PERSONS AND LIFE AFTER DEATH

LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

General Editor: John Hick, H. G. Wood Professor of Theology

University of Birmingham

This new series of books will explore contemporary religious understandings

of man and the universe. The books will be contributions to various aspects
of the continuing dialogues between religion and philosophy, between
scepticism and faith, and between the different religions and ideologies. The
authors will represent a correspondingly wide range of viewpoints. Some of
the books in the series will be written for the general educated public and
others for a more specialised philosophical or theological readership.

Already published
William H. Austin THE RELEVANCE OF NATURAL
SCIENCE TO THEOLOGY
Paul Badham CHRISTIAN BELIEFS ABOUT LIFE
AFTER DEATH
Ramchandra Gandhi THE AVAILABILITY OF RELIGIOUS
IDEAS
Hugo A. Meynell AN INTRODUCTION TO THE
PHILOSOPHY OF BERNARD LONERGAN
Dennis Nineham THE USE AND ABUSE OF THE BIBLE
Bernard M.G. Reardon HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
John]. Shepherd EXPERIENCE, INFERENCE AND GOD
Robert Young FREEDOM, RESPONSIBILITY AND
GOD
Patrick Sherry RELIGION, TRUTH AND LANGUAGE-
GAMES
J. C. A. Gaskin HOME'S PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Further titles in preparation

PERSONS AND LIFE
AFTER DEATH

H ywel D. Lewis

Essays by Hywel D. Lewis

and some of his critics
 Selection and his own material © Hywel D. Lewis 1978
For other copyright holders see pages l, 17, 35, 49, 75, 110, 148
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1978
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission of the copyright holders

First published 1978 by

THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
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Associated companies in Delhi
Dublin Hong Kong Johannesburg Lagos
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8765432
02 01 00 99 98 97 96

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Lewis, Hywel David
Persons and life after death - (Library of
philosophy and religion.)
1. Future life - Addresses, essays, lectures
I. Title II. Series
129'.08 BL535

ISBN 978-1-349-03676-9 ISBN 978-1-349-03674-5 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-03674-5
Contents

Preface vii

Realism and Metaphysics

2 Ultimates and a Way of Looking 17

3 Religion and the Paranormal 35

4 Life After Death. A Discussion 49

Anthot!Y Quinton, Hywel D. Lewis, Bernard Williams

5 Survival 75
I Hywel D. Lewis
II Antol(v Flew

6 Immortality and Dualism 110

I s_ydney Shoemaker
II Hywel D. Lewis

7 The Belief in Life After Death 148

8 The Person of Christ 161

Index of Names 189

Index of Subjects 191

Preface

This book contains papers which I gave on various occasions on

themes related to my earlier book, also in a Macmillan series,
The Self and Immortality. It can be regarded as a sequel to that
book and The Elusive Mind. Some of the papers were prepared
for talks and symposia in which I was asked to participate, and
it would have been pointless to include them without the con-
tributions of the other speakers. I therefore sought and obtained
the consent of the authors concerned, and the appropriate
editors and publishers, to include their papers along with my
own. I am grateful for this kindness. The presentation of some
sharply contrasted views will, I hope, be appreciated by those
who read this book.
The first paper was prepared for the meeting of the Inter-
national Society for Metaphysics at Varna, Bulgaria, in 1973
and subsequently published in Idealistic Studies, Vol. 4, No.3, in
September 1974. The theme ofthic; is extended in my contribu-
tion to the Oxford International Symposium organised by the
late Professor Gilbert Ryle with the assistance of Dr P. W. Kent
and published in the volume of the proceedings edited by
Professor Ryle under the title Contemporary Aspects rif Philosophy,
Oriel Press. There follows my own contribution to the volume
Philosophy and Psychical Research, edited by Professor Shivesh
C. Thakur and published by Allen and Unwin in 1976. We then
have the discussion between Professor Bernard Williams and
myself, with Mr Anthony Quinton in the Chair, on B.B.C.
Radio 3 soon after the publication of The Self and Immortality.
Part of this was published in The Listener on 9 August 1975. We
have then two symposia, one on the subject of 'Survival', con-
Vlll Persons and Life After Death

ducted by Professor Antony Flew and myself at the Joint

Session of the Mind Association and the Aristotelian Society at
Canterbury in 1975 and published in the Proceedings of the
Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume XLIX, the other a dis-
cussion of'Immortality and Dualism' between Professor Sydney
Shoemaker and myself at the Conference on Reason and
Religion arranged at Lancaster by the Royal Institute of
Philosophy and included in the volume of conference papers
edited by Mr Stuart Brown and published, under the title
Reason and Religion, by the Cornell University Press in 1977.
This leads to my Drew Memorial Lecture on Immortality, 'the
Belief in Life after Death', delivered in London in 1973 and
published in the volume of essays in honour of Professor Peter
Bertocci edited by Professors John Howie and Thomas 0.
Buford with the title Contemporary Studies in Philosophical Idealism,
Claud Stark and Co. 1975. I am deeply grateful to all con-
cerned for their help and the permission to include these papers
in the present volume.
The concluding essay is an amplification of an address given
in Welsh at the General Assembly Meeting of the Presbyterian
Church of Wales in 1972 and originally printed in Welsh in
r Traethodydd, September 1976. It was intended for a more
general audience than the other papers and the mode of pre-
sentation is inevitably a little different. But I was anxious to
include the address in this volume for various reasons. At the
close of the Drew Lecture I indicate that the main positive
reasons for our expectation of a future life must be religious
ones, and the distinctively Christian hope of life after death is
bound up essentially with the central theme of the Christian
faith about the role of Jesus as the medium of the ultimate
sanctified relationship we may all expect to have with God. If
there is substance in this claim, which seems to me central to the
New Testament and the main course of Christian experience,
it would be odd, to say the least, to suppose that the fellowship
established by this peculiar outpouring of a 'love so amazing, so
divine' could be thought to be anything other than abiding. The
view has been advanced by some leading theologians and
Clmrchmen today that eternal life consists wholly of some
quality of our present existence or of some place we may have
in God's memory of us. The attractiveness of the latter view, to
 Preface IX

balanced and reflective leaders of religion, seems to me to be

one of the most extraordinary indications of the poverty of
religious sensitivity and understanding today. An Unmoved
Mover may find satisfaction in contemplation of his own per-
fection. Will this, or the enrichment of his own memories, meet
the case of the God whom we meet in Jesus 'in the form of a
servant' 'obedient unto death'? We may not all understand 'the
price that was paid' in the same way, but it is hard to think of it,
in any proper Christian context, as anything other than a price
that was paid 'for me', and we need not sentimentalise that to
make it significant.
The reluctance of many of our contemporaries to recognise
this comes about, I suspect, from an excessive eagerness to con,-
cede the claims of fashionable views today about the essentially
corporeal nature of persons. Yet, oddly, the theologians who
take this course continue, so it seems at least, to think of God as
an essentially spiritual being.
A further consideration that weighed with me was the necessity
for those who do have some form of religious commitment not to
keep it in some isolated compartment of their thought. Precious
it may be, but, if it is worth adhering to, it must be capable of
appropriate presentation in the context of our other thoughts;
and as the traditional Christian claims about 'the Person of
Jesus' present accentuated difficulty for those, like myself, who
stress the finality of the distinctiveness of persons, it seemed
proper to present, at least in outline, the way I myself approach
these questions and view the distinctively Christian claims
which seem indispensable for any peculiarly Christian hope of
eternal life.
The proofs of this book were read for me by my friend
Dr Julius Lipner of the University of Cambridge, and the index
was made by my gifted former student at King's College,
London, Mr Timothy Bond. I am deeply grateful to them both.

June 1977 HYWEL D. LEWIS

1 Realism and Metaphysics

Not so long ago I attended a conference of philosophers and

politicians. I was introduced to one rather opinionated politician
as one of the philosophers. He promptly asked me, 'What sort of
philosopher?' I turned the edge of this by replying rather tartly
in turn, 'Quite a good one, it is generally thought'. This may
seem a little naughty, but there are some uses for prevarication,
and few of us care to attach a too explicit label to ourselves. When
we do so we often find ourselves keeping the wrong company.
There are still some isms around, but we have weeded out most
of them from our syllabuses. There is more important and re-
warding work to do than fighting pitched philosophical battles
between closely regimented troops.
It is for this reason that I am not too happy about the title of
this paper. There is as much to be said for describing me as an
idealist as there is for placing me among the friends of realism. I
did indeed agree to be one of the editorial advisers for an excellent
new journal called Idealistic Studies, and I did not need a great
deal of persuasion. It is most regrettable, in my opinion, that the
great idealist movement of the late nineteenth century suffered
so complete an eclipse in the middle of this century. It had in-
sights we can ill afford to neglect, and many of them have slowly
forced their way back in much less satisfactory forms in a
peculiarly embarrassing meeting of extremes. The considerable
renewal of interest in Hegel, after a period of almost con-
temptuous disregard, is a sign of a welcome new appreciation of
idealist philosophy, and Bradley was never battered out of his
place by hasty iconoclasm. It was never a disgrace to admit to
learning something from him. His logic, as well as his more
© Idealistic Studies 1974
2 Persons and Life After Death

ove~tly metaphysical works, contains a fund of wisdom we

peculiarly need in our present dilemmas and it is presented in
delightful style. I never tire of urging my students to read the
chapters on the Association of Ideas in Bradley's Logic (Book II,
Part II, Chapter I).
My own closest point of affinity with idealism lies in my strong
partiality for a Berkeleian approach to the problems of percep-
tion. This could also perhaps be described in some quarters as
phenomenalism, and I have always been impressed by the sturdy
persistence of A. J. Ayer in defending phenomenalism against
arguments taken rather uncritically to be quite conclusive.
Where I would join issue with him myselfis at the point where
phenomenalism tends to merge into neutral monism. I hold very
firmly that experiencing is quite distinct from the experienced
and that the self or subject is in no way part of the world
around us. This also brings me close to much that idealists have
maintained.
On the other hand, idealism has often found it hard to do
justice to the presented or 'given' element in experience, and
some, notably T. H. Green ('the father of English idealism'),
tended to reduce all experience to a 'system of unalterable
relations'. Common sense seems quite opposed to that. Likewise,
I stand in sharp opposition to absolute idealism on the question
of the distinctiveness of persons. The view that individual persons
are just centres of unification in one 'whole of being', and that the
distinctiveness vanishes the more we fulfil ourselves and become
identified with 'the whole', has seemed to me altogether un-
acceptable. Related to this are familiar difficulties of absolute
idealism in respect to freedom and evil in all its forms. It was
thoughts of this kind that drove some notable thinkers, such as
C. A. Campbell and A. C. Ewing, nurtured as they were in a
strong idealist tradition, to break the bonds of the more ration-
alist form of absolute idealism in favour of some kind of supra-
rationalist metaphysics which owed much to Bradley. This can
be seen magnificently in a remarkable, but much neglected, book
by C. A. Campbell, called Scepticism and Construction. 1 This book is
a mine of wisdom and splendid writing, and it would be very
great satisfaction to me to be able to revive interest in it. In his
posthumous book, just published, 2 A. C. Ewing breaks fairly
sharply with traditional idealism on the questions of personal
 Realism and Metaphysics 3

identity and freedom and, to some extent, on the question of

suffering. The break is much sharper than in Ewing's earlier
writings, 3 and it seems to me an essential corrective to post-
Hegelian idealism.
For these reasons I would be loath to describe myself as an
idealist. In many respects I find myself more at home with the
philosophy of common sense and I have learned as much from
G. E. Moore as from my other mentors. The positivist reaction
against the facile construction of obscure metaphysical entities
will no doubt have the warm support of many who do not hold
with outright positivism. If 'Clarity is not Enough', we can
certainly not get too much of it, and there are few things more
uncongenial to the philosophical temper of mind than the
exploitation of obscure verbiage, a besetting sin of many lesser
lights of today as in the nineteenth century or the Athens of
Socrates. It is in this vein that I find myself taking comfort in
what is sometimes known as a realist approach to philosophy.
I must now, however, make it clear that there are some forms
of realism which I do not set out to defend. The term often stands
for the view that is sharply contrasted with nominalism as a
theory of universals. Perhaps no one can altogether skirt round
the problem of universals or avoid confrontation with it, in-
tractable though it seems to be. But I certainly hold no brief for
the view that universals subsist in some 'realm' of their own like
Platonic forms or admit of being reified in some fashion. We
certainly do not 'manufacture' universal properties or mathe-
matical and logical truths, even when we speak of alternative
logics. We discover what is somehow there and are under the
strict discipline of it. The fashionable relativities of today and the
evasive devices which support them make no appeal to me. But
it goes quite against the grain of my philosophical mentality to
hypostatise values and universals, and few things have led men
into a more dangerous morass than the tendency to do so.
It will be evident also that I am little attracted to a view of the
physical world which makes it altogether independent of being
perceived. However disposed we may be to suppose that the
world of nature is somehow over against us and existed long
before we came on the scene, I find the idea of some totally inde-
pendent physical reality almost quite incomprehensible. Per-
spectival distortion is always with us, and what a physical entity
4 Persons and Life After Death

could be that is not eventually comprehended in terms of what is

actually presented to us I find impossible to conceive. Nor do I
see what explanatory function it could serve. It is perhaps worth
recalling that G. E. Moore, after insisting most emphatically, in an
almostjohnsonian vein, that the railway carriage runs on wheels
which have a completely independent existence of their own,
asserted equally firmly a few passages later that, for all we know,
these wheels could be just points. This takes us far indeed from
the common sense insistence on the reality of the material world.
Perhaps the best approach to our subject, for the purpose of
these meetings, is to refer to the course of the realist and common
sense strain in recent British philosophy. This is associated
largely for scholars abroad with the name of G. E. Moore, but it
owes quite as much, for its original impetus and the course it has
taken, to the influence of a less eminent figure whose influence
has nonetheless been very pervasive, namely, Cook Wilson. I do
not know how well scholars abroad know the work of Cook
Wilson and his place in British philosophy. He taught at Oxford
from 1874 to 1915 but published little during his lifetime. He
was, in many respects, the most influential thinker at Oxford in
his day, and the work of some of his disciples, notably H. A.
Prichard and W. D. Ross, will certainly be widely known. It is
perhaps les3 well-known how much they owe to Cook Wilson.
The writings of Cook Wilson himself were assembled and pub-
lished posthumously under the editorship of A. S. L. Farquharson
and with the title Statement and lnfirence. There is distinguished work
in the two volumes of this book, but most of it is on logical ques-
tions.Only some ofthe papers give a proper indication of the realist
epistemology which took its subsequent impressive course under
the influence of Cook Wilson's disciples at Oxford and elsewhere.
The main claim which Cook Wilson made, if I may put the
matter very tersely for the purpose of this paper, was that there
were certain things we know without need ofjustification beyond
the knowledge itself. The word intuition is sometimes used here,
although it is in many respects a misleading term. The terms
'knowledge for certain' were abjured on the grounds that know-
ledge involves being certain. There are then, it was claimed,
some things which we know ('for certain' the layman may add)
without being able or needing to adduce 'further reason'. We
know, and there can be no question about it; this is our starting
 Realism and Metaphysics 5

point, not the end ofinquiry, a view which has of course a long
ancestry going back in some fairly obvious ways to Aristotle,
though not to be attributed to him without qualification.
Among the things which Cook Wilson would claim to be
known beyond reasonable dispute in this way is the reality of the
external world, the existence of other finite persons and the
existence of God. In the work of his two most eminent followers,
Prichard and Ross, the certainty of immediate insight was in-
voked especially in respect to certain ethical principles, and
intuitionism thus became for a while the dominant strain in
English ethical theories.
The application of these views to religion found a remarkable
expression in one of the most celebrated of Cook Wilson's own
papers, entitled, 'Rational Grounds for Belief in God' (Statement
and Inference, Vol. II). This paper was described by the late john
Baillie as 'one of the most important theological documents of
our time', 4 and Baillie made its central theme the basis of his own
work in most of his own major works, including his Gifford
Lectures, The Sense rif the Presence of God. The main contention is
that rational grounds for belief in God are not required, and that
the traditional arguments fail, for what we have is an immediate
certainty which requires no vindication beyond itself. No one
can fail to know that there is a God.
But what, in the light of this comfortable doctrine, do we say
to the atheist? There seems to be an increasing host of un-
believers. Are they all insincere? By no means. They are just
subject to a delusion whereby they honestly deny 'at the top of
their minds' what they also sincerely believe at the bottom of
their hearts. I have examined these strained apologetics else-
where5 and drawn attention to the excesses to which Baillie in
particular is driven in seeking to prove that all of us are not only
theists at heart but also Christian believers. In the case of Baillie
and Cook Wilson there is a marked attenuation of the content of
belief at the point where it becomes peculiarly implausible to
maintain the universality of orthodox Christian belief. Religious
experience tends to become just the awareness of moral obligation.
There is indeed one respect in which there is an element of
immediacy in our knowledge of God, the sense of the finite
character of the world involving some transcendent source
mysteriously beyond it. But this is not easy to characterise and it
6 Persons and Life After Death

waxes and wanes in the course of our lost consciousness. It needs

to be elicited in peculiar ways and is easily lost in sustained pre-
occupation with our daily round. Many persons seem to be quite
without it. It requires a special sort of sophistication to deal with
it philosophically and, on the other hand, certain sorts of
sophistication are inimical to it. Beyond the sense of the trans-
cendent itself, experience of divine reality is far from simple or
immediate. It is involved in many ways with the variations and
complexities of our present existence. There is no once for all
grasp of static formulas about God and his ways. Understanding
must be renewed and stated anew in the varieties of public and
private experience, and there is no infallible short way or any
means of avoiding effortful thought.
The position in respect of perception is interesting in the same
way, indeed peculiarly so in the light of much recent treatment of
the subject. According to Cook Wilson there can be no doubt
about our knowledge of the external world. We certainly know
that it exists, just as there can be no doubt of the existence of
persons other than ourselves. One of the ablest contemporary
successors of Cook Wilson put the position unmistakably in the
course of a symposium on the subject at a meeting of the
Aristotelian Society. I refer toR. I. Aaron's paper, 'The Casual
Argument for Physical Objects', Proceedings if the Aristotelian
Society, Supp. Vol. XIX.
Here Aaron holds firmly that there can be no doubt that the
pencil I hold in my hand exists. I may be wrong in everything
else I hold about it, about its colour, length, weight, etc. But it
would at the same time be absurd to deny that the pencil is real.
This view, I must confess, I find very baffiing. There is certainly
something veridical about my having this particular experience
now, it is one kind of experience and not another. But to describe
it properly is another matter, and to go from my present experi-
ence to certain assurance that some distinct physical reality
exists is a considerable leap for which the warrant is far from
dear. If I should be mistaken about all the properties of the
pencil, of what exactly am I assured when I affirm that it must
at least exist? Of what was G. E. Moore assured when he held
up his two hands?
What is very strange, however, is that, in spite of the obvious
difficulties of this appeal to immediate certainty and common
 Realism and Metaphysics 7

sense, this strain in recent philosophy has been so persistent. The

subtleties of various treatments of the problems of perception are
brushed aside by simple recourse to what we say or by crushing
insistence that no one at a horse race supposes that he is seeing
various patches of colour fleeting past - he is 'seeing horses' and
no one supposes that he sits on a sense datum - he sits on a
chair. This short way with the dissenter, and indeed with all
inquiry, has had an extraordinary vogue among English-
speaking philosophers to the very great impoverishment of hard
and subtle philosophical thinking which is only gradually
making its way back.
At this point it will be an advantage to look briefly at one of the
most impressive presentations of the tradition we associate in
Britain with Cook Wilson, namely, a book published by the
Oxford Press recently for R. I. Aaron, whom I mentioned a
moment ago. It is called Knowing and the Function ofReason. I much
commend the book as a ripe and cautious statement of a down-
to-earth position which British thinkers find very attractive. It is
all the more significant because it makes no crude appeal to
ordinary language.
Aaron has always been drawn to empiricism, anq is himself
one of the best authorities on Locke. But he is not an uncom-
promising empiricist, and at times his views are reminiscent of
Kant. But he relies less on some a priori feature of experience than
on the quality of experience itself; and what is distinctive, for our
purpose, in this appeal to experience is the insistence that there
are certain things which we undoubtedly know. This is our firm
foundation. I know now that I am sitting at my study table, that
I have a pencil in my hand, that the rain has stopped and the sun
is shining, that my wife's name is Megan, that Heath is the Prime
Minister and that Kant was a famous philosopher, that Plato
lived many centuries before Christ. All this I say I know, not I
'believe' or 'am firmly convinced'. I know these things and that
is what knowledge is like. But have we not felt convinced in these
ways in the past and found ourselves in fact to have been mis-
taken? Mr. Heath may have suffered a collapse and be no longer
Prime Minister. My memory may have begun to fail and I may
be getting confused about familiar matters. I may be subject to
optical illusions or the victim of a clever practical joker. That is
highly unlikely when I can get up and move around and put my
8 Persons and Life After Death

doubts to the test in various ways. Nonetheless we do make mis-

takes and have on occasion been proved wrong about things
which seemed very certain at the time. just when are we entitled
to say that we know?
Some would reply with Plato and others that we know when
we have a firm belief and 'a good reason' for having it. But this
is the start, not the end of investigation. What is 'a good reason'?
Aaron himself takes a different and bolder course. He admits
that we are fallible, but will not for that reason rest content with
a high degree of probability about matters of fact. We must
insist that we do know certain things. We are not presuming or
taking for granted or taking the odds against being mistaken to
be so slight that we can wholly disregard them and have what is
sometimes oddly called 'moral certainty' - we know. In Aaron's
own example, I know that there is a bird singing outside my
window now. It is absurd to say anything else, I hear it. But
have we not been mistaken even about things like this? There are
people who can imitate bird songs. If in fact I heard only an
imitation, could it be said that I knew that I heard a bird
singing?
Aaron makes no attempt to burke this difficulty. His book is
indeed a sustained attempt to deal with it. His main ploy is to
distinguish between 'primal' knowledge and 'absolute' know-
ledge. The former is however genuine knowledge, not just pro-
visional certainty. It is not relative, or knowledge 'for me'. Here
are the author's own words:

It is customary to speak of infallible knowledge as 'absolute'

and this might suggest that fallible knowledge should be
termed 'relative'. But this latter term will not do, since it
might imply that the second sort of certainty is only relatively
certain, and this would be misleading since it is completely
certain. It would be misleading too to call it prima facie certain
knowledge, for this would suggest that it was not in truth
certain but only appeared to be certain. Some more neutral
adjective is required and I suggest that we call the fallible
certain knowledge primal knowledge and the infallible
absolute knowledge. 6

Aaron inclines to doubt that absolute knowledge is within our

 Realism and Metaphysics 9

reach at all, even in matters like basic logical principles such as

the law of contradition. Every system, he maintains, must be
consistent, but its application to the world around us is another
matter; there are, after all, 'alternative logics'. I myself would
take a somewhat less accommodating line at this point. There
has been much loose play with the implication of 'alternative
logics'. But Aaron himself does not belittle consistency. What
he holds is that it arises out of the way our experience con-
ditions the way we must think. And this brings us to what he says
about 'primal' knowledge.
'Primal' knowledge, we are told, in the first place is personal
and private. No one can be certain for me or instead of me.
Secondly, it is final, the matter is settled for me at the time. 'We
can be sure at the present moment that the statement is true, but
later we may come to doubt this, and may even become sure that
it is false,thus settling the issue once again, but in another way'. 7
When the issue is 'settled' for us there is more than subjective
certainty. We are under a 'constraint' through our consciousness
of the world around us. This is clearly a vital consideration.
Many things are 'settled', or seem so, at the time for the madman
or the fanatic. There seem to have been people who were quite
certain that they were Napoleon or that the end of the world was
due in a few hours. We are very certain of things in dreams, to the
extent of being quite terrified in nightmares. Aaron refers rather
cautiously to this latter example and does not say much beyond
the observation that we are in fact subject to the 'constraint' of
the world around us in dreams we have at the point of awakening.
At other times, and in the case of the madman, we are not pre-
sumably subject to the constraint of the world, and there is no
problem. But what, after all, is the alleged constraint when it is
operative and how do we recognise it? What makes it so final?
What is the discipline or impact of the external world which
converts strong probability into knowledge? On these questions
we hear much too little and we are left at the same time in the
embarrassing situation of having to say that we knew at one time
something which we subsequently came to know to be false. This
seems to be a position in which we cannot really rest, however
acute the dilemmas which drive us to it.
In pursuance of the same theme Aaron refers to further
'illustrative cases'. They include our consciousness of our own
10 Persons and Life After Death

existence and that of other people. Now I have argued in various

places that we have a certain knowledge of our own existence in
the very fact of being ourselves. We do not just infer the existence
of a self or know it obliquely. But this is awareness of one's own
existence as a mind or mental being. I am aware also ofhaving
a body, I see it, I feel it, I am sensitive in and through it. But this
is all the same a different sort of certainty. I have this certainty at
the time in dreams respecting the body I have in my dream and
not my real body stretched out in bed. The problem of mind and
b~dy is a hard one, and I have taken a bolder course over it in
the dualism I have defended in my books than many would like.
But for Aaron and many others there is no problem, at least
initially. There are consequential 'metaphysical' problems, but
they proceed upon the initial certainty we have about our own
embodied existence. I am a being which has experiences, but I
also, with equal certainty, 'take myself to be a physical object in
space'. 8 What, one wonders, is the implication of saying this for
any expectation we may have of life after death? My own
reaction here is that, while there is a certain obviousness about
our being embodied and that, for many purposes, we just
identify ourselves with our bodies ('I am lighting my pipe', 'he is
smiling', 'he is sweating', etc.), the facts of our embodied
existence, including somatic sensations and the body-image, etc.,
are starting points for reflecting, not the data ofinitial certainties,
and that dualism is at least one plausible answer. To foreclose the
argument at a certain level and invoke primal certainties
respecting it, even if we are prepared to open it again at another
level as a metaphysical question, is, in my opinion, a prime
remedy for confusion at all levels. What sort of metaphysical
question can we ask about mind and body if we set out with the
initial assurance that one is 'a physical object in space'? The
scope allowed for metaphysics to alter our thinking radically is
very restricted here, and is that how we want to think of meta-
physics, some after-play which leaves the main issues where they
were? On the other hand, metaphysics is not to be a law to itself
or relegated to a world apart. That would be an equally grave
mistake, and there are plentiful sad examples of it.
We are all in the same strait regarding our knowledge of other
persons. We have, it is alleged, 'perceptive assurance' also of their
existence as embodied beings. 'If the question is posed, "How am
 Realism and Metaphysics 11

I sure of the existence of my friend sitting opposite me?", the

answer is plain, that I see him.' But this is surely a short way. All
that I properly see is my friend's body. I gather without difficulty
as a rule also what he is thinking and feeling and how the world
goes for him. But I do not strictly see his thoughts, however close
and easy our intercourse may be. On occasion there may be
grievous misunderstandings, tragic writing is full of them. I may
even be wrong about the actual body, as happens when taken in
at the waxworks. Or suppose various persons were thought to
occupy a body in turn (could it even be simultaneously?)- Eve
White and Eve Black. Of whose existence am I certain in these
cases when 'I see' my friend?
Likewise when we turn to a somewhat different problem, that
of causation. We do not perceive causal linkages as such, as every
young student of Hume is made to understand. But we believe
there is such a relation. We could make little sense of anything
without cause and effect. In some way we are all looking for
causes all the time and mystified when we cannot find them.
Something, we say, must have brought this or that about. But
what then is the causal link? Hume's answer will not do, and
there seems to be more involved than a Kantian a priori condition
of the kind of experience we actually have. Do we not sometimes
speak of an 'efficient cause'? Aaron's answer is to have recourse
again to actual experience, in particular our own experience as
agents. We are conscious of our own efforts making a difference,
as when we press hard to force a door open, and we can 'inter-
polate' this awareness of effortful agency into our understanding
of causal agency in the external world. In this way causation is no
longer an ultimate 'mystery not to be comprehended by human
minds'. 9 It becomes intelligible to us. This leaves me uncon-
vinced, as did the attempt of G. F. Stout in Mind and Matter
many years ago to extend our own consciousness of effort to the
external world. I find nothing here beyond a fanciful reading into
events in the physical world of a feature peculiar to conscious
activity. In my view no ultimately adequate account of causality
and the principle of induction is possible independently of
our invocation of a transcendent ground of all reality whose
mode of operation is bound to remain mysterious to us. We dis-
cover causal relations in experience but the confidence we have
that these are not fortuitous but somehow necessitated cannot be
12 Persons and Life After Death

found in the course of our experience itself. Even in our own most
obviously effortful striving to produce outward changes (as in
my pushing the door), I have no real understanding of why the
physical changes occur beyond more detailed understanding of
the physical changes themselves. My success in opening the door
remains as baffling to me in the last resort as the flame consuming
the candle.
The upshot of this also is that we cannot divorce metaphysical
considerations from our normal examination of philosophical
problems as they present themselves in our experience of our-
selves and the world around us. If, as I am convinced, there is a
metaphysical side to the problem of causality, this is not some-
thing to be deferred for consideration in due course by those who
add to their normal philosophical preoccupations a further
optional taste for some distinct metaphysical reflection. Meta-
physics lies at the heart of all philosophy, and this is what is
exhibited in a peculiarly instructive way in the inadequacy of
the 'short ways' of many forms of common sense philosophy. It
just does not work to take one's stand on day-to-day certainties,
whether or not confirmed in ordinary language, and then seek
consolation against questions and paradoxes that remain by lip
service to some further philosophical luxury in which those who
so desire may indulge. The vital problems are there in what our
experience is like, in perception or awareness of one another.
There is no burking these if we are to philosophise to any
purpose at all.
Perhaps we should go further and insist that there is no strict
demarcation to be made between metaphysics and the normal
course of philosophical thinking, just as we should be very wary of
sharp demarcations between different branches of philosophy,
ethics, theory of knowledge, etc. We have heard much oflate of
various forms of meta activities - metaethics, for example, and
even meta-metaethics. But when the overtures are ended we
find ourselves just doing what philosophers have always been
doing in respect to ethical questions, but with the confusing
complication of supposing that something- not often spelled out
- has already been satisfactorily examined and settled in proper
philosophical terms, thereby leaving a significant area of proper
philosophical concern not investigated in effective relation to the
rest. The unfortunate effects of these bifurcations of philosophical
 Realism and Metaphysics 13

activity are only too sadly evident in the recent history of the
subject.
It might be thought then that the proper course should be to
ban the term 'meta' altogether, and I must admit that this is a
proposal which has much to commend it, along with a ban on the
proliferation of isms. However, I do not think we can go quite
that far. Plato is an excellent guide here as in so much else. There
is a distinctive activity which he called Dialectic. This is not a
circumscribed activity with rules and conditions peculiar to
itself, but rather the culmination of continuous philosophical
activity, the 'coping stone' according to Plato, in which various
investigati'ons, as they arise from different aspects of experiences,
are considered in closer relation to one another to give us a more
unified conspectus. In the case of Plato this would involve
peculiar further insight into a transcendent Good, but there is no
suggestion that this nullifies our earlier undertakings or converts
them into preliminaries which are subsequently dispensable, as
in some forms at least of Buddhism. Philosophy remains one
enterprise, and nothing in the final course of it should encourage
us to be lax or abandon the full rigour of its discipline at any stage.
There is a twofold moral for us here. One is the point with
which I have been largely concerned, namely, that we must not
foreclose our answers to problems which directly force themselves
upon us by what we find our existence to be like. There is no
unassailable initial platform on which to stand. This does not
mean that there is nothing which the philosopher can take to be
established on its own account- far from it! My main concern
could well be taken to be that we take proper account of what the
world and our experience force upon us. We are not just to spin
a web out of our own philosophical bellies. Nor are we left with-
out any resting-place. The world is the kind of world it is, and
there are insights which validate themselves without needing or
allowing of further justification. There are things we just see to
be the case, and to make this evident, in opposition to attempts
to manufacture the world and its conditions for ourselves, is the
very considerable achievement of the Cook Wilson line in
British philosophy. The importance of this in ethics elevates this
movement, in the work of Prichard, Ross, Broad, and others, to a
place oflasting importance in the history of thought. We may not
care for the word 'intuition', and we certainly cannot settle
14 Persons and Life After Death

easily what is its exact place in ethics or mathematics. But

that there must be insights of this kind is hard to dispute, and a
great deal of philosophical skill and wisdom turns on being able
to recognise them. Wittgenstein was given to insisting that a wise
philosopher must know when to stop, and in this, at least, I
heartily concur with him. The drawback is that many stop in the
wrong places, or too soon. Even if, as seems to me inevitable, we
have to admit intuition or immediate insight somewhere, there
are still questions to be asked about this, that of conflicting
intuitions, for example, so helpfully treated by A. C. Ewing in his
Reason and Intuition. But the world, I repeat, is there, however
endlessly varied, and there is a stage where argument is pointless.
The philosopher will disregard this at his peril. But he must also
be persistently vigilant to ensure that the light of his peculiar
sort of reflection continues to play over all aspects of experience,
and he must not burke the impact of the world upon him. In the
last resort, the world is the master, and we must philosophise
about what we find to be the case.
A closely related moral is that, while we must take nothing for
granted until we are sure that philosophy has done its proper
work with it, we must not proceed on our course through a series
of rarefied ethereal concepts prescribing their own relatedness
and culminating in systems into which we then try to force the
world of nature and our experience. Much ingenuity can be
spent on this kind of a priorism; and one has often to admire it.
But it is the bane of sound philosophy, and it is no less insidious
when sustained, as it often has been, by learned allusiveness and
preciousness to maintain the facade. The rationalists have badly
led us astray here, including in some respects (but some only)
the two thinkers I especially admire, Plato and Descartes. The
a priori offers no more a royal road to truth than the dogmatisms
of common sense. There just is no 'short way', and of this at least
Plato never tired of telling us. Few things are more frustrating to
eager philosophical minds than to be pulled away from the truly
philosophically perplexing aspect of things to pursue the course
of seemingly self-determining abstractions - the famous 'blood-
less ballet'. It is the latter, together with the exploitation of
obscure terminology, that brought metaphysics, and with it al-
most our whole philosophical enterprise, into such bad repute
earlier this century and set up the plea for analysis and clarity.
 Realism and Metaphysics 15

Neither of these is enough. There is synthesis also, a picture of

what things are generally like, in ethics or perception, for
example. But the synthesis is not preordained, it is sustained by
looking at what we find to be the case.
I have not said much about ethics. But ethics does provide a
prime example of the inhibiting and distorting character of bad
metaphysics. Systems of thought have been completed, often
with a splendid architectonic of their own, which preclude
entirely some of the conditions which, initially at least and in-
escapably for some of us, make accountability and moral
achievement possible. The example of Spinoza comes obviously
to mind. From his fertile imagination we can draw a great deal
that creative metaphysics requires - the idea of 'infinite attri-
butes' in its application to the idea of different kinds of space, for
example. But the possibility of a genuinely open choice is
excJuded independently of any reflection on what we find actual
situations to be like or the implications of moral distinctions.
That we may draw together, in a unified conspectus, what
presents itself to us philosophically in different respects, is a
legitimate and noble aspiration. It is perhaps what we should
describe as metaphysics par excellence, and what warrants the
prefix 'meta'. But there are few more dangerous enterprises and
few that have had more distressing results. Philosophy is always
difficult and tricky, and this is why so many great philosophers
have been so concerned to warn away those who had not certainly
shown their flair for it. Plato never tires of warning us against the
charlatans and shams attracted by the reputation and superficial
glitter of the subject, the pseudo-philosophers of the pseudo-
problems and the short ways. Nowhere is this warning more
necessary than in the ambitious synthesis of metaphysics, where
the open sesame of some new key concept or fashionable turn of
phrase is thought to open all doors by its own magic. I do not
rule out creative metaphysics, but we must approach it by the
'steep and rugged ascent' of the cave and we must always be
carefullest our last stage be the worst.
This is why some of our down-to-earth philosophers of today,
finding themselves restless and hankering after some kind of
metaphysics, announce their programme as that of 'revisionary
metaphysics'. But while this reflects a most estimable caution, it
tends to overreach itself, like 'vaulting ambition', and fall into
16 Persons and Life 4fter Death

the toils of the very methodological metaphysics which our bolder

empiricists set out t<,> cure. A revision of language or of general
concepts is not what we should be seeking, but a conspectus on
what things look like when they are considered philosophically,
and for this we need more than formal procedures and skills, we
need to know how to look; even if our tasks were simply that of
improving the 'maps', we would still need to explore the country;
and happily some of those who write about revisionary meta-
physics have sometimes been more enterprising than their
announced programme allows and provided intriguing specula-
tions which are only marred by the wrong sort of caution.
Caution there must be, but not lack of enterprise, and we must
not be held back by formal preconceived notions of what we are
to do. Only we must never neglect, whether in dealing with
ethics or perception or the elusiveness of our own identity, that
we start with what, in sustained reflection, we find to be the case.
To that extent I am an unrepentant realist and welcome the
insistence on the 'impact of the world' and the discipline of
experience. But there must be no inhibiting or prejudging of the
philosophical enterprise itself. The appropriate freedom of the
exercise itself must not be curtailed, and we may, if we are bold
enough, soar with Plato but remain true to the here and now of
the world around us in the subtle analyses of G. E. Moore, than
whom the wise metaphysician will not easily find a better
tutor today.

