 when the molecules are so far unfet- 
 tered that they are at liberty to move 
 with respect to each other. The solid 
 has then become a fluid and may 
 through continued heating enter the 
 gaseous state. The cohesion is then 
 entirely conquered so that the mole-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 99 
 
 cules move freely in all directions in- 
 dependent of each other. 
 
 Similarly, heat influences the atoms 
 of which the molecules are composed. 
 Even chemical attraction gives way to 
 heat so that all bodies at sufficient 
 temperature are decomposed into free 
 atoms or elementary constituents. 
 
 We have seen that heat performs 
 mechanical work in so far as it sep- 
 arates masses from each other. But 
 heat not only performs this work but 
 is the work itself, or is identical with 
 the movement of these particles. 
 
 Consequently a certain quantity of 
 mechanical work is equivalent to a 
 certain quantity of heat and vice versa, 
 and it is this transformation from one 
 form of energy into another that takes 
 place during a chemical reaction. The 
 mechanical energy of the atoms is here 
 converted into heat which may again 
 be used for the other forms of mechan- 
 ical activity. Through the chemical re- 
 action that heat is regained which pre- 
 viously was utilized in separating the
 
 100 DEATH AND RESURRECTIO N. 
 
 atoms or sustaining their movement, 
 and this explains why heat is devel- 
 oped in chemical processes. If this de- 
 velopment of heat is increased to a 
 certain point, or, which is the same, if 
 the reaction takes place with greater 
 violence, the common phenomena of 
 fire and light appear. But even with- 
 out these, every chemical process may 
 be called combustion in a wider sense, 
 that is, if we consider the production 
 of heat as the characteristic external 
 effect of the chemical force. 
 
 At sufficiently high temperature, 
 then, all matter must be in an incan- 
 descent gaseous state, and vice versa at 
 a low temperature it is a solid mass. 
 
 With these short notes we have also 
 outlined the history of our own earth. 
 The same gaseous state in which our 
 sun is at present belonged once to the 
 earth according to science of today. 
 During enormous periods of time the 
 incandescent matter of the earth radi- 
 ated light and heat into the cold uni- 
 verse. Finally so much heat was lost
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 101 
 
 that chemical attraction could assert 
 itself. Regarded as a sun, the earth 
 was then dying and it entered upon the 
 chemical era. During this state the 
 elements combined with each other ac- 
 cording to general chemical laws into 
 such compounds as were the necessary 
 outcome of their atomic weights, 
 valence, and positive or negative quali- 
 ties. In this connection it is sufficient 
 to point out that these processes must 
 go on incessantly until compounds have 
 been formed in which the chemical 
 forces have reached equilibrium and 
 rest. In the case of our planet these 
 products formed the solid crust of the 
 earth, the primeval rock, the mineral 
 world, further water and finally air, 
 the oxygen and nitrogen of which may 
 be considered as remains of the ele- 
 ments. Furthermore, according to a 
 law known to science as that "of the 
 least resistance," chemical reactions 
 proceed from compounds which have 
 more energy to such as have less, 
 wherefore it follows that each product
 
 102 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 was as poor in energy as the conditions 
 at the time permitted. 
 
 If we now especially give our atten- 
 tion to the combustion taking place in 
 chemical processes, this era may also 
 be called the period of combustion or 
 the general world-fire, names which are 
 exact even if we use combustion in the 
 common, limited sense of oxidation. 
 Oxygen is considered to constitute 
 about one-half of the solid crust of the 
 earth, and when to this quantitative 
 preponderance is added its extraordi- 
 narily strong affinity to other elements, 
 these must with necessity burn into 
 oxides just as has been the case. 
 
 It is therefore with the products of 
 combustion, that is to say, the ashes and 
 the remains from a general colossal 
 world-fire, that the earth enters its 
 planetary state, at which stage it be- 
 comes suitable for the creation and 
 evolution of living beings. It is from 
 burnt substances that the organisms 
 must form the combustible matter that 
 constitutes their material clothing.
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 103 
 
 How can this be done? In the only 
 possible way; that is, by again decom- 
 posing the products of combustion into 
 their elements and bringing them into 
 such combinations that a new combus- 
 tion may take place. Are the products 
 of combustion able to perform this 
 transformation spontaneously? They 
 have just lost the fund of energy that 
 could have made them combustible and 
 this lost heat must again be stored up 
 and therefore taken from some other 
 source, as no heat can be created from 
 nothing. 
 
 When the chemical forces had once 
 reached equilibrium and rest, the earth 
 might then be compared to an immense 
 corpse thrown into space and which 
 must remain in the same state eter- 
 nally, or until it met with a cosmic ca- 
 tastrophe. Not the slightest movement 
 or variation could now take place spon- 
 taneously on its surface. If a change 
 happened it must have had its cause in 
 another source of power, and two such 
 sources existed. One was the earth's
 
 104 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 own internal heat, and the other the 
 sun, and we must therefore consider if 
 either of these, or both together could 
 produce combustible organic substance. 
 
 In regard first to the earth's internal 
 heat we might immediately eliminate 
 this source of energy, as it has no 
 direct connection whatever with the 
 origin of organic matter, an assertion 
 so commonly agreed upon that we need 
 not dwell further upon it. 
 
 Infinitely more important is the sun, 
 which has been and is the cause of 
 most of the changes taking place on 
 the earth's surface after its cooling off. 
 The sun causes the circulation of the 
 air and water and thereby the whole 
 series of disintegration and decay, the 
 history of which is written with indeli- 
 ble letters in our geological sediments 
 and formations. These formations tell 
 us that new oceans and continents, new 
 minerals and rocks have successively 
 been formed, but nowhere that organic 
 substances were ever built up spon- 
 taneously under the sun's influence.
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 105 
 
 The processes of decay, on the con- 
 trary, proceed in the entirely opposite 
 direction. 
 
 Through them nothing is formed but 
 compounds poorer in energy than be- 
 fore. In decaying, the products of com- 
 bustion absorb, if possible, more oxy- 
 gen, become more burnt or oxidized, so 
 that this whole process may be called 
 an after-burning, a more thorough com- 
 bustion of the remnants from the first 
 general world-fire. 
 
 The spontaneous activity of nature's 
 forces, then, go in a direction just op- 
 posite to the one necessary for the pro- 
 duction of organic substances. And 
 anything else was not to be expected. 
 The products of combustion resemble 
 fallen weights, slack bow-strings, water 
 below the fall, etc., whereas combusti- 
 ble organic matter might be compared 
 to lifted weights, set bow-strings, water 
 above the fall, etc. If matter has once 
 fallen from a higher to a lower level of 
 energy it can never spontaneously re- 
 turn, especially as it has just lost the
 
 106 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 necessary store of energy. As impos- 
 sible as it is for the swift current to 
 turn its course, or for the fallen weight 
 to lift itself or for the discharged bow- 
 string to set itself again, so impossible 
 is it for the products of combustion 
 spontaneously to turn into combustible 
 substances.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Organic Matter as a Product of Art. 
 
 FROM the previous chapter we now 
 draw the extremely important con- 
 clusion that all organic matter is a 
 product of art, that is, a product which 
 the forces of nature cannot produce. 
 Spontaneously these forces only create 
 natural products. Products of art be- 
 long to an entirely different category; 
 they owe their existence to a foreign 
 interference in the natural order of the 
 world and have a cause that does not 
 fall within the limits of a mere me- 
 chanical causalitv. But before we dis- 
 cuss this subject, let us first thoroughly 
 understand what we mean by saying 
 that organic matter is a product of art. 
 Materialists have shown that the 
 organism closely resembles a steam en- 
 gine, but they have neglected to point
 
 108 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 out that the similarity extends also to 
 the mode in which they are produced. 
 Everybody is probably convinced that 
 the forces of nature have never made 
 and never will make a steam engine. 
 If the same might be said in regard to 
 the machines which we call organisms, 
 then materialism would be disproved. 
 But why, to begin with, cannot the 
 forces of nature build steam engines? 
 We must be able to present the rea- 
 sons for this statement. 
 
 If we first consider the building ma- 
 terial, we find this in the factories in 
 the form of plates, bars and ingots of 
 iron, copper, lead, tin, etc. Where do 
 these metals come from? Nowhere in 
 nature is such material found.* 
 
 Humanity had inhabited the earth 
 thousands of years without having an 
 
 ♦Chemists understand that the so-called native iron, 
 found, for instance, in Greenland, forms no real 
 exception more than the chemical reactions that ab- 
 sorb heat form exceptions to the general law that 
 chemical processes set heat free, because if the 
 necessary simultaneous reactions are taken into ac- 
 count, all the reactions as a whole show a surplus of 
 heat. — Translator's note.
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 109 
 
 idea of the existence of such substances 
 as iron, copper, lead, etc. The metals 
 are chemical ingredients in our min- 
 erals and from these minerals they are 
 extracted by complicated, artificial proc- 
 esses. The ore is often lifted out of 
 the depths of the mountains; it goes 
 through a series of treatments which 
 the forces of nature cannot spontane- 
 ously undertake. We will here give 
 only a moment's attention to the proc- 
 ess of reduction, or the separation of 
 the metal from its natural compounds. 
 This, as we know, is done in our blast 
 furnaces, where the iron is reduced 
 through the presence of coal and other 
 suitable substances in certain propor- 
 tions. If we now remember that the 
 heat in our furnaces often reaches 
 about 2000° Centigrade we see at once 
 that the sun may shine on our moun- 
 tains throughout eternity without ever 
 producing the temperature necessary 
 for the reduction. 
 
 But the engine is not yet completed. 
 The plates must be first rolled and
 
 110 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 shaped, the ingots must be melted and 
 cast into frames, shafts, bearings, etc.; 
 in short, the raw material must be 
 formed into all those numerous parts 
 of which the machine is composed. 
 The engine is from beginning to end a 
 product of art. 
 
 There is especially one circumstance 
 pertaining to all these transformations 
 that merits a closer attention. If we 
 remember that all the material used in 
 a product of art is taken from nature, 
 and besides that, all the processes in 
 making and shaping the raw material 
 are carried out through the employ- 
 ment of natural laws, we might still 
 ask the question, why physical forces 
 should not enter spontaneously into the 
 necessary artificial combinations for 
 producing this result. Until we have 
 pointed out the quality in matter which 
 prevents this, we have not completely 
 demonstrated the inability of natural 
 forces to build an engine spontane- 
 ously. 
 
 This quality has been named vis
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. Ill 
 
 inertiae, the inertia of matter, one of 
 the most important natural laws that 
 exist. What does this law teach us? 
 It says that matter cannot itself change 
 its condition. If a body is in motion it 
 can never come to rest unless another 
 force at least equal to the primary op- 
 poses the motion. If it be at rest, it 
 cannot impart motion unto itself; en- 
 ergy, applied from without, is neces- 
 sary. Inertia keeps the earth moving 
 around the sun; a stone thrown into 
 the air would proceed everlastingly 
 with its initial velocity if the attrac- 
 tion of the earth did not interfere. 
 
 Because of this quality, then, matter 
 remains in its natural equilibrium. An 
 engine would never be built because 
 the ore would stay in the mountains 
 and the metals forever remain in their 
 compounds. Every product of art re- 
 quires a foreign interference in the ma- 
 terial world; matter, in consequence 
 of its inertia, presents a determined 
 and often very energetic resistance to 
 such an intervention.
 
