LIFE AFTER DEATH?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 352, 12 May 1928, Page 1

LIFE AFTER DEATH?

Scientists Rush to Fray keen controversy aroused Sir Arthur Keith’s Challenge Taken Up (United P.A.—By Telegraph Copyright) (Australian IPress Association.) Reed. 9.5 a.m. LONDON, Friday. SIR OLIVER LODGE has taken up immediately Sir Arthur Keith’s challenge to the belief in future life, and other scientists have plunged into the fray.

Sir Oliver Lodge said:—“l think the brain is an instrument used by the mind. Physiologists think the brain is the mind. If the brain is the mind, then when one is destroyed the other is destroyed. “A violin manifests Beethoven, but that is not the same thing as being Beethoven. If we smash the violin we do not kill the music. What happens is that the instrument can no longer manifest it. “I say brain or any form of matter cannot evolve Shakespeare or his sense or meaning, but merely manifests it like a typewriter. “Doctors know a terrible lot about the working of the human machinery. It is in the other aspects they have not attempted to understand, that we agree to differ. They do accept what evidence there is about a survival of the spirit. They look at it from another viewpoint, because they, think brain and mind are one and the same thing.” Sir John Bland Sutton, the famous surgeon, supports Sir Arthur Keith, and says: “Death is the end of all—an endless sleep. All who have studied it scientifically and deeply have come to the same conclusion.” Professor De Lisle Burns doubts whether Sir Arthur Keith has been looking at the evidence, and says: “It is undeniable that there are activities in experience which are not of the same type as materials and objects.” Sir Richard Gregory, the wellknown scientist, says: “Sir Arthur Keith weighs and measures brains in

his laboratory, but he can’t measure the weight of the spirit, therefore he is not concerned about it. and does not know if there is no spirit. I am certain in my knowledge of Sir Arthur Keith and his great ability that he does not mean to deny the existence of something which cannot at present be demonstrated.” Sir Arthur, when it was pointed out to him that a controversy had been aroused by his statement, repeated that there was no evidence that the brain was a dual organ of substance and spirit, but he does not think his statement destroys the belief in immortality. “Religion has no bearing on our teaching. We are simply out to discover and understand the human body, and find the exact way of curing disease. All other things are sideissues.” A London cablegram of Thursday read as follows:—In the course of a lecture at Manchester University, Sir Arthur Keith, the great authority on man, said scientists and medical men agreed that there is no evidence to support the assumption that the spirit survives after the brain ceases to function. “If we withhold the supply of oxygen or fuel from the brain it ceases to act,” said the lecturer. “Medical men can find no grounds for believing that the brain is a dual organ or a compound substance. Every fact known to them compels the inference that the mind, the spirit and the soul are manifestations of the living brain, just as a flame is the manifest spirit of a burning candle. Both flame and spirit cease, to exist at the moment of their extinction.” A summary of Sir Oliver Lodge’s recent address on “Human Destiny” appears on page 10 of this issue.