NOTES
I. Cf. also his In Defence of Free Will and his Selfhood and Godhood.
2. Value and Realiry.
3. He defends an outright indeterminist view, for example.
4. Our Knowledge of God, p. 50.
5. Philosophy of Religion, Chapter XII.
6. Op. cit., p. 60.
7. Op. cit., p. 56.
8. Op. cit., p. 68.
9. Op. cit., p. 228.
2 Ultimates and a Way of
Looking in Philosophy

By 'ultimates', for the purpose of this paper, I do not understand

in the first instance, sowe one supreme being or some alleged
final source of all other conditioned existence - the infinite, the
absolute, the transcendent, the unconditioned, God, or whatever
term or description be thought appropriate. Not that I consider
these notions unimportant for philosophy, or want to exclude
them from what I want to maintain here about ultimates. They
would in fact provide one excellent example of what I have in
mind and provide a variation on my main theme which is sig-
nificant and instructive in some special ways. But what I am
concerned to put forward holds irrespective of whether one is
disposed to consider seriously the idea of some supreme existent
or reality along the lines indicated, and I am anxious not to con-
fuse the present issue or give a wrong impression of what I am
mainly concerned to advance at the moment.
For the same reason I must also make it clear that I am not
concerned with the idea of some basic philosophical principle
which we need to recognise before we can make proper progress
with other questions, or some key idea which will unlock all the
other mysteries, evolution, relativity, a self-representative series,
etc. Indeed I am very little attracted to clues of this kind in
philosophy and suspect that many have been badly led astray by
them. I do indeed believe that philosophers, like all others, have
to respect one basic principle, namely the principle of non-
contradiction and would defend this, in the proper place,
against suggestions that it may be conventional or limited in its
application. But while I hold that we must respect this principle
I would make no further· claim for it or suggest that other
philosophical ideas may somehow be deduced out of it.
@Oriel Press Ltd 1976
18 Persons and Life After Death

The place of the 'Form of the Good' in Plato's philosophy,

provides an interesting half-way house which may be worth
noting here. On the one hand, 'the Good' is an ultimate which is
not established by argument but by a glimpse or noesis. Nothing
is known in the vision of'the Good' which can be communicated
in any other way. The vision is all, but it is only within the reach
of suitably equipped and accomplished philosophers. It does,
however, once achieved, provide a means of exhaustively under-
standing both the inherent necessity of the other forms and their
essential interdependence. It is the prime source of philosophical
wisdom. At the same time, little in the conduct of Plato's general
treatment ofvarious philosophical questions is directly affected
by the notion of 'the Good'. Ex hypothesi it could not be, for the
discussion is not addressed solely to the few who have come to the
ultimate attainment. Most of the time Plato continues as the rest
of us might. In the account of 'the Good' as something which is
apprehended peculiarly for itself, and in the insistence on a
peculiar philosophical flair for doing this, Plato is taking the
course I especially wish to commend. That the 'glimpse' has
implications for further questions is also important. But I do not
subscribe at all to the notion of one supreme insight, however
fine and distinctive, from which the proper understanding of all
other issues is made manifest. The major philosophical questions
must be taken on their merit, whatever the ramifications there
may also be between them. Nor am I thinking, along the lines of
Plato, of a quite exclusively philosophical insight. What the
philosopher apprehends in the cases of what I here call ultimates
is what is usually evident to all in the common course of experi-
ence. What is peculiar to the philosopher is his appreciation of
the distinctiveness of the awareness involved and the way to
treat it intellectually without lapsing into misleading aber-
rations.
But having paid our respects in these terms to Plato, let us
now return from this historical excursus to our proper task. What
I particularly want to claim is that, in a number of central
philosophical contexts, there is a point to be reached where
further explicit consideration ends and we can do no more than
note the way things are and declare them to be so. This does not,
as should be obvious, concern ordinary matters of fact which we
may note and record for our usual purposes from day to day.
 Ultimates and a Way of Looking 19

But it is on the other hand not just a way of talking about the
world or of the way things arc in general, it is in the first place
an appreciation of the way things are, of what we ourselves and
the world around us are like and, in that way, of what we may
also say or affirm.
The main point is that, in all philosophical discussion, we
reach a stage where further analysis and argument is at an end,
not because of our own failings and limitations, but from the
nature of the case and unavoidably. Argument may indeed end
because of the stubbornness or the seeming inanity of one's
opponent or some blind spot or bias to which even the most
reflective may be prone in subtle ways. 'There is no point in
trying to argue with him', we may say, or more politely, 'We
must agree to differ'. It is not our aptitudes or temperament
that prescribe the sort of finality or terminus with which I am
now concerned, but the nature of the philosophical enterprise
itself. A point is reached where we see, or seem 'to see, the way
things are and can only declare this, though much will indeed
tun?- on the care and precision with which the declaration is
made - perhaps that is where peculiar philosophical skill is most
evident, and this in turn helps us to appreciate the persistent
preoccupation of philosophers with words and their equally
evident fear of words. Words are our tools but they seem to be
never quite right or appropriate for us. We seem to hit on the
right words but then in no time it seems to be all wrong.
One embarrassment in the view of philosophy which I am
seeking to outline is that the last thing a philosopher would wish
to be accused of is an unwillingness to go on arguing his case. It is
by discussion and argument that he exists, they are his life·blood.
Our patience may easily run out with certain kinds of discussion,
but to give up discussion and argument is to give up our practice.
We must continue on the 'long and circuitous route' and not seck
an easy resting-place or 'a short way'. Dogmatism and unreason
are what we most wish to avoid, and when the philosopher meets
them in others he is understandably affronted and dismayed.
That much intellectual activity of a sort, in politics and theology
for example, is just an elaborate ringing of changes on initial
dogmatisms is a solemn enough warning of which, one would
hope, philosophers stood in little need. But dogmatism and the
closed mind take their course sometimes in very subtle ways and
20 Persons and Life After Death

no one can be wholly unmindful of the hold they may have on us,
the sceptically-minded as much as the rest. No philosopher likes
to be accused of unreason or of 'knowing all the answers' or of
giving up the discipline of hard and continuous thinking and of
listening properly to what others have to say. It becomes him
more ill than any to have recourse to subterfuge, prevarication or
similar ways of scoring an easy victory, and for that reason he will
not take it lightly to be thought to lack openness and flexibility of
mind and just to 'dig his heels in' and take his stance in serene
assurance that he is right. To be troubled becomes him better, a
certain sort of doubt is part ofhis attitude ofmind and he knows
well how hard it is to find any adequate resting-place at all in
his subject.
This has in turn a tendency to induce its opposite, namely the
almost total refusal to commit oneself, either by not putting pen
to paper, except perhaps for wholly negative criticism, or by
inventing curious philosophical moves which involve no
subscription to any positive content, an evasion which seems to
keep us genuinely engaged with our problems while remaining
sublimely superior to the seeming futilities of others. Some play
the safe game by rigid adherence to a fairly simple policy like
strict empiricism. But while caution is estimable, indeed
indispensable, where it is so easy to Sl!JI the misleading thing even
when on the right course, we must not give up the philosophical
task of indicating how things in general seem to us to be, about
ourselves and the world; and this will involve commitment, for
the time at least, to some positive views. My present contention is
that we must not be deterred, by the fear of dogmatism or, like
J. S. Mill, of being 'found out', when we come to the point where
we can only affirm how things seem to be without adducing
further considerations or arguments.
The danger is, I must repeat, that this requirement be invoked
before it is inevitable or proper from the nature of the case, either
out of intellectual indolence (and we must remember how very
demanding and trying genuinely close philosophical reflection is
bound to be) or from fear of refutation. I would not impute either
of these motives, at least in any overt form, to so tireless a
philosophical thinker as Norman Malcolm, but I have elsewhere 1
noted how he makes things easier for himself by resorting at an
inappropriate point to Wittgenstein's celebrated and very proper
 Ultimates and a Way of Looking 21

insistence 'that it is an important thing in philosophy to know

when to stop'. Malcolm will not have it at all that dreaming is
some kind of waking state, an immediate vivid impression the
moment we awake. But he will not have it either that the dream
is anything that goes on, while we sleep, though there is no doubt
that 'people really do have dreams'. We tell the dream but the
dream is not the telling. Just what is it then? Here Malcolm tells
us we have 'to stop', and I have insisted, with perhaps some
impatience, that he is not entitled to stop there. The question
just cries out for an answer, and Malcolm seems to be 'stopping'
because, it seems to him, no further move is possible to him (he is
in a complete impasse) when there certainly ought to be. He
retreats into silence when it is not reasonable to do so.
Malcolm is in no way alone in this. For while it is important
(that is the main theme of this paper) to know that we must stop
and when to stop, it is only too fatally easy to stop at the wrong
place or where it is convenient. This has happened in some
celebrated ways. Let me note some examples.
One of the pioneers and architects of recent realism, especially
in its English variety, is Cook Wilson. How much he is read today
is hard to tell, though he seems always mentioned with respect. I
think it would not be hard to show that his genius has presided
far more than is realised over the course of philosophy at Oxford
during this century, even though the strict allusions to him may
not be very extensive. He held 2 that there were certain things we
undoubtedly know without further reason. These include the
existence of the external world, the self, other minds, causality,
God - a formidable list which leaves little scope for the sceptic.
How far this is meant to extend to particular items is not always
clear, but some of Cook Wilson's closest followers certainly
meant it in that way. I have discussed the views of one of them,
R. I. Aaron, elsewhere. 3 Aaron is forced to the peculiar position
of maintaining that while in all matters of fact we are fallible I
can affirm now that I know that a bird is singing outside my
window, though I may have later to affirm that it was an
imitation and that I did not know this. The course that Cook
Wilson himself took was to say that, in all the contexts in question,
there could be 'philosophic doubt' - I know that there is a 'table
before me', as Berkeley has it, but thought about illusions and
perspectival distortions etc., cause me to doubt this in some rather
22 Persons and Life After Death

special way which leaves the original certainty quite unaffected·

It is not easy, however, to see just what this amounts to. Berkeley
was as certain as any that there was a 'table before' him. His
normal reaction would not be in the least affected. But he was
all the same denying something substantial in his famous
immaterialism. External things would not for him have any
geniune reality when not perceived. This is certainly at odds
with a widespread impression, and while we may or may not
incline to Berkeley's view or some variation on it, the questions
raised in this context, from ancient times to Berkeley and later,
cannot be settled out of hand by invoking an initial or basic
certainty not to be affected by further philosophical thought. It
may be that there has to be some form of realism in our view of
the external world, and I imagine that there would be few today
who would go with some post-Hegelian idealists in dissolving the
world into a 'system of relations', We encounter the world of
nature, we do not make it, it is in some sense there. But before we
take our stance on this or any rival claim we have to do a great
deal of hard philosophical thinking to discover what sort ofstance
we are forced to take. Cook Wilson and most of his followers are
stopping too soon, to the serious detriment of philosophical
thought.
A similar comment is invited by much in the course of the
twin form of realism about the external world, namely the
philosophy of common sense as practised by G. E. Moore and
those he inspired. No one would now agree that it will do to hold
up our hands and declare that here are two physical things.
Indeed few have shown a more subtle grasp of the complexities
of the problems of perception than Moore, as readers of his
Some Main Problems of Philosophy will be well aware. In one place
he suggests that the external object may be just a point, a far cry
from the impression generally conveyed by the famous British
Academy Lecture, 'Proof of an External World' 4 • The main
point here again is that we must be careful where to stop and not
indulge ourselves with the comfort of a resting-place, or seem to
do so, before we have earned it by exhausting all the appropriate
philosophical considerations in the first place.
Of course we all know after a fashion that there is an external
world and we have every confidence in much that we believe
about the 'furniture' ofit and what happens to it. But this is the
 Ultimates and a Way of Looking 23
beginning not the end of philosophical reflection, and the ghost
ofBerkeley (and many perplexed thinkers before him) is not to be
laid by just invoking this day-to-day assurance. To retreat on
that is a prime example ofstopping at the wrong place.
Nor is it possible, as some have tried, to avoid being involved
in any issue of commitment by simply considering how the verb
'to know' is most commonly or advantageously used. It may well
be that, for most purposes, the proper course for me to take is to
say that I know that my elbows are resting on this table and,
indeed, a host of things not so immediately plain, that a boy is
mowing my lawn away from the window, that King's College is
in the Strand etc., extending to much that I know about the past.
It would be misleading to say 'I believe' in these cases. Ifl said
that, as evidence in court, I would be thought to prevaricate, and
the advocate could well ask me sharply to say did I or did I not
know that the boy I had engaged and whom I glimpsed from
time to time was cutting my lawn this morning. It would be
pedantic to start to qualify, and yet, in all these matters, there
is an element of fallibility. We have, with reason, been certain
and proved wrong. Shall we then decide to say that we know only
when there can be no possibility, not even the most remote, of
error? My point is that nothing of real philosophical importance
hinges on this. Linguistic conventions depend, or should depend,
on convenience, but the situation which the philosopher seeks to
understand remains unaffected.
We have in short to say something, or take some stance, in the
study of perception - or give up philosophical study of it alto-
gether. The world around us is not made in our thought, it is in
some sense 'there', we have to take it as it is and come to terms
with it, disagreeable and pleasant features alike, we 'encounter'
things and they make their 'impact'. This is the strength of the
realist case and common sense philosophy, though whether the
best way to deal with this is to say that something is 'given' is a
moot point. My present insistence is that it is not enough to
invoke the obvious reality, in some form, of external objects and
our practical certainties. This is the start, not the stopping place,
and I would not care here, in this peculiarly tricky subject, to say
where I think we must stop - though I think I shall not find
Berkeley very far from my elbow when I do so. Common sense
realism has certainly stopped too soon in the past.
24 Persons and Life After Death

The same goes, though a good deal more obviously, for the
appeal to ordinary language and the paradigm case. It may be a
useful way of bringing out something that is lacking in the sense-
datum theory to say that we do not see patches of colour flash
past at the races, we are watching horses. But to say that, and no
more, is just to give up. There are problems, very exciting ones
too, connected with perspectival distortion, the working of our
physical organs, nerves, brains etc., which are evident to the
most elementary student, and we cannot just sweep these away,
to say nothing of reverie and dreams, by noting that what we see
are chairs, horses, people and not patches of colour or sensations.
Likewise, the free-will problem is not settled by noting that we
would clearly say that we are free, in some sense, most of the time.
I am free now in the sense that I am not in prison, I write these
words of my own accord since no one is guiding my hand, or
again in a different sense because I have no aversion to writing
in this way or some like psychological hindrance, or yet again
because there is no law against it. To disentangle these various
uses closely is a proper task for philosophy, and there has been
much careful work in this vein of late. It is also important to
consider what sort of freedom is involved in our accountability,
by no means an easy task and certainly one not to be settled
entirely on the basis oflinguistic practice. But here again I would
maintain that a point must be reached, in respect for example to
the implications of moral accountability and ofour exercise of the
appropriate freedom, where we must have to affirm how the
matter seems to us.
Likewise, elsewhere in ethics, Professor Toulmin, on one
occasion, poured great scorn on the alleged 'inner eye' by which
W. D. Ross claimed to come to know things in ethics, only to
close his paper with the insistence that the important thing in
ethics is to appreciate that we know some things without further
reason. There may, or there may not be, ethical intuitions. But
ex hypothesi this is not a matter to be itself settled by argument. We
must reflect on how we do come to say that certain things are
wrong or right or good. That, however, is in no way a simple
matter of sitting in one's chair and noting whether flashes of
intuition happen to us from time to time, like twitches of pain. To
suppose this is the unworthy travesty to which much fine work
in ethics has been exposed. The kind of thinking that goes to
 Ultimates and a Way of Looking 25
settling these matters is very special, and before we reach the
point of saying, with or against the intuitionist, that this is how
it now seems to us, a great many subtle considerations, including
what we might say in this or that circumstance, are relevant.
There are also alleged fallible intuitions, and when we have gone
through all the appropriate motions we may find that a term like
'intuition' has misleading associations and is best replaced by
another- 'insight', 'judgement' 5 etc. But none of this precludes
there being some point where, not from philosophical weariness
or desperation, but from what the situation philosophically calls
for, we have to exercise some final judgement and stay with it as
long as things seem so to us.
I myself strongly favour the view that, at some point in ethics,
intuition must be invoked. But I also think that, once this was
clearly appreciated by outstanding thinkers earlier this century, 6
notably G. E. Moore, there was a lapse into the besetting philo-
sophical sin of making this notion do more work than it should.
Intuitions were apt to proliferate, to the serious discredit of the
concept. This seems to me to be a further case of philosophers
stopping too soon or too conveniently at the wrong place. That
is how I would judge the controversy, very much alive at the
moment in a very different garb, between intuitionists like Ross
and utilitarians like Moore or Pickard Cambridge. In both cases
some kind of ultimate was invoked and it is ofinterest that Moore,
while surrendering under attack the attempt to establish non-
natural properties by arguments about the 'naturalistic fallacy'
etc., still clung to the notion of a distinctive insight into a non-
natural quality of goodness. The dispute was as to where this
insight came about, for Moore in the assessment of worth and,
perhaps, in the general duty of maximising good, for Ross in this
and the apprehension of other prima facie duties, like truth-telling
and keeping promises, which had also to go into the final
reckoning.
There is no easy solution to this problem. On the one hand it
seems odd to suppose that we ought to do something which will
not produce most good on the whole for those affected, on the
other we have compunction about disregarding promises made
to the dying man etc., and we feel there is something in the view
that 'a promise is a promise' etc. I believe that it is not impossible
to bring the latter under the utilitarian principle if we think hard
26 Persons and Life After Death

enough about subtle aspects of the cases where the strain is felt;
and if I am right in this and in inclining more to Moore's
'agathistic utilitarianism', then it would seem that the intuition-
ists (of the Ross variety) and their 'consequentialist' 7 descendants
now, are just stopping too soon when they should go on thinking
still harder to locate the precise point where a special insight or
intuition is to be exercised. The distinctiveness of ethics which we
find it impossible to avoid, however hard we try (and the more
tough-minded as much as any), seems to make an insight of that
sort inevitable somewhere. The point is,just where?
Let me now refer to problems about persons. First a word
about 'other minds'. Cook Wilson regarded immediate and
certain knowledge of other persons as a prime example of the
sort of basic certainties he had in mind. In one respect he is
clearly right. No one seriously doubts that we have knowledge of
other persons, the solipsist is a figure offun and does not even take
himself seriously - as was underlined in Bertrand Russell's oft-
repeated pleasantry about the solipsist who was surprised that
her view was not shared by more people. But this tells us nothing
about the mode of this awareness. One sees, in a way, the point
of Cook Wilson's famous jibe about not wanting 'inferred
friends'. We want our friends to be close and intimate and our
companionship simple and easy. But when all has been said in
this vein- and that would be a theme in itself- the fact remains
that we do not know other minds as we do our own, we must have
some basis for what we believe about one another. Usually, and
in close relationships, this involves mainly observation of one
another's bodies. But it is the body that I strictly observe, and on
that basis I learn, easily and spontaneously as a rule, about
thoughts, feelings, sensations and so on. I do not strictly observe
another's pain, I find the indication of it in what I see or hear.
I have stressed this a good deal elsewhere, it is a point on
which philosophical opinion could be a good deal firmer.
Strawson 8 may speak to his heart's content about watching
someone 'coiling a rope', and Aaron, 9 reflecting the initial
persistent Oxford realism a little more explicitly, may say very
boldly that I know my friend is there because I see him. But all
that I strictly observe is bodily appearance and behaviour. I do
not properly see the thoughts and intentions, though in many
cases I have no doubt or hesitation whatever about them. I know
 Ultimates and a Way of Looking 27
that the fisherman passes the rope through his hands as he does to
coil it, but I know this, without consciously pausing to infer it, as
the obvious explanation of the movements of his hands and the
posture of his body and his situation. It is the thoughts and
intention that I learn about, but, very obviously it seems to me,
in a mediated way.
It is worth noting here a curious procedure of many philoso-
phers today who, impressed by the fact that there never is any
real doubt about the existence of other minds, however liable to
error we may be in particular cases, feel that this requires them to
give at least a partially physicalist account of the nature of
persons. They feel that the inferential element brings in a degree
of uncertainty. It would leave at least a remote possibility that
solipsism is true. How this can be eased by falling back on a
requirement of bodily continuity is not as plain as might be
thought. For there again some sort of uncertainty may creep in.
But without looking at this in more detail (I have again noted it
more fully elsewhere 10 }, we may list this also as a case, and in
some ways a peculiarly significant one since not so overtly
realist, of taking a common sense or day-to-day conviction as a
final insight or closure point, however desperate, from the
writer's general view, the course it prescribes, rather than persist
with further reflection.
These considerations seem to be underlined by the fact that,
however happy we may feel in one another's company and
serene in our mutual understanding, we may also be badly in
error and completely misunderstand what our friends and
others are about. The further we go from actual bodily presence,
the greater seems to be the likelihood of error. If this were not so,
historical problems would be greatly simplified. Cook Wilson
himself, and the strictest of his followers, could hardly have
believed that what I know about julius Caesar and the philoso-
phical thoughts of Plato came about through immediate contact
with their minds (there would be no 'Socratic problem' if things
happened that way). I know what I do know here from books
and related evidence, and the position in principle seems no
different in less remote contacts and when people are physically
present. There is physical mediation by which I know what is not
physical.
Followers of Martin Buber sometimes yoke themselves
28 Persons and Life After Death

somewhat uneasily with common sense and tough-minded

realists on this issue. Elsewhere 11 I have expressed my regard for
Bu ber and indicated fairly closely what are some of the important
things which his treatment of the 'I-Thou' relation reflects. It is
a great pity that those who invoke his views and find them sug-
gestive do not think more closely about their true import. But
one thing seems to me certain, namely that there is not a direct
contentless relation with persons (man or God) which is quite
distinct from knowledge about them and need not involve it.
Indeed I doubt whether the idea of such a relation is meaningful.
The facile invocation of it, as an easy way of evading tough
philosophical problems, is one of the most conspicuous theologi-
cal counterparts to the 'short way' with difficult questions in
various forms of common sense realism in recent philosophy. One
hopes its day is over.
These matters are in no way affected if we find that the
evidence for telepathy and related phenomena is strong or
conclusive. Whatever happens in telepathy I do not think it even
conceivable that it should involve the same knowledge of other
minds as we have of our own. Often a vision of certain events
significantly correlated with their so happening is involved, and
the mediation here is evident enough - we do not strictly see the
shipwreck or hear the cry as those on the spot do. But even if
visions or voices of this kind are not involved there must be some
other way in which the absence of the normal physical mediation
and evidence is met. I have myself, in my book The Self and
Immortaliry, 12 discussed the possibility that communication
between totally disembodied creatures might take a quasi-
telepathic form through some intrusions into the course of our
own thoughts of ingredients we might have reason, by their
substance or the mode or occasion of their happening, to ascribe
to some outside influence we might learn in due course to
recognise. But the mediation in its own way is equally evident
here. To deny this is to stop, in our philosophical reflections, at
the one point where it is most inappropriate to do so.
I believe, in short, that the search for an ultimate, in the way I
now use this term, in our knowledge of other persons, is a most
wasteful and delusive pursuit of a philosophical will o' the wisp.
For a reason to be stressed more in a moment, I think it inher-
ently impossible to know the mind of another, man or God, in
 Ultimates and a Way of Looking 29

the same way as one basically knows one's own thoughts or

sensations expressly in having them. But this brings me to the
contrasted case of our knowledge of ourselves which is the main
context in which I wish to highlight and stress the central theme
of this paper.
For what has to be said of self-knowledge is radically different
from what has to be said about knowledge of others. There is
indeed a great deal we may know about ourselves from evidence
or observation, our own and that of others. I discover where I
was and what I did this time last year by looking in my diary. My
friends, and presumably a psychiatrist if required, could tell me
much about the sort of chap I am. But there is a more basic form
of self-knowledge, namely that by which I know that my par-
ticular thoughts and other mental states, and thereby my traits
of character, are mine. Two distinct points need to be sorted out
here, and both of them provide prime examples of what I
understand by ultimates in this paper.
The first concerns the nature of experience itself. This is
sometimes said to be neutral, as between a corporealist and non-
corporealist account. Everyone agrees that we do perceive,
argue, resolve etc., but this, it is said, proves nothing. Thus
Professor Flew, in admitting 13 that my understanding my wife's
call that lunch is ready is decisive in my going downstairs, urges
that this leaves the corporealist view unaffected, and Roger
Squires 14 firmly denies Robert Kirk's claim that sentience
depends on private access. I know of no argument that will settle
this question, any more than the debate with more old-fashioned
materialists, if the latter are consistent enough. On the other
hand, nothing seems plainer to me than that seeing, hearing,
pondering, resolving etc., while they have behavioural and
dispositional aspects, are essentially non-extended, non-physical
on-goings. The simplest stock example is having pain. However
'physical', the pain itself is just not a state of my body, but what I
feel. But if I am asked to adduce a reason for this I am at a loss,
and I marvel that anyone should request a reason for what seems
to me so evident in itself. The appeal to our consciousness of pain,
or any other experience, seems quite conclusive here, but if it is
denied and arguments requested to show why the pain we
admittedly do have, and our thoughts about it, must be thought
altogether different from physical processes, then one is put out
30 Persons and Life After Death

of court before the only possible plea can be made. The thoughts
that I put on paper now cannot themselves be located though
much that concerns and conditions them can. If this is not plain in
itself! do not know what is, and I could hardly fail to do my case
the gravest injustice ifl took up the challenge to adduce further
arguments for what I maintain. What could they be that would
not give the case away, and yet it seems so manifestly clear a case.
The same goes for the claim that will be more widely con-
tended, namely that the processes in question, sensing, per-
ceiving, arguing etc., are 'owned' or 'belong' in some way. The
precise term does not matter, and one is not quite happy with
any, but I do know quite clearly what I mean when I say that I,
and not someone else, am having these thoughts and sensations
now. This has nothing directly to do with our separate bodies,
or the different contexts in which these thoughts might be had in
different cases. Quite irrespective of any distinctness of this kind,
there is what I am almost tempted to call the brute fact that I am
having these thoughts. That is an ultimate of which no further
account appears possible.
Take again the stock and fairly simple example of pain. I
know, in my own case both that there is pain and that I am
having it. In the case of others, a reason is in order. I may hear a
scream and conclude that someone is in pain, and wonder who.
I do none of this in my own case. I may indeed wonder whether I
or someone else has been wounded- whose blood is flowing, whose
crushed foot is that. But if I have not been too numbed to feel
the pain then! know that there is pain, with no possibility of pre-
tence or delusion, and that I have this pain. I know both things
in one and the same experience, and both are beyond doubt. But
knowing that the pain is mine is more than knowing that there
is the pain. I know that beyond doubt in having the pain.
Not many, at the moment, would deny that it would be
absurd for anyone to look for reasons to help him decide whether
he or another was in pain, or whether he was in pain at all. What
could he do? Trust his own report, look at his bleeding limb,
listen to his own screams? Quite obviously all that is absurd. I
just know that I have this pain, whether or not I can describe it
properly or know the true cause of it. But many who would not
oppose me on this seem curiously reluctant to accept the impli-
cations or the proper force of it. This is how Professor Zemach is
 Ultimates and a W try of Looking 31

able to declare that Strawson, 'in spite of his rejection of the

Cartesian ego, is basically a Cartesian' .t r. Zemach himself seeks
the answer, ingeniously enough, in 'an assembly of this ex-
perience with other things' . 16 But is not this quite plainly the
wrong tack from the start, whatever may be said about the
alleged 'assembly' or its importance. It is not a case ofZemach,
or any other, not being quite clever enough, not developing his
own line to the best effect. He is from the start attempting the
impossible. I know from the start that my awareness of myself is
not that sort of thing. Similarly Shoemaker, admitting, indeed
stressing, that there are no criteria of self-identity etc., goes to
great lengths to avoid the proper import ofthis. 17
The view is not, incidentally, as Zemach suggests, that we
know 'a priori' that 'my experiences are mine', though that may
not be out of place in the case of Strawson. Or, if I do know a
priori it is because I know in the first place, in having any
experience, that I am having it and what this means. The prob-
lem is of course to say what it means, and this, I suspect, is why
many are reluctant to own to a Cartesian view. They fear a
philosophical dead-end, or of naively (perhaps for suspect
vested interests, moral or religious, not appropriate in a tough-
minded age) affirming something for which they can make no
further case. It is at least expected that something should be said
about the self so invoked.
Professor Antony Flew brings this sharply to a head in the
closing pages of his reply to my own paper at the joint Meeting
of the Mind and Aristotelian Societies. 18 He writes:
But though the Lewis investigation is properly philosophi-
cal, it is still about how we might know, and when we might be
entitled to claim to know. Yet the primary question here is
precisely what we should know if we knew that this incorporeal
substance at time two was the same as that incorporeal
substance at time one.
and again:
In part my difficulty arises because those who argue on this
assumption never seem to make any but the most perfunctory
attempt to show that it is true. One of my hopes of the coming
discussion is that someone will indicate the lines in which they
think this might be shown.
32 Persons and Life After Death

Professor Flew's hope was not fulfilled, at least not by me. But I
warmly applaud, and did at the time, the unambiguous and
sharp way in which he points up the central issue. What he says,
with typical incisiveness, is what many say and feel about a
Cartesian-style dualism, and perhaps this will become also a
'Flew's Challenge'. It does indeed seem awkward to have to say,
in response to questions like his, there just is nothing we can say.
Is not this just burking the issue? We clearly should be able to say
something. Otherwise, as Professor Bernard Williams put it to me
in the B.B.C. debate about the same time 19 - I seem to be
'running out of steam'. That is of course infuriating, as, in a way,
it is quite true. There is nothing more of any substance to be said.
But this is not, whateverone'slimitations, because ofphilosophical
ineptitude. From the nature of the case no answer can be given.
The force of the temptation to provide an answer is almost
overwhelming, especially as much ingenuity can be provided in
trying to do so. But ingenuity is not philosophical wisdom, and if
we have reached an ultimate the proper course is to admit it.
That does not mean that the ingenious explanations have no
point, they may illuminate something by the way and also help
us to appreciate better just what the appropriate reticence really
involves; and there is indeed a great deal around the edges of the
subject that can, and should be, said. We can stress the awkward-
ness of seeking the right terms, allow for the dangers of terms like
'ego' 'substance', even 'subject', go over the moves which
preclude us from saying too much while still saying something
enormously important and distinctive, note the level at which a
person can be described and identified - by himself as well as
others- in terms of his appearance or his psychological traits, or
his history, what he is like and what has been the course ofhis life
etc. All this is appropriate and important, and even when we
come to the crunch over the question, 'But what is it for this
appearance and these likes and aptitudes etc., to be mine?', we can
indulge in the skilful handling of pointers or 'slantwise' consider-
ations ('assembling of reminders', some would have it) by which
we come to appreciate better what it is that we ultimately claim
just to 'see'. We shall understand better, for example, that what
is being invoked is not something occult, or something which
only a few can come to know in special conditions (like appreci-
ating poetry or music or having some transcendental vision). We
 Ultimates and a Way of Looking 33

shall likewise learn how misleading it is to think of the self or

person as just a presupposition, in a Kantian or any other style,
much less a remote 'thing in itself'. A person is what someone is
and knows himself to be.
There is, in short, no mystery-mongering. Nor is there an
arbitrary or a dogmatic taking up a stance, much less a lapse into
a non-philosophical brute acceptance. There is all the subtlety
in the world involved, ofits own kind. Indeed, this is just where the
finer philosophical skills are displayed, and where the old
insights have to be presented anew without the misleading
accretions acquired in repeated and too familiar statements. The
perils of the wrong sort of confidence are only too evident in the
bewilderment of critics, indeed the parodies and travesties to
which sound philosophy is so easily exposed, and which puts the
premium in debate on the skilful teaser. Plato must have suffered
a great deal in this way, not at the hands ofjust stupid and undis-
cerning philistines, though there were some around as always,
but from truly philosophical minds who had not the peculiar
philosophical persistence and high merit to stay with the
philosophical task of'turning the eye of the mind to the light' and
going on looking in the appropriate philosophical way, aware all
the time of the insidious charm of words and how fatal it is to be
too wholly under their spell. What is right when you say it be-
comes almost immediately misleading.
The caution in all this is of first importance, and it has been as
brilliantly displayed in fine philosophical work in the East as
much as in the West. Time will not allow me now to illustrate this
in the way I had hoped. The affinities between the more overt
scepticisms of the East and of the West can be crudely presented
in a way that takes away the true significance of both. But subject
to a very necessary warning against cheap exploitation and listing
of superficial resemblances, I would like to emphasise how much
philosophical wisdom may be deepened by attending, in an
informed and reflective way, to those aspects of Oriental thought
and religion, where caution is struggling with explicit utterance
in a profoundly philosophical way of looking at the world and
ourselves. To highlight the ultimates in philosophy is in no way
to encourage philosophical stupefaction and staleness. If we seem
to know all the answers we give the wrong impression. The 'right
way oflooking' like the vision of God, if the comparison may be
34 Persons and Life After Death

made without impiety, has to be recovered, reconveyed, reculti-

vated and constantly cleansed of the accretions it generates itself.
It is also, in itself and in other ramifications, supremely re-
warding, and the vistas it opens out, the new philosophical
destinations to be reached, can only be glimpsed by those who
foresake the easy triumphs for the strains of maintaining a
peculiar way oflooking at provokingly elusive things which can
only shine, like the Good Will, by their own light.

NOTES
l. The Elusive Mind, p. 140.
2. See especially 'The Existence of God', Statement and Inference, Vol. II.
For more detail see Chapter 12 of my Philosophy Q/ Religion.
3. Page 7 above.
4. G. E. Moore, Philosophical Papers, pp. 127-50.
5. In his contribution to Contemporary British Philosophy, Series 4, (Ed.
H. D. Lewis) Professor R. M. Hare comes round to the invocation of what he
calls 'judgement'. Seep. 116 op. cit.
6. They had of course been anticipated in essentials by others, like Richard
Price.
7. 'Consequentialism' is a fairly new term. The theory is opposed to
utilitarianism, but insists all the same that we must look to the consequences.
If this means that we must consider what our action wiii bring about it is too
general to be significant. It excludes absolute prohibition, but what else? Its
advocates have no. yet made it sufficiently clear how their view differs from
Ross's doctrine of prima facie duties. For an informative discussion see 'It
makes no difference whether or not I do it',Jonathan Glover and M. Scott
Taggart, Proceedings ofthe Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. XLIX.
8. Individuals, p. Ill.
9. Cf. p. II above.
10. In thediscussionofA..J. Ayer'sviewsin my The Elusive Mind, pp. 251-9.
11. The Elusive Mind, Chapter XIII.
12. Chapter 9.
13. Proceedings ofthe Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. XLIX, p. 242.
14. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. XLVIII, pp. 162-3.
15. 'Strawson's Transcendental Deduction', Philosophical Quarterly, p. 123.
16. Op. cit., p. 125.
17. As I have tried to show in The Elusive Mind, Chapter X, Cf. also
Chapter VI.
18. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol. XliX, pp. 244-5.
19. Listener, 3Ju1y 1975. See Chapter 3.
3 Religion and the
Paranormal

There can be little doubt that, if some of the alleged findings of

parapsychology could be established, they would have very great
importance for religion. I hope to give s~me indication of this in
due course. But first a word of warning. We must try to view
these alleged discoveries in the proper perspective and avoid
exaggeration and distortion. It has often happened that, when
new discoveries are made, they are taken to provide a major clue
to all remaining problems, the one key for which we have been
waiting. A J:l!.ajor fault of some philosophical systems, Hegelian
idealism, for instance, or some features oflinguistic analysis, has
been to present themselves in this way. Process philosophy has
lately been casting itselffor the same role. In the late nineteenth
century, evolution was supposed to be the open sesame, and we
had 'evolutionary ethics', 'evolutionary social theory', and even
'evolutionary metaphysics'. Some turn to the teachings of Teil-
hard de Chardin in the same way. But it is extremely unlikely, in
my opinion, that we shall find any marvellous once-for-all clue of
this kind. Problems do ramify and they may be more interrelated
than some have supposed, but they have also to be tackled on
their merits. We must continue with 'the long and circuitous
route' and resist the delusions of the short way.
One point at which this warning is very much needed, in
respect to parapsychology, is where the findings of psychical
research are invoked to counter materialistic theories or break
down some other form of the alleged dependence of mind on body
which rules out the possibility ofsome life after death. Many have
rejoiced in the prospect of settling the issue of materialism and
related doctrines once for all in this way. The day has dawned
© Allen & Unwin Ltd 1976
36 Persons and Life After Death

when we need not be troubled by these awkward doctrines any

more - their spell is finally .broken. But this is very false comfort.
Materialism seems to me about as implausible a view as any we
could adopt, and I marvel that ingenious thinkers still persist in
it. I also believe that there are fatal objections to various forms of
the 'identity thesis'. But this must be shown on its own account: if
materialism is false, it must be shown to be so as a general account
of behaviour and consciousness. If we fail to do this we cannot
turn, as a last desperate resort, to psychical research. For, if a
materialistic account of consciousness in general is plausible, it
will not be very hard to extend this to the peculiar experiences and
situations presented in psychical research. We must take the case
for the non-material character of consciousness on its merits; it
must stand or fall quite irrespective of any particular finding of
either recent psychology or physics. The appeal must be, for us as
for men in times past, to what we find consciousness, in its varied
forms, actually to be. We have no advantage here over Greek
philosophers or any others. Experience itself must be shown not to
be neutral here. If that will not do, nothing will. We must win
the major battle and not allow our forces to be deployed wholly
in a skirmish on the edges of the field and without proper support.
This being said, I must add, however, that those whose anxiety
over corporealist views of personality stems mainly from the
threat to expectations of afterlife, may well find considerable
reasons for continuing to have those expectations in the findings
of psychical research properly assessed. It will be unwise to
proceed as if the issue rested solely on such evidence. If the
corporealist views are sound, no amount of evidence will help.
For, on that assumption, there could be nothing which could
survive the dissolution of our corporeal existence. Some seek to
retrieve the position here by extending their notion of our cor-
poreal being, for example, to include an astral body. But, in
addition to many other difficulties in this notion, there must
surely be little point or comfort in the expectation that, when the
body of which we are normally aware is reduced to ashes, an
astral body, and that alone, will survive. Invoking the astral body
will only help if it is allowed that a great deal more is involved.
The idea of an astral body could indeed have significance if it
were shown that strict continuity of our present materia
existence is essential for any thought of our continuity as persona
 Religion and the Paranormal 37
beings. But it is also well to point out that the arguments for some
kind of identity or other corporealist thesis rest on ways in which
the body, as we normally apprehend it (affording a 'point of
view' in perception etc., and causally affecting our mental
processes) is vital, or thought to be vital, for an adequate under-
standing of persons and their experience. The astral body hardly
comes into the picture here, and it is hard to see what function it
could be thought to serve which could not be ensured equally
well by some other body, an entirely new one which we might
acquire or have conferred upon us. Indeed, much of the alleged
evidence for the astral body could support equally well the idea
of some different body or materialisation which comes about in
special conditions. But even if there should be outright physical
evidence for a properly physical astral body, or some like
extension ofour corporeal existence, this would seem to have little
interest for us except as a means of sustaining more than an astral
body in itself. To the extent that the astral body is a feature of our
normal physical body or in some way continuous with it, the
question must also be asked how plausible it is to suppose that the
one can survive what seems to be such a total dissolution of the
other. I will not pursue this further now, as I am convinced that
those who entertain ideas of an astral body have not yet done
their philosophical homework upon it. I return therefore to the
main point that, with or without the idea of an astral body, such
evidence as we invoke must relate explicitly to what we find
ourselves, as experiencing beings, to be.
The substance of the evidence alleged to be relevant here, must
consist largely, it seems to me, of ways we may be thought to
acquire information which could not easily be explained except
on the basis of its being communicated to us by persons who were
once alive in this world but are now dead. The form which this
might take, and the stringency of the tests we should apply, have
been considered in more detail by me in my book The Self and
Immortality. It is in terms of communications most plausibly
attributed to 'departed' persons, rather than on eventualities of a
more strictly or exclusively physical sort, that the most serious
claims for psychical evidence for survival have usually been
advanced. If some material component of me, and that alone,
were shown to survive, it would not interest me more than some
assurance that my bones were indestructible. To prove that
38 Persons and Life Afte.r Death

conscious or intelligent creatures survive I need some evidence of

their existence as conscious or intelligent creatures.
To examine the evidence we have in these ways for some kind
of afterlife is too ambitious a task to be undertaken here, and it
falls outside my scope. But it is not without significance that clear-
sighted thinkers and investigators like H. H. Price have found the
evidence in some cases sufficiently strong to warrant a firm indi-
cation of some kind of life after death. My own verdict, from a
much mor<; limited experience of the subject, would go the same
way. If this is a reasonable view of the present state of these
studies, then the implications of it are very great indeed.
Admittedly these findings of psychical research will not give
the religious person all that he wants, or anything like it. The
most that seems to be established is that some persons live on for
some time after the destruction of the present body, though with a
presumption, one might well suppose, that, after surviving so
radical a change, the soul is not easily destroyed. Nothing is
established about life eternal, and there is little indication of the
quality ofthe 'life beyond'. Much that seems to 'come through',
in mediumistic and other evidence, is remarkably trivial, al-
though there is significant indication of a concern the dead
continue to have for the living. But Professor Price has effectively
pointed out that the appearance of nonsense or triviality in many
of the supposed communications may be due mainly to complexi-
ties and imperfections in the mode of its transmission at present.
It may not even be possible to convey to us, in the particular
conditions of the present life, any distinctive richness of a
radically different mode of being. But even if all this is granted,
and if there proved to be nothing peculiarly exciting or inspiring
in reports of a life beyond (and that is certainly too gloomy a view
of the available evidence), the mere fact that there was distinct
indication of there continuing to be life for us after we are dead-
this would be quite momentous in itself.
That the evidence at present does not cause much of a stir is
mainly due to the fact that, as in more popular accounts of
hauntings and curious visitations, the reports are deemed to be
too ambiguous and uncertain to be taken very seriously. They
are thought to be stuff for the credulous and the uncritically
pious. But if the evidence proved to be such that sensible people
would have to accept it, or accept the substantial consensus of
 Religion and the Paranormal 39