 112 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 Exactly the same reasons that pre- 
 vent natural forces from building a 
 steam engine, cause also their inability 
 to produce an organism, and this in a 
 much higher degree because the organ- 
 ism is in a still fuller sense a product 
 of art. The organic building material, 
 instead of being plates and ingots of 
 iron, copper, lead, etc., consists of car- 
 bon, hydrogen, sulphur, phosphorus, 
 chlorin, potassium, sodium, magnesia, 
 etc., or both metals and metalloids of 
 which the former, on account of their 
 negative, and the latter because of their 
 positive qualities cannot exist in a free 
 state. From the minerals found in 
 nature these substances must be ex- 
 tracted for organic purposes. The ele- 
 ments are different, but otherwise we 
 may verbally repeat in regard to or- 
 ganic substance what has been previ- 
 ously said about the steam engine. 
 
 It is the creation of organic matter 
 by art that the materialists have neg- 
 lected to take into account. Therefore 
 they look upon the organism just as a
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 113 
 
 new race, suddenly succeeding human- 
 ity, would view our steam engines. 
 These machines would certainly appear 
 very mysterious to the earth's new in- 
 habitants. But a growing civilization 
 would undoubtedly discover that all the 
 material used in the engine is taken 
 from ores to be found in nature. If now 
 somebody would draw the conclusion 
 that these ores themselves had made 
 the engine he would reason as do the 
 materialists today in regard to the or- 
 ganism. The parallel does not halt in 
 any respect, but it is sufficient in this 
 connection to call attention only to one 
 or two of the more important com- 
 ponents of the organism. 
 
 Organic matter, or combustible sub- 
 stance, consists of carbon and hydro- 
 gen which in an organism are com- 
 parable to the iron in a steam engine. 
 But nowhere in nature is free hydrogen 
 or free inorganic carbon to be found. 
 The carbon was burned to carbonic 
 acid in earth's first combustion, and 
 similarly the hydrogen was burned to
 
 114 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 water long before the conditions for 
 organic life existed on the earth. 
 
 From these original products of com- 
 bustion, burnable organic matter is 
 formed by decomposition of carbonic 
 acid and water into their elements, car- 
 bon and hydrogen, and by their sub- 
 sequent combination through feebler 
 chemical forces into sugar, starch, etc., 
 which substances through a new com- 
 bustion are again turned into carbonic 
 acid and water. The natural forces 
 cannot spontaneously undertake these 
 transformations that only take place 
 because of artificial arrangements. The 
 processes of nature go in the entirely 
 opposite direction, as we have seen. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the reduction of 
 carbonic acid and water is done 
 through the direct assistance of liv- 
 ing beings. From the sun they take 
 their power. But how ineffective the 
 sun would be, left to itself, is seen 
 already by the fact that carbonic acid 
 is disintegrated at a temperature of 
 1300° C. and water only at 1500°.
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 115 
 
 Products of art must be resorted to, 
 and we know that by lenses, burning 
 mirrors, photographic cameras and the 
 like the sun may be forced to accom- 
 plish results that otherwise would be 
 impossible. Such artificial apparatus, 
 then, must be the chlorophyll granules 
 in the cells. More strikingly yet, these 
 organs of the cell may be compared to 
 our blast-furnaces, as it is just in the 
 chlorophyll granules that the reduction 
 of carbonic acid and water, according 
 to science, takes place. If these artifi- 
 cial devices, invented and constructed 
 by the lower living units that consti- 
 tute the cell, did not exist, the sun 
 might shine throughout eternity on 
 water and carbonic acid without pro- 
 ducing organic building material. 
 
 This material is and must be the 
 product of art. If the forces of in- 
 organic nature spontaneously produced 
 sugar, starch, etc., these substances 
 must have the same quality as our 
 rocks, minerals, etc., of being products 
 of combustion, which in such a sup-
 
 116 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 posed case, perhaps, would be made 
 burnable if transformed into water and 
 carbonic acid. We would obtain a cre- 
 ation turned upside down and analo- 
 gous to a world where the bodies we 
 now use as weights would remain un- 
 supported at certain distances from our 
 earth. If we were to use such a body 
 as a weight in a clock, we would have 
 to wind it down instead of up. 
 
 Because organic compounds are 
 products of art, living beings find them- 
 selves obliged to direct the physical 
 forces to destroy these compounds or 
 restore them to their inorganic state 
 more speedily than these forces would 
 have done if left unaided. The proc- 
 esses of decay, performed by micro- 
 organisms, are as necessary in the 
 economy of life as the reverse proc- 
 esses. Otherwise the earth would 
 soon be so covered by corpses that life 
 must cease simply for lack of inorganic 
 raw material. It is true that we might 
 imagine living beings as adapting their 
 organization to this condition and for
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 117 
 
 some time directly utilizing the ac- 
 cumulated stores of organic matter; 
 but such periodical interruptions and 
 changes would disturb the continuity 
 of life's evolution. To avoid this, there 
 is no way open to restore equilibrium 
 except the one in which it is now done. 
 No effect, whatever its nature, can 
 exist without cause; and further, every 
 effect must have a sufficient cause. If, 
 therefore, we have established that 
 natural forces can no more produce 
 organisms than steam engines, we have 
 also proved that these things would 
 never have come into existence if the 
 organic forces had been left to them- 
 selves. Neither organisms nor engines 
 would exist, because they have no 
 cause in the material world. The prod- 
 ucts of art are due not only to other 
 causes, but the relationship between 
 cause and effect is also different 
 with them from what it is with the 
 products of nature. Every product of 
 nature has its cause in a previous con- 
 dition of matter. The cause goes be-
 
 118 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 fore and the effect comes after in time. 
 The connection between cause and ef- 
 fect is so intimate and complete with 
 regard to natural products, that we may 
 trace the series of occurrences back- 
 ward and forward in time without 
 other limitations than those imposed 
 by a deficient knowledge of the quali- 
 ties of matter. Such a connection be- 
 tween cause and effect has been termed 
 mechanical causality, which reigns 
 without exception in the material 
 world. 
 
 Of entirely different kind and nature 
 is the series of causes pertaining to 
 the production of objects of art. In 
 their capacity of purpose they are 
 themselves the physical cause of all 
 the work that precedes their birth. 
 When the product of art is finally 
 ready, the effect has then gone before 
 the cause. Such a connection is called 
 teleological causality in contradistinc- 
 tion to the mechanical one, where the 
 cause always precedes the effect. 
 
 But although the product of art is
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 119 
 
 the nearest cause of its own produc- 
 tion, it is not the primary one; it is 
 itself the result, not of a cause to be 
 found in the material world, but of a 
 foreign interference in the mechanical 
 causality, and points therefore to a 
 supernatural ground which, by a closer 
 investigation, will be found identical 
 with a living will. The will feels the 
 want of other things than those which 
 natural forces can spontaneously pro- 
 duce. Natural products act as incen,- 
 tives on the will, spur it to break 
 through mechanical causality so that 
 physical laws by a judicious guidance 
 may be forced to produce artificial 
 products that better satisfy the desires 
 of the will. If natural laws could com- 
 prehend and judge these things, they 
 would consider them all as miracles, 
 whereas, from the point of view of the 
 will, they are so much the more natural 
 as they are exact expressions of the 
 needs and desires of the will. 
 
 But not only the order of cause and 
 effect, even the tie between the two is
 
 120 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 entirely different in teleological causal- 
 ity from that in mechanical. While 
 the natural product is an effect that 
 cannot fail to appear, the product of 
 art, on the contrary, is an effect that 
 primarily never could be expected, be- 
 cause it has no cause in the material 
 world; but further, if it is forthcoming, 
 the tie between cause and effect is so 
 loose that such a product may be left 
 and will remain in any stage of its 
 production. It may be just commenced, 
 half ready, or nearly completed; be 
 better or worse, be a failure, and so 
 on, whereas the natural product springs 
 forth of physical necessity from its 
 cause and never can be different from 
 what it is. 
 
 Wills and physical forces then stand 
 against each other as two fundamen- 
 tally and radically different causes. A 
 will may neglect to do what it ought 
 to, may be idle, industrious, undecided; 
 a physical force cannot leave undone 
 what it has to do, can never be called 
 idle, industrious or undecided.
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 121 
 
 That man is able to produce objects 
 of art we have sufficient evidence in 
 material invention, from the simple 
 stone-ax up to the most complicated 
 machines. But if man can create prod- 
 ucts of art he must himself be a super- 
 natural cause, as natural products pro- 
 duce nothing but their own kind. And 
 not only he but also the beings that 
 build up his organism must be super- 
 natural causes, as we have seen that 
 all organic matter ipso facto are prod- 
 ucts of art. 
 
 In all these different forms and spe- 
 cies of products of art we possess, 
 therefore, boundless masses of obvious 
 and visible evidence that life is not a 
 quality of matter. In order to break 
 through the mechanical causality and 
 introduce into the material world ef- 
 fects which never could be spontane- 
 ously forthcoming, life must have a 
 supernatural origin, must be a prin- 
 ciple independent of matter. 
 
 By resuming the demonstration that 
 the materialists had broken off, we
 
 122 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 arrive therefore at the same conclu- 
 sion that natural science had already 
 drawn before from external observa- 
 tion, and with which the question of 
 the nature of life-force is inseparably 
 connected. The qualities of matter 
 itself demonstrate clearly that spon- 
 taneous generation never has been, is 
 not and never will be possible, and the 
 tremendous labor spent during cen- 
 turies to prove this by external ob- 
 servation seems almost a waste of time. 
 We might as well pick out a table full 
 of stones and sit down expecting some 
 of them to undertake a flight around 
 the room, as to expect living substance 
 to come forth spontaneously from dead 
 matter. The intrinsic qualities of mat- 
 ter tell us that only hope for the 
 former occurrence can warrant faith 
 in the latter. 
 
 We thus consider it demonstrated 
 that Harvey's formula is a universal 
 natural law and we may now draw its 
 logical consequences: Life is not a 
 material force; no living being can there'
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 123 
 
 fore arise from dead matter; all life has 
 a supernatural origin in a higher imma- 
 terial world.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Soul and the Cells. 
 
 LIVING beings are alive because the 
 very substance in them is living. 
 Life belongs to this substance exactly 
 as materiality belongs to matter. As 
 living substance can exist only in the 
 form of living individuals, all living 
 beings fall outside the limitations of 
 time and possess individual immortal- 
 ity without exception. The cell, there- 
 fore, is as immortal as man. But if this 
 is the case, the fact that the duration 
 of the earthly life of man is different 
 from that of the cell must now at last 
 appear in its full significance. During 
 man's life a series of cell-generations 
 have lived, acted and disappeared, al- 
 though the phenomenon here, as in the 
 body of society, passes comparatively 
 unnoticed because the cell is invisible 
 to the naked eye. Of course we ob-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 125 
 
 serve a daily growth of nails, hair and 
 of the whole outer skin. This outer 
 layer consists exclusively of dead cells, 
 which daily scale off by the millions 
 through wear, washing or otherwise, 
 and are replaced by other dying cells 
 from the inner living tissues. The same 
 process of dying and renewal takes 
 place in the organs of the cell. As 
 man's lifetime often depends on the 
 trade he has chosen, so it is with the 
 cells in his organism. Those that per- 
 form heavy work, as for instance 
 glandular cells, often die in the mo- 
 ment their mission is filled. This proc- 
 ess commences even in the individu- 
 al's embryonic state. With lower ani- 
 mals, whose generation takes place 
 outside the mother-body, we can often 
 observe with the naked eye how whole 
 organs normally die and disappear. 
 
 If the cells as well as men are im- 
 mortal beings, the question naturally 
 arises: what becomes of these inces- 
 santly dying cell generations? The an- 
 swer must necessarily be apparent if
 
 126 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 we can show, First, that the tie between 
 the soul and the cells is indissoluble so 
 that man's organism, i. e., his spiritual 
 body, consists of the same cell-individuals 
 in a future life as here in time; Second, 
 that the cells at the same time are self- 
 existent and so independent of the soul, 
 that in a future existence also, as here in 
 time, they can and must build up man's 
 organism independently. 
 
