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Rebirth-
Philosophical Study
Again unless we are possessed by the idea that the dumber of souls pouring in from this world to the next world would seem to togaire proportionate drain, for else the country might be overstocked, we seed not be driven to the theory of reincarnation to obviate this lamentable result Such Malthusian anxieties about the overpopulation in the spiritual would would appear to be ludicrous
Apparently profound criticism indeed! But this criticism has been based on the wrong foundations Western thinkers have been particular about justifying the belief in buman immortality without accepting pre-exist ence or future life We fiod only a few philosophers like Dr McTaggart who have accepted immortality with pre-existence and a succession of lives There is here a shifting of emphasis in the concept of substance and attributes
Dr Martineau studies the problem in light of the psychological and metaphysical analysis of death and presents a case for immortality, without however, accepting pre-cxistence or future life in its physical aspect death presents simply a case of transformation of energy, the organic compounds of oxygen, hydrogen, Ditrogeo and carbon losing their precarious equation and resolving themselves into trore stable inorganic combinations themseIves destroyed hereafter, to be partially taken up into sew living form Bat we should mix in it any element answering to thought, affections and politions They are the concomitant of the living man. These mental eoengles continue to exist as the law of conservation of energy in the physical phenomena of death there is nothing to prejudge the question of life beyond They amount to only vadising of the evidence of life and leave it there,
But even if all life were drawn from an eternal given stock, the scene and its continuity would belong to the whole and it would not imply unbroken identity between that which was quenched and the succooding elements The lion in which, according to Plato's myth the soul of Ajax was reborn, would not remember bis defeat aboot the armour of Achilles, or the swan, tonanted by Orpheus, look back upon his visit to the shades, and the joy and despair of the won and lost Eurydice The plain of Lethe that had to be crossed, and tho waters of its river 'Careless' that had to be tasted before the second birth, effectually served the unity between life and Ilfe "And we must acknowledge the justice of Lucretius' stiticum." Oo similar ground Fiske merely presents the belief in the Immortality of the soul not in the sense' in which I accept the demonstrable truth of
44 45
Ibid Dr Martineau Study of Religion, Vol 2 Clarendon Press, 1926, p. 320
