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About Torch of reason. (Silverton, Oregon) 1896-1903 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 22, 1900)
T orch of R eason . •TRUTH BEARS THE TORCH IN THE SEARCH FOR VOL. 4. W n ttS ’-LlW retius M LVEBTOH. OREGON, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 83, E. M. 800 (A. I). 1!»no NO. 7. For the Torch of Reason. soul to a pian.pt who executes an ed people of classical antiquity be- mental characteristics which the interesting p.ece — the individual Heve it, at any rate during the child inherits from both parents. life— on the instrument of the mor- highest period of Greek culture, BY J . A . EDGERTON. It is clearly against reason to as tai body, but at death withdraws The monistic philosophy of that sume an eternal and unending life into the other world. This “im -; time, which, five hundred years be- f we could how know' much we owe for an individual phenomenon To one another, we would sow mortal soul” is usually presented fore our era, had reached specula- The soil of human hearts with seeds as an immaterial being; but in fact tive heights so remarkable, knew whose beginning in time we can de ' Of gratitude and kindly deeds, Whence flowers of love'would sweetly it is really thought of as quite ma- nothing of any such dogma. It termine to a hair’s breadth, by di blow. rect observation. Judging of hu terial, only as a finer invisible be- was through Plato and Christ that man spiritual life from a rational We’d seek our peace with every foe; ing, aerial or gaseous, or as resem it received its further elaboration, point of view, we can as little think We’d strive to solace every woe; We’d hind up every hea'rt that bleeds, bling the mobile, light, and thin until, in the Middle Ages, it was so If we could know. substance of the ether, as conceived universally accepted, that only of our individual soul as separated from our brain, as we can conceive A fuller charity we’d show, by modern physics. The same is now and (hen did some bold think- the voluntary motion of our arm A deeper faith ; and we would grow To higher thoughts and larger creeds— true also for most of the concep- er dare openly to gainsay it. The apart from the contraction of its As broad as human hopes and needs— tions which rude primitive peoples idea that a conviction of personal muscles, or the circulation of our We’d help each other as we go, and the uneducated classes among immortality has a specially enno- If we could know. blood apart from the action of the the civilized races have, for thous h.ing influence on the moral nature heart.— [Monism. ands of years, cherished as to spec ot man, is not confined to the grue- The Biological Soul. tral “ghosts” and “gods”. Serious 8» me history of mediaeval morals, reflection on the matter shows that a»id as little by the psychology of BY DR. ERNST HAECKEL. Philosophy and Religion. here—as in modern spiritualism— primitive peoples. s I long ago pointed out,these it is not with really immaterial be If any antiquated school ofpure- BY HORACE SEAVER. ings, but with gaseous, invisible two great questions are not lj speculative psychology still con two separate “world rid bodies, that we are dealing. And tinues to uphold this irrational hilosophy depends on argu dles”. The neurological problem further, we are utterly incapable of d. gma, the fact can only be regard- ment; religion, on credul of consciousness is only a special imagining a truly immaterial being. e as a deplorable anachronism. ity: the one rests on the On the other hand, the concep S xtv years ago such a doctrine was case of the all-comprehending cos uniform experience of things; the mological problem, the question of tion of a personal immortality can e cusable, for then nothing was other on their violation. Philoso substance. “If we understood the not he maintained. If this idea is accurately known either of the fin- phy does not parley with the ap nature of matter and energy, we still widely held, the fact is to be e. structure of the brain, or of the prehensions of the timid; it does should also understand how the explained by the physical law of pnysiological functions of its separ- not press into its service denuncia substance underlying them can un inertia; for the property of persist ate parts; its elementary organs, tions of eternal vengeance; its pro der certain conditions feel, desire, ence in a state of rest exercises its the microscopic ganglion-cells, were fessors are not supplied by revenues and think.” Consciousness, like influence in the region of the gan almost unknown, as was also the extorted from the prime necessaries feeling and willing, among the glion-cells of the brain, as well as cell-soul of the