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.
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