competent opinion, as we do in astronomy or medicine for

example, then I find it hard to believe that this would not cause
the greatest excitement, and indeed lead to radical changes of
outlook.
This does not imply that the thought ofa future existence is
invariably agreeable. As many, including Broad and Price, have
pointed out, it has its sombre and daunting side. Indeed, on some
religious views, the fear of death is greatly inflamed by intima-
tions of terrible punishments to be incurred when we come 'to
face our Maker', unending torment as some Christians have
thought in their curious commendation of the doctrine of a God
of infinite love. Quite apart from aberrations of this kind, there
are many ways in which the thought of another life, especially
one whose quality will be much affected by what we have made
of ourselves in this one, is daunting. Indeed any radical change
makes us nervous and can be extremely disconcerting. The out-
right pessimism of C. D. Broad may be idiosyncratic, but he is
not alone in hoping that we do not have to live beyond our
present span. The prospect that opens before us can certainly be
daunting. It has an unmistakably sombre side.
At the same time I am firmly convinced that the great majority
of men would find unbelievable comfort in an assurance which
they could firmly accept that their existence is not finally ended
at death. The dauntingness of the change, and the strangeness of
anticipations oflife in some quite different mode, are not the root
causes of the fear of death, but rather the thought of our total
extinction. To pass out into the black night of total oblivion is a
fate which is peculiarly dreaded, to the extent that the prospect
makes a real impact even with the further thought that we s~all
have no cognisance of it. The latter thought affords little mitiga-
tion of dread, and rightly so in my view. One's experience must
be peculiarly jaded for us to take consolation in the thought that
there is nothing beyond it. If, on the other hand, life has been
found enjoyable and rewarding, if much has been achieved, the
thought of further attainment and new experience and of fulfil-
ment and enrichment not· possible now, and of relief and
compensation for many present ills, must surely be profoundly
exciting and comforting. There should be nothing craven or
cowardly in the thought of a life be'9'ond.
I shall not pursue this further here. My view, for what it is
40 Persons and Life After Death

worth, is that expectation of a future existence is a natural and

proper one in itself and that the great majority would rejoice in
any assurance of it. Indeed, if such assurance were unmistakable,
that would not merely bring comfort to many, most of all at the
death of their friends, but also open out new prospects and per-
spectives, sombre and exciting alike, that could radically alter
our conspectus on a great many other matters and give us a more
restrained and balanced view of our present fortunes. It would
not give us all that various religions claim that we need, but it
would give most of us a very new outlook and prospects which
would substantially transform our attitudes and expectations
from day to day. Life would not be the fleeting transitory thing
which it seems to be for many. Carpe diem is not on any view a
sound motto, and humanists know it well, they do not just eat and
drink and be merry. But it does not follow that there may not be
profound frustration for many at the limited and transitory
character of present achievement.
The scriptures tell us of those who will not 'be persuaded
though one rose from the dead'. This may be so as far as the
profounder insights and transformations required by religion are
concerned. But if anyone were unmistakably so to return, I can
conceive of nothing that would hit the headlines more. And
rightly. Far more would be involved than idle curiosity. The
event might bring about a radical shift of interest, it would shake
many to the foundations, and could perhaps work a major move
forward in human affairs. Explorations ofspace might be nothing
to it.
All power then to psychical research. It is not a panacea for all
evils. Its potential is limited. But within its limits it could well
have results, not merely of immense excitement in themselves,
but far-reaching and profoundly beneficial for human society.
Religious folk do ill therefore to look askance at, as very many do,
or to fight shy of psychical research. They do well to insist that it
is no substitute for religion, and that it does not come within its
scope to meet the peculiar needs to which religion is addressed. It
could well be that all, however fine and remarkable, could
eventually defeat itself without religion. But there is no reason
why psychical research should aspire to the place of religion, and
it rarely seeks to do so. Religious people should not therefore look
on parapsychology as a rival, or a dangerous pedlar of inade-
 Religion and the Paranormal 41

quate religious wares. They should view it, as many enlightened

religious people do, as an ally capable of great achievements in a
common cause and peculiarly helpful in a confused and sceptical
age like our own. Indeed, nothing which markedly extends the
range of human achievement and understanding is alien to
religion.
As has been pointed out, however, the claims of religion itself
are addressed to much deeper needs than those which can be met
by psychical research, however novel and profound. The sort of
phenomena of which we read in psychical research are those of
clairvoyance, telekinesis, precognition, having dreams or appari-
tions which turn out to be ofspecial significance, out-of-the-body
experiences, etc. There is no inherent reason why any of these
should not be understood in secular terms or admitted by a
humanist. Even intimations of communications from the dead
would not in themselves give assurance of more than an extra-
ordinary extension of our own finite existence. This does not
mean that we query the peculiarity of psychic phenomena as
such or offer an account of them so attenuated that they are not
paranormal at all. Nor does it seem plausible to me to account
for paranormal phenomena exhaustively in terms of material
conditions, as some would do. I believe such an explanation of
any experience is in any case inadequate. All the same, we do not
seem to have, in any of the alleged occurrences, more than
remarkable extensions of the sort of powers we exercise normally.
Take causation at a distance. If I could lift the spoon at the far
end of the table by just willing to do so, instead of walking round
and picking it up in the usual way, this would be no more
remarkable in the last resort than the control I normally exercise
over my own body. It is just brute fact that I can change the
state of my body in certain ways, and thereby bring about other
changes. Explanation of how this happens is in terms of regulari-
ties in what we find in fact to be the case. If causal laws were
different, or if we were endowed with different powers, these
would be just further finite facts, and if they led out in some way
to religion they would do so only in the same way in principle as
any other fact of our experience. If we lived in a world of magic,
as we might think of it now, there would be no more cause for
wonder than there is already at the way we find things now.
The case is not substantially different, it seems to me, in respect
42 Persons and Life After Death

of clairvoyance or precognition. If it is proved that some people

do have such powers, this may seem very bewildering in relation
to normal expectations, and it may baffle explanation. But this
would be only in the sense that such powers do not fall within the
course of what we normally anticipate. Would precognition be
any more remarkable in the last resort than the fact that we
normally see things when our eyes are open? We can explain the
latter in terms of affectations of our eyes and in consequence our
brains. But why should this extraordinary thing come about that
we have this sort of experience when the brain is in a certain
state? To this we can ultimately give no answer. If our powers
were different, that might be very important in various ways, but
they would still be exercises of finite powers.
In an earlier discussion of this subject, I drew a distinction
between states which are paranormal in respect of causal ante-
cedents or the way they come about, and those which are in
themselves inherently different from what we experience in the
normal course of things. Lifting a spoon with a nod of my head
would be very remarkable in the first way, in itselfit would be the
trivial thing it normally is. If I had considerable extension of such
powers, this might have momentous consequences, but only by
way of my being able to accomplish things I cannot undertake
now, as someone who has learned to swim might rescue a person
who would otherwise be left to drown. Acquiring a sixth sense
would be a very different matter. I can form no idea what it
would be like any more than someone totally blind from birth
could have any proper idea of what colours are like. There may
therefore be certain ecstatic experiences to which no proper
analogy may be found in present experience, and of which no
explicit account can be given to those who have not had such
experience themselves. No one can deny that people do have such
experiences, unless they claim that something inherently impos-
sible happens, like seeing a square circle. There is no inherent
reason why all experience should be the kind of thing we find it
now, and if some people claim to have been lifted 'to the seventh
heaven' or had some other experience of which they can give the
rest of us no proper indication but only speak of it 'slant-wise', in
terms of its conditions or accompaniments or in some very
general terms from normal description ('wonderful', 'dazzling',
'horrible' etc.), then we certainly cannot rule this out in the sense
 Religion and the Paranormal 43

of denying that they have had such an experience. They may

have, but on the other hand we cannot accept this on their say-so.
They may be lying, they may be deluded and not be having
quite as odd an experience as seems to them. But the main point
now is that, even if people do have experiences which are
paranormal, in the present more intrinsic sense, this again does
not in itself give us more than an extension of experiences which
finite beings enjoy. We would have a parallel if most of us had
been blind or deaf and some began to see and hear.
The mere fact of being paranormal does not, therefore, in
either of the senses distinguished, provide anything of a properly
religious significance. Everything will depend, as in normal
experience, on the kind of paranormal experience it is. But this
conclusion depends in turn, in some measure at least, on how the
term 'religion' is understood. Ifeverything which falls outside the
normal course of our experience is thought to be religious, then
paranormal experiences are obviously religious. In that case
magic of any kind would be religious, and we might even find
some persons apt to regard exceptional feats ofscience as religious
-walking in space for example. There is no royal way of settling
disputes aboutthe meaning of a term like 'religion'. It is certainly
used in a variety of ways and the list of possible definitions is a
notoriously long one. But I should argue, however, as I have done
at length in my book Our Experience of God, that the sustained and
serious use of this term involves a reference to some ultimate
existence in relation to which the fleeting and limited events of
our finite experience find a more complete or abiding significance
than they can ever have of themselves.
This may not require the sort of transcendent ultimate being,
distinct from all other conditioned reality, which is prominent in
most theistic religions. The case will be met, for some, in a
monistic mysticism which accords a different role to seemingly
finite things. But I should be prepared to argue that there must
be a reference to some ultimate existence if the sort of aspirations
we normally associate with religion are to be met. Postulation of
beings vastly better endowed than we are and without our more
obvious limitations, would not, I think, suffice although some
would find it odd to withhold the term 'religion' in such cases.
My own view is that the aspirations men have in worship, prayer,
meditation and all religious living direct us eventually to a
44 Persons and Life After Death

transcendent being to which we stand in a special relation. What

significance has the paranormal in that sort of context? It should
be evident that, if the word 'religion' is understood alongthe lines
indicated, then the paranormal has no explicit religious signifi-
cance as such. It provides only further finite phenomena, and it is
important that this should be stressed if the proper aims and
conditions of a religious concern are not to be distorted, and
energies directed misleadingly to wrong religious channels. At
the same time, intimations of paranormal experience have had a
prominent place in various forms of religion down the ages. This
is due partly to peripheral affinities, and to false and superstitious
beliefs and misunderstanding. But this is by no means entirely
the case. We have to hold the importance of the paranormal in
religion in the right perspective, but that is not to deny its
substantial importance, in itself and historically.
Some of this may be discerned in the initial or basic insight by
which we become aware of some supreme or ultimate reality on
which all else finally depends. Such a transcendent reality is
essentially mysterious and, in essentials, incomprehensible to us.
We know only that it has to be as the ground of all limited and im-
perfect existence. But from the nature of the case the apprehen-
sion of such an ultimate unconditional being has no proper
parallel in ordinary modes of reasoning or in other finite insights.
It requires a very special insight which is itself evoked by en-
livened apprehension of the essentially incomplete and con-
ditioned character of everything else, including all that we
encounter day by day. Such insight is aided and stimulated by
those features of our experience which stir us out of the normal
round and complacent acceptance of things as they are. Priva-
tions, untoward events, and disruptive experience, enrichment
of experience beyond what we normally enjoy, these and like
occurrences help to elicit the sense of a reality mysterious, not in
the limited existence which baffles and amazes at the finite level
but which is not inherently beyond comprehension, but in the
sense of wholly imcomprehensible being; and among the
evocative and disturbing modes of experience and occasions
which have this character there must surely be accorded a high
place to any paranormal experiences which can hardly fail to
disturb the unquestioning acceptance of things as they are, and
point to a reality which does not fit at any level into the categories
 Religion and the Paranormal 45

of normal accountability. This must be a major reason for the

prominence accorded to seemingly preternatural features of
existence in traditional religion.
Religion rarely stays, however, at the level of an intuition or
insight into the peculiar necessity of transcendent being. In
oblique and mediated ways the 'beyond' which eludes our proper
understanding in itself may be reflected in the limited world of
our own experience in various ways which religious life and the
study of religion disclose to us. Proper account of these intima-
tions of God in present experience and history is a considerable
topic in itself. But it should not be hard to see that considerable
scope may be found for paranormal awareness to ally itself with
these intimations and disclosures of God, and be brought into
their service. It could well be, for example, that the glory of God
is reflected in some distinctively enriching way in modes of exist-
ence and awareness surpassing those available to us now, but of
which we may have occasional glimpses. As the expression of re-
ligious insights understandably takes markedly figurative forms,
the peculiar mode of experience encountered in some para-
normal states could provide new and stimulating symbolism for
the enrichment and communication of religious discernment,
and there seems little doubt that this is in fact extensively sug-
gested in prophetic utterances and kindred expressions of
religious awareness at diverse times and places. Affinities with
art, both from the side of religion and the paranormal itself, will
likewise be very extensive in this particular context.
A further feature of these phenomena which we need to heed
very carefully is the possibility of distortion and perversion, and
therefore the perversion of religion itself. We may allow the
preternatural to impose itself unduly upon us and mar the
balanced judgement of our present existence and its aims which
we need to cultivate and maintain. Religion itself is peculiarly
open to perversion as the persistent warning against various
forms of idolatry makes very plain. Religious practice has its
dangers as well as its comfort and enhancement ofbeing; in par-
ticular, in becoming aware of the demanding, disturbing
character of the impact of the transcendent upon us, we tend to
evade it by diverting its rigour and splendour to related features
of the media by which it is conveyed to us, thus, as I have put it
elsewhere, encapsulating the divine in the limited media,
46 Persons and Life After Death

including our own religious roles and practices. Such perversion

could in turn be aggravated and extended by its involvement in
such preternatural factors as religion can most readily draw into
its service, most of all if the latter are themselves abused or
cultivated in ways at odds with the requirements of a rounded
existence, whether in the furtherance of private aims or of our
commitment to one another.
At this point we have, therefore, a highly significant clue to
much that is suspect in the history of seemingly paranormal
powers and their association with religion. In unholy alliance,
religion and the paranormal can be peculiarly and extensively
harmful, and it is a gravely irresponsible matter to play with
either. We may, or we may not, invoke actual evil agencies other
than ourselves with which we may traffic or by which we may be
influenced or corrupted, and there is certainly nothing inherently
improbable in such possibility, but in one way or another, in
overt demonology or less explicitly, we may find the preter-
natural in religion a source not of enhancement and illumination,
but of peculiarly ugly and harmful perversion. Tantum potuit
religio suadere malorum. Rarely is this more evident than in the
present context. The remedy is not to forswear all concern with
the preternatural but to achieve proper understanding of it and
its place in a properly guided religious awareness. Though all our
highest attainments admit of perversion, that is no reason for
resisting them; we should merely exercise greater care in the
direction of them to their proper courses.
A further topic to which these investigations relate is that of
miracles. It is again notoriously difficult to indicate all that a
miracle involves, bur it is hard to use the term 'miracle' in a
meaningful way without presupposing some radical break in the
course of events as they happen in terms of the regularities we
establish on the basis of experience or observation. But such a
break could include much besides miracles - genuinely open
choice, for example, and paranormal events. To constitute a
miracle, there must be not only the rupture in the normal causal
sequence, but some association of this with a supreme or trans-
cendent reality on which the finite order itself depends. How
this is established is a further issue in itself. But it follows, if my
main submission is right, that the paranormal as such is not
expressly miraculous. On the other hand, it would not be
 Religion and the Paranormal 47

surprising if elevated and highly charged religious states were to

stimulate various paranormal powers which might otherwise be
dormant. In that case the study of miracles and of paranormal
powers might be found to throw much light on one another.
Closely related to this are the problems of the peculiar claims
made by persons in various ecstatic states. These are also notor-
iously hard to assess, especially as the accounts that are offered of
them are in highly figurative language. Some claims, as intimated
earlier, may be dismissed at once if taken at their face value, for
they seem to be inherently impossible. But the study of other
paranormal phenomena, including those which may be
deliberately induced by various physical stimulants or exercises,
could help us to understand better what in fact is being claimed
in ecstatic or visionary experiences. Study of the latter in turn
could help us in psychical research. The important point here, as
in the case we considered at more length at the start, namely
evidence for survival after death, is that the properly religious
issue, however conceived, should not be straightway equated
with that of the preternatural as such. In practice the blend may
be very close, but that gives us all the more reason for heeding the
appropriate distinctions. Religion has to do, in most forms at
least, with some reality altogether beyond finite conditions, and
the considerations centrally relevant to it have little to do expres-
sly with paranormal phenomena. Religious life proceeds for
many people without thought of preternatural events, other than
some relation mediated in present experience with a transcen-
dent reality, involving, for most theistic religions at least, a
continuation of our personal existence. Evaluational considera-
tions will have a central part in this and thoughts of preter-
natural events, including miracles if they happen, will be
peripheral and subordinate to more distinctively religious con-
cerns. At the same time, if these warnings are properly heeded,
the religious person disregards the evidence for paranormal
phenomena at his peril. He throws aside a peculiarly valuable
aid in directing attention from the more mundane course of
events, or the mundane view of them, to suggestive and stimu-
lating aspects of experience which may be closely involved with
properly religious insight, and may help to arouse and enrich it.
Properly conducted, the study of alleged paranormal events
could prove to be of inestimable value in the due appreciation of
48 Persons and Life After Death

religious claims in a largely secular age. That could be exception-

ally fruitful when religion is considered in close association with
the study of art and literature. I would thus like to close my
present discussion with a passage in which I summed up my own
understanding of the subject in my fuller treatment of it else-
where:

The accounts we have of some supernormal occurrences

suggest very strikingly that they may have an exceptional
suitability for the purpose of enlivening religious awareness
and providing a focus for it. It appears from some reports of
paranormal states artificially induced, and thus subject to
more deliberate and designed inspection, that they involve a
very sharp impact on the mind of real objects in one's vicinity
or of hallucinatory ones. This has interesting affinities with art
and religion and if these should be confirmed and seen to affect
imaginative power in general, it would give us reason to expect
exceptional states of consciousness to have a function, not
unlike that of art and in combination with it, offocusing and
sustaining and extending our religious life as a whole. But if this
should be the case, we come back again to the integration of
individual occurrences, however extraordinary, with our total
religious impressions as they disclose to us the character of God
and of His dealings with us which are much more vital for our
relationship with God than any incidental feature of the
setting in which they appear.
4 Life after Death

A discussion between: Anthony Quinton (chairman), Fellow of New

College, President Elect of Trinity College, Oiford; H. D. Lewis and
Bernard Williams, Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy, University of
Cambridge.

Quinton: In the past, although there was disagreement as to

whether or not people actually did survive the death and
dissolution of their bodies, it was not doubted that the personal
survival of death was a conceivable possibility, that, whether it
was true or false, it was an intelligible hypothesis. But in recent
times many philosophers have denied this hitherto unquestioned
assumption.' They have argued that the mental life of human
beings is in various ways essentially, and not just as a matter of
earthly, and perhaps temporary, fact, bound up with their
bodies. H. D. Lewis, professor of the history and philosophy of
religion at King's College in the university of London, is going
to argue the case for the possibility of survival against the con-
viction, that is now widespread among philosophers, that it is
inconceivable. After he has spoken Bernard Williams, who is
Knight bridge professor of philosophy at Cambridge University,
and who is a leading exponent of the view that persons must be
embodied, will question him. I will take part in the discussion
from a position which is, I think, suitably intermediate between
Lewis's positive belief in survival and Williams's denial of its
conceivability.
Lewis: I recently read a tribute to a very fine lady who died
last Spring. At the close of it the author said that this lady had
Radio Three ©British Broadcasting Corporation 1975
50 Persons and Life After Death

now 'received the commendation of the Master himself'. Does

this mean anything to us today except as a nice literary way of
ending a tribute? The Master here is a man who lived very
long ago in substantially the same conditions as ourselves
(except for modern amenities), who ate and drank and got
tired ~nd slept, who enjoyed the world of nature and the company
of friends, and who died a cruel death. Christians claim that
they are in genuine fellowship with this man now and that after
we die we are in a peculiarly intimate relationship with him
and with others we have 'lost awhile'. And not only Christians.
The claim that we live again after we have died is central to most
religions. On a view that is very widely held we have many
such lives. How many believe this today, or look for anything
beyond the present life? That is not easy to answer, least of all
if we think of a firm expectation and not some vague adherence
to some traditional orthodoxy. Is there any sense in such
an expectation?
It must be said at once that, if the view that prevails today
among philosophers, especially in English-speaking countries,
and is even endorsed by many theologians - if this view is sound,
then that settles the matter for us; there can be no afterlife.
The case for it is not just difficult, it cannot get off the ground.
I refer here to the corporealist view of persons, including what
is usually known as the 'identity-thesis'. The most uncompro-
mising form of this is materialism, of which there are gifted and
vigorous proponents still. Unlike the 'old-fashioned' materialist,
such as the behaviouristJ. B. Watson, who held that our thoughts
were literally movements in our vocal cords, unlike this the
materialist today is more subtle and claims to have a proper
place for intentions and purposes, and to distinguish properly
'between men and puppets', persons and clocks. But he can only
do this in terms of complexities and patterns of physical be-
haviour, hypothetical statements and dispositions. He can, that
is, allow no distinct mental process. Argument with such thinkers
is most frustrating, for they expect us to counter their cases, if at
all, by arguments which do not involve appeal to one's own
awareness of having thoughts and sensations in the very process
of having them; but the way we know that we have a pain, to
take a simple example, and what pain is like, is just in having it.
And so at all levels. It is not a case oflooking in, in introspection,
 Life After Death. A Discussion 51

at what goes on. We know what our thoughts and sensations are
like in having them, though of course there are further things to
be said.
Now the 'identity thesis' allows for the existence, in some form
of distinct mental processes but claims that they are nonetheless
bound up with the body or identical with it in the last analysis.
Two things may be involved here. One is the obvious causal
dependence of mind on body in the conditions we know. The
other is the more logical indispensability of the body, making
possible a point of view in perception or a possible account or
way of accounting for our continuous identity. I have discussed
both these points in my recent book, The Self and Immortality.
Indeed, I stressed the importance of the body in many ways in a
chapter of that book. But I also insist that the course of our
thoughts is not wholly determined by the body, it moves in terms
of what it is in itself as well, and I hold, of which more in a
moment, that we can be conceived to exist without at least the
present body.
For the moment the main point I make is that, if any version of
these fashionable views is sound, the idea of afterlife is out. For
no one surely denies that there will be a complete end of my
present body when I die. We may think romantically at times of
the dead sleeping 'beneath that yew tree's shade' but we all
know well that there are no people asleep in the cemetery, only
corpses; and most of us nowadays will in any case be cremated; if
we drown we shall be consumed by yet other creatures. Some
will reply 'Ah, but it is not the resuscitation of corpses that we
have in mind, but the resurrection of the body'. But in what
sense the body? If a new body somewhat like this one, then that
is a different view, and I shall come to it. But if I am identical
with my present physical body, then the end of that body is the
end of me.
To this some religious thinkers reply that 'with God all things
are possible'. All right, but are we then seriously to think that
God reassembles the dissipated elements of our bodies, or the
basic constituents, atoms or electrons or whatever they may be,
from the four winds or wherever, collects them to create literally
the same body again? What conceivable purpose could this
serve? What of any value could turn upon it? Surely, if we think
of some further embodied existence, it must be with a new body,
52 Persons and Life After Death

however like this one, Ifyou persist in saying it must be this one, I
must ask 'At what stage, of this body, when one's body changes
so much?'
Now one further recourse that some have here is to the notion
of an astral body. But there is much obscurity here. Such evidence
as may be adduced for an astral body would seem to support just
as well some other paranormal possibility. Nor is the evidence for
it well sifted. We get by normally without much thought of an
astral body, and the arguments which try to show that the
body is essential for the concept of a person pass it by. Whether I
have, quite unknown to me, such a body or not, that is not what I
wonder about if I ask whether I shall survive or not. If, as is
alleged, this astral body is a genuinely physical one, detectable
by 'an instrument', as it has been put, it is strange that it is so
little in evidence.
What possibilities, then, remain? One is reincarnation. We
may live again on this earth, or its like. This is not, in my view,
inconceivable, provided we can maintain the view of identity in
a non-corporeal way which I have supported in my writings. But
whether there is a good case for it otherwise is another matter.
The general arguments, for example in terms of retribution or
reward, seem to me very thin, and they are rarely exposed to
critical scrutiny. The citation of evidence, the famous twenty
cases of reincarnation investigated in a recent book, has many
loopholes. In my last book, I indicated the sort of situation for
which the idea of reincarnation might be the most plausible
explanation. But it is hard to think of any case which would
begin to have, that is any actual case, which would begin to have,
the firmness and precision required.
There remain two major possibilities. One is that we shall live
again, not in physical space, but in some other embodied form,
or with a different sort of body. The model for this, as a rule, is the
sort of body we have in a dream. We do, of course, retain our
physical bodies when we dream. We do not 'leave' them. My
body, curled up in a chair or in bed, continues to function, and to
condition my experience causally. If I have a fever the state of
my body will give me delirious dreams, indigestion gives me a
nightmare. In some physical states while still asleep I may not
perhaps be dreaming at all. Even so, I am not, as a rule at least,
aware of my physical body when I dream. But I do have some
 Life After Death. A Discussion 53

kind of body, I 'see' things from a point of view and do things like
playing tennis, walking in the fields, talking to friends, or running
from a burning house in a nightmare. It may be said that I do not
really see anything in a dream, because there is nothing there, no
house is actually on fire. But my experience is so like seeing that I
do not know any different at the time. The tree I climb is just like
a real tree - it is not mental pretending. There are coloured
shapes, sounds (though no one else hears them), quasi-sounds if
you like but the experience is the same, somatic sensations, pain,
sense of stress of things weighing on one or being crushed. I can
likewise see parts of my dream body,just like looking at my arms
and legs now.
The odd thing is that this dream body and the things in the
scene around me do not behave like things in the real world, they
change or disappear in a very random way, though we sometimes
have very coherent dreams. They leave no effect on the physical
world to which we return, and this is why we say they are not
real. A real fire would have left my house in ruins. But they are
real enough in their way, and so are the mental images I conjure
up in a reverie; there are real coloured shapes before me at the
time. And the suggestion is that another world might be like the
world of images and dreams we have now except that there are
stricter rules and consistencies determining the way things
happen. If my body were whisked away while I dream and I
nonetheless continued to have a coherent dream experience, this
could be an excellent model of one sort of after life we may
envisage.
Now hard problems arise of course when we think of com-
munication with others. But there are problems about this
in any case. Our awareness of other beings is mediated; even in
telepathy we do not know the minds of others. as they know them
themselves. Why could not the same conditions hold in essentials
in the image-world as in the physical world ? Could there be
communication also with the living? I do not see why not,
provided the dead, in their world, and ourselves in ours, found
that some of the things we do had repercussions, though not of
course in line with physical laws, in one another's worlds. How
could we know these things, with such a 'gulf fixed' between? In
line, I suggest, with the way we might communicate with beings
in outer space in terms of certain sights or sounds which look like
54 Persons and Life After Death

a code we learn to decipher and put to the test. In my book I

have worked out more closely how this might go.
The same principles apply in essentials, but obviously in ways
we find harder to anticipate, if we think of the remaining
alternative, namely that we should live again with no body at all.
It is hard for us to form any conception of what this would be like.
But we may approach it if we think of ourselves so deeply
absorbed in some intellectual activity that we become almost
oblivious of our bodies and our surroundings and suppose that
our bodies were then whisked away and we continued with our
train of thought. If this continued we would have what I have
elsewhere called 'a world of thoughts alone'. How would we ever
then in those conditions get across to other persons? Telepathy, I
think, affords some clue here. But there may be general ways in
which we might find some things seemingly imposed on our own
thoughts, not just normal disruptions of our concentration, and if
this followed a pattern, with appropriate changes according to
our own responses, we might find this the basis of what would
become in due course an easy and spontaneous way of com-
municating. It would indeed seem to us now that such an
existence would be an anaemic and colourless one. But in-
tellectual exchange is not always unexciting, and there might
be many compensations and new modes and media of existence,
·rich and rewarding and intimate beyond anything we can
comprehend now. We only know mind and matter. What other
dimensions might there not be? As Spinoza brilliantly implied,
we should not close the door on this.
But what then of our own identity in either of the states
described? My view, very sharply, is that everyone is aware of
the being that he is in just being himself. He may, in loss of
memory, forget his name, his home and much besides. But he
still knows that he is himself. Personal identity is ultimate, and
our awareness of it. But how do I know that I am the same from
one state to the next - and one world to another? Partly on the
basis of continuities of circumstance and awareness, but more
firmly and expressly through memory, in the stricter sense of my
remembering particular things myself, like coming into this
studio. I recall not only the coming in, but the total situation
including the same awareness of myself at the time as I have now.
This is not bound to happen in afterlife, that is we may live again
 Life After Death. A Discussion 55

without memory of this life, as on some notions of reincarnation.

For further reasons, connected with the kind of hope and reason
we have for a further life, I think that unlikely.
A word before I close on the sort of reasons we may have for
supposing, not that it is conceivable that we shall live again, but
that we shall in fact do so. General philosophical arguments will
not help much here, even though some of the most notable
thinkers have tried it. The evidence of psychical research could
be more important. It will not give the religious person all that
he wants, but, if successful, it could make a radical and startling
difference to our outlook. Religious persons are unwise to neglect
or despise it. But the basic reason is religious, faith if you like, but
not blind faith, a view of ourselves and the universe in which
rational considerations are closely blended with sensitivity to the
available religious evidence.
Quinton: Well I think a good point where we might start from,
and I think probably the thing we should begin with, is that of
the negative considerations that count against the idea of
survival. I think what you referred to as the 'corporealist' view of
persons in fact could be seen to embrace a number of different
lines of attack on the idea that human personality can survive
death. So I think it would be a good idea if I just disentangled
three of these, because I think they're of different degrees of
strength or radicalness in the undermining they claim to carry
out on the view that personality can survive the death of the
body. I think the one you perhaps spoke most about, what's
sometimes called central state materialism, brings the least
pressure to bear. This is the view that as a matter of fact, every
state of mind is at the same time a state of the brain, that, as it
were, the state of the mind and the state of the brain are two
aspects of one and the same occurrence. But it does hold that this
is as it were a matter of fact. It's a law of nature that, let us say,
when states of the brain in a living organism reach a certain
degree of complexity, they bec.:ome at that level states of mind,
one feature of which perhaps is that they are in some sense
announcing themselves to the possessor of that brain in such a
way that he's conscious of, and if suitably linguistically equipped,
can report that this is going on in him. And the thing about this
view is that all it says is that as a matter offact all the mentality in
the world we know of is associated with brains and it proceeds to
56 Persons and Life After Death

exploit and develop this fact. But that of course doesn't say that
the existence of mental states without brains is impossible. It just
says that wherever there are mental states, there are in a very
thorough and systematic way, brains.
So that's merely a dispute about how nature contingently
happens to be. A more radical view, I think is what perhaps had
better be called philosophical behaviourism. I'm thinking of the
view put forward in Ryle's Concept of Mind where a mental state
is said to be essentially a disposition of a living organism of a
certain kind to behave in certain ways. And the thing about this
is that there is no sense in ascribing a mental state to an individual
organism unless that organism really is an organism capable of
displaying the behaviour. It does not have to be displaying the
behaviour when it is in a mental state, but for it to be in that
mental state is to be disposed so to do in the way that a rubber
ball lying on a shelf is disposed to bounce if dropped and so
therefore is still elastic, even if not actually bouncing. Now this
brings a more powerful challenge to the doctrine of the survival
of death, because what of course it implies is that it is strictly
inconceivable that there should be totally disembodied existence
of persons. But it always seems to me that the Rylean doctrine is
compatible with reincarnation. It doesn't require that a given
mind, a given connected sequence of mental states, because a
mind is at least that- and it may be more- that a given mind has
to be affixed to one body, if that mind can be identified in terms
of the memories it has at later stages of what it thought and felt at
earlier stages, and again in terms of a, shall we say, continuously
developing set of character traits, if a mind can be identified in
that way, that particular pattern ofcharacter traits and memories
could be exhibited, in principle, by another body. So although it
does not acknowledge the conceivability of totally disembodied
existence, it does at least allow for reincarnation. But there is, I
think, a third view, and I think this is one that Williams would
want to hold, which is that the concept of the body is indis-
pensable for the work of identifying a person at a given time as
being the very same person as some person who existed at a
previous time, that it is a condition of doing this kind of thing
effectively; and of course it's what we do whenever we recognise
somebody, or use a proper name to refer to somebody, a proper
name that's been used to refer previously. But this is only going
 Life After Death. A Discussion 57
to be possible in the light of the continuity, the identity, of the
body that person has. And in that case of course, there is a body
that is as it were proprietary to each person, and no one person
could be possessed of two different bodies at different times. So,
taking as you do I think the strongest counter-view to Lewis's,
Williams, I'll ask you to say. something on that.
Williams: Well I think that is a very important distinction that
you have introduced there. Certainly the point I would want to
press against what Lewis has said is this point about identity. Now
as you have very properly distinguished, Quinton, I think we must
emphasise that this isn't a question about behaviourism. I do
indeed think, that as a matter of historical fact, philosophical
behaviourism has tended to be more an answer to a set of
questions about how we know that other people have mental
states. It's an issue in the theory of knowledge perhaps rather
than an issue in what persons are, which I think is what we are
here fundamentally concerned with in what Lewis has said. Now
I do not want to deny at all that there is as it were such a thing as
the inner life - a mental life, concerning which each of us in his
own case knows quite a lot. I don't want to deny that for a mo-
ment. I think there are a lot of philosophical issues about what
the status of that truth is, but I do not want to deny it. But of
course, and this I think is a very important point to stress, the
fact that there is such a thing as the inner life does not mean that
the inner life could go on if there was no bodily person to possess
this inner life, and I would want to say that there must be a
bodily person to have such an inner life. Now out of several
reasons, I think that there are two separate points that I would
want to distinguish, which I think are both implicit in what
Lewis has said. And I think it is quite important that they are
different from one another. The first point is that ifl have sup-
posedly a number of different persons existing at the same time-
let us suppose that there are three persons rather than four
persons existing at a given time - the suggestion could be made,
and it seems to me a very plausible one, that the only way of
telling them apart, the only comprehensible basis for dis-
tinguishing between them is that there are three rather than
four separate bodies, exisiting at the same time. And indeed this
of course is not necessarily a materialist or antireligious opinion.
It was held by St Thomas Aquinas and was regarded by him as
58 Persons and Life After Death

the ground of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, that if

there was going to be an immortality, it had to be an immortality
which took the form of a bodily resurrection for this very
reason, the, as philosophers sometimes put it, individuation of
persons at the same time. But of course, the fact that any given
person at a given time has to have one and just one body, does not
strictly imply that the same person over time has to have the same
body. Because it might be that at any given time I would have
some body or other to exist as a person, but nevertheless, it might
be thought I could swop one body for another, as in certain
doctrines of reincarnation, as I think you, Quinton, said in your
opening remarks. Now I want to hold the view, not just like St
Thomas, that at any given time you have got to have some body
or other, but that to be the same person, you have got to have the
same body. And I take it that the requirement that in order to be
the same person you have got to have the same body, over time,
does rule out immortality effectively; and certainly I gathered
from what Lewis said that he would not be disposed to disagree
with this.
Lewis: No, I would not.
Williams: Now why should we say this? Well I just want to
emphasise an exceedingly simple point, which is this: that
everybody who has any conception, however hazy, of either a
future life, resurrection, immortality, and so on, or just, come to
that, a conception of his own future, thinks that he has got a
clear idea about the difference between something in the future
happening to him, and something in the future happening to
somebody else. And unless you have that idea, it seems to me you
haven't got any control over the idea of a personal immortality.
Now, if we have got an idea of the difference between something
happening to me and something happening to somebody else, it
seems to me we must also have an idea of the difference between
something happening to me, and something happening to
somebody else who is just like me. Now, take any of the set of
mental properties which Lewis has emphasised, such as, it might
be, a disposition to remember certain events, or to have certain
characteristic dreams, it seems to me quite clearly that the
following scenario is possible - that I should die, and that some
mad scientist, whoever he might be, should rig up somebody else
to have just the same sort of experiences as I used to have, the
 Life After Death. A Discussion 59

same sorts of dreams as I might have had; and I want to say that
that would not be me. That would be somebody who had mental
properties very like me. And the trouble is, to put it, ifl can, in a
sort of metaphysical nutshell, the trouble about mental pro-
perties, including memories, dispositions to have dreams,
whatever you like, is that they are properties. That is, lots of
different things can in principle have the same ones. Therefore
they cannot possibly secure the difference in it being me who has
these future experiences and not somebody who is just like me.
And since any belief in immortality is based on the idea that
there really is an enormous difference between me having
certain experiences in the future after death, or whatever it is,
and somebody just like me having those experiences, it seems to
me to follow that there must be some basis for distinguishing those
two. Mental properties of whatever kind, memory, dispositions
dreams or whatever they are, being properties, cannot secure
that. And the only thing that could secure it is the identity of the
body.
Therefore, to summarise my view, we all believe, if we are at
all interested in immortality or any such similar expectation, in
the difference between it being me and somebody else. That is the
difference between identity and similarity. The only thing that
can ground the difference in identity and similarity is the body,
therefore I have no future without my body. Therefore there is
no such thing as immortality.
Quinton: Lewis, what do you say to that?
Lewis: May I refer first to the three distinctions which Quinton
drew? Because, it seems to me they could be a little misleading
in one way. Williams's position is really closer to my position
than the ones you distinguished earlier, especially the central
state theory, because there you do have to identify the mental
processes somehow with the state of the brain or some bodily
state. You spoke of the brain state becoming a mental state, and
so forth, and of association of one with its other, but the brain is
indispensable there. You cannot have the mental procesres
without there being the physical processes. And that, it seems to
me, makes it peculiarly difficult to suppose that we could survive
the dissolution of the physical states. Similarly when we speak of
a kind ofRylean doctrine and of one's surviving in the sense that
the same dispositions continue or the same frames of mind, the
60 Persons and Life After Death

same skills and so forth. That is very far removed from any sense
in which you might really want to say that I have survived and
the sense in which one would be interested in whether I survive
at all. But Williams does really recognise processes, or an inner
life as he called it, which are not reducible even to dispositions,
much less to just physical states. And so the crux of the problem
really is whether these mental processes can be thought to have
an identity, or whether I can be as a person having these mental
goings on, and can be identified at all, without reference to a
body. Now, one thing I would like Williams to consider here is,
what about the case of a dream in which I am quite conscious of
who I am? It's all happening to me. I am doing certain things,
but I am not in the dream conscious of this present body. It is
causally effective, admittedly, but that is a contingent relation-
ship. But I can quite well recognise myself and have various
things happening to me, without at least this particular body -
and I identify myself through the dream body. What is wrong
with that sort of identification? Could we start with that?
Williams: Yes. I think that that helps me to explain my
position, because I think that the question you have just raised is
a different question, if I may say so. It is, it seems to me, a
question which relates to the issue of how I know who I am,
whether for instance, in regard to a dream, I have a sense of who
I am or not. Now as a matter of fact, one thing about dreams is
this, that one of the delusions or illusions one can have in a
dream is that one is somebody else, that one is different from the
person one actually is. But that is not the main point. The
questions you have just raised are questions about how I know
who I am. But that's not the point I'm making. The main point
is that when you think about what is promised you - some-
body comes along and says 'I promise you immortality' - then it
seems to me I have to conceive in the abstract, what it is I've
been promised and ask 'is what he's promised me enough to
make it me?' Now the mere fact that there will be a person alive
in the year 3000 who believes he is me, is not a sufficient condition
of my being alive or immortal then. For instance, there is a very
well-known case, you will remember - well there are various
cases- of persons who have been persuaded that they were other
people in the past. They have acquired delusive memories.
They have had dreams of various kinds and so on. Well-known
 Life After Death. A Discussion 61