 In such case no reason can be ad- 
 vanced that would prevent the dying 
 cell-generations from immediately aris- 
 ing to a new and higher evolution, 
 which, as we will endeavor to prove, 
 must be identical with the upbuilding 
 of the higher, transfigured body which 
 man shall possess in a future life. This 
 form of resurrection must be common 
 to all organisms because they are all 
 built according to the same general 
 plan and are consequently subject to 
 the same general process of evolution. 
 Men are themselves the cells in another 
 higher organism, humanity, which en- 
 tity cannot rise to a richer life in an- 

 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 127 
 
 other world otherwise than through its 
 upbuilding by the dying human gen- 
 erations under the new conditions that 
 exist over there. 
 
 As a preliminary experiment in order 
 to find out if the soul is indispensable 
 to the life of the organism, or if the 
 cells possibly might do without the 
 soul, we may appropriately remove the 
 latter from an organism and thus di- 
 rectly observe the importance of the 
 soul for the cells. 
 
 But how can this be done, or at least, 
 how may we deprive the organism of 
 all influence from the soul? The 
 physiologists have proved the possibil- 
 ity of such an experiment. It is fully 
 established that the soul communicates 
 with the body through the brain proper, 
 or the cerebrum, and experience shows 
 that this important organ may be re- 
 moved and yet the body continue to 
 live. We will here give briefly the re- 
 sults of such experiments made with 
 animals. 
 
 If the brain be removed from a dove
 
 128 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 or a hen, the bird often recovers from 
 the radical operation and may remain 
 alive for months and even years. But 
 the dove has become an entirely differ- 
 ent being. Immobile she sits on the 
 same place. If she were not heard to 
 breathe she might be taken for a 
 stuffed bird. She lacks ability to judge 
 her position and resembles a living 
 machine that breathes, and swallows 
 the food brought into her bill. The 
 higher qualities of the dove are entirely 
 lost. She shows no signs of fear and 
 is incapable of initiative. She remains 
 sitting in the same place and will not 
 even fly down from small heights. If 
 thrown into the air, she flies until her 
 wings are tired or until she strikes an 
 obstacle that she makes no effort to 
 avoid. From the first day she must be 
 fed artificially, but she digests her 
 food as usual. The heart, the circula- 
 tion of the blood, the respiration, in 
 short, all the vegetative functions of 
 life continue regularly. Such a state
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 129 
 
 has been characterized by Flourens as 
 a continuous sleep without dreams. 
 
 The same observations have been 
 made with regard to dogs that have 
 been deprived of a large part of the 
 brain. 
 
 With lowered head and dead eyes, 
 such a dog moves about indifferent to 
 everything taking place around him. 
 He shows no signs of fear, envy or joy. 
 Neither threats nor friendly speech im- 
 press him. He never partakes in the 
 barking of other dogs and is, as a rule, 
 mute. Only should he be hungry he 
 might set up a howl. Although indif- 
 ferent to the strongest light or sound, 
 he is not entirely blind or deaf. At 
 the stronger sounds he might move his 
 head slightly. All higher life is lost, 
 but he digests his food and all vegeta- 
 tive functions continue just as regular- 
 ly as if he were in normal condition. 
 
 Observation of the effect of certain ac- 
 cidents and diseases intimates that man 
 forms no exception but that the same
 
 130 DEA TH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 results would probably be obtained 
 from similar experiments with him. 
 Though such experiments are out of 
 the question, we can, however, in many 
 different ways ascertain that the soul 
 of man is also inactive in the vegeta- 
 tive functions of his organism. In 
 earliest childhood this is perfectly evi- 
 dent. To possess a soul that has no 
 functions is, as far as the result is con- 
 cerned, identical with possessing no 
 soul. 
 
 If we observe a child during the very 
 earliest period of its life we will find 
 that it behaves essentially just as the 
 animals referred to above. Even the 
 child remains in the position it is given 
 and is unable to comprehend what 
 happens around him. The child would 
 likewise starve to death unless food 
 were brought to his mouth, but he 
 swallows and digests the nourishment 
 normally. The movements of the heart, 
 the circulation of the blood and respir- 
 ation all take place as normally as 
 with the fully developed man during
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 131 
 
 sleep when his soul also ceases to func- 
 tion. 
 
 The fact that the vegetative proc- 
 esses of the organism are not gov- 
 erned and controlled by the soul may 
 be observed by anyone also during his 
 conscious state. In regard to respira- 
 tion we may repress it only for a few 
 minutes. A command is soon given by 
 certain cells in the central nerve-sys- 
 tem which against the soul's will brings 
 the organ in question into action. Ex- 
 perience tells us that strong agitations 
 generally disturb the vegetative proc- 
 esses. Sudden fear, for instance, ac- 
 celerates the heart's motion. Therefore 
 these processes take place more evenly 
 with animals deprived of their brain 
 just because disturbing influences from 
 the soul are then impossible. 
 
 Thus it is certain beyond doubt that 
 the cells not only execute but regulate 
 and control through the central nerve- 
 system a multitude of functions in 
 which the soul does not take part. 
 But just as certain it is that there are
 
 132 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 many functions which the cells could 
 not perform without the co-operation 
 of the soul. Vision, hearing, smelling, 
 tasting and feeling would be entirely 
 meaningless to the cells without the 
 aid of the soul. The same is the case 
 in a high degree with the motions of 
 the body which also require such a 
 higher guidance. The dove could fly, 
 the dog walk, and so forth, but the 
 motions were relatively purposeless. 
 The predetermined plan was lacking. 
 The cells could assimilate the food, 
 when brought into the body, but they 
 could not search it in nature. Such 
 action requires a power of combination 
 that exceeds their measure of intelli- 
 gence. 
 
 We see consequently that the cells 
 may do without the soul in such func- 
 tions as are not related to the exterior 
 world comprehensible through our 
 senses. Here they need the guidance 
 of a higher, more developed intelli- 
 gence. In the outside world with its 
 more complicated relations, the soul is
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 133 
 
 to the cells very nearly what we mean 
 by the word Providence. The soul per- 
 forms, in the interest of the cells, such 
 a higher, regulating and guiding func- 
 tion. 
 
 The organism, then, is divided into 
 two sections, separated by a sharply 
 denned boundary. As independent and 
 autocratic as the cells are in one of 
 them, is the soul in the other. This 
 bisection in two widely separated 
 spheres is in itself remarkable, but may 
 be explained, if we remember that the 
 organism is an individual composed of 
 lower individuals. As different as 
 these classes of individuals are in their 
 nature and faculties, equally incongru- 
 ous are also the realms in which they 
 dwell. The cells move in the atomic 
 and molecular world. To them the 
 molecules and atoms appear with a 
 clearness comparable to the plainness 
 with which the exterior world reveals 
 itself to us. It is natural then that the 
 cells attend to the vegetative functions 
 of the organism which just fall within
 
 134 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 their sphere of life, a sphere of which 
 the soul can obtain knowledge only 
 indirectly by way of deductions. 
 Equally obvious it is that only the soul 
 can employ the organs of the body, 
 the functions of which fall within the 
 visible world. 
 
 We have now endeavored to obtain 
 an understanding of the importance of 
 the soul to the cells by depriving the 
 latter of the direct influence of the 
 former. This resulted from the re- 
 moval of the brain, the organ by which 
 the soul more directly expresses itself. 
 But the soul is not actually removed 
 from the body. It still remains in the 
 whole cell-mass. The brain itself con- 
 sists of cells, in which the soul is not 
 present except as in all the other cells. 
 The difference is only that the brain- 
 cells are developed for the functions of 
 thought, whereas the cells in the other 
 organs are intended for their specific 
 purposes. In order to remove the soul 
 from the body we must remove the life 
 from every cell. The soul, as we in-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 135 
 
 iend to show, is inseparably connected 
 with every particular cell-individual. 
 But in order to understand how the 
 cells may be at once independent of, 
 and yet intimately united with the 
 soul, we must first know what an or- 
 ganism really is. Its nature and funda- 
 mental idea is the only thing that can 
 explain this remarkable relationship. 
 But it is just here as to the essential 
 qualities of an organism that the con- 
 ceptions are generally very dim and 
 vague. 
 
 Commonly the organism is thought 
 of as a very complicated mechanism 
 whose members and organs mutually 
 depend upon each other. The organ- 
 ism is what the word implies, a tool. 
 But every tool is intended for some- 
 body's use. Who this one is, is not 
 said, simply because it is considered 
 self-evident. If it be a human organ- 
 ism, it is obviously the man who uses 
 it; if it be an animal organism, it is 
 the animal, and so on. That this is a 
 truth, cannot be denied; but still it
 
 136 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 expresses only half the truth and 
 scarcely that. Every organic body is 
 used directly by the individuals that 
 form its building material. The human 
 organism is a society of cells, and it is 
 these latter that first of all use the 
 body's organs for their purposes. But 
 so dominating are the old ideas about 
 the body, that even the cytologists 
 themselves have not been able to shake 
 them off. The cells are continually 
 studied from man's point of view, but 
 what man may be from the eelVs point of 
 view is never thought of. 
 
 We do not hereby deny all justifica- 
 tion to the old conception. The body 
 is also an organ for the soul. The lat- 
 ter, as experience shows, uses the body 
 for its own specific purposes. But this 
 takes place only to a somewhat limited 
 extent. The incomparably larger part 
 of the soul's work, cares, and endeav- 
 ors, is devoted to finding means to 
 satisfy bodily wants. But so far as the 
 soul provides for the necessities of the 
 body, it acts as organ for the cells.
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 137 
 
 When man believes that he is running 
 his own errands, he is in reality carry- 
 ing out the missions of those beings 
 that compose his body. These latter 
 demand for their purposes, if not all, 
 yet at least the largest part of all the 
 work the soul performs in this world.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Fundamental Qualities of an 
 Organism. 
 
 IN ORDER to illustrate the funda- 
 mental characteristics of an organic 
 structure in general, we will begin with 
 comparing it with what it most resem- 
 bles, namely, a complicated mechan- 
 ism. The likeness is so striking that 
 the very dissimilarities become in- 
 structive. 
 
 First of all we notice the parts of 
 which the machine is composed. What 
 these parts are to the machine the 
 members and organs are to the organ- 
 ism. Every part, like every organ, has 
 a certain duty to perform which it in- 
 cessantly repeats. The work of the 
 machine is divided among the parts as 
 that of the organism among the organs. 
 As the organ, so the part of the ma-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 139 
 
 chine can do its share only when in 
 right position and in right order. 
 
 The most obvious similarities are now 
 exhausted. The parts of the machine 
 are actuated by external, but the or- 
 gans by internal, forces. The organism 
 is a living machine. No organism, 
 whether organic or mechanic, labors for 
 its own sake. Every such apparatus 
 exists for somebody's use. But while 
 those that employ a machine stand in 
 outer relation to the same, those who 
 utilize an organism are beings that 
 themselves constitute the organic ma- 
 chine-parts. These are not composed 
 of dead atoms, but of living individu- 
 als. The organism is a society which 
 puts the organic machinery into serv- 
 ice. It is the social tie that connects 
 the individuals which otherwise would 
 be a multitude of isolated beings. 
 
