"Then the 'lah' lives independently of the body?"
I was silent. Here among these savages I saw how the germs of belief in a future life are laid, from what delusion they spring.
Then looking back to the far-off times, when the ancestors of our own now civilized race were savages with minds as undeveloped as that of the savage before me, I saw how from the mystery of dream-appearances rose the belief in the dual nature of things. I saw how this belief, extending first to all things animate and inanimate, came in the slow evolution of man's intellect, by the elimination of the grosser and cruder portion of his thought to hold at length only of living things.
No profound thought--no deep insight into human nature is needed to trace along general lines its further development.
Man in his selfish egoism making himself the center of all nature, has deemed that he alone is thus favored and raised above the rest of the universe.
Moreover it is a belief that with all its uncertainties has an intrinsic attractive beauty in the hope it gives to man, that love and happiness will last beyond the grave.
Above all--fatalest of all, it is a belief that offers to the craft of the priest, power over his fellow man.
Thus, flattering to man's self-love, useful as an engine of power, affording an easy explanation of mysteries in life and death, this belief in a soul really rising in "the mists and shadows of sleep," has come down to us as god-revealed from on high.--C. T. Bingham, in "Progress," London, England.
"When a Man Dies what Becomes of his Soul?"
A friend of mine meeting me in the streets of Chicago one day, without much ceremony propounded the above question; "Say, Brother Bell," he began, "I would like to have you tell me what becomes of a man's soul when he dies?" In reply I said, "Do you see that man walking on the other side of the street?" "Yes," he said, "that is old Johnson." I then called his attention to the peculiar movement of the old gentleman. "See what a peculiar gait he has." He assented that our friend's gait was peculiar. As we were contemplating him, he stopped to look in a store window. When he halted I turned to my questioner and asked, "Where has Mr. Johnson's gait gone since he stopped walking?" He very candidly acknowledged that a man's gait was not a thing, not an entity, but a mode of motion, and that when the body ceased to move, there was no gait. I asked him if thinking (the soul) was not a motion or activity of the brain, and that when it ceased to act, if there was any soul or thinking left. I have a very distinct remembrance that he talked a long time and said nothing.