cases have been cited in the literature of this subject, for example
that George IV towards the end of his life, as I seem to recall, was
convinced that he fought at the Battle of Waterloo, which was a
totally delusive memory on his part. Now to be told that some-
body will exist who believes that he did all and only the things
that I have done, is certainly no reassurance at all. So I do not
think it is a question about how we know who we are. The
question is what conditions have to be satisfied for somebody
actually to be me.
Lewis: Yes, these are really two different questions. I agree that
the question of whether you can be yourself, after your present
body has been destroyed, depends on how we understand what it
is for you to be yourself now.
Williams: Surely.
Lewis: And on this I take a different view from you. The
question how we know is a different question.
Williams: Quite.
Lewis: And that question depends upon memory, among other
things - the more obvious way of knowing that I am the same
person is that I might remember what I have done and so forth.
Williams: Of course.
Lewis: And there would, I agree be other difficulties about that.
Williams: And knowing who you are usually means, I mean in
ordinary parlance, being able to answer questions about your
origins, your past experiences and things like that.
Quinton: It is knowing who you were.
Williams: Yes.
Lewis: Well at a certain level it means that. If somebody asks
me 'Do you know who you are?' I would say 'Yes, I'm Lewis. I
live in such and such a place. I'm fond of certain things' and so
forth. That is one way of identifying me but all this happens to a
particular person all the same and the basic question is how do
we understand that and how do we identify ourselves at that
level ? Because these things, my experiences, where I live, the
sort of chap I am, could happen to other people and be true of
them. And what I say here of course- and this is a point where we
really differ - is that there is something immediate and ultimate
about the way in which I know that I am this being now what-
ever my experiences.
Williams: Well of course there is a general rule in philosophy
62 Persons and Life After Death

that whenever the phrase 'immediate and ultimate' comes up,

one reaches for one's analytical gun. I mean it probably means
that you have just run out of steam in explaining what one is
trying to say. There is of course a certain something called the
sense ofidentity, but I would want to distinguish two things here.
We say we have a certain sense of who we are now, and this seems
to me an enormous complex psychological function of one's
emotions, one's memories, one's dispositions to have certain
memories and, very important, a sense of one's body. I think that
if some terrible thing happened to you suddenly and you in-
creased by three hundred pounds in weight, you would in a
certain way lose a sense ofyourselffor a short time. But there is an
absolutely abstract sense of the self, which a man could have even
if he totally lost his memory. The trouble about that is that it
seems to be just equivalent to being a conscious being, and it
serves to distinguish nobody from anybody. That is, it is true of
absolutely every conscious being, that each X has a sense of being
X. But ifl am just told that a man is going to be alive in a hundred
years' time who has the property that he knows who he is, that
does not get me anywhere near to supposing that he has a reason
for thinking he is me.
Lewis: Ah, but you said a conscious being. But it wouldn't be
that. It would be this conscious being.
Williams: Yes, but what is the ground for saying it is this
conscious being? You see I have described to you a being who
exists in the future.
Lewis: Yes.
Williams: And I say, look I am going to tell you some things
about this being. Some of his memories partly resemble your
experiences, some of his dreams are rather like your experiences.
He does not have the same body as you. He has got a perfectly
new body and what is more, let us just add for good measure,
there are two other people like him at the same time. And they
are all you. Now suppose I say that that is absolutely unintelli-
gible. I mean, no ground has been offered for saying they are you.
Quinton: Can I just break in for a moment here before we lose
track of something. You, Williams, wanted to distinguish very
firmly between the questions of knowing one is the same being and
being the same person. And you said the whole matter of whether
the assurance ofsurvival is a real assurance hangs on the second of
 Life After Death. A Discussion 63

these, of being the same person. Well now let us consider the,
shall we say, unreflective philosophy of those Egyptian leading
political figures and rich Californians who had or have them-
selves embalmed. They clearly were Williamsites if I may so
describe them.
Williams: Yes. Surely.
Quinton: As far as they were concerned they wished to be
magically brought to life again, or in the Californian case,
presumably unfrozen.
Williams: Scientifically brought to life again. Yes.
Quinton: But of course if somebody says, well I am perfectly
prepared for a thousand dollars to freeze you and store you for a
modest rental geared to the cost of living and unfreeze you -
unfortunately we have not got all the bugs out of this yet -you
will, when woken, of course continue to exist, but you will be
unable to recover any memories of your life now. (You may hear
in my voice distant echoes of Leibniz here.) That is, what is the
value of the assurance of continuation when it doesn't involve any
recollections of your existing life? In other words it becomes a
rather hollow assurance ofidentity of body alone.
Williams: Can I make two points about this. The first is that I
regard the question of the value of my survival and the fact of my
survival as two different questions. In fact I have the general view
that what I regard as the case, namely that survival is impossible,
is in fact exceedingly fortunate, because it seems to me that the
value of survival under most conditions, and especially those
advanced by Lewis, would be very low. But that's a different issue
from what we are presently discussing. It is certainly possible for
me to envisage its being me, but my having lost my memories.
One reason I have for saying this is that we have good reason to
try and avoid it. That is, suppose that I am told that there are two
courses of action. One of them will lead to my death - I will stop.
The other will lead to my vegetating in some fort of dementia
condition, no memories, no sense of myself etc. I shall be just
sitting there. Now it seems to me I have, and I think that every-
body agrees with me about this, and certainly many persons who
would support euthanasia would agree, that we all have reason
to avoid the second. Now our reason for avoiding the second,
namely a state in which we are living in a dementia, memoryless
condition, is not just the reason for not wanting another memory-
64 Persons and Life After Death

less person in the world. Their reason is connected with the idea
that they would not want it to be them who are living in the
world without a memory. Now that just seems to me to show that
we can separate the questions. Will it be me? And will I remem-
ber? That is, will I know it's me?
Quinton: Well, I think that is susceptible of other explanations,
we are after all familar with plenty of cases of recovery of lost
memory- we are not familar with any, shall we say well or very
well, authenticated cases of revival from properly certified death,
followed by a month or two during which processes of decay
go on. I am trying to screw this down pretty tight; in the simple
proposition of ordinary psychophysiology, when you are dead
you're dead. But when you have lost your memory, like other
things, collar studs and what have you, you may not have lost it for
good. And you may recover it but be still in a pretty elaborately
damaged or debilitated condition. I mean that for many people, in
this contingency as in others, there are fates worse than death.
And the continuation, coming round, as it were, in a gravely
debilitated condition, might be one you would wish to avoid.
Williams: Yes. Well that may be an explanation of course.
Lewis: He might wish to avoid it but he would be the same
person in it, and this is the main point.
Williams: We seem to agree about this.
Lewis: Well, you say a person might lose weight or gain a
tremendous lot of weight and change in certain ways and at a
certain point not feel that this was himself. In a certain sense,
this is so. But generally he will say 'this terrible thing has hap-
pened to me'. Basically everyone knows that he is the person he is.
And when you say that one runs out of steam when one says this
sort of thing, that is not really the case. Even Wittgenstein had to
say that a philosopher must know when to stop. There are certain
things we do know immediately and we cannot argue further
about them. And one of the obvious ones for me is my own
awareness of the kind of experiences I am having and that I am
having them, and this I is not something you can further describe
or analyse; and what you are challenging me to do, and trying
to force me to do, is to give a description of this something which
I cannot describe and which will survive though not in my view
without other characteristics, experiences, emotions, feelings,
doing things, and so forth.
 Life After Death. A Discussion 65

Williams: No, I am sorry, that is not right. I think there is a

slight misunderstanding here. I am not asking you to answer
quite that question about describing this 'I'. Let me repeat my
question. I think you will agree with me that there is a difference
between being held out the expectation that I shall live in the
next century, and being held out the expectation that there will
be somebody who will live in the next century who is in various
ways like me. Now, if I ask you what is the difference between
those two expectations? If you tell me that the fact about this
person who is going to live in the next century is that he has the
following belief, namely, I am I, then you have not distinguished
him from anybody else. Because everybody has the belief that he
is he. So you have just picked out a feature of what it is to be
conscious, not anything which picks out anybody from anybody
else.
Lewis: It picks it out for the individual himself.
Quinton: The thing is, it only relates to what he is at the moment.
I mean I am the present I.
Lewis: That's right.
Williams: Well, consider the man who is hit over the head.
Maybe the police find him wandering around and they ask, 'who
are you?' And he says 'I'm sorry I don't know'. And then being
mildly philosophical, he says 'well of course I know I'm me, but
I don't know who I was'. And the whole point is about the
connection between what makes anyone now and somebody in
the future.
Lewis: Well, there are two things. First there is what makes
him himself at the time and this is I think more than there being
a conscious being. At the core of all our awareness there is the
awareness of all this happening to oneself. And there is the
further different question, how would I know that the being I am
now, having these experiences, is the same as the one who came
in half an hour ago, and who did other things? This is a further
separate question. And this does involve memory and things of
that sort, although I think it can be coped with without any
reference to the body.
Quinton: But it is surely that further question that is strictly
relevant to the point at issue, isn't it?
Williams: Yes. That's right.
Lewis: Not altogether.
66 Persons and Life After Death

Quinton: Because Williams's question is how are we ever to be

sure that some person exists, or how is it ever to be the case that
some person existing in the future is the same person as a person
existing now.
Williams: What I want to know is what are we promised, you
see? It's npt how will that man know whether he is me. Because
we have already agreed that it is possible to be me and have lost
my memory and so on.
Lewis: Yes.
Williams: The point then is not how will he know he is me. My
point is, how do you explain the difference between two pre-
dictions, one of which is that I shall survive and the other that I
will not survive but that somebody else will. Now one way I can
sharpen the question is this. Take your sense of identity, I mean
this sense of being oneself.
Lewis: Yes.
Williams: This very intimate unanalysable sensation. Now
that is a psychological state. It is a certain kind of psychological
disposition, well - state or disposition. Right?
Lewis: It is something quite unique and it is not just an
ordinary disposition.
Williams: Well now yousay it is quite unique. Quite unique.
Lewis: This is what is difficult to describe you see, because,
there is nothing more to be said about it except that everyone
just has this awareness of themself.
Williams: But the point is this: it is perfectly possible to have
something about which nothing can be said, that is very difficult
to analyse; but there could be two of it. That is I could have two
things each with an unanalysable quality, as when Moore said
you recall, that it is very difficult to capture the essence of yellow
-it does not mean I can not have two yellow things. Now if there
is an unanalysable sense of being why could it not be predicted
that in the year three thousand or two thousand, there will be
two people who will have just that sense?
Lewis: Because by the very nature of it, it is something un-
splitable, undiversifiable, in that way. It is an immediate sense of
somethingultimateandfinal,whichisthecoreoftheperson asheis.
Quinton: What is clear here is that you are both wanting to put
forward different things as the real, individuating factor ifl may
coin a bit ofjargon for the purpose.
 Life After Death. A Discussion 67

Lewis: Yes.
Quinton: And to one extent I think the advantage is on
Williams's side because his individuating factor is one we are
pretty familar with, that is to say, the human body, the human
body for whose continuity through time there exist fairly firm
criteria. You Lewis are, to that extent, at a disadvantage because
your individuating factor, although it is something about which
you feel strongly, you have to admit you find it difficult to express
it in an explicit, definite way. So that a coarse person like myself
is inclined to say, 'yes of course, you're saying something which
is too true. I am I. Just the blank, reiterative, tautological,
statement'. On the other hand, I think he is in a way, at a bit of a
disadvantage just because of the clarity of your example because
it doesn't seem to me that there is any necessary objection to
duplication of bodies, for example by amoebic splitting or some-
thingofthesort, that puts them in an utterly different case from the
splitting of what I'll call personality complexes, all those things
you say could be possessed by two different people in the future.
Williams: Well of course there is such a thing as amoebic
splitting, and though it is a very large argument about what one
wants to say about the case of a body that's split into two, I would
say that it was on a quite different footing from the other. I
would want to say that if a body split into two then neither of the
resultant bodies is the one you started with. I think there are
philosophical arguments for saying that. I would say that that
would destroy identity. But the thing about that is that splitting
is as it were a concrete feature of the history of a body, connected
with the whole idea of tracing a body through time, whereas
reduplication of these non-material, non-corporeal entities,
would have no such in principle detectable or establishable
history. It would not be part of the history of any of them. You
could just multiply them indefinitely. And I would add another
point which seems to me on my side in the contrast that you have
made here, namely that it is not just that we are more familiar
with bodies as identifiable items, concrete items of our world,
which we build identity on, but that the unanalysable, in-
explicable sense of being oneself, to which Lewis has referred,
also, in one sense, falls into a category of things which we are
already familar with. We are familar with mental states; and one
thing that is a feature of our way oflooking at the world is that we
68 Persons and Life ilfter Death

know already that these states are in the class of properties,

attributes, the sorts of things that more than one thing can have.
So that from the beginning, this other item is as it were doomed to
head towards the class of the inexplicable.
Lewis: Oh, no.
Quinton: Actually, I think one could resist that by saying that
the characteristic of real personal memories, direct recollections
of things you have done, tend, shall I say, essentially to involve
the mention of unique things. Such as breaking a particular vase.
There are a lot of other things that are just as, so to speak,
straight-forwardly spatia-temporally individual as the body, and
the memories will contain not just the breaking of a vase of a
certain description, but (why not?) breaking a particular vase?
Williams: Right. But then there seem to me two points about
that. One is that here you are going back to the appeal to
memories, which was not Lewis's strongest point, because he
offered us a future in terms of dreams, in terms of intellectual
activities, not based on memories. And secondly, insofar as you
have appealed to memories, you have appealed to memories
where it is a question of being in bodily relations to things.
Because what brings me into relation with this vase is being the
person, the bodily person who dropped the va1)e. Now suppose my
history was entirely of these rather boring dreams, or these
intellectual ruminations to which Lewis referred, even the
memories would not be anchored in the concreteness of objects,
physical objects in the way that you refer.
Lewis: But there are really two things you must distinguish.
The question of what it means to say I shall be the other person if
I live again, and on this I stand on this notion of the self as
something ultimate and distinctive. But if the further question is
asked, 'how would I know in some future state that I am the
same self and person as I am now ?', there I invoke memory. And
you have attacked this notion on the ground that the memory
would need to be checked and so forth and that this would involve
reference to body; this I also dispute, because it appears to me
that there are cases where we expressly, directly, remember and
that doesn't need to be checked. And this of course would make
it possible for one not only to be the same person in another
existence, but also to remember something about the present
existence, without even the continuity of a physical brain.
 Life After Death. A Discussion 69

Quinton: I think probably we have gone as far as it is profitable

to do on the negative side of things. We've seen what Williams's
principal objection is, that for any person existing in the future
to be the same person, just to be, not to be known to be, but to be
the same person as you, there has to be bodily continuity. Lewis
says no, there is this somehow ineluctable sense of the identity of
the self. We find that difficult to grasp but I think that is a point
where we can stop here.
Williams: That is right. I agree.
Quinton: I think probably the profitable thing to do now would
be to look at the positive things Lewis puts forward as sketching
what kind of existence could be enjoyed, if that is the word, by a
disembodied being.
Williams: Can I make a remark about that or a couple of
remarks about it, rather quickly? I think that we have probably
all got to agree that there is a certain temperamental element
about this. It is perhaps partly a question about what one
savours about one's present life as to exactly how far you eagerly
look forward to the prospect of immortality, described in
various terms. But I must confess that for myself, I found
Lewis's very, admittedly, tentative sketches of what direction
we might look, somewhat unappealing. It seemed to me that it
had two aspects, and I'll make one point about each. One
suggestion was that it might be a bit like dreaming, that is like
continuous dreaming. This seemed to me to have the odd feature,
leaving aside the other metaphysical difficulties we have talked
about, that it makes the whole of future life into a kind of
delusion. It is very like perceiving, he said, but it obviously is not
perceiving, in just the way that dreaming is not perceiving and it
seems to me that one thing I do not want to do is to spend the rest
of eternity in a delusive simulacrum of perceptual activity. That
just seems to me a rather lowering prospect. Why should a future
of error be of interest to me? The alternative was the slightly
higher-minded alternative, that it might consist of purely
intellectual activity, which of course many philosophers have
seen as the ideal future. I can see why they might be particularly
interested in it; others might be less so. The question I would
like to ask about that does tie up with our previous metaphysical
discussion, namely, the more pure and impersonal the intellectual
activity becomes, the less important does it seem to me that it
70 Persons and Life After Death

should be me. If, for example, we are going to have the intellec-
tual love of God, or something, conducted in the future, might it
not as well be conducted by Spinoza or Plato or the world soul or
itself or something as by me? I am afraid I associate my life
rather concretely with my tastes, some of them are of a rather
bodily character, those I love and so on, rather than this some-
what etiolated system ofdelusions, which you seem to be offering?
Lewis: Ah, well, I do not think that the image world or the
dream world need be regarded properly as a world of delusion,
because in the course of it you would be having varied, colourful,
possibly quite exciting and interesting related exeriences, and
you would also preslllmably be in contact with other people, and
having richer inter-relationships with other people on the basis
of this richer fellowship.
Quinton: Can I just ask this: would it be that it would be just
seeming to you that you were having these relations ... ?
Lewis: No, no, I think there would be every good reason for
believing that you were really communicating with other
people on the same basis as we do now.
Quinton: Well, you might have reason for it, but whether you
were actually doing so is the question, but still-leave that for the
moment. If the alternative is that the dream is only a rough
analogy, not an actual description, of this future state, then it
seems that the natural thing for the person in it to do would be to
take himself to be in another world, as it were to have been
conveyed. I mean another world like this world. On your first
description of it, it would be a world with physically embodied
beings and so forth.
Lewis: Yes. Well things like physically embodied beings, not
subject to the normal physical laws, and this might require a
great deal of analysis. But there would be certain things happen-
ing which could be very exciting and rich and rewarding,
including some media for communication with other people at
this level. Now I am not completely committed to this. I am not
completely sold either on the more intellectual version of a
possible survival. But I do not think that this tends in the least
towards the direction that Williams was suggesting, namely
something entirely abstract. I would be having these exciting
thoughts, mathematical thoughts, logical thoughts, whatever
they might be, and I might be communicating on the basis of
 Life After Death. A Discussion 71

them with other people. And I could come to love, and admire, or
perhaps hate, these other people in this way. It could be the
medium for a rich relationship, and of course we are speculating
here about a great deal which is bound to remain obscure to us
and making the best guess we can. There may be all sorts of other
things that would help out here, and it does not have to be
either anaemic or abstract or remote, and of course I would
invoke at all points my sense of one's own finality and dis-
tinctness; and this is I think the very core of the enrichment of
our love of one another and so forth, all this could happen at this
intellectual level as well.
Quinton: Could I just ask one question. In your discussion in
the later stages of your talk, about these hypothetical possibilities
of survival, in both the versions of it, the more or less dreamlike
one and the more intellectual one, in both of them, you laid a
certain amount of stress on how communication would be
possible in this state of affairs.
Lewis: Yes.
Q;tinton: And I can think of two reasons for doing that. One a
more or less emotional one, that a world of dreams might seem,
or of dreamlike images might become, a very lonely place, and
that one might find it so; the other one, the intellectual hypo-
thesis, might become such a disembodied affair, like conducting
your personal relations with computers, who would make
rational answers, depending on the sophistication of their
circuitry, to the questions you put them. But there is another and
I think more fundamental reason. I do not know whether you
would agree that this was working in you- that if you are not in
communication with other persons, you are unlikely to preserve
a sense of yourself. And if you have not ever had communication
with other persons you will never acquire a sense of yourself.
Lewis: Well, I think one would preserve a sense of oneself, but
it would be an appalling state ifl began to realise that everything
around me was a delusion. I would require, to sustain any kind of
sanity or to prevent such a condition from being intolerable, to
be assured that it really was contact with genuine other people.
Quinton: Yes. That puts one in mind of something else - this
form of, I do not know whether it is psychological experiment
or torture, or one leading to the other, these experiments in
sensory deprivation. Now consider your final conjecture about
72 Persons and Life After Death

how the afterlife might be in terms of mere telepathic intellectual

communication. You said something like - thoughts seeming to
be impressed on you from outside as a result of which you would
assign them to some external source and somehow - I am not
quite clear- communicate with them, with a kind ofumph think
something and get a response to it. Well, this looks awfully like an
experiment in sensory deprivation. That is that all that's left is
the thinking.
Lewis: Ah well, yes, it could be that. And it might involve this
difficulty, though possibly there are some ways of overcoming it,
or some compensatory factors, I do not know. But this is why I
say I am not wedded to either of these views. It could be one or
the other, or still something different again for all we know.
Williams: Could I make a quick comment on this? I think it is
important to remember here that immortality has always been
offered to us, or at least, if not always, in good part, by the
religions as a hope. And for it to be a hope it seems to me that it
has got to offer something which is of significance or value to
oneself and to some extent at least to oneself as one now is. At the
very least, one's got to be able to conceive of oneself as being a
person to whom this will be of value. Now the trouble is, it seems
to me, and this is a very broad remark, as you'll understand,
that the scenarios for immortality tend to fall into two kinds.
One of these is really rather like present life, and therefore it is
inexplicable why I should want to go on like that for eternity.
This seems to me true of all versions of spiritualism to which
Lewis referred, where the ....
Quinton: the 'cigars are wonderful' type of thing ...
Williams: Yes, exactly. I mean the drab offerings of the
continuation of lower-middle-class Brighton life to eternity is
really of such an insufferable character that the thought that I
can not take an escape road by suicide is very depressing indeed.
But the alternative is something vastly more, as it were, more
refined than that, less literal, less materialistic than nineteenth-
century spiritualism paradoxically was. And then the problem is
the one of the identity of interest. I mean, suppose that the
prospects of Heaven or the future life are those of intellectual
contemplation and I am a jolly, good hearted fun-loving sensual
character from the seaside, these prospects appear to me to
command very little hold on one's loyalty.
 Life 4fter Death. A Discussion 73

Lewis: But ordinary people are capable, not necessarily of

rising to tremendous intellectual heights, but of having a subtle
refined appreciation of the things that count most in life. What
troubles us about it all is that it is so limited and so restricted and
fleeting and transitory, and the expectation is, and what makes
people interested and concerned, is that they would want to
expand their experience, to develop, not all necessarily along the
same lines- some of us more intellectual, some less so, but having
personal relationships at the very core of it, and there is endless
scope for development, for enrichment, for colour, for excite-
ment, in all this; and of course it is not for us to try to antici-
pate or set what limits there might be to developments in these
ways.
Williams: You do not think that the significance ofour personal
relations is rather grounded in the actual contour of this life?
Lewis: Oh, no.
Williams: For instance in the notion ofgetting older.
Lewis: Oh no, not at all.
Williams: ... and eventually dying?
Lewis: No, not at all.
Williams: Well, that's a profound difference between us.
Lewis: Personal relations depend on what you really find
yourself to be and what your circumstances and relationships
with other people are like, these are capable of considerable
extension and enrichment and of course if we invoke religious
things and bring God into it, there is a whole other dimension of
the enrichment of which it is capable which we haven't really
touched upon.
Quinton: Yes the trouble is that so many of the emotions that
are most fulfiling in life seem to have, if you like, an irrational
element, I mean the love of a unique person who is in fact perhaps
in the eye of an unprejudiced observer not terribly different
from a lot of other people but to you it is something absolutely
special and in this final conjecture of yours, there really is no
place for that. All these rationalities as it were converge into
something like Aristotle's God in purely intellectual communion
with itself.
Lewis: Oh no, ...
Quinton: We have lost the plurality and richness of actual
personal life in it.
74 Persons and Life After Death

Lewis: Oh no, no, no. The plurality is there and all the diversity
as well which is what you regard as important in the plurality. I
think there is more than that. But why could there not be all
sorts of types, even if you think in this more rarified intellectual
sort of way? People will be doing it in all sorts of different
conditions and circumstances, with all kinds of possibilities of
diversification. I do not think that it is bound to be drab if it
goes beyond what we nowadys recognise as the most obvious
ways of identification.
Quinton: Well, I think perhaps we had better leave it there.
And thank Professor Williams and Professor Lewis for this
discussion.
5 Survival

I HYWEL D. LEWIS
There is one point on which, it seems to me, my fellow symposiast,
Professor Flew, and myself ought to find it easy to agree. It is this:
if the corporeal view of the nature of persons, or some other
variation on the fashionable identity thesis about mind and body
(if there is one that is not properly labelled corporeal) were to be
accepted, then there would be no point in raising the question of
the possibility of our survival of death. Professor Flew himself
refers, in one place, 1 to the universal fact of death, as 'an enor-
mous initial obstacle'. I do not think that it is, in itself, as
enormous as all that. It is what sets the problem. But if we hold
some form of what is often labelled to-day as the corporealist
theory of persons, then the fact of death itself puts an end to
further debate. We do not deny that we do in fact die, however
hard it may be to make this a 'real' and not a 'notional' belief in
our own case, and when we die this seems to be the end, in a very
final way, of our present bodies. It is not, on the view that
identifies us with our bodies or regards the body as in :;orne way
essential for persons, that there is an 'enormous obstacle' to be
overcome or that the case for survival becomes more implausible;
the case just cannot get off the ground on this assumption, the
question is closed at the start.
When we die, whatever the exact clinical definition may be,
the body very rapidly ceases to function as the organism we have
known and deterioration sets in very quickly, in due course it
decomposes, leaving at most a skeleton. For most of us to-day, I
imagine, as over the centuries for people in other cultures, there
will be a cremation and the body we have now is at once reduced
to ashes. It is no longer an identifiable body which could in a
©The Aristotelian Society 1975
76 Persons and Life After Death

proper sense be identified with a person. For pious or sentimental

reasons or the like we may label these ashes or the spot where they
are placed, if not scattered to the four winds, with the name of
the deceased, but no one seriously thinks there is anything other
than 'lifeless dust in the casket, no labelling device we may adopt
gives us any sense of survival in which we may be seriously
interested. Likewise, when men drown and their bodies are
consumed by other creatures in turn consumed by yet others,
there seems to be as final an end of the body as could ever be
possible. If I am my body I clearly cease to be when I am
cremated.
The reason why people have not always appreciated this is
that many, in some cultures especially, tend to take a highly
romantic and unrealistic view of physical death, encouraged by
much in our ritual. The 'rude forefathers' 'sleep' beneath 'the
yew tree's shade', the dead are 'laid to rest', they are 'at peace',
or they wait, like King Arthur's knights, in their dark retreat until
the bell sounds and the hour is come when their country needs
them again and they awake. But while our attitudes may in
fact be coloured at times by these romantic ideas, no one now
seriously supposes that there are people sleeping beneath the
tombstones or that the ashes, however preserved, will be stirred
to life again. That, in some Christian contexts at least, people
have supposed that the graves and the seas will one day yield up
their dead again is due largely to the highly unrealistic view men
have been apt to take, with one part of their minds perhaps or in
some moods, of decomposing bodies.
This may seem so obvious a point as to hardly warrant space in
a paper of this kind. But in fact many religious people have taken
comfort in the prevalence of various corporealist views of persons
for the endorsement or support they think is found in them for
what is sometimes thought to be orthodox Christian teaching.
Even Professor Ryle, little though he may fancy himself in that
role, has been hailed as one who has substantially helped to
rescue orthodox religious thinkers from a grave predicament,
one in which no less a person that William Temple thought
we had been largely placed by the unfortunate influence of
Descartes. Even Professor Strawson reminds us, with his tongue
a bit in his cheek, one suspects, that 'the orthodox have wisely in-
sisted on the resurrection of the body'. But I do not suppose that
 Survival 77

he considers his own position to be any substantial strengthening

of the 'orthodox' expectation. There would be more to hope for
in making the attenuated disembodied existence which Strawson
thinks, with doubtful consistency in my view, to be at least
conceivable on his notion of persons, a little less attenuated and
unattractive. But then it would have to be less firmly related to
oneself as 'a former person' in Strawson's sense.
The plain fact is that, however desperately 'orthodox'
believers may seek comfort in the widely held corporealist view
of persons and related teaching, such views are altogether fatal
to most religious claims and certainly, on my understanding, to
Christian ones. They are so, indeed, in more ways than one. For
Christians have not only expectations of some 'life beyond', they
also believe in a personal God. Critics have in fact invoked what
they take to be the obviously corporeal nature of persons as a
fatal objection to the idea of God as well. Thus Mr Jonathan
Barnes, after a brilliant critical analysis of the Ontological
Argument, sums up his own position tersely by noting that 'it is
becoming increasingly clear that persons are essentially cor-
poreal' and 'if this is so, then if Gods are persons, then Gods are
essentially corporeal. Allow this, and it is reasonable to assert as
an empirical truth that no Gods exist'. 2 This seems to me
unanswerable granted the premiss. But this is another issue. At
the moment what I mainly stress is that no form of identity thesis
of mind and body, or any corporealist view, can offer the slightest
comfort to religious believers. On the contrary they are fatal.
That is no reason why they should be rejected. Notions that
are not reconcilable with religious claims, Christian or any
other, must be examined on their merits. But we must not
suppose, as many seem to do, that the task of the religious
thinker is just to effect any kind of bridge or reconciliation. Our
concern, whether religious or not, is not with building bridges but
with the pursuit of truth. If doctrines incompatible with religion
are sound, so much the worse for religion. We must not cry 'Peace'
where no peace exists; and that is just the position where cor-
porealist views of person and the belief in life after death are
concerned.
It might be thought possible to avoid this conclusion in one of
two ways. The first would be to invoke the omnipotence of God.
If God is all powerful, is it not then allowable that he could
78 Persons and Life After Death

reassemble the scattered elements of our decomposed bodies to

constitute again the body we have now? There are some, it
appears, who seriously expect this, although others, while
stoutly maintaining their belief in the resurrection of the body
dissociate themselves with equally firm, if somewhat odd,
disdain from the notion of the resuscitation of corpses. My
difficulty, or at least one basic one, with the present suggestion is
to be altogether precise as to what is expected. What counts as
the ultimate ingredients in my body to be reassembled after it has
been consumed by worms or fishes consumed by generations of
other creatures - or scattered as ashes? The original cells, we
may be told. But these are, in any case, changed or lost in the
course of my life. What number of them, or at what stage
acquired to constitute me is thought proper; and what if they
are now essential ingredients of some other organism, perhaps of
the kind which may also expect to be reconstituted?
We may also ask, just. what would be the point of this recon-
stitution. Assuming that God, if he is omnipotent could ac-
complish it, just why would it be thought that he would go to
work in that way? What of any significance could be accom-
plished? Could not God, as omnipotent, equally well have
provided a duplicate, a new body, original cells and all, exactly
like my present one? I would certainly not know the difference.
If this seems a little light-hearted, let it be noted that no less a
person than my distinguished former colleague in London,
Professor E. L. Mascall, writing about 'the Real Resurrection', 3
as he puts it, is emphatic 'that Christ has risen in his body'. This
body 'is unimaginably transformed, so that it is no longer
limited by the restrictions of time and space though he can
manifest himself in time and space to meet our needs. He is
neither a ghost nor a zombie, but a living and transfigured man'.
It is not enough 'to suppose that Jesus did really appear to them
(the disciples) as a disembodied spirit, while his body remained
and decayed in the grave'. He appeared 'as flesh and blood'
though 'transformed flesh and blood'. He would not otherwise
be 'totally victorious'.
This is contrasted with the view, firmly rejected, 'that Jesus
was indeed alive among them, but only in a spiritual way, his
body remaining in its grave'. The latter is the view of'people who
want a purely spiritual religion' and 'whose views about the
 Survival 79

ultimate nature of matter are derived from the physics and

chemistry of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries rather
than from those of the twentieth'.
My main reaction to this is that I just cannot see what of
importance, for general religious thought or Christian theology,
is involved, in this context, in the insistence on actual flesh and
blood and the same body in a strict sense. It would not, in my
view, do for Christian theology, to suppose that Jesus was
anything other than 'flesh and blood' 'in the days of his flesh',
although what matters here also is that he should live and feel
and sense things as we do. I would also insist that Christian
claims, and central Bibilical themes, require the acceptance of
substantial historical truth in the Gospels and the New Testament
generally. My reasons for such acceptance and the way I
understand and place it in the context of Christian doctrine, is
too vast an issue to embark upon here. I certainly do not regard
the Gospels as mythology, and I would not be content to say
that the disciples just had 'hallucinations' and thereby 'persuaded
themselves that he (Jesus) had come to life again'. They en-
countered him, and, in all likelihood, I should add, in some
visible and tangible form, whatever its nature, though that in
itself would not suffice to sanction their claims about him. But
why, in this context or any other, should much be made to turn
on whether his body actually came out of the tomb, as a trans-
figured body, whether it did or not?
To press this a little further, what is the difference between a
body 'transfigured and transformed almost beyond recognition'
and a new 'spiritual body'? What sort of continuity is there
between the latter and the body that was laid in the grave?
What of the latter has to be retained for any purpose that matters?
I agree that we should not seek 'a purely spiritual religion' if this
means taking a dim view of our bodies and the world around us.
We differ much also, as philosophers, in the accounts we give of
the nature of the external world and the way we know it. But
wherever we stand between the extremes of a Berkeleyan view
and some firmly non-phenomenalist or objectivist view of the
present physical world, I find it hard to see why anything of worth
should be made to turn on whether the particular body we have
in the present existence is retained, in any significant sense, in
any further existence we may have reason to expect.
80 Persons and Life After Death

Professor Mascall mentions 'the physics of the twentieth

century'. He knows a great deal more about this than I do,
indeed there are few theologians or philosophers who could
claim his competence in that field, but I still find it very hard to
know what it could be about recent physics and bio-chemistry
which could make it more significant or plausible to suppose
that something of the material composition of our present bodies
can be retained in another 'glorified' or 'transformed' body
when the former have been reduced to ashes. If we think of
similarity of appearance or function {in some respects at least)
then this gives us a sense of identity or 'the same body' which is
quite consistent with the other moulding in the grave and not
coming out of it, and this goes for whatever further structural
affinity we may have in mind. The most that I can suppose here
is that the ultimate bio-physical components of our bodies,
whatever the scientists tell us now that they are, are somehow
reconstituted as basic ingredients of a new body. If, for other
reasons, we hold that this is the only way our continued personal
identity could be conceived or established, then that is another
issue. But even here I find it hard to understand how the case fqr
bodily identity as a condition of personal identity is affected by
anything the bio-physicist may tell us, however important on its
own account. Such considerations figure very rarely in the
philosophical controversies, and, if they did, some outstanding
contributors to the debate would be badly handicapped. Is the
philosopher's problem about the material world affected at all
by physics?
There seems to me therefore little to be said, even when we
invoke the omnipotence of God, for the view that, in some future
existence, we must have again the body which has decomposed
or been cremated. The best thing to say about that body is that it
no longer exists; and if it is inconceivable, or otherwise virtually
out of the question, that I should exist without it, then that I no
longer exist. The body is no more and ipsofacto I am not.
We have not however quite done with variations on the present
theme, for, quite independently of any special invocation of God,
some have ascribed to our bodily existence a feature, of a very
special sort, which would make it intelligible that one's particular
body should persist even when we fully allow for the processes of
decomposition, cremation, etc. This is the alleged 'astral' body, a
 Survival 81

notion we usually associate with the less reputable and less

plausible aspects of psychical research and theory, but which is
apparently taken more seriously to-day by established in-
vestigators and thinkers, including Professor Flew himself, at
least to the extent of regarding the doctrine of the astral body as
a much more plausible basis for the belief in after life than any
other. The 'insuperable' difficulties of 'the Platonic-Cartesian
way', he writes, 'should now lead us to look with a new interest
and respect at the way of the astral body'.'
There is however some confusion, and I feel that Professor
Flew is in some measure guilty of it, about what we should
understand by the idea of the alleged astral body. It could be
thought to be some kind of non-physical 'dream' or 'image'
body, or some quasi-body not in physical space and quite distinct
from our present body, which we may have or enter when we
discard the body we have now. The latter is, I think, a notion we
can take seriously, and I shall return to it. But the astral body,
however different from our normal physical body, is supposed to
be a body we do have now, presumably all of us; and it is
detectable, in principle at least, and under special conditions, in
the normal way. A photograph could be taken of it and shown to
anyone who cares to look. Accounts of the astral body are a little
obscure, and it is never clear to me how it (or its close relative the
'aura' or 'subtle body' of Aurobindo and others) is related to my
normal body. One has sometimes the impression that it encases
the latter, or ~t least it takes its form and location from it.
Sometimes it appears to be a feature (function?) of our present
bodies, and at times it seems to be more like another body,
conditioned perhaps by our normal one. But it certainly seems to
be detectable in normal ways.
Professor Flew warns the supporters ofthe notion of an astral
body of the danger that they will so qualify it that it become 'in
effect not a body' but 'an incorporeal Platonic-Cartesian soul'.
But I do not think he has in mind the distinction we need to draw
carefully here between a strictly or totally disembodied soul, a
soul in what I have elsewhere 6 called 'a world of thoughts alone',
and a soul with an image or dream body not in pyhsical space.
The main danger is of confusion with the latter. But if the notion
of an astral body is worth considering at all in this connexion,
as a distinct idea, it must be on the basis of its having
82 Persons and Life Afler Death

physical properties ofsome sort or being detectable in physical

space.
The word 'detectable' may however offer some difficulties
here. For it is conceivable that an 'image-body', in H. H. Price's
sense, should manifest itself from time to time in the form of
apparitions, observed perhaps by more than one person, or even
as a poltergeist which would leave physical evidence ofits agency.
How this might be understood and the source of it ascertained
has been considered by me at greater length in the book men-
tioned earlier. 6 But it would still be odd to say that such agents
were in physical space, even though they might materialise in it,
and even be active at times. They would not normally be
locatable at all, and their transactions with other agents would
be in another sort of space. By contrast the astral body is meant to
have at least a permanent footing in physical space, related to the
location and apprearance, colour as well as shape it would
sometimes seem, of our physical body. Sponsors of this notion are
not as precise as one would wish, and much more careful analysis
will be needed if it is to be examined seriously and with some bias
in its favour by philosophers of Professor Flew's standing. But
there seems little doubt that it is meant to be, not an occasional
manifestation, but a permanent feature of our bodily existence
(brutes presumably as well as human beings) or some attach-
ment to it detectable, in special conditions, by physical means,
an 'instrument' in Professor Flew's word.
It is not, in my view, worth spending much time over the
notion of an astral body or its near relations, except to be
sufficiently clear to avoid confusion with ideas for which more
may be said - and that is, I think, important. The objections
to it are twofold. Firstly, the inadequate character of evidence
adduced in support of it. Secondly, that such evidence, when it
can claim to be taken seriously, could support equally well
alternative and otherwise more plausible hypotheses, such as
the occasional materialisation or appearance of a non-physical
or image body or other non-corporeal being. There is, to my
mind, a substantial body of evidence, in the Journal of The
Society for Psychical Research and elsewhere, which is taken by
reputable investigators (Broad, Price et al) to create at least a
strong initial presumption of some transaction with the dead or
other non-terrestrial beings. It does not seem to be altogether
 Survival 83

