You may remember how it was said that the fact that all human beings believed in gods and God was no proof whatever of the truth of that belief, and of the real existence of divine beings, or of one Infinite Being. I tried to show, on the contrary, that what I call the historical proof was really, if not the only, at least the strongest argument for the belief in the existence of God.

Leave man alone, I said, and he will believe in something beyond this world. This has been proved to be a fact by the modern study of the history of all religions. There are no exceptions anywhere, except those which arise from mental idiocy and moral degradation. But as little as we take into account the large number of inmates of lunatic asylums when we maintain that two and two make four, should we be obliged to consider the case of some degraded tribes, supposing they existed, who are said to be without a name for gods or God, and whose only sign of humanity is their language, a remnant and, at the same time, a witness of their former higher state.

History, no doubt, teaches us that much of what people in different stages of their historical progress believed to be true about the gods was not true, was, as they found out themselves, unworthy of the gods. That is perfectly true, but it only serves to confirm the lesson of all history, that truth is never the result of a sudden communication, but the reward of patient labour and honest search. The fact remains, that men, as Homer expresses it, II. iii. 44, yearn for the gods. The metaphorical expression which Homer uses is full of meaning. As birds open their beaks to be fed, because they are hungry, men open, χατέουσι, their hearts and minds; because they are hungry, because they hunger and thirst after God, because they want to be fed. It is this hunger, this weakness, if you like, this incompleteness of human nature, attested by universal history, which is the best proof, nay more than a proof, which is the very fact of the existence of something beyond all finite knowledge, call it by any name you like in all the numberless languages and dialects and jargons of the world. Those who maintain that this is a delusion, must admit at all events that it is a universal delusion, and a really universal delusion must be accepted as true, in the only sense in which anything can be true to human beings such as we are. We may readily admit that our senses are imperfect; but for all that, all our knowledge must begin with the senses. We know that our senses have often deceived us; but for all that, we also know that our senses themselves have helped us to discover and correct their errors. What is quoted as one of the most glaring instances of universal delusion, the belief in the central position of the earth and the movement of the sun round the earth, was after all an imperfect expression only of the facts before us. In the same sense many of the ancient religions, many of our modern theologies also, may be called imperfect, and yet by no means utterly false. As the sun rises and sets and gives us light and warmth, whether we call it by central or eccentric names, the light of the world, the Infinite behind all finite phenomena, remains. Our vision may be clouded by human ignorance, nay the light that shines upon us may be so bright and fierce that, unless veiled in passing clouds, it would burn and blind the human eye. Yet the light is there; we feel and know it. Clouds, dark or radiant, may come and go, but the light, reflected in ever so many marvellous shapes, is, and remains our light.

History teaches us two lessons. The Jews represent their God as jealous of all false or imperfect gods. This is the first lesson: Man ought to be jealous of all untruth in whatever form it meets him. The Hindus, on the other hand, represent their Supreme Being as saying, ‘Even those who worship idols, worship me.’ This is the second lesson, that we ought to be tolerant, and try to discover some grains of truth in all untruth, some honest endeavour in all failures; nay, what has been called a hidden and divine education of man in the whole history of the world.

If we confine our study of history, and especially of the history of religion, to one sacred book only, say the Old Testament, we can never learn from that single book, that a belief in God is universal, and that it becomes more and more pure and perfect, not by casual revelation, but by slow and irresistible evolution. Here is a lesson which nothing but a comprehensive study of the sacred books of the world, an exploration of all the religions of mankind, can possibly teach us. And yet that lesson seems to me the only safe and sound foundation of a belief in God. That belief may be very indefinite—and how can human belief in the Infinite ever be anything but indefinite? And yet, what can be more convincing than that simple argument, if it is not an intuition rather than an argument, which underlies all religions from beginning to end, and in every part of the world, viz. that where there is an act there must be an agent, where there is something finite, there must be something beyond the finite, by whatever name we like to call it. This then is the historical proof of the existence of God; this was the outcome of our Lectures on Physical Religion.

If now we apply exactly the same reasoning to the facts placed before us by a study of what I call Anthropological Religion; if we ask once more, What does it all lead to? my answer is the same.

Man, if left to himself, has everywhere arrived at the conviction that there is something in man or of man besides the material body. This was a lesson taught, as we saw, not so much by life as by death. Besides the body, besides the heart, besides the blood, there was the breath. Man was struck by that, and when the breath had left the body, he simply stated the fact, that the breath or the psyché had departed. The speculations on the true nature of that psyché within, belong to the domain of Psychological Religion, which will form the subject of my next course of Lectures.

