THE SECRET OF LIFE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIX, Issue 5303, 23 July 1928, Page 4

THE SECRET OF LIFE.

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. CONTROVERSY BY SCIENTISTS. In his Ludmig Mond lecture at Manchester University, S'* Arthur Keith discussed “The Implications of Darwinism” in terms which evoked the keenest, press and public contnov’&rsy. He said 1 :— “Scientific anal medical men agree that there is no evidence to support the assumption that the spirit survives after, the brain has ceased to function. The brain is a piece of living machinery. It consumes fuel ■andj transmutes energy into feeling, thought, and memory. If we. withhold the supply of oxygen or fuel, the sources of its energy, the brain ceases to act just as certainly as fire ceases to burn when its supply of fuel or .air ceases. Medical men can find? no grounds for believing that the brain is a dua.l organ—a compound of substance anjd of spiritEvery fact known to them compels the inference that mind, spirit, and soul are the manifestations of the living brain, just as flame; is themanifest spirit of a burning can,dle. At the moment of extinction both flame and spirit cease to have separate existence. However much thilsi ■mode of explaining manfs mentality niay run counter to long and! deeply cherished beliefs, medical men c.apnot think otherwise if they are to believe the evidence of their senses.” Dr. Barnes, Bishop of Birmingham, in.criticism of the above, first of all details “ the physics and chemistry of a burning candle" as capable of deriionstration, and i,n the “ Birmingham ” says:— “ I am Sure that it is impossJble to justify Il’s inference that mind, spirit, and soul are manifestations of a living brain just as flame is the manifest spirit of a burning candle. “ We know the physics an.d trv of a burning candle,” adds the Bishop. “ The whole pro cess is a manifestation of the law of conservation of energy which we recognise in its ipert form as candle-material is transformed into radiation, which affects us pleasantly as light and heat,' Now all such phenomena have bete,n. reduced by relativity-physics to consequences of the propei’t’es of the curvaure of the space-time coninuum.

■ “From the curvature of spa.ce-time we build; up a mathematical express sion called tensor,; and an identity between certain dterivativets of this tensor expresses the law of conservation of energy’. Physicists have’ thus reached the somewhat disconcerting, conclusion tha.t this law is merely an inevitable consequence of the way we measure space-time.

“ The’ burning of a candid, thus belongs to -q, range of physical phenomena which we can, completely explain. But the explanaton is ( ; so complete that we fear that we have not begun to understand the properties of matter which are really significant. Weyl, at the close of his. book, “ Space, Time, Matter,” which is the finest exposition relativity in the German language;, says: “The problem of matter is still wrapped in the deepest gloom.” We are, in particular, entirely ignorant as to how consciousness can be associated with matter. .

“Why should a particular consequence of space-time curvature; wh'ch we call the brain be a thinking machine ? Does the matter of the brain think, and, if so, why does consciousness cease with life ? The modern physicist w'ould allow that in the living brain there ig an’ ntersection of mJ,nd apd matter,; andi in denying substance to matter would prdbably give greater reality, to mind. Further, 'he would not go. Naturally, from our scientific ignorance we cannot der’ve positive conclusions.

“All I contend is that Sir Arthur Keith’s analogy is inadequate. Her I'ef in a continued existence of human spirit after the; death of the body cannot be- ovethrown by any such analogy. Positive reasons foil belief in personal immortality are, of course, derived from arguments of a different nature. “Goddness, beauty, ami truth are', we argue, the ultimate values of the universe, and: therefore permanent as a part of thfe 'highest category of reality. In popular language, they are of the Spirit of God. In so fair- as humanity, emerging from the ape, has made these values a part of i-ts heritage, it has been transformed by that which is eternal. In other Words, by virtue of the Christ spirit within him man has- put on immortality.”

Professor Delisle Burns, Lecturer on Social Philosophy at the London School of Economics, -reports the Evening Standard, said —

“When we talk of the immortality of he soul or anything of .hat kind we are talking about facts which are not calculable ,i n terms of physical science.

“The problem is a very difficult one, and you cannot solve it either by following tradition or by very limited evidence. That there are activities in experience which are not of the same type as material objects is undeniable. ®fy own inclination is that, a metaphor is not argument, and! it is rather ,a glaring metaphor to say that the activity which moves the body is like the flame of a candle.”