'ESP ongoings among ordinary corporeal people', in Professor

Flew's terms again. But little of this evidence seems to me to
point to the notion of an astral body, and it is only taken to
support it because the alternatives are not clearly envisaged. If I
am wrong the onus of marshalling the evidence effectively lies
with its sponsors.
In addition one cannot but note the oddity of our having what
might almost be called the encumbrance of an astral body when
we have normally no consciousness of it and when it seems to
have no function related to our normal transactions in this world.
Why, if I may so put it, do we need it now? Will the soul come
adrift in some way if it has not this spare bodily harness ready to
contain it when we die? Admittedly there is much about our
present bodies of which we are normally quite unaware. Apart
from the fact that most of us are very ill-informed about our own
physiology, it is only at odd times (usually if something goes
wrong) that we think about it at all. I breathe all the time but
hardly ever stop to think of myself filling my lungs with air. I
could do most that I do without knowing that I have lungs at all
or, as our ancestors did, without knowing that the blood cir-
culates. We are certainly quite unaware of what the brain
specialist could tell us, or, even more, of what the bio-physicist
knows about one's body. But I do not question that I have
millions of cells in my body etc. In this case, however, I do have
reasons, including empirical evidence, for trusting the scientists
when they claim evidence which they and suitably equipped
people have for what I would otherwise not know at all about my
own body. There seems to be nothing approaching this in the
claims made for the astral body.
Nor, in spite of what Professor Flew says, is it clear how the
case for survival would be helped if the matter were otherwise.
The relevance of the idea of the astral body is, presumably, to
the view that our personal identity requires bodily continuity.
But the continuity ensured here is very tenuous. The astral body
has, I suppose, the location of the known physical body. But how
much more does it have of the properties of the latter? If very
many, we might have again 'the death by a thousand quali-
fications'. If the astral body is distinct, but still undetected
except in very special conditions, will it meet what the cor-
porealist wants? The requirement of bodily continuity is usually
84 Persons and Life After Death

made, in reputable philosophy, in respect to a point of view

and the confirmation of memories etc. Can the alleged astral
body, of which we have normally no consciousness at all, serve
the purpose here? Would it do so in a way that could not be met
just as well by a new body more appropriate perhaps to my
post-mortem state? An unknown appendage appears to have
little to do with me as a person; and, if there is a gain in causal
continuity, this seems to be on a level with the supposition that
the cells in our bodies might be recomposed. The connexion is
too tenuous to matter.
These are the sort of considerations which, it would appear,
the sponsors of the theory of the astral body must examine. They
have not, it seems to me, begun to do so or to consider the
relevance of their supposition to genuine problems.
A much more attractive course is to consider whether it may
not be possible after all that we should survive notwithstanding
(as most of us expect) that we come to the end of our physical
existence when we die. If my present body is totally destroyed,
what then? This seems to be a more hopeful line of enquiry than
seeking to salvage the position in terms of desperate extensions of
the corporealist view. There seem to be three main possibilities.
The first is reincarnation. On this view, we return to the present
world in another body, not of necessity resembling the present
one. This expectation is not widely held in the Western world,
although, it would seem, there are thoughtful Christians who
endorse it. But it is a central feature of both Hinduism and
Buddhism and is entertained to-day as in the past by millions of
people. It is part of a major culture, and we may do well to remind
ourselves of that.
Even so, I will deal very briefly here with this notion. Much
will turn, it is obvious, on the sort of identity we require. If we
think solely of the way one person lives on in the lives or memories
of others, there is no problem. Everyone can admit that. We may
also say, without being misleading, that Guy Fawkes is back
again if we find someone behaving like him. But this is metaphor.
We would need more than that to say seriously that Guy Fawkes
is back. If we think of identity in terms of some continuity of a
pattern of experience, or, as some hold, that some divine
element distinct from ourselves as we normally know ourselves, is
identical in all of us and persists from one life to the next, then
 Survival 85

these are positions we can understand and consider. But in both

cases we seem far removed from what we normally understand
by ourselves, it is not a very full-blooded return to this world. I
have elsewhere indicated the sense in which we may say more
explicitly that a person who has died has come to life in the
world again. This requires an 'entity' or 'substantival' view of
the self. I have argued that on such a view, there is nothing
inconceivable in the supposition that we may have more than
one life in this world, even though there may be no remembrance
of one in the other. The difficulty is to know that this ever
happens. We may put our case on a priori grounds, such as that
justice requires that we live out our karma in this way, or that it is
part of our progress to greater enrichment. But we would have to
face considerable difficulties, among other things, in showing
how the fulfilment of the alleged requirement is guaranteed.
The obvious alternative seems to be to appeal to evidence.
The difficulty about the evidence is that it is never precise
enough. It usually takes the form of someone seeming to re-
member things he could not otherwise have known. An initial
presumption of pre-existence may be created in this way. But the
evidence, and the exclusion of possible alternative accounts of it,
needs to be very firm indeed before we begin to have a plausible
case. In the book I have mentioned I have sketched what would
seem to me to be reasonable evidence for a strong presumption of
pre-existence, though without wholly excluding other ex-
planations. But I am not aware of any alleged cases that come
near the strictness and precision we would require.
There are of course other problems, especially the much
discussed situation where two or more people seem to have the
memories of someone who has died. I have said what I think
must be said about this in my book. We may say, for example,
that the memories, in some cases, must be pseudo- or quasi-ones,
or perhaps entertain the possibility that the same consciousness
may be involved in more than one body, not so completely out of
the question perhaps as we may at first suppose. But, for the
purpose of this paper, I must be content to observe that while, on
my understanding of persons, the idea of reincarnation is not
ruled out on principle, the general case for it and the evidence
invoked seem both to fall very far short of what we would consider
a reasonably plausible case.
86 Persons and Life After Death

The second possibility is that we should live on, not in the

physical world at all, though presumably in time, with a non-
physical body, possibly resembling in some respects the present
one. The best model for such a body would be H. H. Price's
'image-body' already much discussed by me and others. But we
must not be too wedded to the form in which Price himself first
mooted this. On such a view it would be conceivable that we
should survive without memories of our previous existence or any
thought ofit, though ex hypothesi we would not know anything of a
past existence in that case. But it is hard to see what purpose
could be served by the bestowal of a further life on us in this way.
Perhaps our earlier lives might be brought to consciousness, in
part perhaps, at some higher stage. But one's initial expectation
would be that in a future existence there would be some
consciousness of the present one, and some continuity. The hard
questions would be how would we know who we were ourselves,
how would we identify others, how would we communicate and
how, if we knew that we had lived before, would this be
established?
I have said something on all these topics in my book The Self
and Immortaliry. I have maintained, for example, that there is a
basic sense in which everyone knows who he is independently of
any mark or criterion. Each one knows who he is in being himself,
but as others, like Professor Shoemaker, have maintained, though
with a slightly different intention, no description of the self, in
this basic sense, which distinguishes it from others and identifies
it, is possible. In this basic sense, a person in some future existence
would know himself in exactly the same way as now. But a
linkage with a previous existence, as in the past of one's present
life, depends mainly on memory which must be considered, for
this purpose, to be extensively, though not infallibly, defensible
in and for itself. Around the identity so established may be built
up further describable features of a person, his likes and dislikes,
history, etc., a man's identifiable character about which others
may know in substantially the same way as himself. At the core is
the way each individual is aware ofhis own basic identity, and, in
ascribing experience to others credits them with the same
awareness of their own irreducible distinctness. In essentials,
there need be no difference in these matters in a future existence,
provided communication is possible, but the latter could be
 Survival 87

ensured, in principle in the same way as now, through the

consistent behaviour ofimage bodies, or their like, which, though
not subject to physical laws, could have laws or consistencies of
their own.
How, in more detail, this would operate I cannot unfold
further here, and must refer you again to the fuller discussion in
my book. 7 But the argument does presuppose a mediated
knowledge of other minds whereby we pass, easily and spon-
taneously, from observation of bodies to apprehension of distinct
mental existences. The stock objection that we would need
initially some 'inner' awareness of other minds to make this
possible has never seemed to me to have force. We credit the
bodies of other persons with animation by minds like one's own
as the obvious explanation of the way they behave, and if this
argument can be sustained in the here and now, there does not
seem to be any reason why the situation should not be the same in
principle, though no doubt with many other differences un-
known to us now, in another existence.
There may of course also be other means of communication,
such as the extension of some form of telepathy, if we find reason
to accept evidence for the latter now; and, as at present, the
operation ofsuch paranormal communication would be rendered
easier by the initial communication and identification through
our non-physical image bodies.
The question of a linkage, in a future existence, with our
present existence, has further difficulties. They would partly be
met by dependence on memory, and I see no reason to doubt
that, if I became convinced that I was in another existence, and
seemed to have clear memories of the present life, I could put
considerable credence upon it, as I do now when I wake up and
without any checking. Admittedly, there has been other checking
in this life, but it does not seem to be just for that reason that we
trust our memories. One person's memories might also be
checked against those of others, and there seems to be no reason
why other linkages might not be established. No one would be in
physical space, and there could thus not be normal observation,
but this need not rule out certain limited ways in which events in
the world of physical space might have repercussions in another
sort of world and reduce what would otherwise be total isolation.
If any evidence of communication from the dead is acceptable, it
88 Persons and Life After Death

might involve such repercussions as part of the explanation, but

there could also be invoked some form of paranormal com-
munication across, so to speak, terrestrial boundaries. I see no
reason in principle why these things might not be allowed if, as in
the case of communication through physical media we obviously
must, we allow them 'here below'.
A further possibility might be that, instead of individual image
bodies by which communication would be facilitated, we might
be effective in a different existence through manipulations we
could effect in one another's otherwise private image world, or
some such medium. This would be like people in the present
world having contact entirely through writing and other signals.
In a different medium this might be more complete and satisfying.
The third form of future existence which we may envisage is
one that might be labelled 'total disembodied existence' for
which I have also elsewhere used the words 'the world of thoughts
alone'. Here there would be nothing resembling our present
bodies, no image bodies or their like. The problem of communi-
cation, for our understanding at least, would be much ac-
centuated in this case, and the spectre of solipsism rears itself
higher. But the position does not seem irretrievable, for there
might be ways in which we could recognisably modify the course
of one another's thoughts, effecting such patterned unexpected
changes in them with subsequent response to one's own response
etc., that the basis for what might become very full and intimate
communion of persons might thus be established. That this
seems peculiarly difficult now does not preclude its being easier in
some radically different state.
A misgiving which many will have, no doubt, about these
speculations is that the existences envisaged are thin and
anaemic, or too intellectually rarefied, to compare favourably
with the fullness of our present embodied existence. But that may
be due to our limited understanding of what may be possible in
these ways. Admittedly our bodies are important, not just in
incidental causal ways but also through what they more directly
make possible, and I have very much stressed that myself. But
there does not seem to be any inherent reason why all that matters
in present bodily existence, the tenderness of intimate contact,
gesture, look, etc., might not be provided equally, and perhaps
more, effectively in one of the modes of future existence I have
 Survival 89
envisaged - and without many of our present extensive dis-
abilities. Indeed in new media there may be much enrichment of
experience we are unable to envisage now. Nor is this wholly
ruled out in what I have described as 'a world of thoughts alone'.
It might afford its own substitute and much compensation. In
addition, just as Spinoza thought of infinite attributes, though
we only know two of them, so there may be entertained the
possibility of various modes of existence, dimensions, ifl may use
an over-exploited word, of which we have no conception at
present. We cannot rule this out on principle; and in other modes
of being there may be, not only the preservation of what matters
in a world of sight and sounds and sensations, which on the face
ofit we would much miss, but also other glorious possibilities not
dreamed of now.
There is certainly no reason why someone who envisages some
form of future disembodied existence should take a dim view of
the body as some dualists, including Plato much of the time,
have done. Much less should the body be thought to be evil,
though that has also been extensively maintained.
It is implicit, however, in all that I have been suggesting in this
paper, that we can fully conceive of our own existence inde-
pendently of our present physical state. Unless we can have an
acceptable idea of persons which does not involve identity with,
or dependence upon, our present physical bodies, there seems to
me little point in considering a possible future existence, whether
'future' be the proper term or not. Elsewhere I have defended the
view that mental states are of a different nature from physical
ones, and that they belong to a subject or entity that persists
through various states without being reducible to them. The
first seems an obvious prerequisite of any significant doctrine of
survival, but I attach almost equal importance to the second.
The most that I can add here is that, in considering such views
we should not father them wholly on the much maligned
Descartes. There are very great names in the same line of
country before him- and many after. It is to Kant perhaps, more
than any other, and to notable followers of Kant like James
Ward and F. R. Tennant fairly recently, that we owe our best
indication of the notion of a Pure Selfor Subject.
Nothing has been said, in this paper, about the notion of an
identification of the finite person with some infinite or supreme
90 Persons and Life After Death

and absolute being. This is also a view which has widespread and
impressive support. It does not seem to me consistent with what
we must think about the distinctness of persons. But my reasons
for omitting further reference to it are those, not of disrespect,
but of space and the need to circumscribe our discussion.
For similar reasons I have said nothing about the grounds we
may have for believing that we will in fact survive. My concern
has been solely with the way we should think about it and how
philosophical difficulties may be met- to keep the door open if
you like. If challenged to adduce such grounds, I would not
place much weight on general philosophical arguments or
proofs. The best known traditional ones are notoriously inade-
quate. Nor is there any case to be made, in my view, for the
inherent indestructibility of the soul. More may be said for the
evidence from psychical research. It is not unimportant that philo-
sophers as dear-sighted and cautious as C. D. Broad and H. H.
Price seem convinced (especially Price) that some of the evidence
invoked here points very strongly towards explanation in terms
of some kind of survival. The layman is not in a good position
to go further than this, and my own acquaintance with the
subject is much too ragged for me to offer an opinion to which
weight could be attached. I will however add the following
comments.
(a) The weakness in much of the serious evidence for survival
offered along these lines is that much of it could be accounted
for in other ways, though often involving some paranormal
element, such as telepathy or clairvoyance. The usual impressive
case is that where information is obtained which would not be
normally available to another living person or acquired in
normal ways. If such information comes allegedly from a person
now dead who would have had easy access to it, the presumption
is that the dead person is now alive in some way and able to
communicate with us, for example to tell us where he himself has
concealed a will. It is possible however that the information, in
these cases, has been obtained, whether or not of set intention by
the communicant, telepathically from some living person who
chances to have come across it, or, more plausibly, by clair-
voyance. In itself, and allowing for other difficulties in the idea
of survival, explanation in terms of a communication from the
dead seems stronger and more direct. If the paranormal has to
 Survival 91

be invoked at all, why not go the whole way with the more
inherently plausible explanation?
A considerable strengthening of the case along these lines
could be made if one were able to obtain information, not about
some relatively isolated fact, but about a spate of happenings to
which we would normally have no access, but which in due course
we were able to verify. We might, for example, have variation on
the case I considered in my book in discussing reincarnation.
Suppose a diary came to light confirming in great detail what a
medium or the like had described about the hour-by-hour
activities over a period of many days of someone long dead. If the
medium claimed to remember this, there would seem to be a strong
presumption of rebirth- that would seem to me much more likely
than other explanations. If there were no distinct suggestion of
memory, or if it seemed not in the least like memory to the
medium, the explanation in terms of communication from a
person now dead would appear irresistible. In either case some
form of survival would be involved. I am not aware of a case that
strictly measures up to this, but it would seem to provide a model
of what would be required to set reasonable doubt at rest.
(b) If the evidence in question were to be found conclusive, or
at least very strong, it would still be important not to give it the
wrong kind of significance, or to suppose that it afforded some
once for all clue to all major outstanding problems. Some, for
example, have rushed to the findings of psychical research for
the refutation of materialism. But the most obvious counter to
materialist views of personality must be in terms of what we
normally find to be the case, and if we cannot succeed at this
level it is a moot point whether any other special evidence would
defeat attempts to offer exclusively materialistic explanations.
(c) Any positive conclusions we may draw about survival
from paranormal phenomena would still fall very far short of
what religious persons usually claim. Little might be known
about the permanence or the quality of future existence. It
might be possible to deduce only that we 'hover around' in some
form for some while after death. This would not be the 'life
eternal' that Christians, for example, speak of, and there might
be no more reason, in the accepted cases of survival, to invoke the
idea of God and related religious ideas than is already available
in present temporal existence.
92 Persons and Life After Death

There should, however, be a caveat here. The seemingly

trivial or pointless character of much that seems to be com-
munication from the dead, should not be taken straightway to
discredit the soundness or the significance of such communica-
tion. As Price has pointed out on more than one occasion, there
may be many reasons for the seeming triviality of the alleged
communication and the rather discouraging impression it gives
of a 'world beyond'. Much may be ascribable to faulty reception
or the peculiar difficulties of such communication and the proper
interpretation of it.
(d) Religious people, for the reasons instanced, often take a dim
view of psychical research and its relevance to their claims. They
are right ifit is supposed that the findings of psychical research
could do duty for the fulness of religious belief, and they may be
justified in their suspicion that excessive preoccupation with the
preternatural at this level could divert attention from more
distinctly and centrally religious concerns. Religion has to do
with much deeper needs than those which psychical research
could satisfy, and the latter must be seen in its proper perspective.
All the same, religious persons are very ill-advised to be con-
temptuous of psychical research or to dismiss it as of no im-
portance for them. In many ways besides those concerned
directly with survival (as in the study of religious symbolism for
example) it could be most illuminating for their purpose.
In particular, in our present context, it would be quite absurd
to dismiss any powerful evidence for survival, obtained from
psychical or mediumistic sources, as of little importance. Most
persons pay little heed to the matter at present, mainly, I
believe, because the present state of the subject and especially of
information about it, leaves it very uncertain for most people that
there is anything in it. But suppose it were established, with the
sort of firmness with which new findings in science come to be
accepted, the nature and distance of remote heavenly bodies and
the early formation of our own planet for example, that there was
communication with persons known to have lived and died on
this earth but therefore existing now in some form, what then? It
would seem to me that this would be a most momentous event,
and I can hardly conceive of its being passed without major
widespread notice. It would certainly hit the headlines and
might well have consequences for our future much more far-
 Survival 93

reaching than many of the remarkable scientific discoveries

which have transformed so much ofour lives today.
Nor would this be unimportant for religion. It would not give
us the more fundamental claims which religious persons usually
make, but it might well produce attitudes of mind and an outlook
on our present existence which could very considerably bring us
more within the ambit of properly religious concerns. It would be
unthinkable that a firm belief, on the most objective grounds, that
we do have some existence beyond the fleeting and imperfect
present one, sobering or grim (as Broad suspected) though the pro-
spect may be in some aspects, would make little difference to our
main concerns and attitudes. It might well revolutionize them,
and for that reason psychical research, even if presumed to be
still in its infancy, should have the fullest respect of religious
persons.
Having said this, I must add that the main positive reasons for
beliefin life after death seem to me to be essentially religious ones.
To deploy them is a vast undertaking in itself. Philosophy has
certainly a part in such process, but religious insights would also
be involved and need to be defended. Something might be made
perhaps of the oddity, a little overlooked in religious apologetics,
of a brief attainment of so much that is thought to be wholly
obliterated. But to go further would require not only a general
defence of religious claims, but the more precise commendation
of a particular religious allegiance, in my case a Christian one,
and a particular understanding of this. Indication of these tasks
is all that can be given here. My concern has been solely with the
way we may best understand the possiblity of life 'after' death.
Envisaging this positively is in no way essential to having such
expectations. We may hold on to our faith, if we have good
reasons for it, while also affirming that 'it doth not yet appear
what we shall be'. But specualtion may help, more I suspect than
religious people appreciate and it is in any case of great philo-
sophical interest on its own account.

NOTES
1. 'Is there a case for disembodied survival?' Journal of the American Society
forPsychicalResearch, Voi.66,Aprill972,p.l29.
2. The Ontological Argument, p. 84. Mr Barnes strengthens his position by
adding, 'If the conclusion is not allowed (on the dubious ground that Gods
94 Persons and Life After Death

are, by definition, incorporeal), then it follows that any God is both corporeal
and incorporeal; so that it is a necessary truth that there are no Gods'.
3. StMary's Quarterly (Journal ofSt Mary the Virgin, Bourne Street).
4. Op cit., p. 141.
5. The Self and lmmortaliry, Chapter 9.
6. Chapter 8.
7. Chapter 8.

II ANTONY FLEW,
Professor of Philosophy, Universi!J of Reading.

I. Some points of agreement

I follow the the excellent example of Pmfessor H. D. Lewis by
starting with points of agreement. Since I am writing a second
paper, I can pick out not one but several. Nor is the list below
exhaustive.
(a) First, I wholeheartedly concur with his old-fashioned
academic dedication: 'Notions which are not reconcilable with
religious claims . . . must be considered on their merits. Our
concern, whether religious or not, is ... with the pursuit of truth'
I could wish - to take an illustration from another but still
topical controversy - that it was in that spirit and with that
commitment that everyone approached the contested issue of
whether there are in fact genetically determined differences
between racial groups, genetically determined differences, that
is, other than those by reference to which membership in such
groups is itself defined. Too many- and, most scandalously, too
many teachers in tertiary education - have recently felt called
upon to denounce affirmative answers as racist, which they are
not; without, apparently, being troubled by any pedantic
concern lest the contrary doctrine, which they find more
palatable, might not after all be false. ('A pedant', to quote one
of Russell's mischievous yet salutary definitions, 'is a person who
prefers his statement to be true'.)
But, having said this, I have to jib at a remark made by Lewis
in considering the suggestion that we might 'survive without
memories of our previous existence or any thought of it'. In a
discussion of what, for better or for worse, may in fact be the case
he is not entitled to help himself to the assumption that every-
 Survival 95

thing which occurs must have some satisfactory point: ' ... it is
hard to see what purpose could be served ... in this way'.
(b) Second, though this is a concurrence of another kind,
Lewis and I have both written at greater length on the same
subject elsewhere. Lewis mentions both his book on The Self and
Immortality (SI) and my article 'Is There a Case for Disembodied
Survival?' (ITCDS). I now have to ask the court to take into
account also my recent collection of papers, The Presumption of
Atheism (London: Pemberton, 1975). PA includes a revised
version of ITCDS, as well as several other essays in the same
area. I cannot avoid recycling some of this material here.
(c) Third, I agree with Lewis in linking the question of the
essentially incorporeal nature of persons with the question of the
existence of a God defined as both incorporeal and in some sense
personal. If it makes no sense to speak of incorporeal persons,
then it can scarcely make sense to speak of such a God.
I also agree with the parenthetical suggestion that Professor
P. F. Strawson's remarks about 'former persons' cannot be
squared with Strawson's own fundamental contention that
persons are tokens of 'a type of entity such that both predicates
ascribing states of consciousness and predicates -ascribing
corporeal characteristics ... are equally applicable to a single
individual of that single type' (Individuals, pp. 115-16 and 102;
italics original). By enunciating this basic proposition Strawson
disqualifies himselffrom going on to say, as he does, that 'each of
us can quite intelligibly conceive of his or her individual survival
of bodily death. The effort of imagination is not even great' (p.
115). Really to imagine myself disembodied would surely have
to be to imagine (the same person as) me; but disembodied. Now,
either we really imagine a person or we do not. Former persons, if
they are only former persons, are no more a sort of person than
ex-wives, if they are only ex-wives, are a sort of wives. We cannot,
therefore, allow Strawson these concluding manoeuvres: first, in
his easy imaginings to assume that his putative disembodied
beings would be persons; and then, when the going gets tougher,
to sidestep the consequent charge of inconsistency by saying that
they areformer, and hence presumably not, persons. (Compare
PA, XI 3 and IX.)
(d) Fourth, after insisting: that 'Unless we can have an
acceptable idea of persons which does not involve identity with,
96 Persons and Lift 4fter Death

or dependence upon, our present physical bodies, there seems ...

little point in considering a possible future existence'; Lewis
warns that 'in considering such views we should not father them
wholly upon the much maligned Descartes'. Indeed we should
not. It is therefore perhaps just worth noting that the name
'Plato' does not occur in the Index to the first edition of The
Concept of Mind; although its first chapter 'Descartes' Myth' does
end with an 'Historical Note' allowing that 'Platonic and
Aristotelian theories of the intellect shaped the orthodox
doctrines of the immortality ofth~ soul' (p. 23).
Now consider, as the occasion for a further scholarly note,
some remarks made by Mr A. M. Quinton in the opening
paragraph of his article on 'The Soul', first published in The
Journal of Philosophy for 1962: 'In the history of philosophy the
soul has been used for two distinct purposes: first, as an ex-
planation of the vitality that distinguishes human beings, and
also animals and plants, from the broad mass of material objects;
and, secondly, as the seat of consciousness. The first of these,
which sees the soul as an ethereal but nonetheless physical
entity ... need not detain us. The second ... the soul of Plato and
Descartes, deserves a closer examination than it now usually
receives'.
So it does. But Quinton's will not serve. Certainly Plato did
not see 'the soul as an ethereal but nonetheless physical entity':
this view he ridicules at Phaedo 77D. Yet it is quite wrong to
suggest that Plato therefore did not conceive of the soul as a
principle oflife, and hence possibly as some sort of' explanation of
the vitality that distinguishes human beings ... from the broad
mass of material objects'. For both in Tlze Republic (352D-354A)
and in Phaedo ( 105C9-D2) this clearly is at least part of Plato's
conception of the soul. In both places he fails to distinguish
sufficiently: between an idea of the soul as the (incorporeal)
principle oflife; and the concept of the soul as the true (always
incorporeal) person. In Phaedo this failure is crucial to the
plausibility of his great set-piece argument for immortailty
(100B-105E). For more on this see my Body Mind and Death (New
York: Collier-Macmillan, 1964: Introduction and under Plato).
It is equally wrong to attribute what is in fact a distinctively
Cartesian emphasis on consciousness to Plato. For it was
Descartes who first, after concluding that he or his soul was
 Survival 97

essentially an incorporeal thing, a spiritual or thinking sub-

stance, proceeded to define 'thinking' in terms of all and only
consciousness. So it is to Descartes that we owe the modern
problem of mind and matter, considered as the problem of the
relations of consciousness to stuff. In setting us this problem
Descartes prescribed his own factitious meaning for the word
'thinking', going against the grain of all established verbal
habits. So, almost inevitably, and almost immediately, he
becomes himself the first backslider: his 'two most certain tests'
of the presence of a thinking substance inside the machine of a
body are tests for rationality rather than for consciousness. The
price of Humpty Dumptysim for Descartes is heavy: he both
fails to uncover completely our twentieth-century problem of
other minds; and he concludes that the brutes, simply because
they are not rational animals, must be as it were permanently
anaesthetised.
(e) Fifth, I agree with Lewis about the possible religious
relevance of the evidence of psychical research. So, although my
own appraisal of the present state of that evidence is even more
discouraging than his, it is perhaps just worth adding two
supplementaries. First, it really will not do to dismiss conceptual
difficulties about the notion of survival in such supercilious
words as were used by the reviewer of C. B. Martin's Religious
Belief in Mind for 1961 : 'Christians believe that they are to be
resurrected. They are not committed to any particular theory of
personal identity, e.g. "that there must be something that is
continuous and identical in this life that will survive into the
next" (p. 107), an insistence argued convincingly by Mr
Martin to be pointless. Christians do not have a theory here at all.
They believe that they are in for damnation or salvation, which
is something Mr Martin does not consider. The notion of
"looking forward to a life after death as a means of settling
questions concerning the existence and nature of God" which he
seems particularly concerned to attack smacks of"Spiritualism"
perhaps rather than Christianity' (p. 5 72). This evasive com-
placency is grotesque. Survival is not an alternative to, but a
necessary condition of immortality. It is, once again, the first
step which counts.
Second, we must not assume that a proof of 'communication
with persons known to have lived and died on this earth but ...
98 Persons and Life After Death

existing now in some form' would necesssarily provide support

for all those 'systems of religion' which embrace some doctrine of
immortality. Certainly survival is, as I have just insisted, a
necessary condition ofimmortality. But the particular content of
such hypothetical communications could either count against or
even decisively falsify one or other particular system of religion.
The tales which some Spiritualists have told or been told about
the Summerland do not easily fit into any traditional Christian
picture of either Hell or Purgatory or Heaven. And, if Islam
really does promise that those who die fighting on the right side
in ajehad pass straight into the eager arms of black-eyed houris,
then the disappointment of this stimulating expectation must
constitute decisive falsification for what would be humanly the
most attractive element in that religion.
(f) Sixth, Lewis and I agree about the crucial position,
though not about the size, of what I call the 'enormous initial
obstacle'. This, as Lewis says, 'is what sets the problem'. The
problem is to show how, if at all, any doctrine of personal
survival or personal immortality could get around or over the
obstacle. It is, I suggest, helpful to distinguish three sorts of way
in which this may be attempted. Many compounds of these
three elements are possible. But it is best to begin by distin-
guishing pure forms. I will now where necessary explain, and
examine, these three ways one by one.

2. The reconstitutionist way

What this involves becomes clear from two quotations. I have
used these more than once before. But they do bear repetition.
The first is an epitaph composed for himself by Benjamin
Franklin. I copied it from a plaque erected not on but beside his
grave in Christ Church cemetery, Philadelphia: 'The body of B.
Franklin, Printer, Like the Cover of an old Book, Its Contents
torn out, And stript of its Lettering and Gilding, Lies Here,
Food for Worms. But the work shall not be lost; for it will, as he
believ'd, appear once more in a new and more elegant Edition
Corrected and improved By the Author'.
The second quotation comes from Chapter XVII 'The
Night Journey' in The Koran, in N. J. Dawood's Penguin
Classics translation. As usual, it is Allah speaking: 'Thus shall
they be rewarded: because they disbelieved our revelations and
 Survival 99

said "When we are turned to bones and dust shall we be raised

to life?" Do they not see that Allah, who has created the heavens
and the earth, has power to create their like? Their fate is
preordained beyond all doubt. Yet the wrongdoers persist in
unbelief' (p. 234).
Lewis is clearly embarrassed by such robust suggestions:
'That, in some Christian contexts at least, people have supposed
that the graves and the seas will one day yield up their dead
again is due largely to the highly unrealistic view men have been
apt to take, with one part of their minds perhaps or in some
moods, of decomposing bodies'. But Lewis seems not to have
appreciated that and why this is the kind of mountain which even
faith could not move. Though apologising a moment later for his
apparent light-heartedness, Lewis writes: 'We may also ask,
just what would be the point of this reconstitution ... What of
any significance could be accomplished? Could not God, as
omnipotent, equally well have provided a duplicate, a new body,
original cells and all, exactly like my present one? I would
certainly not know the difference'.
The trouble here is that Lewis has simply not taken the
measure of the reconstitutionist. For the reconstitutionist holds
that a person just is a creature of flesh and blood, not an essentially
incorporeal being who may happen to be equipped with a body.
Suppose Lewis had been right thus to project his own view of
persons on to the reconstitutionist. Then it would indeed have
been a puzzle to find any reason why 'a duplicate, a new body'
would not be acceptable. But, as things actually are, the re-
constitutionist has to meet the crucial Replica Objection. This is
the objection: that the 'new and more elegant Edition' would
not be the original Founding Father, Signer of the American
Declaration of Independence, but only a replica; and that
Allah spoke more truly than his prophet realised when he
claimed, not the ability to reconstitute numerically the same
persons, but only 'power to create their like'.
In this context we can see why a reconstitutionist should
'invoke the omnipotence of God' in order to 'reassemble the
scattered elements of our decomposed bodies to constitute again
the body we have now'; although, of course, a pure recon-
stitutionist would not talk as Lewis does of our having or not
having bodies in a putative life after death. One good reason for
100 Persons and Life 4fter Death

the reconstitutionist to make this particular appeal will be that

he hopes - maybe rightly, maybe wrongly - to meet by this
means the Replica Objection.
Pure reconstitutionism, as illustrated by my two quotations,
has no doubt been rare, even in places and periods of more
absolute faith. (One may perhaps take leave to wonder whether
Franklin's suggested epitaph was itself the sincere expression of
such a faith!) Usually spokesmen for the resurrection of the
flesh or the reconstitution of the person- however strong their
insistence that any truly human being must be corporeal- have
wanted also to make some provision for a substantial soul. At
least part, though surely only part, of the point of this provision
has been to have another answer to the Replica Objection. See,
for instance, the Summa Theologica, Part III (Supp.) Q.LXXIX A.2;
especially the Reply to the first Objection. So long as there is a
soul which is a substance, in the sense of something which could
significantly be said to exist separately, then that soul can be
called upon to remain in being between death and resurrection;
and thereby to preserve the desired identity of the resurrection
persons with their 'dead originals'.
In so far as we are dealing with an impure reconstitutionism,
and in so far as (we believe) the Replica Objection is adequately
met by reference to the impurity, we may well wonder - with
Lewis - why there should be such a strong insistence upon
having the same organism, and neither a perfect duplicate nor a
new improved replacement. I think the answer lies in something
which Lewis tries to minimise: namely, the importance within
the Christian tradition of the notion that to be truly human is to
be corporeal - that that is our proper ontological station. That
this matters to StThomas, for instance, comes out very clearly in
the whole subtreatise 'Of the Resurrection', where the passage
cited in the previous paragraph is found (Qq. LXIX-LXXXVI).
The first Article of the same Question LXXIX, incidentally,
shows: that while for Thomas a human soul can be said to, and
does, survive physical dissolution; still it could not exist or,
rather, subsist before its body. It thus appears- no doubt to the
surprise of both - that here Thomas in his own way anticipated
Strawson's notion of 'former persons'.
A more immediately relevant illustration of Christian concern
with corporeality is provided by Lewis' - and my - former
 Survival 101

colleague Professor Eric Mascall. Lewis quotes Mascall as

proclaiming 'that Christ has risen in his body', albeit a body
'unimaginably transformed'. Lewis is perplexed: 'But why, in
this context or any other, should much be made to turn on
whether his body actually came out of the tomb, as a trans-
figured body; whether it did or not'.
The answer again is, surely, that Mascall- good Thomist that
he is- holds that to be truly human is to be corporeal. Hence, if
Jesus is to remain man as well as God after his resurrection, he
has then to be 'neither a ghost or a zombie, but a living and
transfigured man'. Of course, as Lewis and I agreed in Section 1
(c) above, this is going to be an awkward commitment for the
theist theologian. If human persons- the paradigm persons- are
thus essentially corporeal, then it must be at least very difficult
to show that there is room for a concept of God as a being both
essentially incorporeal and also in some sense personal.

3. The way of the astral body.

The best approach to the present notion of an astral body is by
thinking of those cinematic representations - as long ago in the
movie version of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit- in which a shadow
person, visible only sometimes and only to some of the characters,
detaches itself from a person shown as dead, and thereafter
continues to participate in the developing action, at one time
discernibly and at another time not. This 'astral body' is taken
to be itself the real, the essential, person.
It is not, however, essential that an astral body be of human
shape; much less that, even after the traumatic detachment of
death, it should remain - as in those decent old days it did -
neatly and conventionally clad. The crux is that it should possess
the corporeal characteristics of size, shape and position; and
that- though eluding crude, untutored, observation- it should
nevertheless be in principle detectable. It it were not both in this
minimum sense corporeal and in principle detectable, it would
not be relevantly different from the Platonic-Cartesian soul. If it
were not in practice excessively difficult to detect, no one could
with any plausibility suggest that such a thing might slip away
unnoticed from the deathbed: ' ... if the notion of an astral body
is worth considering at all in this connection, as a distinct idea, it
must be on the basis ofits having physical properties of some sort,
102 Persons and Life After Death

or being detectable in physical space'. For present purposes,

therefore, we ought to classify corporeal souls as astral bodies.
The notion which, as we saw earlier, Plato derided at Phaedo
77D clearly satisfies the present specifications; and that notion
surely was, as near as makes no matter, that of the soul of
Epicurus and Lucretius.
Lewis complains: 'There is however some confusion, and I
feel that Professor Flew is in some measure guilty of it, about
what we should understand by the idea of the alleged a~tral
body. It could be thought to be some kind of non-physical
"dream" or "image" body, or some quasi-body not in physical
~eace and quite distinct from our pre~ent body, which we may
have or enter when we discard the body we have now'.
Certainly there is confusion in plenty in the literature to which
Lewis and I were both referring. But I plead 'Not guilty' to
confounding my concept of an astral body, as explained in the
two previous paragraphs, with that preferred by Lewis, and
explained in the passage just quoted. I am sure that Lewis
suggests that I am confused, where I am not, out of charity. He
cannot bring himself to believe that I have knowingly kept
company with so disreputable a concept as that of the astral
body (Flew); whereas the astral body (Lewis) is, he allows, 'a
notion we can take seriously'.
I am grateful for the kindness. Yet it is misplaced. In IT CDS
I entertained only the Flew and not the Lewis concept, and I gave
it this hospitality for the reason which Lewis himself notices.
(See the quotation in my last paragraph but one.) Of course
I agree with him about 'the inadequate character of evidence in
support of it'. That is the good reason why I did not attempt any
elaborate development - that 'much more careful analysis ...
needed if it is to be examined seriously and with some bias in its
favour by philosophers of Professor Flew's standing'. The 'bias
in its favour' which Lewis detects is grounded in my conviction
that there are insuperable philosophical difficulties in both the
alternative ways; whereas the way of the astral body, though
certainly blocked, is blocked by empirical difficulties.

