Chapter 47
Immortality of the soul; life after death; heaven, hell and resurrection.
622 passages · 226 principal · Covers the 49 volumes of primary texts
Immortality is the question of whether anything of a man survives his death, and if so, what and in what condition. Under this one heading the Harvard Classics gather the soul’s survival, the shades of Hades, rebirth in new bodies, the resurrection of the flesh, the last judgment, heaven, hell and purgatory, and the humbler survivals of fame and offspring. It is a great idea for these books because so many of them turn on it at their decisive moments. Socrates spends his last day arguing it. Paul stakes the whole faith upon it. The Koran returns to it on nearly every page. Pascal holds that every other question depends upon it. And the poets, from Homer to Swinburne, either people the other world or deny that there is one to people.
The books first ask whether endless life is even desirable. Odysseus refuses the nymph’s offer to make him free of death and age, preferring his mortal wife and home1,2. Montaigne recalls that Chiron declined immortality, judging an ever-during life more painful than a mortal one3. Virgil’s Juturna laments that she was born to death yet cannot die, so that only immortal pains are left her4. Cory likewise rejects promised heavens of sexless souls in favour of mortal beauty5. Against these refusals stands the longing Emerson finds universal: men’s terror of losing existence and appetite for its continuation, which he reads as a gentle trust in a future6. Andersen’s little sea-maid endures transformation only for the chance of an immortal soul, which men possess and her people lack7,8. Fear runs the other way too. Milton’s Adam dreads that the spirit may not die with the body, and wonders whether death might be endless9.
If the soul survives, the worth of this life seems to hang on the next. Plato’s Socrates draws the consequence plainly. An immortal soul needs care for all eternity and not for this life only, and there is no release from evil except by virtue and wisdom10. Browne calls the hope of resurrection the life of all actions; without it, he says, atheists would be the true philosophers11. Pascal finds no good in this life except the hope of another12, and the Koran calls this world a mere provision beside the abode of stability13. Emerson dissents most sharply. He holds that Jesus never taught immortality as a doctrine, and that separating duration from moral quality is a fall14. The well-employed soul, he says, is incurious about the future, because deserving matters more than duration15. Hobbes, from another side, denies any natural knowledge of man’s estate after death, so that hope of eternal reward cannot excuse breaking faith16.
Where knowledge fails, men must act under uncertainty. Cicero reasons that either the soul is extinguished or it lives forever, and in neither case is there anything to fear17. Marcus Aurelius offers the same alternative of the gods’ company or freedom from sensation18. Burns, in a lighter vein, says that if there is another world he lives in bliss, and if none, he made the best of this19. Pascal will not allow such calm. He calls carelessness about an eternity of annihilation or misery monstrous20. He insists it concerns all of life to know whether the soul is mortal, and observes that atheists cannot show the soul to be material21. He weighs who has more cause to fear hell, the indifferent or the believer22. Goethe’s Faust, by contrast, cares little whether there be a depth below or a height above23.
The philosophical proofs begin in the Phaedo. Socrates argues that the living arise from the dead as opposites arise from opposites, so that the souls of the dead must exist somewhere24,25. He argues next that learning is recollection, which implies that the soul existed before birth26, and he combines the two arguments to show survival27. He argues that the soul is akin to the divine and indissoluble28. Finally he argues that the soul brings life and cannot admit death, and is therefore imperishable29,30. Yet he grants that his account of the other world may not be exactly true, only worth venturing31. Cicero repeats the Platonic reasoning that the soul is self-moved, simple and indivisible32. Descartes reaches immortality from the soul’s independence of the body and the lack of any cause that could destroy it33. Rousseau’s Vicar cannot conceive a thinking being dissolving34. The Romantic poets turned the argument into vision. Wordsworth’s soul comes trailing clouds of glory from God35. Shelley asks whether the mind that knows can be quenched like an atom when nothing we know dies36.
A second family of arguments rests on justice. The oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked point Rousseau’s Vicar to a life where Providence fulfils its promises37. More’s Utopians require citizens to hold that vice is punished and virtue rewarded after death38. Lessing gives this argument a historical turn. The unequal distribution of goods, he says, impelled reason to seek proofs of a life to come, which a perfectly just earthly recompense would have prevented39. A third family argues from aspiration. Cicero infers immortality from great men’s striving after future fame40. Poe hears in the unquenchable thirst for beauty a sign of man’s perennial existence41, and Emerson’s love affirms itself a native of inextinguishable being42.
The proofs met objections from the start. Simmias proposes that the soul may be like the harmony of a lyre, which perishes with the instrument43. Cebes grants pre-existence but compares the soul to a weaver whom his last coat outlives44. He adds that the soul may wear out after many bodies, so that confidence in death is foolish without proof45,46. Voltaire holds that immortality cannot be demonstrated until the soul’s nature is understood47. Outright denials appear in many ages. Dante sets the Epicureans, who said the soul dies with the body, in burning tombs48. Luther rejects Aristotle’s teaching that the soul perishes49, and Augustine sides against Epicurus50. Marcus Aurelius asks why the gods would let good men be extinguished, and concludes that if they do, it must be right51. Hume ridicules those who make this life a porch to a greater state52. Swinburne gives thanks that dead men rise up never53. Euripides had already called any other life a sealed fountain, known only through legend54.