 In all organisms there are as many 
 organs as actual wants among the in- 
 dividuals that compose it. Because 
 these individuals are kindred, they have 
 common needs and are therefore able
 
 140 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 to use the same organ. Every partic- 
 ular individual requires the assistance 
 of all the organs and must therefore 
 stand in such relation to them all that 
 he can utilize the work of any one. 
 But he himself enters as a working 
 member only in one organ, whose work 
 is the only one he can immediately 
 press into his service, and even this 
 only in certain cases. All other organs 
 stand in more or less distant relation 
 to him. How, then, will he be able to 
 utilize them? Only so that the organs 
 make themselves present in his own 
 organ, and, so to speak, reach him their 
 different products. Like every citizen 
 in a community, each organ ought to 
 have a system of circulation through- 
 out all the other organs to transfer the 
 results of its work where it is needed. 
 If, however, each organ were provided 
 with such a distribution agency this 
 would be an extravagance inconsistent 
 with the concentration of forces that 
 the very idea of an organism implies. 
 Instead of many such systems we find
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 141 
 
 therefore in every organism but one, 
 whose sole purpose is to circulate the 
 products of the various organs, and 
 thus, so to speak, make each organ 
 represented in every part of the whole 
 community. We find that every or- 
 ganic building is constructed in this 
 way to suit the individuals that form 
 its building-material, and so of course 
 it must be, since it was built for that 
 purpose by the same individuals. 
 
 The consequence is that the degree 
 of development an organism possesses 
 is closely related to the state of evolu- 
 tion reached by the individuals which 
 constitute it. The more perfected the 
 organism, the higher and more devel- 
 oped also are the necessities it is able 
 to satisfy. 
 
 The way in which independent liv- 
 ing beings build such an organic ma- 
 chine may be denned as "division of 
 labor." Every organism is a union, 
 founded on the division of labor, be- 
 tween a multitude of kindred individu- 
 als which thus combine their isolated 1
 
 142 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 forces. But a large mass of individuals 
 cannot merge at once into an all-em- 
 bracing entity. This result can only be 
 reached by a series of higher and lower 
 intermediary units, each denned by its 
 particular share of the total labor. 
 
 A closer study of the organisms will 
 show that they all without exception 
 are composed in this way. 
 
 The cells in any organism in nature 
 combine into higher and higher units 
 as follows: 
 
 The primary unions of the cells are 
 the tissues, where all the cells perform 
 the same function in the same way. 
 Of these tissues is formed the nearest 
 higher unit, the organ. As the tissue 
 was a union of cells, the organ is a 
 union of tissues. Then we have a sys- 
 tem of organs. To each such higher 
 system a more comprehensive function 
 is assigned. By distributing the total 
 labor among the different systems 
 these merge into the organism which 
 unites the whole cell-mass into one
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 143 
 
 well-organized community of working 
 cell-individuals. 
 
 Human society is similarly composed. 
 The difference is only that in one case 
 the citizens are cells, and in the other 
 they are men. Of an organism in na- 
 ture we only see the members and or- 
 gans, but not the cells; in human so- 
 ciety, on the other hand, we only ob- 
 serve the cells or the human individual, 
 but not the body of society. The cells 
 combine into a solid body; humanity 
 is spread over a surface. Human in- 
 dividuals, because of their greater per- 
 fection, move in space more freely and 
 independently of each other than do 
 the cells in their realm. These and 
 other differences do not, however, dis- 
 turb the general organic structure. 
 This has everywhere the same funda- 
 mental qualities. Society is essentially 
 only a vastly enlarged copy of the same 
 model that man traces in his own bod- 
 ily organism. 
 
 Through a similar division of labor 
 the work of the community is split
 
 144 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 into trades, corresponding to the tis- 
 sues in the natural organism. As the 
 cells in one tissue, so the men in one 
 trade are incessantly occupied with the 
 same work. Out of several trades are 
 formed the social organs. A social 
 organ consequently is a certain com- 
 munity or district performing a certain 
 part of an industry. This has been 
 called "territorial division of labor." 
 Several such communities make up an 
 organ-system or an industry. A few 
 such larger units merge into the single 
 unit, the entire mass of human indi- 
 viduals as a whole. 
 
 The cells of the individuals in an or- 
 ganism are consequently at once build- 
 ing-material and builders, and in their 
 latter capacity are endowed with wants 
 and aspirations that with natural ne- 
 cessity force them to organization with- 
 out conscious plan or purpose. Neces- 
 sity is the teacher that tells them how 
 to organize. Some speak of a social 
 instinct that man does or should pos- 
 sess; but its existence has never been
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 145 
 
 shown. On the contrary, it is only by 
 those needs that can only be satisfied 
 by a community that men are driven 
 to unite socially. Similarly with the 
 cells. Only by building up an organ- 
 ism are they able to satisfy their com- 
 mon wants. What society is to human 
 individuals, the natural organism is 
 to the cells. No trade or industry can 
 be found in the state that does not, 
 serve to provide for some common want 
 of the people, and no tissue nor organ 
 exists in the natural organism but for 
 satisfying collective needs of the cells. 
 These collective needs are at the same 
 time the higher needs of the individu- 
 als. The organism provides the power 
 that the isolated individual does not 
 possess. Organization allows that spe- 
 cializing of effort which so essentially 
 contributes to the productivity of la- 
 bor. The more limited the operations 
 each individual has to perform, the 
 more rapidly and perfectly are they 
 done. 
 
 Although the cell lives in a world
 
 146 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 inaccessible to our immediate compre- 
 hension, we still possess means to as- 
 certain that it has the same funda- 
 mental qualities as man. We observe 
 manifestations of life in the cell corre 
 sponding to those of sensitivity, feeling 
 and will-power in man. The cell's com- 
 prehending faculty has been termed ir- 
 ritability and its power of action spon- 
 taneity. From certain physiological 
 phenomena the conclusion has also 
 been drawn that the cell likewise pos- 
 sesses memory.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Organic Relationship Between the 
 Soul and the Cells. 
 
 HITHERTO only little study has 
 been given to the spiritual quali- 
 ties of the cells, and such investiga- 
 tions must always meet with certain 
 insurmountable difficulties. The reason 
 is that we only judge others by our- 
 selves and we are therefore unable to 
 understand the spiritual life of any be- 
 ing that is not one of our kin. 
 
 If a being stands higher or lower 
 than ourselves its spiritual experi- 
 ences, if not entirely different from 
 ours, are at least limited and modified 
 by the being's own power of compre- 
 hension. If, however, these beings 
 show manifestations of life that we un- 
 derstand, we must conclude that their 
 spiritual or mental life is correspond- 
 ingly active.
 
 148 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 Such a position we occupy with re- 
 gard to the beings called cells. From 
 the result of their activities we con- 
 clude that they, like men, are en- 
 dowed 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 ghes 
 clothes, food, houses and the like to 
 man. Nature provides the raw mate- 
 rial 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 impos- 
 sible it is for the individual to produce 
 them. Only as citizens in a commu- 
 nity, 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
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 149 
 
 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 de- 
 velopment 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 hu- 
 man 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 organ- 
 ism 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 ma-
 
 150 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 terial of the organs, because the organs 
 jnst 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 facul- 
 ties, from the cell-organism, the previ- 
 ous resurrection of which therefore is 
 an indispensable condition for man's 
 own rise to another life. 
 
 If the mass of a body is living the 
 body itself is alive. The whole receives 
 its qualities from its elementary com- 
 ponents. The organism itself is a living 
 being. From the point of view of the 
 building material the organism is a so- 
 ciety composed of independently living
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 151 
 
 individuals; from the point of view of 
 the whole again it is a living individual 
 of higher order than the individuals 
 that form its social side. Man is a cell 
 in the social bodv, but is himself com- 
 posed of lower individuals, which again 
 consist of more primary units. 
 
 Man, considered as being possessed 
 of a body, is an individual composed of 
 lower individuals. 
 
 We now ask the question: What is 
 the relation between the higher indi- 
 vidual and the lower ones? This is 
 only another and more exact form of 
 the question: What is the relation be- 
 tween the soul and the body? Be- 
 cause, what is the body and what is 
 the soul? The body is the sum of the 
 lower individuals, or, in other words, 
 it is the organized mass of cells. The 
 soul, as the feeling, thinking and will- 
 ing principle, is the real spiritual unity 
 in this mass, or just what we denote 
 by the word man, or the higher in- 
 dividual. To ask, what is the relation- 
 ship between the higher individual and
 
 152 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 its lower constituents is therefore the 
 same as to ask, what is the relation be- 
 tween the soul and the cells? Take 
 away the latter, and there is nothing 
 left of the body. The cells mean here 
 everything, and it is to them conse- 
 quently that the soul can be thought 
 to stand in relation. 
 
 Formerly the problem was to explain 
 how soul and body as two substan- 
 tially different entities were related to 
 each other. They had then nothing in 
 common, nothing to encourage an in- 
 teraction. If now the relation holds 
 between the soul and the cells we have 
 at least commensurable quantities to 
 deal with. 
 
 So far all is well. But now other 
 difficulties arise. We can and must 
 ask, how an interaction is possible be- 
 tween the soul and the cells even if 
 they are formally, according to their 
 inner nature, kindred beings? In other 
 respects they are not so separated and 
 different that a spiritual intercourse is 
 inconceivable. As inaccessible as is the
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 153 
 
 inner life of the cell to man, so incon- 
 tiguous is the spiritual life of man to 
 the cell. These beings are so widely 
 separated that they cannot possibly 
 communicate directly with each other, 
 and yet in order to establish a mental 
 or spiritual interrelationship, such 
 communication is just what is neces- 
 sary. 
 
 The soul and the cells must have 
 something in common that is of a 
 purely spiritual nature. As the spirit- 
 ual always is a comprehending sub- 
 stance with nothing but comprehen- 
 sions as its content, the something com- 
 mon to both must consequently have 
 the form of common comprehensions. 
 Not all comprehensions, however, in- 
 cite to activity and a smaller number 
 yet call forth a co-operation of inde- 
 pendently living individuals. But, ob- 
 viously, the perceptions that concern 
 us now must be of the latter kind. The 
 comprehensions in general that induce 
 a being to activity we call wants or 
 appetites. In its desires a being con-
 
 154 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 ceives its own ego in want of one 
 thing or other. The feeling of discom- 
 fort, accompanying the want, naturally 
 causes the endeavor to satisfy the 
 want through a corresponding effort. 
 The incitement to activity then is 
 purely spiritual. Are the soul of man 
 and the cells subject to such common 
 needs, requiring their co-operation? If 
 so, at least their wants or appetites 
 cannot be wholly congruous. Such are 
 only to be found in entirely similar 
 beings. But different wants are satis- 
 fied in different ways; each requires a 
 carefully adapted form of activity. AH 
 direct, immediate co-operation of the 
 soul and the cells is therefore impos- 
 sible. Only man with man, or cell with 
 cell, can co-operate in the primary sense 
 of the word. 
 
 But an indirect working alliance is 
 not yet precluded. Though themselves 
 different, the two beings may compre- 
 hend wants identical in substance, but 
 not in form. The formal discrepancy 
 would require not only different modes
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 155 
 
 of satisfying the need, but also differ- 
 ent kinds of activity; but the common 
 substance might yet under certain con- 
 ditions so unite and interlink the dif- 
 ferent labors, that the result would 
 show a mutual co-operation. 
 
 We shall presently see that the soul 
 and the cells are so united with each 
 other that the connecting link is the or- 
 ganism per se. From the point of view 
 of the cells the organism, with its dif- 
 ferent members and organs, was noth- 
 ing but the collective expressions of in- 
 dividual wants. Now man compre- 
 hends as his needs only the wants of 
 the organs; in other words, the col- 
 lective wants of the cells are the indi- 
 vidual wants of the soul. Experience 
 teaches us that the soul has no direct 
 comprehension of the cells, but only of 
 their organic unions. To prove this it 
 may be sufficient to point out that be- 
 fore the discovery of the microscope, 
 man knew absolutely nothing of the 
 existence of these beings, much less 
 that they were the all-governing forces
 
 156 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 in his own body. But also in other 
 ways we may ascertain that the com- 
 prehending power of the soul does not 
 reach beyond the organs. This is ap- 
 parent from the different significance 
 the physiological processes have for the 
 soul and for the cells. If we consider 
 the most important of them all, our 
 nutrition, and ask ourselves for whom 
 the nourishment is really intended, we 
 find that it is for the cells and for the 
 cells alone. 
 