4. The Platonic-Cartesian way

This consists in two moves, not one. The first is to maintain that
what is ordinarily thought of as a person in fact consists of two
 Survival 103

radically disparate substances: the one, the body, earthy,

corporeal and perishable; the other, the soul, incorporeal,
invisible, intangible and perhaps imperishable. The second
consists in the contention that it is the second of these two sub-
stances which is the real, essential person. It is obvious that if this
way will go, then what I call the enormous initial obstacle is really
no obstacle at all: the death of the body is not necessarily the
death of the soul, which is the true person; and such an essentially
incorporeal entity cannot in principle be touched by the earthy
corruptions of the graveyard, the inferno of the crematorium.
Lewis, it seems, right from the beginning takes this Platonic-
Cartesian framework absolutely for granted. Without it, as he
says in his first paragraph, 'there would be no point in raising the
question of the possiblity of our survival of death'. Indeed Lewis
appears to be unable even to describe my two alternative possible
routes over or round the 'enormous initial obstacle' except in
intrusively Platonic-Cartesian terms. Thus, as we have already
noticed, in discussing reconstitution he asks: 'Could not God, as
omnipotent, equally well have provided a duplicate, a new
body ... ? I would certainly not know the difference'. Obviously
the referent of this 'I' is a Platonic-Cartesian soul.
The same deep assumption reappears in the distinction
between two senses of 'astral body'. The second, approved, kind
of astral body would be one 'which we may have or enter when
we discard the body we have now'. That this enterer and dis-
carder of bodies is none other than 'the soul of Plato and Des-
cartes' becomes, if possible, even clearer when Lewis later notes
'the oddity of our having what might almost be called the
encumbrance of an astral body when we have normally no
consciousness of it and when it seems to have no function related
to our normal transactions in this world. Why, ifl may so put it,
do we need it now? Will the soul come adrift in some way if it has
not this spare bodily harness ready to contain it when we die?'.
Certainly Lewis makes a fair point in insisting that the spokes-
man for the way of the astral body has to establish not only that
there are, but also that we are, astral bodies;just as, as I have to
add, the protagonist of the Platonic-Cartesian way has to show
not only that people contain, but also that really and essentially
they are, incorporeal substances. What I feel that Lewis never
fully recognizes is that there are serious, perhaps intractable,
104 Persons and Life After Death

difficulties in his view of the nature of man: that, in Quinton's

words, 'the soul of Plato and Descartes deserves a closer examin-
ation than it now usually receives'. I have elsewhere attempted a
rather more systematic presentation of these difficulties (PA, X).
Here, as befits a second symposiast, I will raise them in the form
of occasional comments on the first paper.
(a) Lewis writes: 'Elsewhere I have defended the view that
mental states are of a different nature from physical ones, and
that they belong to a subject or entity that persists through
various states without being reducible to them. The first seems
an obvious prerequisite of any significant doctrine of survival,
but I attach almost equal importance to the second'. References
later in the same paragraph to 'the much maligned Descartes'
and to 'the notion of a Pure Self or Subject' make it quite clear,
even before referring to Sf, that the crucial adjective 'incorporeal'
should here be supplied to qualify 'subject or entity.' (Without
that insertion I could myself happily assent to both claims!)
When I reviewed Sf for Philosophical Books I made the
inexplicable, but also inexcusable, mistake of attributing to
Lewis himself, as an aberration, what was in fact part of his
statement of a rival view. Inevitably therefore, and properly, I
have qualms in reporting that I still cannot see that Lewis gives
in that book any more or better reason than he gives in his present
paper for thinking that mental states must, or even may, be the
states of such a subject.
His aim is 'to break down the materialist presuppositions of
much contemporary thought ... by what we find to be the case in
ordinary experience .. .' (Sf, p. 204). But he in fact reaches the
desired Cartesian conclusions by taking it that an exclusively
Cartesian interpretation of various familiar ongoings is itself an
essential part of our ordinary experience of these ongoings. Thus,
for instance, he says: 'If my wife calls and I go downstairs, this is
because I understand that dinner is ready, etc.; and surely my
understanding counts, short of treating all purposive activity as
some curious sort of reflex action' (Sf, p. 64).
Certainly Lewis, and Mrs Lewis, and everyone else, knows
that his understanding her call is on this sort ofoccasion a causally
necessary condition of his going downstairs. But this familiar
fact simply does nor begin to show that two substances, conscious
mind and non-conscious matter, have been causally interacting.
 Survival 105

Nothing has been done, therefore, to prepare for the question on

the following page: 'But why should we expect that or suppose
that proper scientific study of the brain at its own level precludes
the recognition that the impact of our thoughts upon it alters
considerably what would have happened otherwise?'
To argue on these Lewis lines does nothing to foreclose on
the possiblity that consciousness can be significantly predicated
only ofliving organisms. To insist that such 'ordinary experience'
as that of my hands moving because I decide to move them, or of
my suffering agonies because a weight is crushing my leg, proves
'a close interaction of mind and body', is not at all to show
that in these cases extended physical entities are engaged in
causal transactions with something 'of a radically different
nature from extended or physical reality'. Absolutely nothing
has been said to rebut the studiously simple-minded contention
that the deciding agent and the suffering patient are one and the
same flesh and blood person. Nor has anything whatever been
said to show that either pure moments of consciousness unalloyed
with anything material, or incorporeal subjects of consciousness,
either have been, or could be, isolated as independent causal
factors. In sum it seems to me that reference to Sf does not help to
show that mental states belong to incorporeal substances. Nor
does it help to show, more fundamentally, that we possess a viable
concept of this kind ofsubstance.
(b) In discussing 'The relevance of the idea of the astral
body ... to personal identity', Lewis says: 'The requirement of
bodily continuity is usually made, in reputable philosophy, in
respect of a point ofview and the confirmation of memories etc.'
But the philosophical problem of personal identity, the reputable
problem, concerns not the confirmation but the content of
claims to be the same person.
It is not Locke alone who needs to take to heart Butler's terse,
elegant and decisive statement of the reasons why -whatever
persons may be- personal identity simply cannot be analysed in
terms of memory. For instance: Quinton, in the paper cited in my
Section 1 (d) above, not yet being fully seized of this objection,
was still trying to develop a neo-Lockean account of the sameness
of souls; these being there conceived as 'series of mental states
identified through time in virute of the properties and relations of
these mental states themselves' (p. 397; compare PA, X 3 (i)).
106 Persons and Life After Death

It is in the third paragraph of his 'Dissertation of Personal

Identity' that Butler delivers what another Bishop would have
called the killing blow: ' ... though consciousness of what is past
does ... ascertain our personal identity to ourselves, yet to say
that it makes personal identity, or is necessary to our being the
same persons ... 'is a 'wonderful mistake'. For 'one should really
think it self-evident, that consciousness of personal identity
presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute personal identity;
any more than knowledge, in any other case, can constitute
truth, which it presupposes'.
Just so. Hence 'The relevance of the idea of the astral body
... to personal identity' is: not that knowledge of the presence of
a particular body might enable us to know that the soul 'harness-
ed' to that 'encumbrance' was also present; but that being the
same astral body might be being the same person. That Lewis
does indeed see the problem as one of how, rather than what, we
might know is confirmed by a later passage: 'The question of a
linkage, in a future existence, with our present existence, has
further difficulties. They would partly be met by dependence on
memory, and I see no reason to doubt that, ifl became convinced
that I was in another existence, and seemed to have clear
memories of the present life, I could put considerable credence
upon it, as I do now when I wake up and without any checking'.
That 'could' shows that Lewis is asking, as too many do not,
the properly philosophical question: not 'What would we in
fact say if so and so?'; but 'What should or, better, ought we to
say if so and so?' Questions of the former form belong to what a
Kantian might call hypothetical anthropology, not philosophy.
But though the Lewis investigation is properly philosophical, it is
still about how we might know, and when we might be entitled
to claim to know. Yet the primary question here is precisely what
we should know if we knew that this incorporeal substance at
time two was the same as that incorporeal substance at time one.
The nature and importance of this most fundamental question
is for many obscured by the extraordinary, and yet extra-
ordinarily widespread, assumption that person words are
ordinarily used to refer to substances which, if not essentially
incorporeal, are certainly not essentially corporeal. Given this,
and given, what is indeed the case, that we are all both acquain-
ted with many persons and equipped with at least an everyday
 Survival 107

if not a philosophical understanding of what it is to be the same

person; tqen there obviously is no difficulty about what could be,
indeed is, meant by talk of such incorporeal substances, and of
one of these being the same or not the same as another.
Almost every passage which I have already quoted from Lewis
will also serve to show how unshakably he holds, or is held by,
this extraordinary assumption. Perhaps the point came out most
clearly when we saw him misdescribing the reconstitutionist and
astral body alternatives in terms which were themselves still
unquestioningly Platonic-Cartesian. But my own favourite
illustration of the entrenched strength of this assumption is
provided by Hume. For Ryle's 'ungullible Hume', Hume the
lifelong Mortalist, Hume who had nothing except perhaps his
philosophical scepticism to lose and everything to gain, even
Hume, still never thought to question this. Instead, in rather
self-conscious radicalism, he asked only whether we have any
good reason to believe in the existence of a Self as the subject of
all our 'loose and separate' experiences. Very soon - and to us
significantly - he found himself entirely at a loss to provide any
tolerable account of the bond which unites such collections of
unowned experiences; a notion which in any case, surely, makes
about as much sense as those of a harmony without any elements
being harmonised or of a grin without any face to grin it.
I do not know how to begin here to show that this extra-
ordinary assumption about the ordinary meanings of person-
words is, though among philosophers both deep and common,
false. In part my difficulty arises because those who argue on this
assumption never seem to make any but the most perfunctory
attempt to show that it is true. One of my hopes of the coming
discussion is that someone will indicate the lines on which they
think this might be shown. In the meantime I ask Lewis whether
he is really prepared to maintain, as this assumption appears to
require, that anyone who characterises someone as a person,
while denying that that person, or any other, either is, or
contains, an actually, or potentially, incorporeal substance,
thereby contradicts himself. On the side of the Noes we have
the whole weight of the evidence which led Wittgenstein in the
Investigations to say: 'The human body is the best picture of the
human soul' (p. 178).
The second subject- I can scarcely say matter- upon which
108 Persons and Life After Death

I hope the discussion may throw some light is that of incorporeal

substances. So long as it is assumed that we ourselves are, and can
easily know that we are, such substances it is hard to recognise
this as the opaque and disputatious notion which it is. We may
here recall how in Phaedo, wishing to establish that this is indeed
what we are, Plato's Socrates appealed to what he took to be the
known fact of the existence of Forms; though we should notice,
as he did not, that if there were such paradigm incorporeal
substances they would presumably be, not, as his supposed
proof of personal immortality requires, eternal (everlasting), but
eternal (makes no sense to ask when or where).
But now, once we have come to see the key notion, or pseudo-
notion, as possibly problematic, it is easy to put the finger on the
fundamental problem. Is an incorporeal spiritual substance any
more a kind of substance than an imaginary or non-existent
entity is a kind of entity? I cannot put the crucial point better, or
more politely, than by quoting Professor Terence Penelhum's
Survival and Disembodied Existence (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1970) : 'Beyond the wholly empty assurance that it
is a metaphysical principle which guarantees continuing
identity through time, or the argument that since we know that
identity persists some such principle must hold in default of
others, no content seems available for the doctrine'; and, apart
from serving as a subject to which mental characteristics may be
attributed, it is 'merely an alleged iden ti ty-guaran teeing condition
of which no independent characterisation is forthcoming' (p. 76).
The first adjective in the expression 'incorporeal spiritual
substance' seems to negate the identifying content of the noun.
Nor is this, I suggest, an emptily verbal point, to be parried by
some equally verbal manoeuvre. For any stipulation making it
possible to identify such a substance, must thereby make it
correspondingly possible to show that in fact nothing of the sort
either enters at conception or leaves at death. The often un-
acceptable price of providing such identification is that it
becomes by the same token in principle possible to falsify the
claim that these substances exist. This is in part why, I think,
many would be inclined to dismiss anything which was identifi-
able as only an astral body, not a genuine Platonic-Cartesian
soul; and certainly this was part of my reason for proposing to
classify Epicurean corporeal souls along with astral bodies. My
 Survival 109

own friendliness towards the latter, a friendliness which I am

afraid shocked Lewis, is not of course a mark of any inclination
to believe that there are such. It is rooted in my preference for the
identifiable and the falsifiable as against the unidentifiable and,
it seems to me studiously unfalsifiable.
In order to concentrate discussion upon what is, surely, the
most fundamental and crucial question, and because it is always
a pleasure to reread the 'Monster of Malmesbury', I conclude
with some rather rude words from Leviathan, Chapter V: 'And
therefore, if a man should talk to me of "a round quadrangle";
or "accidents of bread in cheese"; or "immaterial substances";
... I should not say he was in error, but that his words were
without meaning: that is to say, absurd'.
SUMMARY
1. Some points rif agreement include: that our overriding concern
should be with truth not comfort; that a view of persons as
essentially corporeal threatens the idea of God as both incor-
poreal and yet personal; that what is called the survival evidence
from psychical research could be relevant to religious beliefs; that
the main philosophical battle must be about the Platonic-
Cartesian conception of the nature of man; and that we must
start from looking for ways round the 'enormous initial obstacle'
of the facts of death.
2. The reconstitutionist wqy must be seen as, in its pure form,
maintaining that people just are corporeal. This way is blocked
by the objection that such a reconstituted person would be a
replica, not the original.
3. The way of the astral body must again be seen as in its pure
form, maintaining that people do not have but are 'astral
bodies'. The decisive objection here is that there is no good
reason to believe in the existence ofsuch 'astral bodies'.
4. The Platonic-Cartesian way is in fact always taken for granted
by Lewis, even where he believes that he is offering evidence in its
support. The two crucial questions for discussion arc: first, can
we hope to show that at least part of what person-words are
ordinarily used to refer to is a Platonic-Cartesian soul; and,
second and more fundamental, is it possible to provide any
positive identifying characterisation for any such incorporeal
spiritual substance?
6 Immortality and Dualism

I SYDNEY SHOEMAKER,
Professor of Philosophy, Cornell Universiry
I. Someone who believes in immortality is not thereby com-
mitted, logically, to believing in dualism and in the possibility of
disembodied existence. Nevertheless, any anti-dualist who
believes in immortality is committed to believing things which
most anti-dualists would find even less plausible than dualism.
Observe that if at some future time I die and then undergo
bodily resurrection, or if I arrange to have myself deep-frozen
and then thawed a few millennia later, 1 or if I have my brain
transferred to a younger and healthier body, or if I have my
brainstates transferred to a younger and healthier brain, or if I
undergo rejuvenation at the hands of the micro-surgeons, then
no matter how much my bodily existence will have been
extended beyond three score years and ten, I will still have an
eternity ahead of me. None of the imagined life-prolonging (or
life-restoring) episodes would, by itself, bring one immortality,
as opposed to mere increased longevity. If someone believes
that these (will be?) immortal, but rejects dualism and the possi-
bility of disembodied existence, he is committed to believing
either (a) that beginning now or later he will live forever em-
bodied in a body of the sort he currently has, one subject to all of
the ills flesh is heir to, or (b) that at some future time his body
will be transformed into, or replaced by, one that is imperish-
able and indestructible (by natural means), in which he will
then be embodied forever, or (c) that he will undergo and
survive an unending series of life-prolonging episodes (resur-
rections, brain transplants, rejuvenations, etc.). Even if none of
these beliefs can be faulted on logical or conceptual grounds,
most people would agree that there are overwhelming empirical
grounds for rejecting all of them.
©Cornell University Press 1977
 Immortality and Dualism Ill

For anyone who wants to believe in personal immortality,

dualism seems to offer obvious advantages over anti-dualism. A
dualist can believe in immortality without clashing head-on with
science and with the fund of experience which has made 'all men
are mortal' a truism. While we have abundant empirical
evidence of the perishability and impermanence of material
substances, especially organic ones, we have none at all of the
perishability and impermanence of immaterial substances. To
be sure, we also have no empirical evidence of the imperish-
ability and permanence of immaterial substances. But to many
philosophers it has seemed that we are guaranteed the latter
on a priori grounds. An undoubted attraction of the idea that
persons are immaterial substances is the idea that such sub-
stances, being simple and without parts (a supposed consequence
of their lacking spatial extension), will be incapable of going out
of existence through dissolution of parts, and so will be 'incor-
ruptible' by natural means. Nowadays, of course, such ideas do
not have the following'they once had. There are few who sub-
scribe to the sort of'rational psychology' attacked by Kant in the
Paralogisms. But the effects of such ideas linger on, and the view
persists that belief in dualism is appreciably more compatible
with belief in immortality than is belief in materialism. One of
my objects in this paper is to undermine this view.
2. Recent philosophers who reject dualism and deny the
possibility of disembodied existence of persons tend to fall into
one of two groups. Those in one group seek to show that the
falsity of dualism can be demonstrated on conceptual grounds. 2
Those in the other group maintain that dualism is an intelligible
and logically coherent doctrine, but that we have overwhelming
empirical grounds for rejecting it as false. 3 On the first view there
is no possible world in which dualism is true. On the second view
dualism is true in some possible worlds, but not in the actual
world.
I think that there is an element of truth in each of these views;
roughly, they are true of different versions of dualism. There is a
version of dualism, and one that implies that disembodied
existence of persons is possible, to which there is, as far as I can
see, no decisive logical or conceptual objection. This it seems
reasonable to regard as a doctrine to be accepted or rejected (I
opt for the latter) on empirical grounds. Once it is clearly
 112 Persons and Life After Death

distinguished from other versions, this version turns out not to be

of much h,elp to believers in immortality, and it is not, I think,
the doctrine that such believers have ordinarily held. There is
another version of dualism which at least some believers in
immortality have held, and which seems in harmony with the
doctrine of immortality. I believe that this second version is
conceptually incoherent, but I shall content myself here with
arguing that there is, and could be, no reason to believe it true.
Presumably any dualist who believes that it is possible for him
to exist in disembodied form believes that there is an immaterial
substance such that (a) what mental states he has depends on
what states the immaterial substance has, (b) all causal con-
nections involving mental states between his sensory 'input' and
his behavioural 'output' are mediated by states of this immaterial
substance, and (c) it is possible for him to exist, as a subject of
mental states, without having a body, as long as the immaterial
substance exists and has the appropriate states. Let us say that
anyone of whom all of this is true has a minimally dualistic
nature. I shall use the term 'Minimal Dualism' for the doctrine
that all persons have minimally dualistic natures- but it is worth
noting that there is no evident incoherence involved in holding
that some persons have minimally dualistic natures while others
are purely material creatures.
Notice the Minimal Dualism does not say either (a) that the
immaterial substance associated with a person is the person, or
(b) that the states of the immaterial substance are the mental
states of the person. Neither docs it deny that (a) and (b) are true.
So two versions of Minimal Dualism can be distinguished. Both
of these hold that the person is something distinct from (non-
identical with) his body, and that physical states (height, weight,
etc.) belong to a person only derivatively - so, for example, a
person has a certain weight in virtue of having (rather than
being) a body having that weight. And both hold that the mental
states of a person belong to him non-derivatively - that a
person's being angry, for example, is not a matter of his being
related in a certain way to something (non-identical to himself)
that is angry. But one version affirms what the other denies, that
a person is identical with an immaterial substance, the states of
which are the mental states of the person. I shall call the version
that says that persons are immaterial substances Cartesian
 Immortality and Dualism 113

Dualism, and shall call the other Non-Cartesian Dualism. But

these are only suggestive names, and I do not claim that Descartes
consistently adhered to the doctrine I call Cartesian Dualism.
It is worth noting that what Minimal Dualism says about
immaterial substances is the same as what many contemporary
philosophers are prepared to say about brains. Many philo-
sophers would hold that for each person there exists a brain such
that (a) what mental states the person has depends on what
states the brain has, (b) all causal connections involving mental
states between the person's sensory input and behavioural output
are mediated by states of the brain, and (c) it is possible for the
person to exist, as a subject of mental states, as long as the brain
exists and has the appropriate states. The only part of this that
would ordinarily be regarded as at all controversial is (c), which
is affirmed by those who think that a person could survive the
destruction of his body ifhis brain were detached and kept alive
in vitro. Now this view about brains does not seem to imply that
persons are brains (and so weigh only a few pounds, are greyish
in colour, and so on), and that the mental states of persons just
are states of their brains. And no more does Minimal Dualism
seem to imply Cartesian Dualism. It seems compatible with
Minimal Dualism that an immaterial substance should be
related to a person in much the way we ordinarily think of a
person's brain as related to him - that it should be, in effect,· a
ghostly brain. 4 And this is what I shall take Non-Cartesian
Dualism to hold.
It should come as no surprise that the version of dualism I
regard as conceptually coherent (although empirically very
implausible) is Non-Cartesian Dualism, while that which I
believe to be conceptually incoherent is Cartesian Dualism.
3. Before I can go on I must explain some terminology and state
some assumptions.
A substance, as I shall use the term, is a 'continuant' in
W. E. Johnson's sense- something that can persist through time,
and can have different properties at different times. A material
substance I take to be a substance whose non-derivative and
non-relational properties are necessarily limited to (a) physical
properties and (b) properties it has in virtue of what physical
properties it has (in the way a machine can have a certain
computational capacity in virtue of having a particular physical
114 Persons and Life After Death

structure, even though things having very different physical

structures, and perhaps even immaterial things, could have the
same computational capacity) . 6 And I take it that physical
properties can belong, non-derivatively, only to material
substances. Beyond this I shall not attempt to define the terms
'material' and 'physical'. I shall simply assume, for the sake of
this discussion, that the correct definitions of these terms (if there
are such), or the ways in which their references are fixed, are not
such as to make it self-contradictory to suppose that there might
be properties and states that are not physical and substances that
are not material.
It is misleading to treat the terms 'material substance' and
'immaterial substance' on a par. The relationship between them
should be thought of as analogous, not to that between 'iron' and
'copper', but to that between 'iron' and 'non-ferrous metal'. If
there can be immaterial substances at all, presumably there can
be different kinds of immaterial substances, these being as
different from one another as they are from material substances.
For each possible kind of immaterial substances there will be a
kind of properties which are essential to those substances in the
way physical properties are essential to material substances. Just
as physical properties can belong (non-derivatively) only to
material substances, so immaterial properties of one of these
kinds will be capable of belonging (non-derivatively) only to
immaterial substances of the corresponding kind; and, con-
versely, the non-derivative and non-relational properties of
immaterial substances of a given kind will be necessarily limited
to (a) immaterial properties of the corresponding kind and (b)
properties they have in virtue of what immaterial properties of
that kind they have.
A term that purports to refer to a kind of immaterial sub-
stances, and to be on a par with 'material substance', is 'spiritual
substance'. Spiritual substances are what Cartesian Dualists
believe persons to be. They are (or would be if they existed)
substances whose non-derivative and non-relational properties
are necessarily mental properties (if you like, modes of conscious-
ness); and anyone who holds that there can be such substances is
committed to holding that mental properties can belong
(non-derivatively) on(y to such substances.
It might be supposed that 'immaterial substance' could be
 Immortality and Dualism 115

defined as meaning simply 'substance that is not a material

substance'. A reason for not so defining it (one that would not,
however, impress a Cartesian Dualist) is that this would make
Non-Cartesian Dualism logically incoherent. Persons are
certainly substances in the broad sense I have defined; they are
'continuants'. Now Non-Cartesian Dualism denies that persons
are material substances, and so would be committed, by the
proposed definition of 'immaterial substance', to holding that
they are immaterial substances. But I have characterised Non-
Cartesian Dualism as the version of Minimal Dualism which
denies that a person is the immaterial substance on which his
mental states depend; and if a person is not that immaterial
substance, what immaterial substance could be he? No answer
seems forthcoming.
But there is another reason, and one that even a Cartesian
Dualist should appreciate, for rejecting the proposed definition.
On any version of dualism which allows for the possibility of
causal interaction between material and immaterial substances
(and only such versions are under consideration here) there can
exist systems which consist of one or more immaterial substances
interacting causally with one or more material substances. Such
systems (I will call them 'partly physical systems') will be
continuants, and so substances in the broad sense. And such
systems will have properties - dispositional properties at least -
which they possess in virtue of what properties their material and
immaterial components have, and of how these components are
related to one another; something's having such a property will
be a 'partly physical' state of it. Clearly such a system will not be a
material substance. Yet it will not do to characterise such
systems as immaterial substances; for obviously a system which
has material as well as immaterial components cannot be
immaterial in the same sense in which its immaterial components
are immaterial.
Immaterial substances, if there are any, will be substances
whose non-relational and non-derivative properties are neither
physical nor partly physical. What we have just seen is that if we
admit the possibility of there being immaterial substances as well
as material substances, we must admit the possibility of there also
being substances, or at any rate continuants, which are them-
selves neither material substances nor immaterial substances
116 Persons and Life After Death

but whose existence in some way consists in the existence of

material and immaterial substances. We cannot, I think, rule
out a priori the possibility that persons, or even minds, will turn
out to be such entities. 6
4. I shall follow tradition by assuming that immaterial sub-
stances lack spatial properties, and so are not spatially extended,
and that they do not have spatial location in their own right.
Some philosophers have held that the non-spatiality of
immaterial substances makes the very idea of an immaterial
substance incoherent. Their argument has been that there could
be no satisfactory way of individuating such entities; since
immaterial substances are supposed to be particulars, rather
than abstract entities, they could not be individuated by their
non-relational properties (for it ought to be possible for two
particulars to share all of their non-relational properties), and
since they are supposed to be non-spatial they could not be
individuated by spatial relations. Likewise, it has been objected
that there is no way in which the notion of identity through time
could be applied to entities to which the notion ofspatiotemporal
continuity is inapplicable.
Those who make such objections usually assume, as do most
philosophers who write about dualism, that immaterial sub-
stances would be spiritual substances. It does seem logically
possible that two numerically different persons should be exactly
similar with respect to their mental or psychological attributes.
And it may seem to follow that the notion of a spiritual substance,
a substance having only mental (psychological) properties and
states, is not a coherent notion.
Even if this constituted a valid objection against Cartesian
Dualism, which takes persons to be spiritual substances, it
would not refute Non-Cartesian Dualism, which is not com-
mitted to the existence of spiritual substances. And in fact it does
not seem to me a convincing objection to Cartesian Dualism.
Both Cartesian Dualism and Non-Cartesian Dualism are
versions of what I have called Minimal Dualism. And Minimal
Dualism is committed to the claim that immaterial substances
are such that they can interact causally with material substances;
for it is essential to Minimal Dualism that the states of immaterial
substances mediate the causal connections between the sensory
input and the behavioural output of the bodies ofliving persons. 7
 Immortality and Dualism 117

Now immaterial substances are usually thought to lack spatial

position, and spatial relations, as well as spatial extension. And
this makes it difficult to understand how there can be causal
connections of the required sorts between immaterial substances
(and their states) and material substances (and their states).
There can be no spatial relationship, such as spatial contiguity,
which relates the immaterial substance which is my mind, soul,
or ghostly brain to my body and not to any other, and which
relates my body to my mind (soul, ghostly brain) and not to any
other immaterial substance. Why, then, do the states of my mind
affect only the states of my body, and why is it only my mind that
is directly affected by sensory stimulation of my body? Since I
am supposing that Minimal Dualism is coherent, I must suppose
that this difficulty can be overcome. And to suppose this we must
suppose, I think, that there could be non-spatial relationships
between immaterial substances ('minds') and material sub-
stances ('bodies') which play a role in determining what causal
relationships can hold between these substances which is
analogous to the role which spatial relationships play in deter-
mining what causal relationships can hold between material
substances. Let us speak of these as 'quasi-spatial relationships'.
Now there seems no reason why a Non-Cartesian Dualist cannot
hold that immaterial substances are, or can be, related to
material substances by such relationships; there seems to be no
conflict between this claim and the essentially negative charac-
terisation of immaterial substances given by Non-Cartesian
dualism. If it is incompatible with the notion of a spiritual
substance that such a substance should stand in quasi-spatial
relationships to material substances, then Cartesian Dualism
cannot make intelligible the possibility of interaction between
mind and body, and can be rejected on that account. But it is not
clear that this is incompatible with the notion of a spiritual
substance. What we know from the notion of a spiritual sub-
stance, beyond the fact that spiritual substances are immaterial,
is that the non-relational properties of spiritual substances are
mental properties. Offhand, this implies nothing about what
relations such substances can enter into, except (perhaps) that
they cannot enter into spatial relationships. But, and here is the
point, if it is intelligible to suppose that immaterial substances
can be related to material substances by such quasi-spatial
118 Persons and Life After Death

relationships, there seems no reason why we should not suppose

that they stand in quasi-spatial relationships to one another. And
then their quasi-spatial relationships could play the role in their
individuation, and in their identity through time, which spatial
relationships play in the case of material substances. It seems
that this could be held by Cartesian Dualists as well as by Non-
Cartesian Dualists. 8
5. Immaterial substances have traditionally been supposed to
be 'simple', in the sense of being indivisible and without separable
parts, and this supposition has figured prominently in a priori
arguments for immortality. One basis for this view has been the
view that persons are simple and indivisible, this being based on
considerations which we can lump together under the heading
'the unity of consciousness'. Given the premise that persons are
simple and indivisible, that properly speaking nothing can be a
part of a person, plus the premise that persons must be either
material substances or immaterial substances, plus the obvious
fact that material substances are not simple and indivisible, we
can derive both the conclusion that persons are immaterial
substances and the conclusion that at least some immaterial
substances (namely those that are persons) are simple and
indivisible. In order to reject this argument I do not need to
dispute the claim that persons are (in some sense) simple and
indivisible. For I have already rejected the second premise of the
argument, namely that persons must be either material sub-
stances or immaterial substances. A Non-Cartesian Dualist, who
denies that persons are immaterial substances, cannot conclude
from the (alleged) simplicity of persons that immaterial sub-
stances are simple, and cannot cite the simplicity of persons as
proof that there are immaterial substances.
It may be objected that even if persons are not identical with
either material or immaterial substances, their existence must in
some sense consist in the existence of substances of one, or both,
of these kinds. With this I agree. And it might further be held
that if something is simple and indivisible, its existence cannot
consist in the existence of substances that are not themselves
simple and indivisible. But this further claim seems to me
unwarranted. I can imagine someone arguing that the United
States Supreme Court, for example, is in some important sense
without parts and indivisible, and that the relationship of the
 Immortality and Dualism 119

individual Justices to the Court is not that of part of whole

(since, arguably, the Court would continue to exist even if all of
the Justices were simultaneously to die or resign and since,
presumably, the question, 'How much does the Supreme Court
weigh?' is one we should reject rather than answer by summing
the weights of the individual Justices). But nothing that could
plausibly be meant by this would persuade a materialist that he
must choose between denying the existence of the Supreme Court
and abandoning his materialist view that the things that exist in
the world are either material substances or things whose existence
consists in the existence of material substances and their relation-
ships to one another.
There is, however, a traditional reason for thinking that
immaterial substances would have to be simple and indivisible
which does not rest on the claim that persons are simple and
indivisible. For it is taken for granted (as I do here) that an
immaterial substance cannot be spatially extended, and from
this it is concluded that immaterial substances, if there be such,
are necessarily indivisible and without parts. No doubt this
consideration and those leading directly to the conclusion that
persons are simple have tended to reinforce each other - if
someone has been persuaded on independent grounds that (a)
persons are simple and (b) immaterial substances are simple, it
will not be surprising if he concludes that immaterial substances
are just the right sorts of things for persons to be.
But this second reason for thinking immaterial substances to
be simple is undermined by the points made in Section 4· We
saw there that in order to make intelligible the possibility of
causal interaction between immaterial substances and material
bodies (as is required by both forms of Minimal Dualism) we
must suppose that there are 'quasi-spatial' relationships which
immaterial substances can stand in which constrain what causal
relationships they can stand in to material substances, and do so
in a way analogous to that in which spatial relationships con-
strain what causal relationships can hold between different
material substances. Moreover, we saw that in order to answer
the 'individuation' objection to dualism we must suppose that
there are 'quasi-spatial' relationships that hold between different
immaterial substances. But given all this, it is surely intelligible
(if talk about immaterial substances is intelligible at all) to
120 Persons and Life After Death

suppose that immaterial substances can interact causally with

one another, as well as with material substances, the causal
connections between them being constrained by quasi-spatial
relationships holding between them. And if there could be causal
interaction between different immaterial substances, surely
there could exist, in virtue of the holding of causal connections,
systems of immaterial substances which constitute causal units in
much the way a (physical) machine is a causal unit in virtue of
the causal connections that hold between its parts. And such
systems would have parts, or at any rate components, some of
these being subsystems and some (perhaps) being 'atomic'
immaterial substances which are simple and without parts.
Presumably such systems could have a quasi-spatial unity which
goes with their causal unity in much the way that the spatial
unity of material bodies goes with their causal unity.
Someone might allow that there could be such systems of
immaterial substances, but deny that such systems would them-
selves be immaterial substances. If this denial stems from a
stipulation that a substance, of whatever sort, must be simple and
without parts, we can point out that this stipulation rules out
talk of material substances (or at any rate excludes human
bodies, and other macroscopic material things, from being
substances). But there is no need for us to quibble here about the
word 'substance'; if need be, we can abandon it in favour of
'thing', 'entity', or 'continuant'. The point is that if there can be
immaterial substances at all, of the sort required by Minimal
Dualism, there seems no reason why there should not be
immaterial entities that have parts. More specifically, if Non-
Cartesian Dualism is coherent, there seems no reason why the
'ghostly brain' of a person should not be a composite immaterial
thing, a system of immaterial things which are so related as to
constitute a causal unit, rather than an 'atomic' immaterial
substance. Certainly the view that we have immaterial brains
that are such systems is no less intelligible than the view that we
have immaterial brains that are immaterial atoms.
Finally, and this is of course the point of all this, if it is possible
for immaterial substances (or things) to have parts or com-
ponents, then there seems no reason to suppose that immaterial
substances are not subject to destruction through the dissolution
of their parts. Clearly we have no empirical evidence of the
 Immortality and Dualism 121

indestructibility of immaterial substances. Let us suspend, for

a moment, our scepticism about purported cases of communica-
tion with the dead, 'out of body experiences', and other
spiritualistic phenomena. Even if such cases were evidence that
there are immaterial substances, it is clear that they would
provide no evidence that these substances are simple and
indivisible, or that they are for any other reason indestructible.
Likewise, if we discovered evidence that the structure of the
human brain and nervous system is insufficiently complex to
account for all aspects ofhuman behaviour, then while this might
be evidence that there exist immaterial substances which func-
tion as the 'ghostly brains' of persons, or which are the immaterial
components of partly physical systems which function as 'partly
ghostly brains', it clearly would not be evidence that these
immaterial substances are simple and indestructible.
It is plain that support for Non-Cartesian Dualism, if we had
it, would not as such be support for the doctrine of immortality.
Moreover, it seems (and I shall argue later) that whatever
empirical evidence we can imagine having for the truth of
Minimal Dualism would be compatible with Non-Cartesian
Dualism- assuming, of course, that Non-Cartesian Dualism is a
coherent position. If so, dualism can be used to buttress the
plausibility of the doctrine of immortality only if it can be shown
on a priori grounds that Non-Cartesian Dualism is not coherent
and that Cartesian Dualism is - in other words, that Cartesian
Dualism is the only coherent form of dualism. It will turn out
that in order to maintain this one must maintain that it can be
established a jJriori not merely that Cartesian Dualism is the only
coherent form of dualism, but that it is the only coherent philo-
sophy of mind. In other words, one must maintain that it can be
established a priori that persons are spiritual substances and that
mental states are immaterial states of such substances. As will
become clear in the following sections, I think that there are no
sound a priori reasons for believing this to be true, and that there
are strong a priori reasons for believing it to be false.
6. Let us consider what the status of mental states would be if
Non-Cartesian Dualism were true. The brief answer, I think, is
that their status would be much the same as it would be (or is)
if materialism were (or is) true- where by 'materialism' is meant
the view that whatever exists (apart from 'abstract entities' such
122 Persons and Life After Death

as numbers) is either a material substance or something whose

existence consists in the existence of material substances, their
states, and their relations to one another.
Materialists sometimes assert that mental states are neuro-
physiological states of the brain. Now on one understanding of
this, it implies something which many materialists would want to
deny (and which, I think, any materialist should want to deny).
Suppose that pain is said to be the firing of C-fibres. This might
mean that the mental property, or attribute, being in pain is
identical with the neurophysiological attribute has its C-fibres
firing.
Now this ought to imply, not merely that in all actual
cases, whatever has the mental attribute has the neurophysio-
logical one, and vice versa, but also that this holds in all possible
cases as well - for it is a principle of modal logic that if a is
identical with b, a is necessarily identical with b. 9 And if every
mental attribute were thus identical with some physical feature
of human brains, it would follow (a) that disembodied existence
of subjects of mental states is not even a possibility, and (b) that
other physical creatures (e.g. the inhabitants of remote planets)
cannot be subjects of mental states unless they have brains
capable of having the relevant physical features, e.g. brains
containing C-fibres. But many materialists would reject (a), and
most would reject (b). There is, however, another way of taking
the claim that mental states are neurophysiological states of the
brain. To say that pain is the firing of C-fibres might mean that
in the case ofhuman beings (but not, necessarily, in the case of all
possible creatures) being in pain 'consists in', and 'is nothing over
and above', the firing ofC-fibres. Or as it might be put, in human
beings the attribute of being in pain is 'realised in' the firing of
C-fibres - which is compatible with its being realised in other
ways in other creatures. It is even possible to hold that in the case
of human beings a given mental state sometimes has one physical
'realisation' and sometimes another. Of course, it needs to be
explained what this relationship of 'being realised in', or
'existing in virtue of', amounts to. I think that this can best
be understood if we adopt a causal, or functional, analysis of
mental concepts. Roughly, to say that in a certain person at a
certain time the attribute of being in pain is realised in the
firing of C-fibres is to say that in that person at that time
 Immortaliry and Dualism 123

the firing of C-fibres plays the causal role which is definitive

ofpain. 10
Now a Non-Cartesian Dualist will not hold that mental
attributes are identical to immaterial attributes of immaterial
substances.] ust as it seems possible that there should be creatures
which, given their behaviour, we would want to count as having
mental states despite the fact that the physical make-up of their
brains or 'control systems' is very different from ours, so it seems
possible (assuming the coherence of Minimal Dualism) that
there should be creatures to which we would be willing to assign
the same mental states despite the fact that they have 'ghostly
brains' having very different immaterial states. What the Non-
Cartesian Dualist will hold is that the mental states of a person
are realised in, that they exist in virtue of, immaterial states of an
immaterial substance that functions as the person's 'ghostly
brain', and that it is possible (in principle, anyhow) for the same
mental attribute to be realised in different immaterial states on
different occasions or in different persons. Indeed, just as a
materialist can hold that there could be creatures (though in fact
there aren't) whose mental states are realised in immaterial
states, so a Non-Cartesian Dualist could hold that there could be
creatures (though in fact there aren't) whose mental states are
realised in physical states. And somebody could hold, although
I doubt if anyone ever has, that the mental states of some
creatures are realised in physical states of brains, while those of
other creatures are realised in immaterial states of 'ghostly
brains'.
While the Non-Cartesian Dualist holds that mental states are
'realised in' states of immaterial substances, he does not hold
that they are themselves states of immaterial substances. They
are states of persons; and just as a sensible materialist does not
hold that persons are their brains, a Non-Cartesian Dualist does
not hold that persons are the immaterial substances which
function as their 'ghostly brains'. A person, according to Non-
Cartesian Dualism, is an entity which normally exists, and has
the properties it has, in virtue ofthe existence of a 'mind' and a
'body' which are related in a certain way and have certain
properties, but which can exist in virtue of the existence of the
mind (immaterial substance) alone. Perhaps the Non-Cartesian
Dualist can say, harking back to the discussion in Section 3, that
 124 Persons and Life After Death

a normal, i.e. embodied, person is a 'partly physical system', but

one whose identity conditions permit it to survive the loss ofits
physical components. But if he says this he must avoid saying
that in becoming disembodied a person would become an
immaterial substance; for immaterial substances are essentially
immaterial, and nothing can become one or cease to be one.
Likewise, a materialist who thinks that mental states are
'realised' in physical states of the brain will not think (or should
not think) that mental states are themselves states of the brain;
for he will know that they are states of a person, and that a
person is not identical with his brain (for one thing, the size,
shape, weight, etc., of a person are not normally the size, shape,
weight, etc., of his brain). 11
7. Now let us turn our attention to Cartesian Dualism. The
Cartesian Dualist holds that mental attributes are, in the sense
of being identical with rather than in the sense of being realised
in, immaterial states of spiritual substances. This means that he
must hold, not merely that neither materialism nor Non-
Cartesian Dualism is true, but that neither of these positions
could be, or could have been, true. If being in pain (say) were merely
realised in some immaterial attribute (rather than being
identical with it), this would not rule out the possibility of its also
being realised (in other creatures, or in other possible worlds) in
some physical attribute of a material substance. But if being in
pain is identical with an immaterial attribute, it is plainly
impossible that it should be realised in a physical attribute of a
material substance. Likewise, if it is identical with an immaterial
attribute (an attribute which can belong only to immaterial
substances), it cannot belong to something which is not an
immaterial substance (e.g. a person as conceived by Non-
Cartesian Dualism), and so cannot do so in virtue of some
immaterial substance (someone's ghostly brain) having some
other immaterial attribute (one that is not mental).
This is not yet to say that the Cartesian Dualist is committed
to holding that it can be established a priori that both Non-
Cartesian Dualism and materialism are false or incoherent. For
while he is committed to holding that neither of these positions
could possibly be true (that neither is true in any possible world),
this would be compatible with his holding that the truth of his
own position, and the falsity of these others, is necessary a
 Immortality and Dualism 125

