The so-called ethical argument for immortality is associated with the name of Immanuel Kant. Kant's philosophy was agnostic, and it was this agnosticism which made his use of the ethical argument possible. If you can't make any assured theoretical statement { 148} about the nature of the self, you can allow demands, which you regard as ethical and primary, to dictate your ultimate beliefs. It cannot be denied that Kant's argument savors of the popular notion that the virtuous must be rewarded. At its highest, the ethical argument signifies a demand for a future life in order to carry out that development of character which the brief span of earthly life is not equal to. It is this argument which runs through Browning. What shall we say of it?
There are both factual and theoretical objections to the ethical argument for immortality. The more we know about habit, the more we realize that character is pretty well "set" by middle life. The creative period of human life ends all too soon. Character is not an abstract possession separable from human tasks and needs. It is not like a work of art which can be polished and re-polished. But, when all is said and done, ethics must abide by the facts of the case. Take character abstractly enough and apart from its human and organic setting, and the dream of continuous perfecting may have meaning; but so would the dream of continuous intellectual advance. Yet the scholar knows all too well the judgment passed by the coming generation upon the older one: "They can't adjust themselves to this new point of view." Would progress come if the generations did not pass?
The philosophical aspect of the question can be touched upon only briefly and in an untechnical way. The basic problem may be put in this way: Can human personality be included in nature in a theoretically satisfactory way? It has been customary to stress the difficulties which confront such an attempt { 149} and to be silent in regard to the problems which the separation of body and personality has always found facing it. Yet I think that few philosophers would deny that it is the very irrationality of the traditional dualism which makes a living monism of mind and body so desirable and so urgently sought after.