 The food benefits the soul only if it 
 is utilized by the cells. But the nour- 
 ishment that the soul craves does not 
 satisfy the cells. Hunger and satisfac- 
 tion are not even simultaneous in both, 
 at least not as regards the same food. 
 As a rule, the soul comprehends 
 hunger when the cells are satisfied and 
 vice versa. The soul's hunger ceases 
 the moment suitable food in sufficient 
 quantity is introduced in the stomach. 
 But this does not help the cells. Be- 
 cause, if the food remained in the 
 stomach, to the satisfaction of the soul,
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 157 
 
 the cells would soon die of starvation. 
 The nourishment in the stomach is of 
 the same importance to the cells as the 
 provisions stored in the warehouse of 
 the community are to the human in- 
 dividuals. These also would die from 
 hunger if they let the victuals remain 
 in the stores. The people must under- 
 take to distribute, prepare and con- 
 sume the food. Similarly the cells 
 would starve to death unless they pre- 
 pared the food in their common storage 
 to suit their wants. The nourishment 
 must be transformed into blood through 
 the whole complicated process we call 
 digestion. When this is done, the cells 
 are able to satisfy their craving, and 
 simultaneously a new hunger-feeling 
 arises in the soul. Although it is the 
 same food that satisfies both parties, it 
 is the same food administered in differ- 
 ent forms, at a different time, and in a 
 different mode. We are concerned with 
 dissimilar beings possessed of wants at 
 once different and yet most intimately 
 associated.
 
 158 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 The connection is not difficult to un- 
 derstand. When the soul comprehends 
 the need of the stomach, it is the col- 
 lective want of the cells that comes 
 to expression as the individual want of 
 the soul. The different needs receive in 
 different form an identical substance 
 and this fact is obviously the connect- 
 ing link between the soul and the cells. 
 We might without difficulty carry out 
 the same reasoning in regard to res- 
 piration and all the other physiological 
 processes of the body. 
 
 From what we have said it is evi- 
 dent that the soul and the cells em- 
 ploy the body differently; but for the 
 sake of clearness this ought perhaps 
 to be further accentuated. The differ- 
 ence may be thus expressed: The soul 
 acts with the members and organs of 
 the body as units, whereas the cells 
 perform the work of the organs as in- 
 dividuals. It would be easy to explain 
 what this implies if we could point to 
 similar conditions in human society. 
 But no exactly similar institutions ex-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 159 
 
 ist there, at least not to the same ex- 
 tent. They would exist if the ideal 
 socialistic state was realized. The cells 
 in their sphere have carried through a 
 communism of the most rigid form. 
 Their social organs then do not work 
 at the cell-individual's own initiative, 
 but only upon the command of the cen- 
 tral power and under its guidance and 
 control. But even in the present or- 
 ganization of mankind, we find a few 
 organs which offer a suggestive com- 
 parison. Especially is this the case 
 with the defensive organ of society, 
 the standing army, which is entirely 
 under the control of the central power 
 and acts only upon its command and 
 under its control. 
 
 As to its composition the army is a 
 mass of independently living individu- 
 als, co-operating so as to form an or- 
 ganic whole. All the work this unit 
 performs is done by the thousands of 
 soldiers of which it is composed. If 
 the government decides to use this 
 organ, that is if it declares war, we
 
 160 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 know that it leads, arranges and con- 
 trols the army as one unit. It is not 
 concerned with the soldiers as individu- 
 als, but only as organized masses. 
 
 Exactly analogous is the relation be- 
 tween the soul and the organs, com- 
 posed of cells, in man's organism. Here 
 also the cell-individuals perform the 
 work of the different organs. The soul 
 is not concerned with the cells as indi- 
 viduals. It governs, guides and super- 
 intends the movements of the members 
 as elements; that is, commands the 
 cells as organic masses. 
 
 We now consider the following facts 
 established. The soul and the cells are 
 different beings with different wants. 
 They do not feel or comprehend in the 
 same way and can therefore not have 
 immediate perceptions of each other. 
 However true this is on one side it is 
 on the other just as certain that they 
 are so intimately connected as to form 
 the same organism through the medium 
 of which they feel their mutual wants 
 and therefore must have some compre-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 161 
 
 hension of each other. This strange 
 and, as it may seem, contradictory re- 
 lation depends on the fact that the 
 union between the soul and the cells 
 does not extend to their whole entity. 
 We have seen that the soul compre- 
 hended only the collective not the indi- 
 vidual wants of the cells. Within cer- 
 tain defined limits therefore they have 
 a common substance that causes their 
 marvelous co-operation through the 
 body. ' 
 
 To understand and explain this co- 
 operation we must make clear how the 
 soul and the cells in their innermost 
 nature are united. And we shall learn 
 this by going to the bottom of the 
 meaning of the expression that a com- 
 mon substance so governs their rela- 
 tionship that the collective wants of 
 the cells become the individual wants 
 of the soul. 
 
 How then are the soul and the cells 
 intrinsically connected? 
 
 The answer may be derived in two 
 ways. We might take both the sub-
 
 162 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 jective and the objective side of the 
 wants as our point of view. If we first 
 consider the subjective side the rela- 
 tionship between the soul and the cells 
 may be stated as follows: 
 
 We have previously pointed out that 
 in its wants a living being perceives its 
 own ego as related to something else. 
 This is an axiom that needs no demon- 
 stration. If now the soul comprehends 
 the collective wants of the cells as its 
 own, this can only mean that the soul 
 comprehends that part of the cells' in- 
 ner nature which expresses itself as 
 their collective wants, as a part of its 
 own ego. Again the cells within the 
 same limits on their part comprehend 
 the soul's inner nature as belonging to 
 their own individuality. The connec- 
 tion within these limits is so intimate 
 that they cannot comprehend them- 
 selves without at the same time com- 
 prehending each other. The soul must 
 consequently perceive the body as its 
 own body because the same wants that 
 cause the cells to upbuild the soul also
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 163 
 
 belong to the soul's own entity. On the 
 other hand the soul in conceiving itself 
 cannot comprehend the cells as such 
 because the identity is not extended to 
 their whole individuality. 
 
 When a being conceives the wants of 
 somebody else as its own wants it is at 
 the same time directly influenced by 
 the other. Thus the soul and the cells 
 act upon each other throughout the 
 body. A will of the soul takes with 
 natural necessity the form of a com- 
 mon impulse upon the cells bringing 
 them into action in the will's direction. 
 If the soul, for instance, wishes to 
 move an arm or a hand, a collective 
 want is simultaneously created in the 
 cells that form the organ in question 
 to execute that movement. 
 
 We arrive at the same result by con- 
 sidering the fact that the different 
 wants of the soul and of the cells are 
 identical in substance. The same sub- 
 stance cannot enter into and define 
 different beings unless they themselves 
 enter in and define each other. As now
 
 164 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 both parties comprehend wants iden- 
 tical in substance, the soul must neces- 
 sarily belong to the cells so that it is 
 the ground for their collective wants. 
 But these wants were the cell-individu- 
 al's higher wants, manifested in the 
 organization of the body. The soul 
 therefore is potentially present in the 
 cells in the form of their higher wants 
 and is consequently developed along 
 with the upbuilding of the body. Only 
 when this is ready is the soul's entity 
 developed. The soul must then com- 
 prehend the organism as its particular 
 body when conscious of its own ego, 
 but the cells do not enter into the soul's 
 entity as individuals and are therefore 
 not present as such in man's conscious- 
 ness. 
 
 For this organic co-operation the soul 
 and the cells need no language, no 
 signs to communicate with each other. 
 It is not even necessary that they are 
 aware of each other's existence. It is 
 sufficient that each party comprehends 
 its own wants and acts for their satis-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 165 
 
 faction according to its own nature. If 
 they do this their co-operation through 
 the body receives a simple and at the 
 same time complete explanation. 
 
 But however natural this interaction 
 is, it is nevertheless a wonder above all 
 wonders. The world that exists to the 
 soul does not exist to the cells, and 
 vice versa. They have an entirely differ- 
 ent conception of the realm in which 
 they live. They have different appre- 
 hensions, feelings and wants and per- 
 form accordingly different functions. 
 But in spite of this they are, as we 
 have seen, within certain limits so in- 
 timately connected that these different 
 comprehensions and labors are inter- 
 linked with each other, regulating each 
 other as accurately as the wheels in a 
 clock.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Resurrection. 
 
 FROM the relationship existing be- 
 tween the soul and the cells it ap- 
 pears that the former cannot live a 
 life independent of the latter. The 
 soul receives its entire individuality, 
 all its qualities, forces, and faculties, 
 through the organism built by the cells, 
 which therefore must exist before the 
 soul can exist as the real unity in the 
 organism. This does not mean that the 
 soul is an empty form void of independ- 
 ent substance. Even before the cells 
 have combined into an organic unit the 
 soul is potentially present in them in 
 the form of the wants that force them 
 to upbuild the organism, and this or- 
 ganism is that of the soul, not that of 
 the cells, of which each possesses its 
 individual organism.
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 167 
 
 But if the soul is potentially present 
 in the cells it is only through them that 
 it can arise to a higher life. We have 
 already shown in another connection 
 that a direct transposition would be 
 useless and meaningless. Endowed 
 with his present organs adapted to 
 earthly conditions, a man suddenly 
 translated into the glories of a higher 
 world would with seeing eyes yet see 
 nothing, with hearing ears hear noth- 
 ing and with feeling senses would feel 
 nothing. To comprehend what there 
 exists and happens, man's own organ- 
 ism must have undergone a correspond- 
 ing radical transformation. He must 
 have new, more perfect senses, higher 
 spiritual and bodily faculties, differing 
 from his present as far as the objects 
 in this higher world differ from those 
 on earth. This transfigured body can 
 only be organized by the same beings 
 that built it here in time. The soul is 
 inseparably united with these beings 
 and is where they are. 
 
 Here in time man commences with a
 
 168 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 cell and with a cell he must begin in a 
 future life. This first cell with which 
 man enters his next form of existence 
 cannot logically be any other than the 
 first dying cell-individual. As no atom, 
 so no elementary unit of the living 
 spiritual body is annihilated. Viewed 
 from our present existence death can- 
 not mean anything to the departed 
 cell-generations but the cessation of 
 life and activity in the world responsive 
 to our senses. In reality they rise to a 
 higher evolution under different condi- 
 tions and this evolution must be iden- 
 tical with the upbuilding of the glorified 
 body man shall possess in a future 
 life. 
 
 This form of death and resurrection, 
 natural because it is founded on the 
 idea and nature of the organism, is 
 common to all living beings and must 
 so be, as they are all built according to 
 the same general plan and therefore 
 essentially subject to the same evolu- 
 tionary processes. The birth and death 
 of the lower individuals in whole gen-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 169 
 
 erations is known to be a universal 
 phenomenon in every organism and we 
 will now endeavor shortly to explain 
 this process. 
 
 If the soul enters as a real part in 
 every individual cell, it does not belong 
 differently to the first generation than 
 to the last or to the whole series of 
 intermediary generations. But here in 
 time man lives only in the generation 
 existing at the present moment. The 
 generations that in the past successive- 
 ly formed the spiritual substance of his 
 body have already gone out of time 
 and those that are coming have not yet 
 made their entrance. Man's entity is 
 thus split or distributed upon a series 
 of successively existing moments, each 
 of which contains only a certain lim- 
 ited part of the organism, and the lat- 
 ter has therefore in reality a far 
 broader extent than is seen at present. 
 