posteriori (in Kripke's sense) rather than necessary a priori. 12 Just

as an identity like 'Hesperus is Phosphorus' is established
empirically, despite the fact that if true it is necessarily so in the
sense that it could not have been false (is false in no possible
world), so it might be held that identities between immaterial
attributes and mental attributes are (like all identities) necessary
in this sense, but are known to hold aposteriori.
But this view has no plausibility at all. For suppose, first of all,
that we wished to establish empirically an identity statement of
the form 'Mental state M is immaterial state I'. Clearly we
would need, to begin with, to have some way of identifying or
picking out state I which guarantees that it is an immaterial
state but which leaves it an open question, to be settled empiric-
ally, whether it is identical with M. In fact, of course, we lack any
such way (or any way at all) of picking out immaterial states. But
even if we had such a way of picking out immaterial states, what
could we discover empirically that would show that a mental
state M is identical with an immaterial state I, as opposed to
being merely correlated with it, or being realised in it? We
could rule out mere correlation if we could establish that effects
(e.g. behavioural ones) which we confidently attribute toM are
in fact due to I. But this would no more establish that M is
identical to I than the discovery that pain behaviour is produced
by the firing of C-fibres would establish that the attribute is in
pain is identical (and so identical in all possible worlds) to the
physical attribute has its C-fibres firing. At best such a discovery
would establish that, in the creatures investigated, state M is
realised in state I; and this in no way rules out the possibility that
there should be creatures in which it is realised in some other
state, either immaterial or physical (i.e. that there should be
creatures in which behavioural and other effects which would
correctly be regarded as manifestations of M are due to some
state other than I). Yet if this would not establish that M and
I are identical, it seems to me that no empirical discovery would
establish this.
Of course, someone might maintain that we could establish
empirically that mental states are immaterial states without
establishing identities of the form 'Mental state M is immaterial
state I' (just as many materialists would hold that we can
establish that mental states are [realised in] physical states
126 Persons and Life After Death

without establishing any statements of the form 'Mental state M

is [realised in] physical state P'). But essentially the same
difficulty arises about this. For in the absence of an a priori
argument against the possibility of Non-Cartesian Dualism
being true, it seems that any conceivable evidence that might be
thought to show that mental states are immaterial states would be
compatible with the claim that they are merely realised in them,
and that the same mental state could (in principle) be realised
in more than one way. This is true, for example, of the (perhaps)
imaginable discovery that we need to posit the existence of
immaterial substances in order to explain the behaviour that is
attributed to mental states.
8. Let us turn, then, to the question of whether the Cartesian
Dualist has any hope ofestablishing his position a priori.
The a priori arguments for dualism that I know of simply
assume, and make no attempt to show, that Cartesian Dualism is
the only viable form of dualism. I do not myself think that any
of these arguments are sound. But what is relevant to our present
concerns is that even if some of them were sound, and did
establish Minimal Dualism, they would not establish Cartesian
Dualism. For example, one typical argument goes (fallaciously,
I believe) from the (alleged) fact that I can conceive of myself
existing in disembodied form to the claim that it is possible for
me to exist in disembodied form, where this is taken as a state-
ment of de re modality to the effect that I am something that can
exist in disembodied form, 13 from which in turn it is concluded
(validly) that I am not a material substance. But even if this
conclusion were established, we could not legitimately go from
it to the conclusion that I am a spiritual substance (or, more
generally, that persons are spiritual substances), for nothing in
the argument excludes the possibility that I am (that persons
are) as Non-Cartesian Dualism represents persons as being. Or
consider the arguments that purport to show that mental states
are not physical states. If the conclusion means simply that
mental attributes are not identical with physical attributes
(and that it is therefore possible for them to be realised non-
physically), then even a materialist can accept it. If it means that
mental attributes cannot be realised in physical states (that the
having of a mental attribute cannot be 'nothing over and above'
the having of certain physical attributes), than I do not think it
 Immortality and Dualism 127

can be established a priori. But even if it could be, this would not
establish Cartesian Dualism, for it would be compatible with the
truth of Non-Cartesian Dualism. Still another argument is from
the alleged 'simplicity' of persons; we have already seen that this
fails to establish Cartesian Dualism.
Moreover, I think we can see that there could be no sound
a priori argument for Cartesian Dualism. For suppose (per
impossible) I had such an argument, and knew a priori that all
mental states are identical with immaterial states of spiritual
substances. And suppose that, having this knowledge, I am
faced with what looks like someone who is, with great ingenuity
and resourcefulness, repairing a complicated machine; that is,
I am faced with what, as things are, I would take without
question to be a person having certain mental states. On our
supposition, I could not be entitled to regard what is before me
as a person having these mental states unless I were entitled to
believe that the body before me is animated by a spiritual
substance. Someone might argue that since I would be entitled
to believe that there is a conscious person before me, and since,
ex hypothesi, I would know that all mental states are identical
with immaterial states, I would ipso facto be entitled to believe
that the body before me is animated by a spiritual substance
having the appropriate immaterial states. But here it seems more
appropriate to argue backward, and to say that since one cannot
be justified on empirical grounds in believing that something is
animated by a spiritual substance, and since, ex hypothesi, I
would know that all mental states are immaterial states of
spiritual substances, I could not be entitled to believe that what
was before me was (or was the embodiment of) a person having
those (or any) mental states.
To elaborate this, suppose that I am confronted with two
creatures, one from Venus and one from Mars, both of which are
exhibiting behaviour which one would ordinarily take to show
the existence of certain mental states. And suppose, what seems
compatible with this, that the physical make-ups of these two
creatures are entirely different (their evolutionary histories
having been different), and that I know this. There are two
possibilities here; either the causes of the observed behaviour are
entirely physical, or they are at least partly immaterial. If I had
good reason to believe the former, and was guaranteed on a
128 Persons and Life After Death

priori grounds that mental states are immaterial states, I certainly

could not be entitled to take the observed behaviour as evidence
of the existence of mental states. So let us suppose that I have good
reason to believe that the causes of the behaviour are at least
partly immaterial. Now, given that the physical make-ups of
these creatures are entirely different, it seems reasonable to
suppose that they would have to be acted on by different sorts of
immaterial states or events in order to yield the same output of
behaviour (roughly, that there would have to be immaterial
differences to compensate for the physical differences). 14
Moreover, if we can investigate immaterial substances empiric-
ally at all, it ought to make sense to suppose that we have
investigated the immaterial substances that animate our
Martian and Venusian and discovered that they have very
different immaterial states. So let us suppose that I have dis-
covered this. I would therefore know, given our supposition that
I am guaranteed a priori that mental states are immaterial states
of spiritual substances, that at least one of the creatures was not
the subject of the mental states which seem to be manifested in
the behaviour of both. And this would be true no matter what the
behaviour was, and no matter how extensive it was. Moreover,
given what I argued in Section 7, nothing I could establish
empirically would show which creature, if either, is a subject
of those (or any) mental states- that is, there is nothing that
would show which body, if either, is animated by a spiritual
substance. More generally. on the supposition that we are
guaranteed a priori that mental states are immaterial states of
spiritual substances, the behavioural evidence we would
ordinarily take as establishing that a creature is a subject of
certain mental states does not establish this, and there is no
empirical data which in conjunction with this evidence would
establish it. In other words, on this supposition mental states are
unknowable. And this seems to me a reductio ad absurdum of the
supposition.
It seems, then, that we could have neither good empirical
grounds nor good a priori grounds for believing Cartesian
Dualism to be true. It does not follow from this, perhaps, that
Cartesian Dualism could not be true - that it is logically or
conc'"'tually incoherent. We could establish this stronger
conclusion if we could establish that either materialism or Non-
 Immortality and Dualism 129

Cartesian Dualism could be true. For as we have seen, if it is so

much as logically possible that either of these positions is true,
Cartesian Dualism cannot be true. And if the falsity of Cartesian
Dualism follows from a true statement oflogical possibility, then
it is not even logically possible that Cartesian Dualism should be
true. We could establish the logical possibility of materialism or
Non-Cartesian Dualism being true if we could establish a causal
or functional account of what mental states are - for such an
account would allow for the possibility of mental states being
realised in a variety of physical states or a variety of immaterial
states. I believe myself that only such an account makes sense of
our ability to have knowledge of mental states (our own as well
as those of others). But I have not the space to argue this here.
However, ifl have succeeded in showing that there is and could
be no good reason for believing in Cartesian Dualism, then, given
what I argued earlier, I have shown that there is and could be no
good reason for believing in a form of dualism that would make
belief in immortality significantly more plausible than it is on
anti-dualist assumptions.

NOTES
I. See Robert C. W. Ettinger, The Prospect of Immortality (New York, 1966).
2. I have not been able to find a unequivocal and unqualified statement of
this view in the literature; but it is implicit in my own book Self-Knowledge and
Self-Identity (Ithaca, N.Y. 1963), and in thewritingsofother philosophers who
have attacked dualism on conceptual (or logical)rather than empirical grounds.
3. See David M. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of Mind (London,
1968) p.l9.
4. See my paper 'Embodiment and Behaviour,' in Amelie Rorty (ed.),
The Identities of Persons (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1976).
5. I owe this example to Richard Boyd.
6. Even on the assumption that there are no immaterial substances, and
that the existence of everything in some way consists in the existence of
material substances, there may be a sense in which persons are neither
material nor immaterial substances. For even on materialist assumptions, it is
natural to hold that stones, trees and automobiles are material substances in a
sense in which corporation, nations, and political parties are not. If such a
narrow sense of'material substance' cau be defined (and I shall not attempt
to define it here), it may be that even a materialist should deny that persons
are material substances in the narrow sense - for one thing, the identity
conditions for persons seem to differ importantly from those for paradigmatic
'material objects', but not in ways that call materialism into question.
7. So I am not discussing Occasionalism, and other versions of dualism that
deny interaction between material and immaterial substances. I believe, but
130 Persons and Life After Death

have not the space to argue here, that interactionism is the only coherent form
of dualism.
8. Despite what I have said here, something must be conceded to the objec-
tion that there is no satisfactory principle of individuation for immaterial
substances. In the sense in which we have a conception of material substance,
which includes, as central to it, a partial specification of the identity conditions
for material objects, we do not have a conception of immaterial substances, or
of any particular kind of immaterial substances. The definition I have given
of'spiritual substance' does not specify such a conception, for it says nothing
positive about what relationships would hold between spiritual substances
(to say that some of these relationships would be 'quasi-spatial' is not to say
what they would be). So it is in a rather thin sense that it is 'conceivable' that
there should be immaterial substances. It is not that we have a determinate
conception of some kind of immaterial substance, and can conceive of there
being things that satisfy this conception. It is rather that we can conceive of
having (or acquiring) such a determinate notion, and of believing, intelligibly
and consistently, that there are things that satisfy it. However, in the remain-
der of this essay I shall write as if we do have a determinate conception of
immaterial substance; this can be thought of as a concession to my opponents.
One other common opjection to dualism should be mentioned here. It is
sometimes urged that there are intimate conceptual, or logical, connections
between mental states and their behavioural manifestations or expressions,
and that because of these connections it is logically incoherent to suppose that
a person might exist in disembodied form. In order to assess this objection we
must consider in what sense, if any, mental states and behaviour are 'concep-
tually connected'. I cannot discuss this complex issue here; but I have argued
elsewhere that what seems to me the most defensible version of the 'conceptual
connection thesis' is compatible with the view that disembodied existence is
possible- see my 'Embodiment and Behaviour,' op. cit.
9. See Saul Kripke, 'Identity and Necessity', in Milton Munitz (ed.),
Identity and Individuation (New York, 1971), pp. 135-64.
I 0. See D. M. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory if Mind (London, 1968) and
David Lewis, 'An Argument for the Identity Theory', in D. M. Rosenthal
(ed.), Materialism and the Mind-Body Problem (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971),
and 'Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications', in Australasian Journal
if Philosophy, Vol. 50, No.3 (December, 1972), pp. 249-57.
11. It may be thought that if a person's brain is kept alive in vitro, and is all
that physically remains of him, then (on materialist assumptions) he will be
identical with it - and, likewise, that if all that is left of a person is an im-
material brain, he will be identical with it. But this cannot be so if, as I believe,
it is impossible for entities X and Y to be numerically different at one time
and numerically identical at another (or if, what would seem to come to the
same thing, identical entities must have identical histories).
12. See Kripke's 'Identity and Necessity,' op. cit., and his 'Naming and
Necessity', in Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman (eds.), Semantics if
Natural Language (Dordrecht, 1972), pp. 253-355.
13. The fallacy in this, I think, involves a confusion of a certain sort of
epistemic possibility with metaphysical possibility. In the sense in which it is
 Immortality and Dualism 131

true that I can conceive of myself existing in disembodied form, this comes to
the fact that it is compatible with what I know about my essential nature
(supposing that I do not know that I am an essentially material being) that I
should exist in disembodied form. From this it does not follow that my
essential nature is in fact such as to permit me to exist in disembodied form.
14. See my 'Embodiment and Behaviour', op. cit., for an elaboration of this.

II HYWEL LEWIS
I am in entire agreement with Sydney Shoemaker on one main
point. This is the point with which he begins, namely that we are
reduced to desperate straits, in seeking to make any case for
immortality, unless we can first make out a case for dualism- on
the mind-body problem. I would indeed go further. I do not
think that any case for immortality can begin to get off the
ground if we fail to make a case for dualism. This has been
extensively recognised by non-dualists. Immortality has
normally been understood to mean that we continue to exist
when the present physical body has been destroyed. In condi-
tions of existence in the past, and in any condition we can
reasonably forsee now, the body one now has is very completely
destroyed, as a functioning organism, very soon after we draw
the last breath. Usually today it is reduced to ashes, and even if
preserved in some mummified form, the chances of revivifying
it to function as it does when we are alive, are too remote to be
taken seriously. There is indeed a little more prospect today,
owing to the advance of science, that the deterioration of living
organisms could be arrested or reversed or that there might be
some other 'life-prolonging episodes' or devices which would
ensure our literal bodily continuity without end. But even if this
were a prospect we could entertain with some confidence, it
would be rather far removed from the expectations usually
entertained by those who believe in immortality. The latter has
been thought to be available to human beings past and present,
to the millions whose bodies have suffered complete disintegra-
tion already as well as to the fortunate ones, assuming they are so,
on whom endless bodily existence may be conferred some day by
the advance of science. Indeed, the case for immortality has
hardly ever been made to rest on the avoidance of the reality of
132 Persons and Life After Death

death; it concerns an expectation of something which holds

irrespective of the normal accepted facts of death and decay,
and, for many, the attractiveness of the prospect turns, in part
at least, on our superseding the limitations as well as the ills to
which flesh is heir and embarking on other, presumably richer,
modes of existence.
Against this it may be urged that, in the Christian context at
least, what has been largely expected is that, notwithstanding
death and decay, there may still be a 'resurrection of the body'.
This, we are told, does not mean the 'resuscitation of corpses',
but it does then become difficult to know what it can mean. Some
just invoke here the omnipotence of God with whom 'all things
are possible'. But we still need to know in some measure what is
contemplated, and what reason there could be for supposing that
God would in fact literally recompose our bodies. I have, how-
ever, commented at more length on this issue in another recent
symposium; 1 and have referred to the suggestion that better
scientific understanding of physical bodies can make the present
supposition more attractive. In the same context I have also
discussed the relevance, not very great it seems to me, of the
the notion of an astral body and its intelligibility. I will therefore
leave this point here with the general expression of agreement
with the view that immortality must at least be understood to
involve such independence of our present physical existence as
will make it intelligible to suppose that we continue to exist and
function notwithstanding the destruction of the present body.
But suppose someone says: 'I agree, but surely you will need
a body of some kind'. I do not think I would concede this, at
least as an absolute requirement. 2 But if the point were conceded,
it would still mean that my continued existence was independent
of any particular body I might have at one stage. The body is
replaceable while I remain the same. This commits us to dualism
at least to the extent of making my own existence, in essentials,
independent of my having a particular body, and especially my
present physical body which, I have no doubt, will come to its
end with the end of my 'allotted span'.
On this score then there is nothing seriously in dispute between
Shoemaker and myself, whether or not we would put our points
in quite the same terms. But immediately beyond this point a
gap begins to open. For I consider a dualist position to be an
 lmmortaliD' and Dualism 133

indispensable basis for belief in immortality in at least one

markedly different way.
For me the dualist supposition is a requirement of any
reasonable understanding of what it would be like to be
immortal, or of what this notion means. On most of the widely
held views of mind and body today, any kind of future existence
is ruled out, and for this reason it is essential for anyone who
wishes to defend the beliefin immortality to counter the doctrines
which plainly preclude it. I do not expect to do more than this,
in the present context, in my defence of dualism. I only wish to
keep the door open, to rule out the essential inconceivability of a
future existence, in an immortal or more limited way. Nothing
is claimed, on the present score, to make it certain, or even highly
probable, that we shall survive the dissolution of our bodies.
Other reasons must be invoked to accomplish this further aim. I
an not concerned in this paper with what they are.
Shoemaker's attitude here appears to be different. He expects
the case for dualism, especially in its stricter Cartesian form, as
he labels it, to yield more positive results, indeed to establish
nothing less that the essential indestructibility of the soul.
Immortality is assured if the dualist case is made.
This is not because some of the obvious difficulties, for example
the indisputable causal dependence on the body in the present
existence, are removed or have the sting taken out of them.
Much more positively it is established that, in terms of what we
find ourselves to be, we just cannot fail to be immortal.
Furthermore, the way this is understood is that, in a dualist
view, we must be deemed to have a simple, indivisible nature,
and nothing which is thought to have such a nature can ever be
destroyed, on the grounds presumably that destruction must
take the form of the dissolution of some entity into its component
parts. This supposition, although it has never been central in
discussions of the subject in the past, is not without an impressive
ancestry. Plato has recourse to it, in the Phaedo and in the
Republic, although he turns also to some other rather formal
arguments such as the insistence that nothing is destroyed except
by its own evil, the evil of the soul being injustice which is far
from causing the death of the wicked. What is impressive in the
case of Plato is the sustained conviction that the individual soul is
immortal.
134 Persons and Life After Death

On the indivisibility argument, Plato would also find

difficulty in his own sustained account of the tripartite division
of the soul. The reply might be made that appetite and spirit, on
Plato's view, come about through involvement with the body
and do not belong to the true and essentially rational nature of
the soul. But the famous myth in the Phaedrus at least ascribes
both appetite and desire to the soul in its pre-natal state. It is
worth noting also that the discussion in the Phaedo finds the clue
to the simplicity of the soul in its affinity with the Forms and this
gives the former a somewhat different character from its
invocation in later traditions.
The idea of the simplicity of the soul has lurked in the back-
ground of much subsequent Western thinking, but it has also
been prevented from making fuller impact by anxiety not to
inpugn the essentially created character of all finite things. A
soul that is, in virtue ofits essential nature, not destructible would
presumably have pre-existed, and while this in some form would
be acceptable to Plato, it would cause some embarrassment to
later theism by coming close at least to elevating one kind of being
into a state of existence in its own right over against a purported
Authorofall things.
To pursue the last point further on our own account, and in
closer relation to Shoemaker's view, it is not at all clear to me why
anything should be deemed impervious to destruction just by
having an essentially simple nature. Can we take it for granted
that nothing can come to an end except by dissolution into its
constituent parts? This would confer inviolate, and thereby it
would seem necessary, existence on any finite entity that has the
appropriate simplicity. But we generally assume that necessity
does not characterise any statement of finite existence. Indeed,
the principle has sometimes been generalised to apply to all exist-
ence, as inJ. N. Findlay's celebrated reversal of the Ontological
Argument. 3 Generally it is conceded that necessary existence
belongs solely to God and that it is so essential a feature of God,
where the being of God is at all acknowledged, that it is impious
to place it elsewhere. Less piously, I repeat the question why
should anything be thought essentially less destructible solely
in virtue of the simple nature it is alleged to have.
That there is a sense in which the self does have a simple
ndivisible nature seems to me true, although the point needs to
 Immortality o.nd Dualism 135

be presented very carefully indeed to avoid the difficulties

instanced in discussions like that of Shoemaker. To the last point
we shall return shortly. But in the meantime it seems evident to
me, irrespective of any understanding we may have of our own
natures, that we are in no way exceptions to what seems evident
about'other finite existences, namely that, in the last resort, we
just find that certain things do exist. Granted, of course, the
order of nature as in fact we find it, then we may claim that
certain things are required. Our common speech reflects this as
much as scientific statements. 'It must have rained', we say,
'there must be another force at work somewhere, another planet
drawing known ones from their anticipated orbit', but this holds
only given the order of nature as we find it. There is no inherent
ultimate necessity why the world should be as it is or why any
particular entity should be; and anything we say in this respect
in one finite context must apply in just the same way in all. There
is nothing inviolable about simplicity, and if we do have some
ultimately simple nature this does nothing at all to remove us from
the class of things which, in the last analysis, we just find to be.
It may be that Shoemaker does not want to dispute what I say
here, but is simply concerned to dispute the sort of grounds on
which it seems to him the case for immortality is usually made,
or has to be made. If he does take this line, then he seems to ignore
the main course of the commendation of the beliefin immortality,
at least in Western thought, where ideas of worth, of moral
requirement or the known will of God for certain of his creatures
and so forth hold the centre of the stage. It is on these grounds, or
in consequence of some alleged evidence of some measure of
survival of death, rather than on a priori grounds, that most
people, today and in the past, would wish to base a belief in
immortality. Even if a priori grounds are invoked they are usually
of a more wide-ranging kind than the insistence on alleged
simple natures.
All the same, I agree, though on quite different grounds, that
the maintenance of a dualist view is an indispensable part of any
plausible case for immortality, and I also deem it an essential
ingredient of a sound dualist view of persons that, in the last
analysis, selfhood will be found to be ultimate and indivisible.
This will become clearer if we now turn to the substance of
Shoemaker's paper in the attempted refutation ofdualism.
136 Persons and Life After Death

The case against dualism, as advanced by Shoemaker, involves

the distinction he draws between two kinds of dualism, labelled
for his purpose, without claiming historical accuracy, Cartesian
Dualism and Non-Cartesian Dualism. The first he considers to
be wholly untenable and the second is thought 'not to be much
help to believers in immortality'. Both are said to be versions of
'Minimal Dualism'. In both the main forms, and thus in all
Minimal Dualism, it is affirmed that there is an immaterial
substance, a 'continuant' which 'can have different properties at
different times' and such that our mental states must depend on
those which the immaterial substance has. The states of the latter
mediate all causal connections involving mental states between
sensory 'input' and behavioural 'output', and we may exist
without having a body as long as the immaterial substance
exists and has the appropriate states. But, on Cartesian Dualism,
the person is the immaterial substance, on the other view he is not.
That is the crucial difference.
So,just as some philosophers say that a person may exist 'as long
as the brain exists' but without implying that persons are brains,
Non-Cartesian Dualism holds that we have 'a ghostly brain',
the immaterial substance, which is not however the person.
There are difficulties in this view which I shall try to bring
out in due course. In the meantime let it first be noted that
Shoemaker attaches very great importance to the notion ofNon-
Cartesian Dualism. The main weight of his arguments seem to
rest, at the crucial points, on the availability to us of this alterna-
tive to Cartesian Dualism. The latter is not shown in this paper
(though Shoemaker thinks it can be done) to be strictly
incoherent. But we have no reason 'to believe it', for all the
considerations that might seem to require it are equally con-
sistent with Non-Cartesian Dualism which has in addition
attractions of a further sort, though not such as to induce
Shoemaker to accept it. It seems then to follow that we can have
no a priori argument for Cartesian dualism, there can be no strict
requirement of its being sound, for all thought directed to it
leaves us with the rival version; and it seems thus to be shown
that we are not bound to think of ourselves as simple immaterial
substances which can thus be deemed, in virtue of what they are,
to be incapable of destruction, in the only way deemed relevant,
by dissolution into further components.
 Immortalit_y and Dualism 137

This seems to me the gist of Shoemaker's central thesis. Let

us look at the details. The arguments turn much here on the
questions ofindividuation and identity. This is in line with much
that has recently been said by philosophers opposed to Cartesian
views, even those who would not wish to give a behaviourist or a
physicalist account of mental processes, for example Ayer,
Strawson and, very explicitly, Bernard Williams. What they
say, in brief, is that, if it were not for the body, we could not be
individuated, and Williams at least appears not unsympathetic,
in that context, to the notion of a universal mind, at least as what
we would have to think if we retained the notion of mental
processes without bodies. The idea of a universal mind or some
strictly shared, unindividuated consciousness has appealed to
many religious thinkers and to psychologists from time to time-
it is a widely held interpretation of mysticism. Many post-
Hegelian idealists subscribed to it, and there might for that
reason be some grounds for rebuking Shoemaker for not reckon-
ing with this possibility- it is the approach that many who would
defend the belief in immortality would be disposed to take. I do
not myself, however, wish to make much of this point, partly
because no one can deal with everything in one paper, and
Shoemaker has his distinct target in Cartesian Dualism, but even
more because there are few views which seem to me more
mistaken than the notion of unindividuated finite minds, and I
have done my own share of blowing upon it, in itself and in its
ethical and religious consequences.
There must, then, I agree, be individuation. But how is this
possible if the immaterial substances in question cannot, as the
thought of them would seem to imply, 'be individuated by spatial
relations'. This problem, I must now add, does not worry me a
great deal, and it never has. It has always seemed evident to me
that everyone knows himself to be the being that he is in just
being so. We identify ourselves to ourselves in that way, and not
in the last resort on the basis of what we know about ourselves.
The reaction to this is sometimes to retort that we seem to be
running out of arguments, and we must surely make our case by
argument. This is a trying situation for a philosopher to have to
meet; quite clearly he does not want to seem unwilling to argue.
But argument is not everything, we have also to reckon with what
we just find to be the case, we cannot conjure all existence into
138 Persons and Life After Death

being by argument and we cannot, as I hope does not sound

portentous, argue against reality. There is a way of looking at
what there is, and wisdom in philosophy has been thought, from
Plato to Wittgenstein, to depend largely on knowing how to look.
The bane of much philosophy, past and present, has been the
supposition that we must provide arguments for everything, and
Shoemaker himself seems to be in some measure a victim of this,
as may perhaps become plainer later. Admittedly, famous
dualists, Plato and Descartes, have been apt on occasion to fall
back on very formal arguments little worthy of their proper
attainments, and I suppose Descartes must have regarded the
Cogito 4 as a strictly rationalist a priori argument; but the real
strength of the Cogito lies elsewhere - the 'I think' refers to
experience and what we find it to be. This does not commit us to
dogmatism or an unthinking commitment to this or that view,
or the lack of taught thinking. It is just a caveat about the a
priori and the wrong sert of exclusive reliance on argument. I
shall not pursue this further, and I have indicated more fully
elsewhere 6 how, without any quasi-empirical looking in on
ourselves, we find ourselves to be the distinctive beings that we
are in the fact of being so, and in the same way are aware of
having the experiences we do have.
It is quite otherwise when we think of how we know, not
ourselves but one another. I am not convinced that spatial media,
or their like, are altogether essential for knowledge of other
persons, and I have tried 6 to sketch how, taking telepathy as a
possible partial clue, we might communicate in what I have
called 'A world of thoughts alone'. But I readily admit that, in
identifying other persons, normally at least in present conditions,
we require observable evidence, though what we do establish is
not itself observable. I shall not develop this further now, and
must leave it with what I have said elsewhere, although a brief
reference will have to be made to the same point below. But let
us return to the way Shoemaker proceeds.
He does not think that the requirement of 'spatial relations'
is altogether fatal even to Cartesian Dualism, although he notes
that this has often been thought to be the case. But this is for very
different reasons from those I might adduce.
He observes that we have to admit, and on the whole may do
so without jeopardy to Cartesian Dualism, that immaterial
 Immortality and Dualism 139

substances can interact causally with material substances. That

was certainly Descartes' intention and that of any Dualist who
claims to make sense of common experience. Shoemaker does
indeed here touch upon the somewhat hoary objection of how
minds having, ex hypothesi, 'no spatial relationship; such as
contiguity' can affect material bodies and, in each case, one
particular body- one recalls Passmore observing 7 that minds do
not push and bodies do not persuade. But he thinks we 'must
suppose that this difficulty can be overcome'. The difficulty is
not to my mind all that serious. It is indeed strange that minds do
affect bodies, and vice-versa, and peculiar, though generally
fortunate, that one mind affects just one body. There seems to
be no way in which we can account for this (and to postulate
'mysterious transactions' as Ryle and others would require of
their opponents is only to make matters worse). But here again
we must not go against the facts because we have reached the
limit of further explanation - no causal relation can be quite
exhaustively explained. We must again take the world as we find
it, and we do find that states of mind affect bodies (one particular
body normally at least) and bodies minds. But granted this how
do we proceed?
We come here to the crux of Shoemaker's thesis. If the
difficulties in the supposition that immaterial substances can
interact causally with material substances 'can be overcome'
(and if it cannot what do we say to the out-and-out materialist?),
then we can establish relationships between substances of these
two sorts, analogous to the spatial relationships which have their
role in determining causal relationships between material
substances and establishing their identity; and on the basis of
these 'quasi-spatial relationships' we can establish further
'quasi-spatial relationships' between the immaterial substances
themselves and, on this basis, determine their identity and
continuity through time. This can furthermore apply to
Cartesian Dualism and to Non-Cartesian Dualism, and it is for
this reason, it seems, that the former cannot be rejected expressly
by its failure to cope with the question of individuation. But in
that case, how does Cartesian Dualism come to grief?
It comes to grief, as Shoemaker seems to hold, because of the
availability to us, on the basis of what has just been outlined, of
the notion of immaterial substances which can have parts. As he
140 Persons and Life After Death

sums it up: 'Finally, at;td this is of course the point of all this, ifit is
possible for immaterial substances (or things) to have parts or
components, then there seems no reason to suppose that
immaterial substances are not subject to destruction through the
dissolution of their parts' (p.l20). There are further points in the
elaboration of this to which I shall return. But first we should
have the core, or central theme, of the argument clear. And the
sum of it seems to be this. We might be tempted to object, as our
first move, that the argument could cut in another way than the
one intended by Shoemaker, that is, we might argue that,
because Cartesian Dualism is available to us, we can reject Non-
Cartesian Dualism. For all that has been shown that might be
true. But I do not think this would quite take the force of
Shoemaker's special contention here. What he seems to be hold-
ing is that, since Non-Cartesian Dualism is available we cannot
claim that immaterial substances as such are bound to be without
parts and indestructible. And the presupposition of all this, in
turn, seems to be that we need to establish in an a priori way the
essential indestructibility of immaterial substance, and that by
dissolution into parts. But how is this requirement itself establi-
shed? Even within the ambit of Shoemaker's own procedures it
could be urged that, as Cartesian Dualism has not been shown
to be incoherent (and Shoemaker fully admits that) a person
could, for all that has been shown, be a Cartesian substance in the
present sense and so, ex hypothesi, indestructible.
In other words, why, on the argument as we have followed it
hitherto, does anyone who hesitates to go along with Shoemaker
have to show 'that Cartesian Dualism is the only coherent form
ofdualism' (p.l2l) ?8 Ifl have missed something vital here I shall
be relieved to be shown whatitis. It will not, of course, be enough
to bring forward other reasons for rejecting, or having doubts
about, Cartesian Dualism.
Let me now refer to other puints of difficulty in the elaboration
of Shoemaker's main thesis. I would like first to reflect further on
the way the notion of a person must be understood in the context
of Shoemaker's notion of Non-Cartesian Dualism, and, in
particular, to be clear how person and substance are taken to be
related here. First of all, what would an immaterial substance,
not itself the person, be in this case? Is it a Lockian 'something
we know not what', and do we then just have to 'suppose' it? Or
 Immortality and Dualism 141

a Kantian 'thing in itself', and on which of the many versions of

this? I do not by any means rule out the possibility that there may
be types of existences of which we know nothing at present, as
implied in the celebrated notion of'infinite attributes'. We know
only mental and physical reality, at least explicitly. The universe
may have other things in it of which we have no conception. Is
Shoemaker thinking along these or kindred lines? I doubt it. In
that case, the immaterial substance, in the present context, must
be some combination of mental states, on which more in a
moment, and the quasi-spatial relationships indicated - or
perhaps some combination of the latter alone (but where, in that
case, would mental states come in?). Is the substance in the latter
case to be defined exhaustively in terms of such combinations -
if not what is left over? And where, in all this, does the person,
which is not the substance, figure?
I suspect that the answer to the last question is that a person is
a further combination of immaterial substances, and their
relationships, and perhaps material substances. If so, it begins to
be a far cry from what we normally think of persons. But it will
certainly help to have this matter clarified. Moreover, when we
are told that there could '(perhaps)' 9 be 'atomic' immaterial
substances, is this intended seriously, and where does it figure, if
it does, in the account of persons and substances, if the latter
at least require the quasi-spatial relationships for their
identification?
The only clear example we are offered, to help us to determine
how persons must be understood- or what constitutes a person-
is not very helpful in fact. It is that of the Supreme Court on
page 118. This is brought up in the context where it seems to be
admitted that persons may be 'simple and indivisible' although
the relevant substances need not be so. One reaction to this would
be to point out that, when people concern themselves with
questions of immortality and survival of death, it is persons that
they have especially in mind - it is persons who are immortal,
etc. - and if persons may after all turn out to be 'simple and
indivisible' they would qualify without more ado for Shoemaker
-what is simple cannot be destroyed. But let us look more closely
at the example itself.
The Supreme Court, it appears, is 'in some important sense
without parts and indivisible.' This is, apparently, because it
142 Persons and Life After Death

would continue to exist if all the members died or resigned at the

same time. Now it certainly would be true that the Supreme
Court, as part of the American constitution, would continue in
these sad circumstances, and it could function as before as soon
as new members were appointed - and so indeed for any com-
mittee. A committee does not lapse when all its members leave.
But what is it that remains? Surely a system of rules and pro-
cedures, for the appointment of members and their rights and
duties- terms of reference, the rights of the chairman, etc. And
while these are not manifold in the case in which the individual
members are, they certainly involve some complexity and inter-
relations of parts. The Supreme Court is a fairly elaborate part
of an elaborate constitution.
But in any case is this a proper model for our concept of a
person? There are indeed doctrines of corporate personality, but
when they are not explicitly taken to refer to legal or quasi-legal
fictions, they seem to be misleading and, in fact, mischievous
doctrines. Post-Hegelian idealists welcomed them, though in
some cases with reluctance, and the sinister consequences of
entertaining them were effectively exhibited by L. T. Hobhouse
in his celebrated The Metaphysical Theory of the State, as relevant
in its day as it is in ours. Professor Hannah Arendt has taken up
.the same cause with vigour and eloquence in our time. This is a
topic in itself, and having made it a central theme of some of my
own writings, I must leave it there now. B'ut the meeting of
extremes in this way is not, perhaps, so unimportant a feature of
current philosophy as some might suppose. When it appears in
the work of highly professional and cautious thinkers like
Shoemaker and Strawson 10 one wonders whether they apprec-
iate whither their thoughts may be tending.
I should maintain by contrast that the person is the distinct
individual, and to think of persons by analogy with abstract
systems seems to put us gravely in danger of substituting
hypostatised abstractions for individual beings. As a rule, in
Western thought at least, it is of oneself as a particular being and
notofsomeabstractconstitutionofone's individual existence, that
one is thinking in relation to the prospect ofimmortality, whether
that is attractive or not. The constitution of my own nature, or
my 'values' as some have supposed, are repeatable, presumably
ad infinitum and in diverse conditions. But will I live again?
 Immortali~ and Dualism 143

Even in Oriental thought, the position, if properly scrutinised

(as, alas, rarely happens) may not be as accommodating to
Shoemaker's notions as some might be inclined to assume. But
that is also a theme in itself.
Let me now add a brief word on mental states as they figure in
Shoemaker's paper. Here we come closer to a materialist position
than I thought previously he wished to go. The status of mental
states is, we are told, the same as it would be if materialism were
true, the view that whatever exists 'is either a material substance
or something whose existence consists in the existence of material
substances, their states, and their relations to one another'
(p.l21). But this does not apparently mean that mental states are
just neurophysiological states of the brain. A person could in fact
be in pain without having the neurophysiological states of my
brain, or indeed of brains and bodies like ours at all when we are
in pain. A mental state may have 'sometimes one physical
"realisation" and sometimes another'. If this merely meant that
the same mental state could conceivably be caused by different
physical states, I would not dispute it. But it seems to mean more.
There is no admission that the mental state is essentially (perhaps
I could be allowed the word 'ontologically') other than its
physical conditions. It is rather that we must adopt 'a causal, or
functional, analysis of mental concepts'. The causal role of
certain neurophysiological states could be taken over by others.
Pain may thus be 'realised' in different sorts of physiological
states. But just what is it that is being 'realised'? What is being
caused, what function is exercised - an exclusively physical or
behavioural one? This seems most implausible.
Indeed, I must confess here to head-on collision with my
cosymposiast. For while he could admit (and this makes him
appear to concede a great deal more than he does) that pain
could be 'merely realised' in some immaterial attribute of an
immaterial substance, in what may seem by now a rather unusual
view of the latter, the pain could not be 'identical with an
immaterial attribute', for then it could not be realised in a
physical attribute of a material substance. Against this, which
appears to be essential for Shoemaker's system, I should want to
insist that pain, like all other mental states, is essentially an
immaterial attribute and that a causal or functional definition
does not begin to do justice to the facts. There are normally
144 Persons and Life After Death

physical conditions of pain, and there is pain behaviour. But I

had hoped that it would be evident to philosophers by now that
pain is neither of these, or their like. It is what Ifeel. I know it in
experiencing it and in no other way. I could learn to recognise
the physical accompaniments and the behaviour but this would
not tell me what pain was. I might also have pain without any
awareness of conditions (a wound perhaps) which would
normally induce it - or any disposition to behave in the way
normally expected of people in pain. And so, even more
obviously, of thoughts, the ones that go on while writing this
paper or speaking to it. These are what I find them at the time
to be, and that is essentially non-spatial reality. I have no
independent proof of this, I can only reflect and invite you to
reflect on what I find my experience to be like, and if this is not
allowed, then I must protest against being put out of court before
the only proper case can be stated.
The same goes for our knowledge of one another. Shoemaker
reverts to the stock objection to a Cartesian account, namely that
empirical evidence cannot tell us anything about a 'spiritual'
or non-empirical substance. But why not? Shoemaker himself
notes that if I saw 'what looks like someone who is, with great
ingenuity and resourcefulness, repairing a complicated machine'
he would take it without question 'to be a person having mental
states'. But if this is so obvious, is it not equally plain that the
mental states, far from being merely causal or functional, are
ongoing thoughts and purposings such as each of us would be
aware of in the process of having them in his own case? Admit-
tedly, in knowing other persons, we do not proceed through
correlations of behaviour and directly inspected states of mind
of other beings, as that is ex hypothesi out of the question. But that,
as Ryle and others have overlooked, is no bar to our finding the
observable behaviour explicable on the assumption of designs
and purposes such as we have in our own inner life. It is sheer
unwarranted dogma that empirical evidence can only establish
empirical things.
This shows us what is wrong with the example of the Martian
and the Venusian at the end of the paper. It is of course possible
to be mistaken about one another, and we can never wholly
eliminate that. With a different 'evolutionary history', etc., the
same outward behaviour may reflect a different state of mind,
 Immortality and Dualism 145

but this is something we could only discover if we had very

elaborate evidence. In these peculiar circumstances we certainly
could not know from the limited evidence of the present occasion
that one of the creatures had not the thoughts and purposes we
would normally ascribe to it. But in due course, from sufficiently
comprehensive evidence we would expect to discover this. And
if for some reason we did not discover it, that would be just too
bad, as in the case where we are, as often happens, at a loss in the
case of identical twins. Such confusion, or failure of identity, is
no bar to the confidence we otherwise have about identity and
the ascription of mental states. But if the only course were to
establish by some direct independent inspection a causal relation
between physical and non-physical states, the sort of quandaries
that Shoemaker envisages would present insurmountable
problems.
It may be urged at this point that I have not said much in a
positive way myself about the possible simplicity of the self or
subject and the relation of this to the obviously varied and
changing mental states that we have. My reaction is that I find
this is a peculiarly diffic•Ilt philosophical question, though in a
very different way from Shoemaker. There seems to me to be a
very unique or distinctive way in which everyone finds himself
to be the being that he is, whether he reflects on that or not. We
are also aware that certain states of mind are ours in the fact of
having them. I do not, to keep to the relatively simple stock
example of pain, infer that I am in pain - I do not have to tell
myself, or note my bleeding finger or swollen limbs or hear my
own cries. These are the ways in which I know that someone else
is in pain, and if a coach were blacked out in an accident I might
wonder which of my companions is in pain. I would not wonder
about myself. I would know that I had the pain in having it, it is
very much myself; I do not know first that there is a pain, and
wonder about the ascription of it as in the case of other persons.
I know it immediately as mine, and by this token, though not
certain always in other cases who is in pain, I have no conception
of a pain that is not in this immediate sense someone's pain.
There could not be just a 'floating' pain. But to find adequate
terms for this is peculiarly difficult- 'belong', 'owned', etc., have
associations with physical belonging (or with rights) which are
quite out of place here, though we may have to be content with a
146 Persons and Life After Death

cautious use of such metaphors. A hasty and oversimple use of

terms in this sort of context is the bane of sound philosophy, and
it is better to say nothing at all than be too hasty. There is, all the
same, a peculiarly intimate sense in which a pain, or any other
mental state- thoughts, purposing, etc.- is me or mine; and at
the same time this is also not strictly correct.
It is not correct, not just because there is more to any of us than
just being in this particular state, having this pain, etc., but also
because I would be the being that I am, and know this, even if I
did not have the actual states of mind I do have, or if all my
experiences were different. The latter would make a difference
in one sense to my identity, the sense in which I do not know who
I am in loss of memory or split personality. But basic to all this is
the sense of my being the one I find myself to be, an ultimate
irreducible sense, in those or any other contingencies. Even if I
should be born again, as on reincarnation theories, in some
entirely different conaitions, and with no knowledge of my
present existence, I would have, in this new state, the same basic
sense of being the being that I am in my present state, though
ex hypothesi I could not know this, having no way, on our sup-
position, of knowing, by memory or other evidence, what had
gone on previously.
There is in this way a simplicity and finality or ultimacy
about personal identity to which no proper parallel is to be found
elsewhere, though philosophers go astray, as many do today, by
neglecting this and looking too closely for models or parallels in
other cases of identity external to ourselves. At the same time our
ongoing mental states are also, as was stressed, ourselves in a very
distinct sense; and I am not at all happy about any way of
presenting this situation. Perhaps there is not much more that we
can say, but in granting the tension between similar, but not
quite reconcilable, things we are forced to say, we may here be
getting as deep as we can into the philosophical apprehension of
the subject. I certainly want to say that the self is simple in the
sense that it could not be or become another, however much the
kind of experiences we may have may overlap or be shared. Nor
is a person just the experiences he happens to have. At the same
time, a self is not to be too sharply dissociated from the actual
experiences or mental states it does have.
With this, and the awareness that much harder thought may
 Immortali~ and Dualism 147

have to be given to this subject to take it further than I have done,

I return to the points I made at the start, namely that the most
immediate relevance of the view of persons and identity which I
advance to the question of immortality lies in the disassociation
of the self, in its essential nature, from the bodily state which we
have every reason to expect to be completely ended in due course.
The issue of simplicity or finality does indeed relate very
expressly to questions of absorption in some more complete or
universal existence, which is how some think of immortality.
But the alleged indestructibility of the simple has not, on my
view, much significance at all. If it came within God's purpose
that a tree should be conserved for ever, I see no reason in logic,
from the fact that a tree obviously has parts, why this could not
be. But if I am identical with my body I cannot expect to be
conserved in the absence of what seems altogether unlikely,
namely the conservation as well of this seemingly mortal coil.
But to dissociate a person, in essential being, from any material
state is not to make the case positively for either survival or
immortality; it is to remove an obstacle and make a start, but
there is a long way to go beyond that.