Between proof and denial lies dread. Job wonders whether a man who dies shall live again55. Augustine fears that death may end all, even while he reasons that the faith would have no authority if the soul died with the body56. Hamlet’s dread of what dreams may come makes men bear present ills57. Manzoni’s Unnamed suspects the afterlife is a priests’ invention, yet the doubt that it might be real deepens his despair58. Shelley’s Beatrice asks who has returned to teach the laws of death59, and Poe’s raven answers “Nevermore”60.
If reason cannot settle the matter, perhaps revelation must. Voltaire says exactly this, adding that the belief is socially useful61. Lessing develops the claim into a history. The early Hebrews knew no immortality, and revealing it to them would have been premature62. They learned it later from Chaldeans, Persians and Greeks63, and Christ was the first certain practical teacher of it, making it a rule for inward purity64,65. Other peoples show the belief arising apart from Scripture. Herodotus credits the Egyptians with first teaching that the soul is immortal66. Renan finds precise Celtic ideas of the soul’s journeys, from which he traces the medieval Purgatory67,68. Raleigh’s Guiana natives bury treasure to enjoy it again69, while Darwin’s Fuegians show no distinct belief at all70.
Many authors offer earthly substitutes for survival. Pliny writes that Verginius lives on through fame, death ending his mortality but not his life71. Yet Pliny marks the difference: his uncle was made immortal in fame, not in soul72. Milton says that to kill a good book is to slay an immortality73. Shelley’s dead poets rise robed in immortality to welcome Adonais74. Marcus Aurelius answers that even immortal remembrance would be nothing75. Browne would rather live in substance in Heaven than in name on earth76. Aeschylus makes children the means by which the dead do not wholly die77, and Bacon notes that the childless seek perpetuity in works instead78.
What survives, and how, is pictured very differently. Homer’s dead flit like shadows and must drink blood to know the living; only Teiresias keeps his wits79,80. Virgil’s dead keep identity and speech, and in Elysium continue their earthly pursuits81,82. Then they drink Lethe and return to new bodies83. Rebirth is widespread in these books. Plato’s souls pass into animals that fit their characters84. The Gita teaches that the spirit passes through many bodies untouched by death85. Lessing wonders whether each of us lives more than once86. The Buddhist writings teach rebirth with nothing transmigrating87,88, and refuse to say whether the freed saint exists after death89. Christian writers dispute the soul’s consciousness. Dante’s departed soul keeps memory, intelligence and will keener than before, and forms an airy body90. Raleigh holds that the dead know nothing of the living91.
The Christian and Islamic answer is resurrection. Paul argues that if the dead are not raised, then Christ is not raised and faith is vain92. Luke’s risen Jesus eats fish to show that he is flesh and not a spirit93. Against the Sadducees, Jesus teaches that the risen are like angels and that God is God of the living94. The Koran answers doubters who ask about rotten bones: He who first made them will restore them95,96. Pascal thinks resurrection no harder than birth, since only habit makes the one seem easy97. Browne finds types of it in plants reviving from their ashes98. The raised body is a changed body. Paul’s seed is sown perishable and raised a spiritual body99. Dante’s blessed long for their flesh, which will be more glorious yet bearable to sight100.
Judgment follows. In the Koran the book of deeds is placed in the right hand or the left101, and the balance falls light or heavy102. Bunyan dreams of the saved caught up while others sink to the pit103. Heaven is described at length. The Koran offers gardens with rivers104. The Latin hymns promise a heavenly Jerusalem of tearless joy105. Bunyan gives his pilgrims crowns and harps106, and Dante seats his blessed on the thrones of the rose107. Hell is pictured just as concretely, in the gulf between Lazarus and the rich man108 and in Faustus’ envy of beasts whose souls dissolve109. Yet hell’s justice is questioned. Rousseau’s Vicar doubts that damnation is eternal110, and Mill reports everlasting torment denounced as monstrous111. Browne confesses his early error of hoping the damned might be released112. Purgatory too divides the books: Luther mocks the selling of release from it113, while Pascal finds its sharpest pain in uncertainty of judgment114. Some interiorize the whole scheme. FitzGerald’s soul reports that it is itself heaven and hell115, and Emerson has souls enter heaven or hell by their own affinity116.
The tenderest question is reunion. Cicero looks forward to his son and is content to err if he is wrong117. More consoles his friends with meeting in heaven to love eternally118. Bunyan’s pilgrims debate whether the blessed will know one another and conclude that they will119. Rossetti’s damozel waits in heaven for her lover120. Raleigh holds that the blessed will not return to mortal affections at all121. Death itself becomes, for many, a gate. Socrates insists that only his body remains to be buried122. Donne declares that Death itself shall die123. Bunyan’s river of death tastes bitter but proves sweet124.
Socrates’ own caveat31 stands over the whole conversation. Whether immortality can be proved or only believed, whether it is desirable, and whether duration adds anything to deserving all remain open in these books.
Introductory essay written by Claude Opus 5.5 from the outline and the notes on every passage below; quotations are checked against this edition.
See also: Soul 7a
See also: Poetry 2c
See also: Honor 11d
See also: Life and Death 7e
See also: Life and Death 7c · Soul 7d · Religion 14d · Desire 4c
See also: Life and Death 7e
See also: Sin 9b · Theology 5b · Life and Death 7b
See also: Life and Death 7b
See also: Punishment 10e · God 5a
See also: Angel 4a
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See also: Punishment 10d · Religion 4c
See also: Religion 4c
See also: Life and Death 8b · Philosophy 1b