 But time confines and restricts man 
 not only in this, but in all respects. To 
 take another example, we know that 
 man possesses a multitude of different
 
 170 PEA TH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 faculties and talents. But in time he 
 cannot utilize them all. As a member 
 of society he devotes himself to a cer- 
 tain trade or profession. Now there 
 are thousands of different possible 
 activities and therefore thousands of 
 different talents that every man might 
 develop but never can, simply for lack 
 of time. Time is not even sufficient to 
 fully develop one human talent in one 
 definite direction. Man has at his dis- 
 posal only the present moment, and in 
 each moment he can only think one 
 thought, perform one act, satisfy one 
 need. It is said that man should de- 
 velop all his faculties evenly, but so long 
 as he lives in time this is an impossi- 
 bility. As a matter of fact man can 
 only live this life piecemeal, and in this 
 time-existence proper we have the ex- 
 planation of the fact that man distrib- 
 utes his body over a series of cell-gen- 
 erations. 
 
 The law of the indestructibility of 
 matter and energy is valid also in the 
 ideal world and this necessarily since
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 171 
 
 it is a demand of thought itself.* Ap- 
 plied to spiritual substance, which can 
 exist only in the form of living indi- 
 viduals, the law may be expressed, 
 "All living beings are immortal." If 
 therefore the cell-generations that in 
 the past composed man's organism can 
 no more be annihilated than the future 
 generations can be created from noth- 
 ing, this implies that man has an indi- 
 vidual existence not only after but 
 before his entrance into this world. If 
 such be the case we must be able to 
 derive and explain our earthly life from 
 this pre-existence. Can it now be 
 shown that man's conditions in his 
 pre-existence are such that he needs 
 and must go through an evolution in 
 time? In that case history may per- 
 haps give us a hint how to answer the 
 question, or would this pre-existence be 
 an entirely new thought? By no means. 
 Pre-existence is and must be a funda- 
 
 ♦Bjorklund might here properly have referred to 
 his previous demonstration of the fact that life has 
 no roots in time, consequently is independent of this 
 principle — 1. e., immortal. — Translator's note.
 
 172 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 mental idea in all religions because 
 they all suppose that man emanated 
 from God through an original act of 
 creation. That the Christian religion 
 especially has this basic idea Victor 
 Rydberg has fully demonstrated in a 
 treatise entitled "Man's Pre-existence." 
 
 But although we may say that all re- 
 ligions teach a pre-existence we do not 
 mean that this idea has been or even 
 could have been rightly understood. 
 We might expect just the contrary, as 
 pre-existence is connected with the 
 common conception that man's soul as 
 well as the material world was once 
 created in time, in which case pre- 
 existence can only mean an existence 
 extending very far back in time. There 
 was a time when God existed but not 
 man, which latter, as being created, 
 must have an existence separate from 
 God even if he may in other respects be 
 called His image. 
 
 This form of belief in pre-existence 
 shows the same shortcomings and is 
 subject to the same objections as the
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 173 
 
 whole orthodox theory of creation. As 
 we can and must ask how a perfect 
 God could create an imperfect, that is, 
 an evolutionary world, we might also 
 ask, why was man created with the 
 necessity for an evolution in time when 
 he never could develop anything but 
 what God had implanted potentially in 
 his being? Instead of explaining evo- 
 lution this theory only makes it so 
 much the more mysterious. 
 
 Besides this conception, however, the 
 religious intuition has surmised that 
 the connection between God and man 
 is profoundly deeper and more inti- 
 mate. Man does not have an existence 
 separate from God. This intuitive 
 thought, intensified in highly religious 
 souls, has led them to preach, that man 
 possesses a life in God; is part of His own 
 being, is a living member in His perfect 
 organism. If this be true, why, again, 
 must man go through an evolution? 
 Is he not as unchangeable as God Him- 
 self?
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 Man and Infinity. 
 
 IT IS the perennial honor of Sweden's 
 greatest philosopher, Christofer Jacob 
 Bostrom, to have satisfactorily ex- 
 plained the extremely difficult and 
 complicated question with which our 
 last chapter concluded. He has shown 
 that man, exactly on the supposition 
 that he is an eternal part of God's be- 
 ing, requires and must go through an 
 evolution in time. According to Bos- 
 trom, religious intuition has found the 
 truth that man is an eternal idea in 
 God, a living member in His organism. 
 But Bostrom has also understood and 
 considered the difference implied in 
 thinking of man as a member in God's 
 organism and in thinking of this mem- 
 ber as living its independent life. In 
 the former case man possesses the same
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 175 
 
 qualities as God; in the latter, these 
 qualities with corresponding limita- 
 tions. 
 
 For an illustration of how all lim- 
 ited beings are incorporated in an ab- 
 solute personality, Bostrom likes to 
 fall back on the numerical system. 
 Spiritual beings form a series, as it 
 were, of lower and higher entities, 
 where the latter contain the former 
 pretty much as higher numbers contain 
 the smaller. Bostrom distinguishes be- 
 tween positive and negative attributes, 
 and means by the former those attri- 
 butes without which the being cannot 
 be thought, and which it therefore in 
 one sense contains. So for instance in 
 the number ten, all the previous num- 
 bers are positive attributes because ten 
 cannot be thought without them, which, 
 however, does not imply identity with 
 either of the lower numbers. On the 
 other hand all the following numbers 
 are negative attributes to the number 
 ten because this may well be thought 
 without them. It contains them onlv
 
 176 DEATH AND RESURRECTION . 
 
 if it is considered as one point in the 
 numerical system, in which case it has 
 them all as attributes. Thus, still re- 
 ferring to the number ten, this may 
 be considered complete within itself 
 without considering the higher num- 
 bers, whereas if we wish to compre- 
 hend it fully we must see it as a link 
 in the numerical system. Ten would 
 not be the half of twenty without the 
 latter, and so on. The existence of the 
 higher is after all required for that of 
 the lower as fully as the existence of 
 the lower is necessary to that of the 
 higher. 
 
 Because each entity is higher accord- 
 ing as it has a larger number of the 
 rest as its positive and a smaller num- 
 ber as its negative attributes, it fol- 
 lows that the highest entity, or Deity, 
 has no negative attributes but only 
 positive ones, which of course is the 
 true meaning of the expression that 
 God is the most perfect being. 
 
 As a lower being is more perfectly 
 denned when considered included in a
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 177 
 
 higher, this fact must be the reason 
 why all finite, rational beings in their 
 evolution try to assert themselves in 
 the higher beings, up to the highest, 
 by whom they finally obtain their full 
 scope and in whom only they live their 
 complete life. 
 
 But if Bostrom had lived to study the 
 modern cytology he would have found 
 a more adequate comparison within 
 man's organism, and one that perhaps 
 in several respects would have modified 
 his conception of the world of divine 
 ideas. 
 
 God is related to man as man is, not 
 to the cell, but to the lower units of 
 which the cell is composed. Between 
 God and man there is at least one 
 other organism that we know of, name- 
 ly humanity. But if we overlook this 
 and for simplicity's sake imagine the 
 relationship as that of man to cell it 
 should be evident from what has been 
 previously said that man is and must 
 be something else to God than he is to 
 himself.
 
 178 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 To God he is what the cell is to man, 
 a living part in His organism, and in 
 this capacity he possesses all the per- 
 fect qualities of that organism. Living 
 his independent life, man is in the 
 same position as the cell in his own 
 being, when the cell is thought of as 
 living the life it is confined to by its 
 less perfect organism. 
 
 Although limited to that life the cell 
 may literally be said to be man's 
 image — but an image of a very singu- 
 lar kind. The cell does not reproduce 
 man's traits as does a photograph or a 
 statue, but within its lower realm it 
 mirrors the fundamental qualities of 
 the original on a very reduced scale. 
 
 These limitations can not be con- 
 ceived by the cell as such because they 
 are natural to it and belong to its 
 entity. The cell is and must feel itself 
 as perfect in its realm as man in his. 
 Only if the cell could compare its con- 
 ditions with man's, these limitations 
 would be apparent to it, and such a 
 comparison the cell really undertakes
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 179 
 
 within certain limits. Into each feeling 
 of want enters a comparison between 
 the possessed and the desired. In the 
 higher wants, then, that drive the cells 
 to upbuild man's organism we have a 
 manifestation of such a comparing 
 power of the cell. Experience shows 
 that the cell may live in a veritable 
 natural state, but it is also, because of 
 the presence of the soul in its inner- 
 most being, capable of a high culture 
 for the development of which it receives 
 constant impulses and stimulations 
 from the soul. 
 
 In the same sense man may be said 
 to be the image of God. Living in the 
 world and the natural state, to which 
 he is confined by his relatively imper- 
 fect organism, man has the qualities of 
 God with corresponding limitations. 
 But even in this state he feels the spirit 
 of God present in him because he is an 
 original part of God's own organism. 
 In his conscience and in his religious 
 feeling man not only comprehends dis- 
 tinctly the presence of God in his inner
 
 180 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 being but constantly receives also im- 
 pulses, incitements and inspirations to 
 develop that perfect life and heavenly 
 kingdom, of which he is called by his 
 high origin and divine birth to become 
 a citizen. 
 
 What the conscience and the reli- 
 gious feelings are to the will, the log- 
 ical laws of thinking are to the reason, 
 and in the latter, man finds God as im- 
 mediately present as in the former. 
 Indeed, logical laws are the form in 
 which God himself exists. 
 
 Because of God's presence in the 
 eternal laws of our thinking, man is 
 able to appraise himself and his con- 
 dition with an absolute measure, and 
 can in this way obtain a certain knowl- 
 edge of God's world and of his perfect 
 qualities. He has only to abstract all 
 wants and limitations from such quali- 
 ties as have a positive content, because 
 lack of want is perfectness. We shall 
 now undertake such a valuation with 
 respect to man's need of evolution here 
 in time, which quality, as all the oth-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 181 
 
 ers, can be explained and understood 
 only through its connection with the 
 corresponding quality in the absolute 
 being. 
 
 It is as natural to God to be without 
 an origin and an evolution as it is to 
 man to have them, and we might there- 
 fore ask how man in this respect can 
 have anything in common with God, a 
 condition which, as we remember, was 
 indispensable for any comparison what- 
 ever. To make this point clear we may 
 express ourselves in a more familiar 
 way. We might speak of time and ex- 
 istence in time, instead of origin and 
 evolution, as the latter are only forms 
 of time. 
 
 Is there then a moment in time that 
 has a corresponding meaning for God 
 and the limitations of which we must 
 abstract in order to understand God's 
 quality of being eternal? It is by an- 
 alyzing the relation between time and 
 eternity that we hope to receive an 
 answer to the question why man must 
 undergo an evolution in time.
 
 182 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 The most conspicuous want in all 
 that exists in time is its lack of dura- 
 tion; everything has a beginning and 
 an end. With this lack of duration a 
 corresponding lack of reality follows. 
 The real is real, only as long as it lasts 
 or only in the present moment. Every- 
 thing past has ceased to exist and is 
 therefore no longer real, and the future 
 is unreal because it has not entered the 
 present. 
 
 The real in time is identical with 
 the present, which therefore must be 
 the moment most like eternity and the 
 limitations of which we have to re- 
 move. 
 
 First of all, the present in time suf- 
 fers the want of ceasing and sinking 
 back into the past, into unreality. We 
 can overcome this only by raising 
 everything past from its grave, so to 
 speak, and drawing it simultaneously 
 into the present. To the eternally 
 present, nothing past, ending or ceas- 
 ing can exist. 
 
 On the other hand the present in
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 183 
 
 time suffers the same want in the op- 
 posite direction, inasmuch as everything 
 future is excluded therefrom and this 
 future growing reality must therefore 
 be drawn into the eternal. Neither 
 past nor future can exist to God; He 
 lives life undividedly, without limita- 
 tions, and needs not, as man, plot out 
 his existence in a series of moments. 
 Eternity then is not identical with un- 
 ending time; it is a different form of 
 existence, related to time as the per- 
 fect to the imperfect. 
 