A mere study of language sufficed to show us how general, nay how universal, is the belief in something beside the body, in some agent within, or in what in Sanskrit is called by a very general name, the antahkarana, the agency within. Every kind of internal agency was ascribed to that something, which showed itself not only as simply breathing and living, but as feeling and perceiving, soon also as naming, conceiving, and reasoning.

In these Lectures on Anthropological Religion we have had chiefly to deal with the speculations which arose from that psyché as no longer within, but as after death without the body. Here also language began with the name of breath. The breath had gone, the psyché had departed. That psyché, however, was soon conceived, not as mere breath or air, but as retaining most of those activities which had been ascribed to it during life, such as feeling, perceiving, naming, conceiving, and reasoning.

So far I do not see what can be brought forward against this primitive and universal form of belief. If there was a something in man that could receive, perceive, and conceive, that something, whatever name we call it, was gone with death. But no one could think that it had been annihilated—nusquam nihil ex aliquo. So long, therefore, as the ancient philosophers said no more than that this something, called breath or psyché, had left the body and had gone somewhere else, I do not see what counter-argument could be advanced against them.

Even during life, the body alone, though it could live by itself, could not be said to see or hear or perceive by itself. The eye by itself does not see, it requires something else to receive and to perceive, and that something, though itself invisible, was as real as the invisible Infinite and the Divine behind the agents in nature, whom the ancient nations called their gods. It became in turn the soul, the mind, the agent, the subject, till at last it was recognised as the Infinite and the Divine in man¹.

The ancients knew all this as well as we do, nay, they saw it and pronounced it more clearly than we do. Thus Epicharmos said without hesitation:

—all the rest, including the body with eyes and ears and other organs of sense.

So long again as these psychés or souls were spoken of in the plural and were supposed after death to be somewhere, the argument would still remain unassailable. Remember, we are dealing here, not with schooled metaphysicians, but with the so-called sons of nature, though before these universal problems of the world, even the best-schooled metaphysicians are not much wiser than these so-called sons of nature. If the ancient nations had been satisfied with this simple faith that the psychés or souls of their departed friends continued to exist somewhere, there could have been no opposition of any kind to this as an article of the universal faith of mankind. It might have been called a self-evident proposition.

But man, as we say, does not only reason. He has also a heart, and that heart will believe many things that cannot be proved, if only they cannot be disproved.

First of all came the question, where do the souls of the departed exist? All the answers returned are equally natural, all are equally unobjectionable, but likewise equally not proven, because they are beyond the reach of proof. The best answer was perhaps that contained in the most ancient Greek language and mythology, that the souls had gone to the house of the Invisible, of Aides. No one has ever said anything truer. That house of the Invisible was placed, as we saw, either beneath the earth, or beyond the earth in the west, in the land of the setting sun; while others who looked upon heaven as the abode of the gods, placed the souls of the departed also in the same abode.

With regard to these fond hopes and imaginations, all we can say is that they may be true, that they may all be fulfilled, but that we are no better off than the Vedic poets or the lowest of savages for pronouncing a definite opinion.

Next came the question, how the souls fare after death. We are inclined to smile at the idea that the next life will be much the same as this, that there will be hunting-fields, battle-fields, music, poetry, sweet discourse with our friends, meditation, and adoration. And yet there is again nothing utterly unreasonable in all this. It is a deduction, it is true, based on one precedent only, namely, on the precedent of this present life. But as there can be no other precedent, the belief so widely entertained that the next life will be much like this, seems in reality the most reasonable conclusion at which man, whether in his childhood or in his old age, could have arrived.

This conclusion was strengthened by two influences, one purely imaginative, the other, however, by no means unreasonable.

It has generally been supposed that bows and arrows, pots and pans, playthings and medicine bottles, at last, even wives and servants, were burnt or buried with the dead, because people believed that the next would be some kind of continuation of the present life. I tried to show, on the contrary, that what is here represented as the cause, may far more likely have been the effect, that many things were placed on the funeral pile, or in or on the grave, from a mere desire to give up something to those whom one had loved and served during life. When afterwards a reason was asked to account for what was originally a mere impulse, an unreasoning act, a belief was expressed and very soon defended against all gainsayers, that all these things, down to the dolls and medicine bottles of children, were not merely thrown away, but would for ever prove useful in another life.

And when these offerings to the dead took in time a more settled form, and became part of the religious ceremonial among many nations, both civilised and uncivilised, the idea that the dead were cognisant of the honours paid to them, and could enjoy the gifts offered to them, grew stronger and stronger². Soon also the thought arose that the dead resented the neglect of what was due to them, that they would find no rest till they had received their funeral honours, and that they would haunt the abodes of their relations and bring misfortune on their families till their just demands had been fulfilled.