Protista; very im of the people; it requires no stat higher animals is a mechanical in all other natural bodies. Tra perfect ideas were held as to onto utes villainously foisted into the work of the ganglion-cells, and as ditional ideas handed down through genetic development, and as to legal code, to protect its tenets such must be carried back to che many generations are maintained phylogenetic there were none at all. from disquisition, for truth and mical and physical events in the with the greatest tenacity by the This has all been completely freedom, not falsehood and tyran plasma of these. And by the em human brain, espeoially if, in early changed in the course of the last ny, are its aim. ployment of the genetic and com youth, they have been instilled in half century. Modern physiology Love of truth never raised a per parative method we reach the con to the childish understanding aR has already to a great extent de viction that, consciousness, and con indisputable dogmas. Such hered monstrated the localization of the secution. Persecution springs from the ambitious desire to govern the sequently reason also, is not a brain itary articles of faith take root all various activities of mind, and their opinions of others, and thus con function exclusively peculiar to the more firmly, the further they connection with definite parts of vert them to their interested uses. man; it occurs also in many of the are removed from a rational knowl the brain; psychiatry has shown And a religious ambition is by far higher animals, not in Vertebrates edge of nature, and enveloped in that those physical processes are the worst, the most rancorous, the only, but even in Articulates. Only the mysterious mantle of mytho disturbed or destroyed if these parts most hateful and unreasonable in degree, through a higher state of logical poesy. In the case of the of the brain become diseased or de specimen of its kind that ever in cultivation, does the consciousness dogma of personal immortality, generate. Histology has revealed fested the world; it is.a direct vio of man differ from that of the more there comes into play also the in to us the extremely complicated lation of the rights of conscience, perfect lower animals, and the same terest which man fancies himself to structure and arrangement of the an atrocious and infamous invasion is true of all other activities of the have in his individual future exist ganglion-cells. But, for the settle ence after death, and the vain hope ment of this momentous question, of the rights of man. A man wish human soul. es to compel me to thin kas he does, that in a blessed world to come By these and other results of the discoveries of the last ten years in order that I may subserve his there is treasured up for him a ( tnparative physiology our whole with regard to the more minute oc purpose, not regarding my right to P^cology ¡s placed on a new and compensation for the disappointed currences in the process of fertiliza express my opinions being the same firm monistic basis. The other hopes and the many sorrows of his tion are of decisive importance. as he has to express his own; his mystical conception of the soul, a« earthly life. We now know that this process es opinions must be established, mine It is often asserted by the nu- sentially consists simply in the cop- not dared to be uttered.—(Occas " e find it amongst primitive pfeo- pi' s, hut also in the systems of the merous advocates of personal im- ulation or fusion of two microscop ional Thoughts. dualigtic philosophers of today, is mortality that this dogma is an in- ¡cal cells, the female egg-cell and ’’futed by them. According to nate one, common to all rational the male sperm-cell. The fusion of these systems, the soul of man (and men, and that it is taught in all the nuclei of these two sexual cells The great slight the men of sense the higher animals?) is a separ- the more perfect forms of religion, indicates with the utmost precision entity, which inhabits and rules But this is not correct. Neither the exact moment at which the new who have nothing but sense; the the body only during its individual Buddhism nor the religion of Mos- human individual arises. The new- men of sense despise the great who ’Be, but leaves it at death. The es originally contained the dogma ly-formed parent-cell, or fertilized have nothing but greatness; and wid( spread “piano-theory” (‘Clav- of personal immortality, and just egg-cell, contains potentially, in the honest man pities both, if, hav ’■'theorie’) compares the “immortal as little did the majority of educat- their rudiments, all the bodily and ing greatness and sense only, they have no virtue.—[Sel. If W e Could Know. I A a _ __ _ _ ■ * 1 1 • • a _ * A P