 Difficult as it is to explain what 
 eternity implies as the perfect form of 
 existence, it is no less difficult to com- 
 prehend the infinite wealth of content 
 that such a form includes. We will 
 therefore give a few brief suggestions 
 in this direction. 
 
 How poor in content is everything 
 present to man, and likewise how de- 
 fective and unsatisfactory is his whole 
 life here in time. As a matter of fact 
 we can in each moment only think one 
 thought, perform one act, satisfy one
 
 184 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 want. We read a book and we are 
 only conscious of one line or one sen- 
 tence at a time. We listen to a musical 
 creation or admire an exhibition of art, 
 and we only hear a few harmonies, or 
 see a few details of one picture, more 
 distinctly at the time, and so on. How 
 much richer would not our life be if we 
 could think the book from beginning to 
 end at once, hear the harmony of the 
 entire oratorio, now focus the beauties 
 in smallest details of the whole picture- 
 gallery to one point. It even dazzles 
 our spiritual eye if we enlarge the 
 range of such a rich intuition to en- 
 compass not only our nearest environ- 
 ments but our whole earth or possibly 
 our entire solar system, and yet we 
 have only taken one step on a road 
 that has no end. Our solar system is 
 only an insignificant point among those 
 innumerable worlds that form the 
 Milky Way, beyond which the astrono- 
 mers surmise the existence of other 
 hosts of stars without limit. If we 
 now could share in life at every point
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 185 
 
 in this infinity of worlds, would then 
 our conception of the content of eter- 
 nity be exact? By no means. We must 
 include in this present moment every- 
 thing that has happened on these 
 worlds since the dawn of time and 
 similarly all that will occur in the mil- 
 lenniums to come. Is the eternal meas- 
 ure now full and overflowing? By no 
 means. Above us and below us there 
 are beings to whom other universes 
 exist as infinite in all directions as our 
 own. All these infinities of infinities 
 must be drawn into eternity, but then, 
 surely, the measure must be full. By 
 no means. We have all this time moved 
 within the realm of phenomena, that is 
 to say, in the finite world; all this is 
 only a faint shadow of the wealth that 
 eternity contains. God lives in a light 
 that no man hath seen nor yet can see. 
 In this light, in this perfectness, man 
 is a part of the divine entity. This life 
 in God's eternal consciousness is man's 
 primary and original existence. Only 
 in a secondary meaning is he a self-
 
 186 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 existent personality and is then no 
 more identical with God than the cell 
 is with man. 
 
 Man as an entity for himself must 
 have the natural limitations of the part. 
 Conceived by God man is eternal in the 
 divine sense, but conceived by himself 
 man's eternal life is clothed in the lim- 
 itations we call time. The eternal is 
 a constant present without beginning 
 or end, without past or future. What 
 is present to man must suffer these 
 limitations; in other words, man must 
 be born, must go through an evolution, 
 or what is the same, become to himself 
 what he has been eternally to God. In 
 this respect man's relation to God may 
 be compared to the relation of a new- 
 born child to its earthly father. To 
 him the nature and scope of the child 
 is perfectly clear, but the child is un- 
 conscious of it and must awaken to an 
 understanding thereof, that is to say, 
 must become to itself what it already 
 is to its father. 
 
 Living beings form a continuous
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 187 
 
 series in the absolute organism. This 
 scries is such that the higher beings 
 form the conditions and supports of 
 the lower. This connection must be 
 entirely reversed during evolution 
 itself, which naturally proceeds from 
 the lower to the higher. In time there- 
 fore the generation and development 
 of the lower beings must precede that 
 of the higher. We have also seen that 
 the evolution of the former is identical 
 with the upbuilding of the organisms 
 of the latter, and we understand now 
 that the whole process must essentially 
 follow the course which, as we have 
 previously shown, it does in fact, actu- 
 ally take. 
 
 It is further the inherent idea of time 
 that man's eternal entity cannot ap- 
 pear w r hole and undivided. He must 
 plot it out along a series of successive 
 moments which make room for only 
 one cell-generation at a time. As the 
 cell's entity again has a less compre- 
 hensive content than man's, its lifetime 
 must be correspondingly shorter.
 
 T 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Recapitulation. 
 
 HE theory we have here advanced 
 may naturally seem startling; for 
 what could be more foreign to common 
 conceptions than the assertion that sci- 
 ence today gives us full evidence of a 
 death and a resurrection that com- 
 mence during our life in time? Con- 
 sidering this, it may be appropriate 
 to recapitulate the salient points in our 
 line of thought. 
 
 From prehistoric times up to our oAvn 
 days all people at all stages of evolu- 
 tion have to a man been convinced that 
 the body in some way and in some form 
 contains an imperishable and essential 
 part which man cannot do without in 
 a future life. With this intuitive and 
 purely instinctive faith as a basis, the 
 steps in the following historical evolu-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 189 
 
 tion become fully natural and logical 
 consequences. 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that this 
 eternal part should at first sight be 
 considered identical with the material 
 body. Therefore it was also natural 
 that a cult of the dead would be the 
 stage where all people begin. Man 
 sees however that death as a matter of 
 fact separates the immortal soul from 
 that body which the soul cannot dis- 
 pense with. The separation cannot be 
 complete because the ties cannot be 
 severed. The soul then is attached to 
 the body even after death. Conse- 
 quently it must be the duty of the sur- 
 viving to provide the body of the de- 
 ceased with a dwelling as good and 
 suitable as possible and also with the 
 provisions that the body needs. 
 
 A man could not, however, find such 
 a condition satisfactory for any length 
 of time, and the thought of death 
 gnaws and torments him. Shall the 
 soul never regain possession of the 
 body without which even the glories of
 
 190 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 heaven are pale and shadowy? The 
 doctrine of the bodily resurrection on 
 the day of judgment must be the next 
 great progress in our philosophy of 
 life. 
 
 But unusually gifted persons, bent 
 towards idealism, had already felt in- 
 stinctively that it was not the exterior, 
 material covering that was indispensa- 
 ble to the soul. Man possessed also 
 another, a spiritual body which the 
 soul could immediately transfer to an- 
 other life. We gain a glimpse of the 
 vividness of this intuition in large 
 groups of men, when we remember that 
 the survivors even sought to annihilate 
 the material body by the flames of the 
 pyre in order to liberate the deceased 
 from his earthly ties. The great masses 
 of the population could not rise to this 
 ideal conception, and we therefore find 
 the two fundamental ideas prevailing 
 side by side. 
 
 Here the two first epochs in man's 
 history end. They show us the inti- 
 mate connection between religious con-
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 191 
 
 ceptions and man's understanding of 
 the exterior world in which he lives 
 and acts. The following stage com- 
 mences logically with the great ad- 
 vancement of the natural sciences. 
 Chemistry partly lifts the veil that 
 hides the innermost nature of matter, 
 and at the dawn of the new science the 
 old ideas concerning the nature of the 
 body disappear like the shadows of 
 night at the rising of the sun. 
 
 A bodily resurrection on doomsday 
 is impossible because every dead body 
 sooner or later arises and takes part 
 in the circulation of matter, so that on 
 the day of judgment it might be found 
 that the same materials had entered 
 over and over again into the composi- 
 tion of a variety of human bodies. It 
 is also a fact that man changes his 
 material clothing several times even 
 during his earthly life. But the belief 
 in the essential value of the body is 
 too deeply rooted to give away entirely 
 and so we meet it again in the modern 
 materialism which perhaps may be said
 
 192 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 to emphasize the significance of the 
 body even more than the cult of the 
 dead did in ancient time. 
 
 But while materialism claims as its 
 own the consequences of the revolu- 
 tionary work of chemistry, biology lays 
 the firm foundation for a new and 
 higher development of religious con- 
 ceptions. Biology discovers and proves 
 the existence of that spiritual body 
 which humanity has surmised since 
 prehistoric times. It is to this extraor- 
 dinarily important fact that we desired 
 to call attention. We have endeav- 
 ored to draw its consequences only as 
 •regards the cell-generations which suc- 
 cessively rise and die in the human 
 body as in human society. Now when 
 it can be shown that these dying gen- 
 erations are eternal and imperishable 
 parts of man's own nature, the concep- 
 tion of death and resurrection we have 
 here advanced must be the only possi- 
 ble one. The hitherto common ideas 
 regarding the translation of man to 
 another world have upon closer study
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 193 
 
 been found as naive as they are un- 
 natural, because any such direct trans- 
 position of man's entity is impossible 
 and unthinkable. 
 
 But however simple and scientifical- 
 ly natural the theory here proposed, it 
 could not have appeared at a much 
 earlier date. It requires not only the 
 results of modern cytology but also the 
 widening of the idea of immortality 
 which natural science suggests and 
 overwhelmingly proves. It presupposes 
 also the law of evolution we have en- 
 deavored to make clear, namely, that 
 beings endowed with common wants 
 and existing in similar surroundings 
 and conditions cannot develop, except 
 by the upbuilding of an organism, and 
 thus entering as organic members in 
 an individual of higher order than 
 themselves. From these premises we 
 might have deduced our theory of 
 death and resurrection and yet the 
 whole process would still have seemed 
 mysterious and inexplicable but for 
 the work of our great predecessor,
 
 194 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 Christofer Jacob Bostrom, that Plato of 
 the North, sO often misunderstood by 
 his contemporaries, or at least more 
 known on account of certain possible 
 deficiencies in his system than because 
 of its imperishable merits. 
 
 Idealism and materialism have hith- 
 erto stood as two absolutely incom- 
 patible contrasts and the fierce battle 
 that continuously rages, even in our 
 days, between the two world-concep- 
 tions can, according to common notions, 
 only be brought to an end through the 
 complete defeat of one of the parties. 
 We have endeavored to show that both 
 these philosophies have common defi- 
 ciencies, but that each of them pos- 
 sesses an essential part of truth. We 
 cannot deny idealism the merit of hav- 
 ing looked far deeper into the nature 
 of things and phenomena. While ad- 
 mitting this we cannot be blind to the 
 fact that this philosophy has left at 
 least one fact of nearly overwhelming 
 importance totally unexplained. If it 
 be true that the soul is the essential
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 195 
 
 part of man and is that to which alone 
 immortality is granted, how then shall 
 we account for the fact that the soul's 
 evolution, properly the one principal 
 object of man, must stand aside for the 
 body to such an extent that the body 
 utilizes, if not all yet at least the 
 largest part of man's time and energy? 
 To materialism this reply is given, but 
 then again this philosophy has been 
 unable to answer all those questions 
 which idealism alone could satisfactor 
 ily explain. 
 