“We can trace, roughly,” g’ays the Evening standard in a leader, “the connections between the brain, the nerves, an.d' the muscles. We know such things as that the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and vice versa. We can, that is to .say, describe, more or less, the physical working of the brain in its physical relations.

“But what scientist ever observed or described or even imagined the physical process which goes to the formation of a thought ? Can any biologist, suggest what changes must have- gone on in the cells of Shake-s--peare’s brain when he was writing “Antony and Cleopatra ?” He cannot even tell why of two brains, between which there is. nothing to choose, one should pitoduce beautiful or useful thoughts while the other produces none but such as arq dull and humdrum.

“AU this is negative criticism, but it requires to be' made. It amounts to asserting that, while we are unable to disprove Sir Arthur Keith’s thesis of a purely .mechanical brain, he is quite unable to prove It. Still unknown (and perhaps, for ever unknowable), there remains that which may give up a. quite different explanation. Sir Isaac Newton compared hmself to a child picking pebbles and shells on the shores of the great ocean of truth, and it is unlikely that even Dr. Einstein would claim to have done more than dip a toe in the water. “What is true of these; great physicists is equally true of all physiologists. They, too, are standing on the shores of a great ocean, which, indeed. they may never cross. But until they .have crossed it they cannot say what unimaginable- truth may not li'e on the’ other side. We do: not, after all, yet kn,ow the secret of life, and l .with that the. secret of the expression of life, which we call mind, soul, and spirit, is inextricably bound up.”

“My own view is that the brain is an instrument of the mind,” says Sir Oliver Lodge in the Daily Telegraph. “The view of physiologists is. that the spirit does not survive- after the brain has ceased to function. I do not. agree w’th that. They seem to regard the brain as the mind. I. do not look at it ip. that way. My view is that the’ br.'ain. manifests the mind, but that is not the same thing a.s being the mind. *

“ I am with them in what they say about the brain and the way it acts on muscles and nerves. That is the' positive; side ; but there is something more to be sjaid than that. It is quite easy to explain the working of ;a,n instrument or a piece of machinery, but that does hot explain the' sense or, the meaning of what comes out of it “ The brain of itslelf cannot evolve sense or meaning ; it only manifests it. If, therefore, as the physiologists; say, the brain is the mind, and one' is destroyed, the other g.oes, too ; but if, as I contend, th'ei brain is only an ihr strumen.t, the; fact that, the instrument ceases to function doe's not destroy the sense that has come from it. “ The violin is a good analogy. There you have an instrument through which music is manifested, but the music is not destroyed because the violin is> smashed. It simply seases to manifest and goes out of our knowledge ; but that is vejry different from saying that it, goes .out of existence.

“Physiologists find it difficult to accept what evidence there is about thq survival of the- spirit, and that (Difficulty will always be present until they look at the matter from another point of view an'd cease to regard the brain and the mind as one and the same thing.” “With all respect to Sir Arthur Keith,” comments the- Morning Post, “and his eminence in his< owp, sphere of knowledge, his hypothesis does not. explain the obvious facts. Memory a,nd sensation may be; the components of thought, but how can they be mixed except by an active agent.—except by the very thought which they are assumed to produce ?

' “In other words,, the creature must become the creator. That such supreme manifestations of the human spirit as a poem by Shakespeare or a symphony by Beethoven 'are but the result of chemical reactions in the grey matter of the brain may be; the present conclusion of science; but it is decidedly opposed to the profoundest instinct of man, who, with Malvol'o, prefers to think .nobly of the soul.

“It is sad to find tiha,t scientists should still be confronting the deductio ad absui'dum which they were rathe,r proud of fifty years ago. They were then confident n telling their fellow-creatures that they were “ ‘The worms and maggots of to-day, Without their, hope of wings.’ “But the world has, learn,t much since then. It may have no better answer to the great mystery of thesoul; but it khow's that the answer is not to be found in the material and mechanical plane.” “Sir. Arthur Keith can find no proof of the immortality of the spul.” says the Daily Express, “and therefore there is no such th'ng. It is a queer conceit, this megalomania of the mind which denjes what it cannot comprehend.

“Eve-ry rising of the sun, every movement of the sea, every flower and star, every kindness and every prayer is proof that there is a plan too great for the wisdom of man to explain, it i,s not as, easy to dogmatise on the truths of the soul as those of the mind, but there are times when the simple faith of a peasant comes nearer to the explanation of the eternal -mysteries than all the brain,s of the world’s scientists.”