By this process of reasoning, if reasoning it may be called, the question how the souls of the departed existed in their new abodes, answered itself. They were of necessity supposed to be capable of knowing what passed in this life, of enjoying offerings, of appreciating praise, of rewarding those who cared for them, and punishing those who neglected them. Thus, without actually ascribing to them a body like the body that had been burnt or buried, they were supposed to be conscious, to retain their names, and to have what we call the faculties of feeling, perceiving, conceiving, and reasoning. We then saw how an even mere powerful impulse sprang from the belief in a moral government of the universe, by whatever name it might be called. The mere conviction that no deed can die, that there must be an effect to every cause, would irresistibly lead to the conclusion that crimes, unpunished in this, will be punished in the next life, and that the good deeds unrewarded here, will receive their reward there. This idea soon received an enormous development. It led to the invention of sunny isles in the west, of a paradise in the east, and of glorious abodes in heaven. It also inspired both ancient and modern poets in their descriptions of the terrors of the lower world, the fire of hell, and the tortures of the Inferno.

We can distinguish three stages in the growth of this belief. With some people, as with the Jews, and with some of the Greeks, life after death was hardly more than mere existence, without joy, but likewise without suffering, without rewards, and without punishments. It was a sleep with their fathers.

With others, as the Vedic Indians, for instance, life after death was conceived chiefly as a happy life, a state of enjoyment in company with the gods.

Then, by the side of those who reaped the reward of their virtues in heaven, was imagined another place for the punishment of the wicked. This took place at a later time both in India and in Greece.

And lastly, a more philosophical theory prevailed, that by a succession of new births the soul would assume new bodies, having thus an opportunity given it for rising to higher and higher perfection, and reaching in the end the supreme goal, nearness to, nay, likeness, or even oneness or atone-ness, with God.

In all these thoughts which we find not only in India, Greece, and Italy, but scattered all over the world, wherever human beings have been living together, we can distinguish between what is true, true for us to-day as it was for the earliest thinkers and speakers on earth, and what is merely imagination, often quite harmless, but having no claim to be called either true or untrue.

What is true to us, as it was to our earliest ancestors, is that the soul does not die. In many languages even the expression, ‘He is dead,’ is avoided, partly, it may be, because it is an inauspicious expression, but partly also because it is felt to contain an untruth. I am told that in some parts of Scotland also, you will never hear that a person has died. You are told that he has been taken away. Mr. Macdonald, a missionary, remarked the same among the Zulus in Africa. They never say, ‘He is dead,’ they say. ‘He is not here,’ and they speak of the departed spirits as ‘ascending to heaven,’ or as ‘gone home³.’

It seems to me that they are right in this, at least to a certain point. To die applies to the body; it has really no sense as applied to the soul, if only we distinguish rightly between what we mean by body and what we mean by soul. The soul is neither born, as the body is born, nor does it live, as the body lives; nor can it die, therefore, as the body dies. We do not say that the soul is blind, because the eyes of the body have been injured, or that it is deaf, because the tympanum has been pierced, or even that the soul is mad, because the central organ, whether we call it heart or brain, has been injured. The soul is the witness only, it may be the compassionate witness, of all that passes in the body. It perceives what it perceives without eyes and without ears, and even madness is only like a darkening of the light, like a deep sleep that falls on the body and cannot be shaken off.

And what applies to the soul within, applies also to the souls without, I mean, to the souls, after the decay and death of the body. It is because the ancient, and many of the modern philosophers also, cannot distinguish between what is body and what is soul, because, in fact, they do not believe in a soul, but only talk about it, that they become involved in endless contradictions in their utterances about the souls of the departed. In our longings for the departed we often think of them as young or old, we think of them as man or woman, as father or mother, as husband or wife. Even nationality and language are supposed to remain after death, and we often hear expressions, ‘Oh, if the souls are without all this, without age, without sex, without national character, without even their native language, what will they be to us?’

The answer is, they will really be the same to us as they were in this life. Unless we can bring ourselves to believe that a soul has a beginning, and that our soul sprang into being at the time of our birth, the soul within us must have existed before.