 Now at last we understand the rea- 
 son for these contradictions. The two 
 world-conceptions suffer the same es- 
 sential deficiency of having overlooked 
 the fact that the body contains a spir- 
 itual organism, of the same importance 
 to man's future life as to his present. 
 In the theory here proposed material- 
 ism in a purified form melts into ideal- 
 ism, which latter thus receives the sup- 
 plement it hitherto has lacked as a 
 universal, satisfactory world-explana- 
 tion. We have barely outlined this
 
 196 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 new, organic idealism and have treated 
 it somewhat more extensively only with 
 reference to death and resurrection. 
 But also on this point our work, as all 
 human effort, is only piecemeal labor. 
 As soon as we have advanced one step, 
 other entirely new questions arise. We 
 already discern boundless expanses of 
 problems in the same direction and 
 shall here point out one example. The 
 organic changes, characterizing old age 
 and preceding the so-called natural 
 death, are comparatively well studied 
 and known. But in spite of this, 
 natural science is unable to tell us the 
 underlying cause in the inner nature of 
 the organism, and it is even admitted 
 that we know no reason why the 
 process should not follow an entirely 
 opposite course. From our point of 
 view man has an individual content 
 larger than that included in the suc- 
 cessive moments of time, and death 
 should normally enter with the transla- 
 tion of the last cell-generation. It is 
 true that as civilization advances man's
 
 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 197 
 
 lifetime is constantly increasing, so 
 that we may look forward to a time 
 when most men will die a natural 
 death. But if we meet a premature 
 death, as is now generally the case, 
 can this, and other disturbing inter- 
 ruptions in the natural process, after- 
 wards be repaired? Let us hope that 
 this is possible, but a decisive answer 
 we cannot give. Our conviction is that 
 God does not interfere to help man 
 either in the transition itself or in a 
 future life in any other way than he 
 does here in time. Certainly the cler- 
 ical orthodoxy has rightly understood 
 the divine guidance in its teaching of 
 God's general providence, comprising 
 the whole creation, His special provi- 
 dence in regard to mankind, and His 
 most particular providence, limited to 
 the faithful; that is, to those that let 
 themselves be governed by the divine 
 will. Critical experience has never dis- 
 covered any exterior, occasional inter- 
 ference, which moreover is utterly im- 
 possible. God is present and active in
 
 198 DEATH AND RESURRECTION. 
 
 the eternal and unchangeable laws of 
 nature and spirit. Sin and punish- 
 ment, virtue and reward, are connected 
 with each other as reason and conclu- 
 sion, cause and effect. Man is himself 
 the cause of his acts and they bring 
 their inevitable consequences. The 
 man therefore who consciously and 
 purposely distorts his own natural evo- 
 lution or that of others stands before 
 himself and before his fellow men bur- 
 dened with a terrible responsibility.
 
 INDEX 
 
 Absolute organism, the, 187. 
 
 Achilles, 14. 
 
 Activity, incitement to, 154. 
 
 Adaptation, 149. 
 
 Affinity, 97. 
 
 Agni, the elementary, 24. 
 
 Annihilation contrary to nature, 1, 168. 
 
 Army organization, 159f. 
 
 Art and organic matter, 107, 111, 119f. 
 
 Ask and Embla, 21. 
 
 Athens, 9. 
 
 Bacteria, 57. 
 
 Belief in future life, 2. 
 
 Biology and the spiritual body, 192. 
 
 Bjorklund, Johan Gustaf, "VTT. 
 
 Body, importance of the, 18. 
 
 Bostrom, Christofer Jacob, 174, 1P4. 
 
 Burial ceremonies, 9, 20. 
 
 Btichner, 48f, 56, 62, 69, 73, 75, 83. 
 
 Causality, 118, 119. 
 
 Cause, sufficient, 117. 
 
 Cells, living units, 27, 29; man, a community of, 30; 
 
 a system of, 142. 
 Chemical reactions, 76, 82. 
 Chinese civilization, 10; death-cultus, 11. 
 
 199
 
 200 INDEX. 
 
 Chlorophyll, 115. 
 
 Christianity, 16, 20. 
 
 Church burial, 16'. 
 
 Circulation, blood, 78. 
 
 Civilization, antiquity of Chinese, 10. 
 
 Cohesion, 97. 
 
 Conscience, 44. 
 
 Consciousness, 45. 
 
 Combustion, 92, 94ff. 
 
 Communism, cell, 159. 
 
 Cooperation, innermost, 161. 
 
 Corporeal existence, soul's craving for, 15. 
 
 Cosmic catastrophe, a, 103. 
 
 Creation, orthodox theory of, 67, 173. 
 
 Cremation, 21, 24. 
 
 Customs, grave, 13. 
 
 Coulanges, Pustel de, 7, 10. 
 
 Cytology, 28, 29, 177, 193. 
 
 Darwin's theory, 62. 
 
 Death, and dissolution, 1; in mid-ocean, 12. 
 
 Death-cultus, 11, 49, 189, 192. 
 
 Decay, 105, 116. 
 
 Deity, 176. 
 
 Dextrose, 82. 
 
 "Division of labor," organic, 141. 
 
 Dogma, 16, 51. 
 
 Doomsday, 191. 
 
 Dove, 128. 
 
 Dualism, ecclesiastical, 21, 88. 
 
 Dusch, von, 57. 
 
 Duty of matrimony in China, 12. 
 
 Dying and renewal, process of, 125. 
 
 Earth, history of our, 100. 
 
 Ego, perceived as relation, the, 162f. 
 
 Elysian fields, 15. 
 
 Energy of a living being, the, 72.
 
 INDEX. 201 
 
 Entity, the soul's, 164; man's, 169; the divine, 185. 
 
 Equivalents of energy, 89. 
 
 Eskimo, the, 13. 
 
 Eternal, the, 181, 185f. 
 
 Eternity, 183. 
 
 Ether, 89. 
 
 Evolution, 17, 26. 
 
 Existence beyond the grave, 37. 
 
 Experience, daily, 77. 
 
 Faith, founded on probability, 37. 
 Fear, effect of, 131. 
 Fechner, Gustav, V. 
 Flourens, 129. 
 Folk-lore, IV. 
 Food, 156. 
 
 Forces, inorganic, 74; as qualities, 76; and resist- 
 ance, 87. 
 Forms of energy, 88. 
 Foundation fact, Bjorklund's, XII. 
 Fries, S. A. D. D., VH. 
 Fuel, organic, 93. 
 Function, bodily, 48. 
 Funeral ceremonies, 7. 
 Furnace heat and the sun, 109. 
 Future life, modern attitude toward, 4. 
 
 Geology, 62, 69. 
 
 Ghosts, 25. 
 
 God, image of, 22; presence of, in logical laws, 180. 
 
 Granfelt, 19. 
 
 Grave, communications from the, 7; in China, 12. 
 
 Grew, 28. 
 
 Harvey's formula, 55f, 58, 62ff, 67, 122. 
 Heat, equivalents of, 98f. 
 Historical process, the, 46, 70, 188f. 
 Hierologists, Germanic, 22.
 
 202 INDEX. 
 
 Hoffman, 58. 
 
 Honor, 22. 
 
 Humanity, a higher organism, 126; the link between 
 
 God and man, 177. 
 Hunger, 156. 
 Hydrates of carbon, 82. 
 
 Idea, man, God's eternal, 174. 
 
 Idealism, 18, 194. 
 
 Image of God, the soul an, 172f, 179. 
 
 Immaterial experience, 45, 50. 
 
 Immortality, instinctive, 1, 2; of the cell, 124. 
 
 Incentives, 119. 
 
 Indestructibility of matter and energy, 170. 
 
 Indian tribes, 13. 
 
 Industry, a common need of, 145. 
 
 Inertia, 111. 
 
 Instinct, faith and, 4, 6; social, 144. 
 
 Intellect, mechanical equivalent of, 90. 
 
 Intelligence and the soul, 132. 
 
 Intuition, 26, 44, 173f. 
 
 Islam, 15. 
 
 Judaism, 15. 
 
 Jungle of materialism, the, XV. 
 
 Key, Ellen, VIII. 
 
 Laboratory results, 83, 84. 
 
 Language, cell, 164. 
 
 Lavoisier, 72. 
 
 Life-force, so-called, 71, 73, 121. 
 
 Life, supernatural origin of, 123. 
 
 Logical laws the form in which God exists, 180. 
 
 Limitations, man's, 178. 
 
 Lodur, 21. 
 
 Machine, the living, 79, 139. 
 Malplghi, 28. 
 

 
 INDEX. 203 
 
 Man, a social organism of cells, 32; responsibility 
 
 of, 198. 
 Material, organic, 112f. 
 Materialism, 19, 49, 85. 
 Matrimony in China, 11. 
 Matter, 47, 68, 88, 96, 118. 
 Mechanical toy, man not a, XIV. 
 Mechanism of the organism, 138. 
 Memory, 146. 
 Metamorphosis, 40. 
 Micro-organic world, the, 58. 
 Mid-ocean, death in, 12. 
 Microscope, the, 28, 155. 
 Mirbel, Brisseau de, 29. 
 Mind, time-bound and space-bound, XIV. 
 Moldenhaver, 29. 
 Molecules, 96. 
 
 "Moss-clad fragment," the, 65. 
 Motility, mechanical, 79. 
 Mutability, 91. 
 Mythology, Germanic, 21. 
 
 Nations as organisms, 31. 
 
 Natural science, 48, 191. 
 
 Nirvana, XIV. 
 
 Nobel prize, the, X. 
 
 Negroes, immortality ideas among, 12. 
 
 Nordenskold, 13. 
 
 Norse sagas, 15. 
 
 Odin, 22. 
 
 Omne vivum ex vivo, 59. 
 Organic structure, 33, 83, 84. 
 Origin of life, the, 70. 
 Oxygen, 102. 
 
 pacific Ocean, 10. 
 Farasites, 54.
 
 204 INDEX. 
 
 Parseeism, 15. 
 
 Pasteur, 58. 
 
 Permanence, law of, 89, 91. 
 
 Personal existence after death, 6. 
 
 Philosophy of science, the, 73. 
 
 Polar regions, 10. 
 
 Pre-existence, 171. 
 
 Prehistoric beliefs, 4, 188. 
 
 Present, the eternally, 182. 
 
 Presentiment, 2. 
 
 Priestley, 72. 
 
 Primitive ideas of immortality, 10. 
 
 Principles of life and physical force, 90, 91, 121. 
 
 Propagation, 54, 55, 61. 
 
 Providence, 133, 197. 
 
 Psychical Research, society for, III. 
 
 Psychologic order of evolution, 5. 
 
 Purpose, organic, 149. 
 
 Pyre, the funeral, 190. 
 
 Reasoning, headlong, 20. 
 Re-birth, 40. 
 Recapitulation, 188. 
 Religious instincts, 17. 
 Resurrection, 15f, 150, 166, 190. 
 Rydberg, Victor, 21, 172. 
 
 Sagas, 15. 
 
 Samoyede grave, a, 13. 
 
 Scheele, 72. 
 
 Schroder, 57. 
 
 Schultze, 57. 
 
 Schwann, 57. 
 
 Science and resurrection, 16, 20, 74. 
 
 Scylla and Charybdis of science, the, XTV. 
 
 Sin, 198. 
 
 Skeptical attitude, modern, 3f. 
 
 Society, human, 32, 143, 158.
 
 INDEX. 205 
 
 Solar system, the, 184. 
 
 Sorcerers, 25. 
 
 Soul, future life of the, S, 14; physiologists and the, 
 127; functions of the, .130, 134; a spiritual princi- 
 ple, 151. 
 
 Spallanzani, 57. 
 
 Spiritual body, a, lOf. 22, 26, 34f, 190, 195; vision, 43; 
 interaction, 152; beings, 175. 
 
 Spontaneous generation, 51. 52, 59, 105, 122. 
 
 Substance, living, 124: comprehending, 153. 
 
 Sun, importance of the, 104. 
 
 Supernatural forces, 45, 67. 
 
 Steam engine, art and the. 108, 110. 
 
 Swedish Peace Society, X. 
 
 Teleological casuality, IIS. 
 Telepathy, III. 
 Thomson, Sir William, 63. 
 Time, a form of existence. 181. 
 Tissues, the, 142. 
 Tomb, life in the, 7. 
 Tool, the organism a, 135. 
 Transcendental world, a, 42. 
 Treviranus, 29. 
 
 Units, organic, 151. 
 
 Unity of the organism, 16fif. 
 
 Upsala, VII. 
 
 Veda Aryans, 21, 23 f. 
 Virtue, 198. 
 Vis inertia, 11 Of. 
 Vitalistic doctrine 7.'. 
 
 Will incentive, 1.19. 
 Wohler, 81.
 
 

 
 U 7