But however convinced we may be of the soul's eternal existence, we shall always remain ignorant as to how it existed. And yet we do not murmur or complain. Our soul on awakening here is not quite a stranger to itself, and the souls who as our parents, our wives, and husbands, our children, and our friends, have greeted us at first as strangers in this life, but have become to us as if we had known them for ever, and as if we could never lose them again. If it were to be so again in the next life, if there also we should meet at first as strangers till drawn together by the same mysterious love that has drawn us together here; why should we murmur or complain? Thousand, of years ago we read of a husband telling his wife, ‘Verily a wife is not dear, that you may love the wife, but that you may love the soul, therefore a wife is dear.’ What does that mean? It means that true love consists not in loving what is perishable, but in discovering and loving what is eternal in man or woman. In Sanskrit that eternal part is called by many names; the best seems that which is used in this very passage, Âtmâ. We translate it by soul, but it is even higher and purer than soul, and it is perhaps best translated by the word Self. That which constitutes the true Self, the looker on, the witness within us, that which is everywhere in the body and yet nowhere to be touched, that which cannot die or expire, because it never breathed, that is the Infinite in man which philosophers have been groping for, though ‘he is not far from every one of us.’ It is the Divine or God-like in man.

It might seem as if such speculations belonged to modern times only, when there is leisure for the few at least, to think, not of this life only, but also of the next. But that is not the case. The curiosity as to what awaits us in the next life, is very old. We find among the Vedic Upanishads one that is entirely devoted to this subject. It is called the Katha-upanishad. We may, I believe, safely say that this Upanishad is older than Buddha, and that, for our present purposes, is enough. It is a strange mixture of mythology and philosophy. Some portions of it are probably later additions, and some scholars have attempted, more or less successfully, to separate these more modern from the more ancient parts. I shall only attempt to give you a short abstract, and to select those passages which are universally intelligible, and can appeal to our own sympathies.

The Upanishad consists chiefly of a dialogue between Yama, the ruler of the dead, who has become identified with Mrityu or death, and a young Brâhmanic student, of the name of Nakiketas.

We are told in the beginning that the father of this young Brâhman performed a sacrifice in which he professed to give away everything he possessed. The son is represented as taunting his father that, after all, he had not given away everything, because he did not give away his own son. The father becomes angry at last, and exclaims:

The son at once accepts his fate, and says:

It so happens that when the young Brâhman enters the abode of Death, Yama, the lord of the departed, is absent. For three nights no hospitality is shown to Nakiketas, and this was looked upon as so great an offence that Yama, when he returns, has to offer him three boons to avert his anger. Nakiketas asks as his first boon that his father may not be angry with him when he returns from the mouth of death. This is granted.

He then asks for the knowledge of a sacrifice by which he may attain immortality in heaven, where there is no death, no old age, no hunger or thirst, and no sorrow. This too is granted.

And now it might be supposed that no more could be asked for. But Nakiketas is not satisfied with the ordinary immortality in heaven, though it gives everlasting peace and happiness. He wants to know more and to have more, and says:

Then a fierce struggle begins between the young Brâhman and Death. Death offers him anything rather than to tell him this mystery which, as he says, even the gods do not know. He offers him health and wealth, children and chariots, fair maidens and music, but all in vain. Nakiketas will have his third boon, he will know what happens to man after he is dead, and Yama has at last to yield.

Then follows the answer of Yama or Death:

Then follows the explanation of what constitutes the true being and the true immortality of man, what is called Âtmâ in. Sanskrit, and is generally translated by the soul, but which is better rendered by the self, the self that lies behind the Ego, behind the mere personality of man, and which is really, when fully known, the same as Brahman, the universal Self.

Yama continues:

Then follows a parable which reminds one of a well-known passage in Plato's Phaedros:

Here ends the first chapter. Then follows a second which contains a collection of verses, all bearing on our subject, but full of allusions to minute points of Indian philosophy. It would require more time than we can spare to make their real meaning quite clear, and I must be satisfied with quoting a few of the more simple and telling verses:

We are then told that the young Brâhman, after having received this instruction, became free and obtained Brahman, and that everybody who knows all this about his true Self, will be like him.

I doubt whether any literature, and more particularly any ancient literature, has produced anything to match this Upanishad. To those who can enter into the spirit of its teaching, or, as Yama said, to those whom the Self has chosen, it is perfectly marvellous. But even those who shrink from following its doctrine, must admit that the discovery of such a work among the so-called niggers of India, composed at a time when neither Roman nor Saxon had as yet set foot on these isles, is an important discovery, as important at least as what has been discovered in the hieroglyphic records of Egypt, and in the cuneiform inscriptions of Babylon and Nineveh. We may not find in the Veda so many names of kings, so many accounts of battles and conquests, so many dates carrying us back to three or four thousand years before our era. But we find in the Veda, and more particularly in the Upanishads, what has occupied the thoughts of man at all times, what occupies them now and will occupy them for ever—a search after truth, a desire to discover the Eternal that underlies the Ephemeral, a longing to find in the human heart the assurance of a future life, and an attempt to re-unite the bond which once held the human and the divine together, the true atone-ment between God and man. How this old problem was solved in certain religions, we shall see in our next and last Lecture.