NOTES
I. Proc. Aristoulian Society Supplementary Vol. LXIX 1975.
2. See my The Selfand Immortality, Chapter 9.
3. Mind, 1948.
4. As also the Ontological Argument, although what remains is an initial
insight into there having to be some necessary being.
5. The Elusive Mind, Chapter XI and The Selfand Immortality, Chapter 5.
6. The Selfand Immortality, Chapter 9.
7. Philosophical Reasoning, Chapter iii.
8. It could, I suppose, be argued, that the Cartesian Dualist has to hold that
mental states are necessarily identical with those of an immaterial substance
and that, in consequence, his position becomes untenable even if we can
consider an alternative view. But the Cartesian Dualist would only hold his
view on reflection on what he finds to be the case, not on some independent
apriori ground.
9.Page 120.
10. Individuals, page 113.
7 The Belief in Life
After Death

There can be little doubt that the greater part of mankind has
believed, in some way or at some level, that they have a destiny
beyond the fleeting transitory existence we have in the present
life. This belief is deeply rooted in most of the great religions, and
most persons in the past have subscribed to some kind of religion.
Even Shinto, although a very secular religion in some respects,
makes much of the worship of ancestors who are thought to be
still 'around' in some form. Theravada Buddhism, in spite of its
scepticism, at least leaves the matter open and, while presenting
special difficulties for any view of personal survival, has drifted
into forms of belief and practice which involve at least some
notion of a round of various existences; Mahayana Buddhism
makes it very explicit. The so-called primitive religions seem also
to centre on the expectation of some kind of further existence.
How profoundly religious allegiances have affected people's
attitudes and how firmly religious persons have adhered to their
professed beliefs is a more debatable matter. But few things have
affected the general life and culture of people in the past more
than religion: it has been a main determinant of attitudes, a
shaper of major presuppositions; and it would not be incautious
in the least to affirm on this basis that, at some level, by far the
greater part of mankind has committed itself to the expectation
of a life besides the present one and has shaped its activities
accordingly.
Could the same be said today? There can be little doubt that
most communities today have become much more secular than
at any previous time. How deep or permanent is this change may
©Claude Stark and Co. 1975
 The Belief in Lift After Death 149

not be easy to settle. Some, like myself, regard it as a phase in the

profounder and more intelligent recovery of religion, although
this by no means involves commendation of secular attitudes or
the canonising of them as inevitable stages in some dialectic of
religious progress. But without going further into this particular
question, I would hazard fairly coJlfidently the guess that, where
the question ofbeliefin life after death is concerned, most persons,
if a poll of some kind were taken, would still return a fairly firm
positive answer, even in countries where vast material changes
have brought about considerable secularisation. What impor-
tance we should ascribe to that I leave unanswered for the
moment.
Beliefs can be held in a variety of ways and at different levels.
There are at least two main ways in which this is true in respect of
the present theme. A belief can be held at one level only when we
adhere to it in spite of the fact that the evidence for it (or other
reasons for holding it) is not very strong. There are some beliefs
which we can hold with much more confidence than others. They
need not be the most important beliefs. If I believe that it is fine
and sunny at the moment, I have only to look up from my desk
or step out into the garden to be sure of this, and anyone who calls
will confirm it. I am equally certain that I have a pencil in my
hand and am writing with it. I see and hold it, and that is about
the greatest certainty we could have. Philosophical questions
could be asked about the status of things like pencils or the nature
of perception. But for all normal purposes I am as certain as
anyone could wish to be that I am holding a pencil and that
the sun is shining. I am not so certain that the point of this pencil
will not suddenly break or that the weather will hold for my walk
this evening. But the pencil looks firm enough and the weather
seems set for a glorious day. I make plans accordingly. I am not
quite so certain of what falls outside my immediate purview,
though in many cases as certain as makes no difference. I am
quite certain that King's College still stands in the Strand. In
principle there could have been some weakness in the structure
causing it to collapse this morning, but having heard no hint
or rumour of this, I do not give the possibility serious thought.
But there are a host of other matters, ascertainable in perception,
of which I am less certain. A road near my home in North Wales
was closed recently, but I only learned of this when I got there.
150 Persons and Life After Death

In more serious matters we are often a good deal more certain

of some things than of others. Some of my acquaintances I trust
absolutely, but I am cautious about others. Confidence is some-
times misplaced, and we must go on the strength of the evidence
at the time. We likewise adhere with varying degrees of firmness
to certain principles, socialism or pacifism for instance, and some
are swayed more than others by evidence and rational reflection.
But clearly, when a strong case can be made out for something
and objections met, we are normally disposed to think favourably
of it and try to put prejudice aside. One reason therefore for the
weakness of a belief and oscillation in the firmness of our
adherence to it is the difficulty of making out a simple over-
whelming case, as I can for my belief that it is not raining in my
garden at the moment. The belief in a future life cannot be
established with that kind of conclusiveness. If it could only
idiots would doubt it.
This is what has set many persons searching for some foolproof
way of ascertaining that the dead do in fact live again. The most
obvious approach here is parapsychology and mediumistic
evidence. Some religious people are very contemptuous of this.
It will not, so they say, prove the resurrection but only the
survival or immortality of the soul, of which some religious
people take a curiously dim view. But this is, in my view, a very
great mistake. The evidence may not give us all that we want to
establish in a religious context - it certainly cannot provide all
that the Christian means by 'the life eternal'. But if it did the
trick it would certainly give us a great deal. It might not prove
that we live for ever; but if some kind of mediumistic or kindred
evidence could be found which made it tolerably certain (as
certain as we are about conditions in some of the planets we can
more easily study, for example) that someone whose lifeless
corpse we had seen put in its coffin and buried or cremated was
now all the same unmistakably in communication with us, in
whatever trivial a way, this would be momentous.
I can in fact think of nothing that would startle people more,
or have greater news value. A journalist who failed to report it
would obviously be falling down on his job. The trouble is that
there is much to dispute about mediumistic evidence, and most
people take the line that, while 'there may be something in it',
it is all too uncertain to be taken seriously- and in the meantime
 The Belief in Life After Death 151

there is much to tell against it, including the lifeless corpse. I

repeat therefore that if confidence could be established in the
psychical approach to the question of survival, it would be a
matter of enormous importance. The issue is not, of course, the
stra~ghtforward one of finding conclusive or very impressive
evidence; there are peculiar difficulties about the interpretation
of the evidence available, as critics are not slow to point out.
Some views about the nature of persons would rule out from the
start the interpretation of any evidence in terms of actual
survival, and those who defend the possibility of survival must
reckon with such views as a vital part of their undertaking. But
apart from this, and even allowing for some psychical pheno-
mena, there are differing ways in which it is proposed to interpret
the available evidence. Clairvoyance and telepathy among the
living might cover much of it. I myself find much of the evidence
impressive, and I am even more impressed by the fact that very
clearsighted investigators with the highest philosophical com-
petence like C. D. Broad and H. H. Price have thought it worth
taking very seriously, the latter being fully convinced of its
adequacy to establish at least some form ofsurvival.
There are, admittedly, some people who would prefer the
evidence to be negative, and Broad is perhaps the most notable
example. There are indeed disconcerting aspects to the possibility
of another life. It may not by any means be all that we expect
now; but even so, and allowing fully for the sombre side of those
possibilities, my own expectation would be that most people
would be immensely relieved and excited if they had firm
assurance comparable to that which we may have about ordinary
matters of fact that the friends they had lost were alive 'some-
where' and might even be contacted, and that their own existence
would not come finally to its end at the close of their earthly life.
This assurance could in fact make a vast difference to the way we
think of ourselves and our lives at present. We do not have to
think of morality in terms of rewards and punishments to appre-
ciate what a change it would make to our present attitudes and
restlessness if we were certain that this life is 'not all.'
For these reasons I do not think that religious people should be
as contemptuous or suspicious as many seem to be of the investi-
gation of the alleged paranormal evidence for survival. They are
indeed entitled to insist that this will not give them any of the
152 Persons and Life After Death

essentials of a Christian faith or the reasons for holding it, and we

need thus to be warned not to· confuse major issues or draw
attention away from the sort of assurance on which the Christian
faith depends. All the same, an assurance that men do live after
they are dead (even if it extends to only a limited period) would
make a very considerable breach in the hard wall of scepticism
which confronts us now and open men's minds to further
possibilities which come closer to the profounder and more
exhilarating insights which the Christian claims. It has been said
in a classical context that philosophy can 'make room for faith'.
This has sometimes been understood in a way that implies that
philosophy has no place in faith as such, and it is, alas, this
travesty that appeals most to those who invoke the distinction
most often today, thus maintaining an unholy alliance between
religious dogmatism or uncritical relativism and philosophical
scepticism. This was certainly not Kant's idea, and without
pretending to follow him further in how he thought of faith, we
can insist that there are rational ingredients capable of philo-
sophical refinement at the centre of a religious faith. Nonetheless,
philosophical and other secular assurances which do not affect
the core of a Christian commitment can help to open men's
minds to possibilities which prepare the way for a deeper
religious understanding.
There are a great many ways in which this holds today, and
there are many important and exciting tasks for religious
philosophers who rightly understand their prospects and have
the energy and courage to persist. But I cannot investigate these
now; I must content myself with the insistence that philosophical
and scientific investigation of the religious implications and
possibilities of psychical research is a respectable and important
part of seeking a better understanding and acceptance of
Christian beliefs. The pitfalls are many, but that is no reason for
avoiding the subject as many religious thinkers do today. If the
results prove negative no harm is done, for this is not what faith
turns upon; if positive, a great deal is gained. In any case, our
first concern is with the truth, disconcerting or otherwise.
I come now to the second main way in which a belief may be
held 'at one level' of our minds only, namely when we believe, as
it is sometimes put, with 'one side of our minds' or 'one part
of us'. To some extent, this is true of all of us, and it needs to be
 The Belief in Life After Death 153

reckoned with more than is commonly the case in matters ofbelief.

In extreme cases we have the situation memorably described
by Plato in his account of what he called 'the democratic man'.

Day after day he gratifies the pleasures as they come - now

fluting down the primrose path of wine, now given over to
teetotalism and banting; one day in hard training, the next
slacking and idling, and the third playing the philosopher.
Often he will take to politics, leap to his feet and do or say
whatever comes into his head; or he conceives an admiration
for a general, and his interests are in war; or for a man of
business, and straightway that is his line. He knows no order
or necessity in life; but he calls life as he conceives it pleasant
and free and divinely blessed, and is ever faithful to it.

This is not, in the main at least, a case ofinsincerity or hypocrisy.

In certain moods men genuinely do believe what they do not
believe at all at other times. This is how some well-known public
figures leave the impression of a deep insincerity of which they
may not really be guilty. They really do believe, perhaps quite
fervently at times, what they also seem to reject or disregard,
though there may be insincerity as well. We are, all of us, more
of a mixture than we care to admit.
There has, on occasion, been serious commendation of this
frame of mind, as in some doctrines of a dual standard or in the
nineteenth-century notion of a 'truth of the heart' which could
ease the intellectual strain for us by being entertained alongside
an incompatible 'truth of the mind'. I hope no one today
encourages this kind of intellectual schizophrenia. But we must
all be on our guard against the insidiousness of our temptation
to lapse into it in subtle ways.
It is here also that we may find the element oftruth in john
Baillie's famous account of believing something 'at the bottom
of our hearts' which we deny 'at the top of our minds'. Baillie's
mistake was to suppose that this must be true of all unbelief. That
is certainly not the way to take the measure of unbelief or the
magnitude of our task in resisting it. But it may well cover many
cases; and even notable atheists, like Bertrand Russell, come
sometimes very close to the substance of what the believer
professes.
154 Persons and Life After Death

The sum of this, for our purpose (it is a theme of great impor-
tance which needs to be treated more fully on its own account),
is that our beliefs need to be cultivated. That is not a commenda-
tion of wishful thinking or of naive refusal to look serious
difficulties in the face. But profound and precious beliefs about
spiritual matters can neither be achieved nor maintained in a
casual way. This is again what we learn from Plato, who spoke
eloquently about 'the long and toilsome route' out of the cave
and how easy it is to lose a true belief or to substitute for it a
merely superficial opinion. We have to be like athletes, a com-
parison to which St Paul was also very prone, resisting 'the softer
influence of pleasure' and 'the sterner influence of fear'.
The saints have indeed been well aware of this: they are
constantly wrestling with doubt and despair; the pilgrim sinks
deep in the Slough of Despond; our hymns are full of varieties of
mood, from triumphant certainties to deep despair, from the
hilltops to the valleys and the shadows; and this is as it should
be- we have to win our way through doubt to firm belief and the
t:enewal of belief. But this is no mere intellectual matter; it is
more a maintaining of the set of our thoughts and dispositions, of
living with the evidence which leads to spiritual discernment;
and for this reason we should welcome the importance that is
accorded today to contemplation. Meditation has its discipline,
and there are those who can guide us. This is often travestied and
sometimes almost equated with physical exercises or mechanical
stimuli. We need to understand much better what contempla-
tion means, for it is in the fullness of meditation, which extends to
thought and practice alike, that faith is renewed. This will have
rational ingredients among which philosophical thought has a
prominent place.
The belief in life after death is not an easy one. There is much
to induce us to identify ourselves with our bodies, and philo-
sophers today find it hard to avoid that. This is not the place to
put the case against them- I have tried to do that elsewhere. But
we all know what will happen soon to our bodies. They will rot
or be burned. To believe seriously that we can survive this needs
some very clear thinking, and I do not discount in this context the
oddity we all feel, I imagine, of the notion of our own total
extinction. But what I most wish to stress at the moment is the
strenuousness at the intellectual level, and at the level of com-
 The Belief in Life After Death 155

mitted religious living, of maintaining a genuine belief. Belief in

life after death is a momentous one, and the burden ofour witness
to it has come to be taken too lightly.
In the sophisticated thinking relevant to a belief in afterlife,
there is one item of exceptional importance to which I wish to
draw attention and which will be my chief concern for the
remainder of this discussion. It is at this point that I find myself
sharply at odds with Plato and with the vast range of philo-
sophical thinking for which he has been largely responsible.
Plato, you will recall, maintained that genuine reality consisted
of certain general principles, the ideas or the forms, as we call
them. These are not concepts, though the best way for us to begin
to understand them is in terms of universals; they are in his view
real, indeed the only true reality. They are also closely inter-
related, and in the progress of Plato's own thought there is a
deepening insistence on the essential interrelatedness of the
forms. At the centre and transcending all is the form of the Good;
and it is in our glimpse or vision of this at the end of our toilsome
route that we find our clue to the ultimate necessity of all the rest.
Particular things, it is thus affirmed, 'the choir of heaven and
the furniture of earth' (in the words of a kindred but more down
to earth spirit), in the rush and travail of our own lives derive
such reality as they have from the forms themselves; they have a
questionable borrowed reality. The wise man will seek to draw
away from the insubstantial fleeting world of particulars and
centre his thought not on 'shadows' but on the only true realities,
the forms. He will in this sense seek what is 'above'. It is signifi-
cant that, in spite of this denigration of the particular and the
seeming exclusiveness of the bifurcation into the world of
particulars and the world of forms, Plato continues to think of
the soul as essentially individual. Exactly where it fits is not clear,
but it is certain that Plato never wavers on this- the soul is the
individual, now and always; and it is also for Plato immortaf
because it is essentially indestructible, and it is indestructible
because it has an essential affinity with the forms; the eternal
world offorms is its home.
It is this affinity with the world offorms that Plato stresses most
of all in claiming the immortality of the soul. The inadequacy of
his other argumentation has often been exposed, but his main
considerations provide a not unimpressive view of the im-
156 Persons and Lift After Death

mortality of the soul. It has many of the ingredients we would

also stress: the sense of the inevitable transitoriness of our present
existence, the urgency with which we are pressed to look to the
things 'above' (almost as the Bible tells us to 'lay up treasures for
yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt'),
the abiding conviction that at the heart of all is the absolute
transcendent Good, the source of our being and our home. We
must not despise this understanding; it is never monistic, 'soul
is soul' whatever else we say, and it has helped extensively to
shape Christian understanding at various times. But it has one
radical weakness. It does not take proper account of the here and
now. This is not because Plato adopts an unmitigated other-
worldly view as in extreme monism. He set the course, on the
contrary, for the effective rebuttal of the arguments of
Parmenides, whose force he well appreciated. The philosopher,
in some ways like the avatar, has to return to succour and provide
for others. In the world of forms there is an essential variety.
Nonetheless the particular, whether in the world of nature or in
our own lives, tends to count solely as a reflection of the true
reality of eternal verities. The persistence of this view is the
source of the main points of disagreement one would have with
Plato.
This is seen to good advantage in Plato's treatment of the
family and personal relations. He did not think physical enjoy-
ment in any form an evil thing, but he rated it very lowly, not
appreciating how physical enjoyment enters into a fuller
experience to make it more meaningful. The intimacy of full
personal encounter and a rounded friendship seems to give way
before the idea of the blueprint and the pattern laid up in
heaven (which is surprising in view of Plato's own enjoyment of
excellent friendships and his great regard for Socrates). Appetite
tends to remain brute appetite; it does not become an ingredient
in a richer experience. For the same reasons, the morally or
physically handicapped receive very harsh treatment. If they do
not play their proper part in the fulfilment of 'the pattern', they
are dispensable. The same clues yield us the secret of Plato's
famous perversity about poetry and the arts. A very great
literary artist himself, and very consciously attracted to poetry,
he would have none ofit officially. This is because he understood
well that poetry does not deal in essences or universal notions -
 The Belief in Life After Death 157

a point about which our late and gifted friend Dr. Austin Farrer
was peculiarly confused. 1 Art is some illumination of the
particular, even in its rarefied and abstract forms, and it is for
this reason that literature, music, painting and all the other arts
are accorded such a very lowly place in a scheme of things which
puts all its premium on the impersonal and eternal aspect of
things. 2
This is where true religion provides its corrective, and that is
why Plato can never set the model for a truly religious philo-
sophy. For religion, as I understand it, has always an element of
revelation at the core of it; and in revelation the transcendent
discloses and shapes itself for our illumination in a peculiar
involvement ofitselfwith a particular situation, a time and place
at which the revelation happens notwithstanding that it may not
always be precisely specifiable. The disclosure is to someone, and
may well include some transmutation of what is presented
immediately in his environment. It speaks of the 'beyond', but
it is also altogether of the here and now. Others may appropriate
it, and it takes its place in the exchanges of committed religious
living as the gradual refinement ofour understanding of God and
the sense ofhis presence.
This puts immeasurable worth on particular things, on an
essentially created world in which the divine splendour shines,
and on the lives of all. All the earth is holy, a 'sacramental
universe' as it has been boldly put, and personal existence as the
peculiar centre of divine involvement acquires a significance
which nothing can efface, a place at the heart of the life of God.
This is what the mystic perceives and this is why he speaks of an
absorption in which God is all in all. This is a travesty if, as often
happens, it is taken neat. God is God, but the point of true
religion is the discovery of our place in the life of God himself,
and as the disclosure deepens and the essentially self-giving
character of it reveals itself, as the bond tightens, we know that
we are 'of God' and have no home but God. The inestimable
worth that is placed on each, even 'weak things' and 'things that
are despised', puts the question of the elimination of anyone
out of the question. This is in some ways a terrible truth for us to
realize, for whatever is evil in our lives or persons is present there
in this holy relationship. It is no wonder, therefore, that out-
standingly saintly persons have been so peculiarly tormented by
158 Persons and Life After Death

the sense of sin as to seem to others obsessed and unbalanced. We

may much resent the words 'sinners in the hands of an angry
God', and indeed few things have been more travestied and
misdirected, in theory or experience, than the sense of sin and
the fear of God. But there is a certain horror, and an abysmal
consuming wretchedness - the worm that does not die - in the
spectacle of one's own life aglow in all its forms in the life of God.
That is where the costliness of redeeming love begins to be seen.
In the peculiar claims of the Christian religion, the unfolding
of divine love in history and the manifold experiences of men is
alleged to come to a finality of fulfilment in Christ. Here God
himself comes as a man to put the seal of his redeeming activity
on the indissoluble bond of our own lives in his. Of the way we
must understand this, and of the infinite sadness of the many
travesties of it, we cannot speak here. But the Christian should
have no doubt about 'the price that was paid'. Christianity with-
out sacrifice does not begin to get off the ground, and it is in the
sacrifice we celebrate in a holy communion that we find the
ultimate seal on our own abiding destiny as sons of God. There
can be no elimination of what is so completely of God himself.
These assurances in no way dispense with the need for thought;
they have thought at the core of them. The wise Christian will
cm:ne to terms with this, most of all in a developing culture.
Insight is not random, and faith is not blind. Both are at the
opposite poles to unreason. There is much work atso in preparing
the ground: in dealing, for example, with problems about the
nature of persons, as indicated earlier, in sifting the evidence of
psychical research, and in hard thought about the peculiarly
tantalising problem presented by extensive evil in a world
governed by divine love. The latter problem does in fact find
some easement in the present case in the very substance of what
faith affirms; for, in the affirmation of a life beyond, we do have a
broader canvas on which to view the various ills men endure
nc,w. Compensation in afterlife could afford a partial solution at
least to the problem of evil, and some of the most impressive
writers on the subject of late, such as C. A. Campbell, A. C.
Ewing and John Hick, give it particular prominence. I go more
cautiously with it, as indeed do Campbell and Ewing, because I
wish to stand firmly on our present assurances. In these the
feeling we have that it would be strange for personal existence to
 The Belief in Life After Death 159

be eclipsed for reasons incidental to what our natures properly

are and what we do deserves more prominence than is often
accorded to it; and here the study of other religions could be very
relevant. But the main weight has still to be placed on the
peculiar assurance offaith through divine disclosure.
This lends particular urgency at the present time to the
proclamation of Christian truth and our witness to it. This
should include at centre the affirmation of a life beyond, and if
we fail in this we shall place a serious limitation on any renewal
offaith in our time. The relevance of our proclamation to present
ills will be much weakened. This is not because the new problems
of today spring directly from irreligion; they come about largely
through the complexities of a changed situation and marked
advances in our understanding ofourselves and our environment.
At the same time the limiting of our horizons to the here and now
is not without profound effect, and, on the positive side, the
transformation in attitude and expectation which could be
induced by a detached and objective sense of illimitable possi-
bilities of richer experience would be hard to calculate. The
palliatives and substitutes would easily dwindle beside it.
It is in the context of this expectation and the renewal offaith
in its fulness that the Christian should consider the question of a
life after death. The hope we have in this precise sense is not a
luxury, a secondary consideration to be investigated on its own
account; it belongs to the essence of a Christian commitment.
To tie that to some isolated doctrine of the Resurrection, or make
the Resurrection stories pivotal on their own account, is a bad
mistake. The work and person of Christ must be taken in its
fullness, but it seems to be unthinkable that it should not be
thought to include, in explicit word and in implication, the
affirmation of our abiding place at the heart of God's love. We
can form little conception of what this will be; the new dimen-
sions of it go far beyond our present limitations and boldest
speculation, involving transformations of the quality of life as
much as its formal scope. It does not yet 'appear what we shall
be' but we shall be 'like him', and that, to any who consider the
matter seriously, is about as remarkable an expectation as that
we shall exist without our present bodies. Indeed, it is in many
ways the most bewildering item of our faith, as sober realistic
theologians appreciated earlier in this century, however muddled
160 Persons and Life After Death

in other ways. This is nonetheless the bold truth the Christian

must proclaim, and in the long run we do better with the daunt-
ing character of the full Christian assurance than with half-
hearted humanist travesties of it. That is one reason why
narrowly dogmatic Christians succeed better, for a time at least,
than the rest of us. Other reasons are less estimable. An enduring
faith must be open and reflective. But it must be faith and the
fulness of it, and that unmistakably includes our own conserva-
tion, sanctified beyond our dimmest understanding and renewed
in the knowledge of the price that was paid, at the heart of the
life of God. 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not
perish but have everlasting life.' There is no Christian faith
without 'everlasting life', and it is in the fullness of faith, as a
rounded personal apprehension, that this life of 'the world to
come' becomes also our proper possession 'in this time now'. In
essentials it is all a matter of the right kind offaith.

NOTES
l. See The Glass of Vision (Westminster: Dacre Press, 1948), Chapter 7,
pp. 113-31, and my comment in Our Experience of God, Chapter 7, pp. 131-45.
2. Cf. my paper 'On Poetic Truth', in Morals and Revelation (London:
Allen & Unwin, 1951), Chapter IO,pp. 232-55.
8 The Person of Christ

One of the distinctive words of our times is 'relevance'. Every-

thing has to be relevant. Some of our students will not begin, or
continue, their courses without constant assurance of their
relevance. I have often wondered, in a mildly whimsical way,
how things might have gone if I and some of my friends, in my
student days, had called upon that notable scholar, the late
Professor James Gibson (author of a well-known work on John
Locke), or his remarkably versatile colleague, Professor Hudson
Williams who taught us Greek, to tell them that what they taught
us, about the ancient Greeks and their ways, was hardly relevant
to us today. They were both very courteous and kindly persons,
and both in their ways rather remote and shy. They would
certainly have been much embarrassed, and there would have
been much coughing and floundering. Perhaps it is best not to
speculate further.
At the same time it is important that anything we teach or
think about should be relevant in the sense of taking its proper
place in the modes of thought and conditions of our time. We
cannot live wholly in the past and must come to terms in some
way with what we find the world to be like today.
What then is the relevance ofJesus? Who was he? What do we
know about him? Almost everything, indeed everything of any
substance, that we know about him comes from a collection of
writings that we know as The New Testament, four gospels, the
story of the early Church in Acts and letters. The earliest com-
plete copy of these comes to us from the Fourth Century A.D.,
but there are fragments identical with the later version which
strongly suggest that the rest was in circulation at their own date,
162 Persons and Life After Death

a hundred years earlier. Some find all this disconcerting, but I

do not think we have any serious cause for anxiety here. There
are good reasons, both of scholarship and common sense, for
concluding that most of the New Testament was available, sub-
stantially as we have it, within the century in which Christ lived,
and most of it not very far from the time when he died. Scholars
will no doubt continue to debate the precise dating of parts of
the New Testament, but I do not think there is any likelihood of
serious doubt about the placing of most of it, including the first
three (synoptic) gospels, at a date not very far removed from the
events they purport to describe. It is well known also that the
gospels exhibit patterns and other features which reflect some
earlier records that were in circulation still nearer the time. I
shall not go into further detail on these matters- they can be left
to the appropriate experts. But I do not think there can be serious
doubt about what I have hitherto maintained. The available
records do unmistakab.ly take us fairly close to the events in
question- at least in point of time.
So far the Christian has no serious worry. Even so there is a
gap. The evidence, even on the most optimistic view, comes to us
from some time, a few years at least, after the events. The Muslim
has the advantage of the Christian here. When Muhammad
spoke what he claimed to be divine revelations communicated to
him, and on other occasions too when, like St Paul at times, he
gave more his own opinion, his words were immediately taken
down on whatever was available. The record of the revelations
given to him (in what manner is a further point not relevant
now) was available in four nearly identical copies which were
speedily conftated and edited to give us 'the Glorious Qu'ran' as
it is often described. There can be little doubt that the Qu'ran
gives us the words of Muhammad himself.
We can say nothing strictly comparable of Christian scriptures.
Professor W. D. Davies, in his excellent short study, The Sermon
on the Mount, has noted recently the familiar 'phenomenon of the
retention and repetition of sayings and speeches by worthy men
in the Semitic world of the first and other centuries' 1 and
adduced other reasons which make it 'credible that the "words"
of Jesus were preserved and transmitted with some degree of
faithfulness'. 2 In other cultures our confidence in the authenti-
city of sacred scriptures owes a great deal to highly developed
 The Person ofChrist 163

techniques of oral transmission operative long before there were

written texts. There may have been nothing strictly comparable
in Palestine, but we can certainly give some weight there also to
habits oforal transmission which we lack. 3
Even so we have, on the most optimistic view, to reckon with a
gap. What we have is the evidence or recollection of witnesses
some time after the event, some of it at second hand, and most
having passed through the mill of public and social transmission.
It is worth recalling how many witnesses have sworn in a court
of law, often with the greatest sincerity, that they have seen
something which it can be shown they could not possibly have
seen from where they were standing. Our eyes deceive us and
imagination plays tricks on us. Legends grow up quickly around
charismatic persons and events, the story of St David when the
mound sprang up under his feet to facilitate his preaching to the
multitude, St Francis and the birds, nativity stories and 'trans-
figurations', and, in our own time, the story of the Russian
soldiers, in the First World War, who landed in the North of
England and were seen marching south on their way to help our
troops in France with the snow still on their boots. Most of us have a
subtle streak of credulity in us and have to be much on our guard
against wishful thinking. We have also read much today about
'the life of images' and the way the great myths and their themes
live on in some renewed way in new cultural settings. The writers
of the New Testament had moreover a case to make, they were
not detached, uncommitted witnesses.
In the light of this and like considerations can we place firm
reliance on the New Testament as history? Is not 'the quest of the
historical Jesus' a vain one from the start, as so many Biblical
scholars have themselves maintained? The actualJesus ofhistory
never emerges from the mass of culturally conditioned represen-
tations of him. Whose evidence do we trust?
At this stage I should like to make one point very explicit. In
my view, if it is not possible to get at the historical Jesus, if the
records are some kind of fabrication or the work of inspired
imagination or literary genius, then the bottom goes out of any
distinctively Christian affirmations. For me, it is 'the Jesus of
History' or nothing. Bonhoeffer has maintained that God was
incognito in Jesus and that the actual historical Jesus, for all we
know, may have done some bad things. He does not indicate
164 Persons and Life After Death

what the bad things might have been, consistent with the record
as we have it. ·I am not clear what is meant altogether by saying
that God was incognito inJesus, but presumably it implies that we
claim that 'God was in Christ' independently of what we feel we
know aboutJesus; and along these lines it is hard to see why we
should make these claims about Christ rather than anyone else,
any notable figure or even a disreputable one like Hitler. We
would think it absurd to say that God was incarnate in Hitler,
but this is because we know what Hitler was like. Bonhoeffer was
a brave and notable person and died the death of a martyr, but
that is unhappily no guarantee of sound religious understanding.
For my own part, if I feel I had to admit that Jesus had done
some bad things, then while I might feel inspired and helped by
his teaching and example, as with other outstanding but erring
and fallible human beings, I could not worship him or make the
claims about him that seem to be central to the Christian faith.
But how then, when there is so much room for scepticism, can we
place reliance on the Biblical records? Can we take these firmly
as history?
I answer with every confidence that we can, not because of any
independent confirmation of substance, but because the records
themselves, in their substance and character, authenticate them-
selves, as history as well as the essentials offaith. But this does not
in the least mean that everything must have happened or been
said exactly as described. There is much variety in the stories
themselves from one report to another, and what Census was
that which figures in the nativity story? What we have is a picture
of a person, but not the picture of the eye of the camera, a portrait
rather but a portrait which altogether convinces us as history and
as saving truth.
What then do we find in this portrait? Let us pause to consider
this. In the first place, we encounter in the portrait a young man
of quite extraordinary gifts and powers. It is not at all a case of
some relatively ordinary person on whom some peculiar status is
conferred by divine ordination, as might happen, it might be
thought, to anyone. By any computation Jesus was a most
remarkable man and it is hard to think that he would not have
made his impact on his own times and afterwards in some
exceptional way even if his life had not taken the course it did
take. This may seem obvious but it needs stressing today when
 The Person of Christ 165

it seems implied, in some theological attitudes and procedures,

that the doctrine of 'the person of Jesus' does not rest at all on
what we know him to have been like in historical fact.
What then was he like, what do we find in the portrait? First
of all, unmistakably, a man with the eye of a poet to note the
world around us coming alive3 stark and distinctive, in its
familiar unfamiliarity, the 'lilies of the field' in all their glory, the
red sky at night, the fields white for the harvest and the tares also
sprouting among the good seed, the ravens which neither sow
nor reap and other fowls of the air lodging in the mustard tree,
the sparrow limp in the dust, the foxes slinking to their lairs ahead
of his solitary step on the mountain, the shepherd leading his
flock; the gift to hear also the wind blowing where it listeth
among the reeds and, with his own peculiar penetration and
sensitivity, the widow's mite dropping into the treasury. He
would not be the first to note these and their like, and to speak of
them, but they come before us, notwithstanding our own great
familiarity, with a peculiar starkness and freshness of their own.
The eye of a poet, but also the skill of the artist and his unfailing
touch to convey it all with neatness and without false embroidery,
a remarkable literary genius. Even if we had only the parables,
and without the peculiar spiritual significance we give them in
their full Christian context, what a treasure they would be for art
and literature. We grow up with them as part of our talk, they
are vital elements in the modes of our thought and culture- the
prodigal son and his elder brother, the lost sheep, the good
Samaritan, the talents, the pearl of great price, the wise and
foolish virgins, the broad and the narrow way, the camel and the
eye of the needle, the vineyard, the rich man and Lazarus, the
great feast, and many more. These would undoubtedly take their
place of themselves as part of a rich and classical culture, and as
Jesus was so given to telling such parables, there may have been
many more of which no record is left. A good parable is in some
way very simple, but that is their glory and where the craftsman-
ship shows, everyone can follow them and they are peculiarly
whole and apt. To be so unfailingly ready with them was no little
thing.
What else do we find? It seems to me that we have in Jesus
someone who must have had an exceptional home. We know
little about this, barely more than the names of his parents and
166 Persons and Life After Death

the story of the boy Jesus in the temple. And yet in one sense we
know all. The very silence is most revealing here. Joseph and
Mary, bringing up this strange child, would not have been un-
aware of what came to be described as his growing in favour with
men and God. He must have astounded people greatly long
before the start of his 'public ministry'. But his parents seem to
have been wisely restrained and unobtrusive in it all. They might
easily have thrust themselves forward and made the way hard for
him. By contrast we read that his mother 'kept all these sayings
in her heart'. The implications of this simple and tender observa-
tion seem to me more remarkable and revealing than a virgin
birth.
Admittedly we do have one observation that seems rather
harsh- 'Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?' But the
context makes it very clear here that this is not a lessening of
tenderness but the all-inclusive character of his public commit-
ment. His personal life was bound to be deeply affected by his
special ministry. We recall by contrast his moving care for his
mother from the Cross. It is to me inconceivable that we should
have such central reference to 'my heavenly father' if Jesus had
not known in the fullest way what it is to have a fine father. I
shall not elaborate this but simply note how difficult it would be
to make sense of the story in disregard of the sensitivity and
tenderness bred in a home which would have entered deeply into
his character and outlook, and which in due COUTSe became part
of the full significance of his work- and the divine disclosure.
The very sharp intellect ofJ esus and his general understanding
is also very evident at every stage. He was steeped in the
Scriptures of his own people and their culture, and could hold
his own in controversies about them or in meeting questions of
shrewd and learned people with a hostile intent. Everything
about him has the stamp of the profound insights and experience
of an exceptionally gifted person. He could have made a place
for himself with ease in learned religious circles in his own time-
and this, as the records again hint very strongly, is what many
expected ofso remarkable a religious teacher. He mixed with ease
with the highest in the rich world of thought in his time. It is, I
must repeat, not a case of just anyone singled out for a peculiar
charismatic role.
Consider next the impact Jesus made on those around him,
 The Person of Christ 167

and his influence. His popularity was obviously great at times,

he drew the crowds, and there must have been much in his
manner which charmed them. There seems little reason to doubt
that this pleased him, although it wearied him also in more ways
than one. He certainly did not go greatly out ofhis way to win or
retain it, least of all at any cost. Much of the enthusiasm for him
was cheap aud meanly motivated, and he made it evident him-
self what little value he put on that. But he clearly liked to move
among the people, the warmth of genuine response meant much
to him, and also the loyalty and companionship of his closest
friends, though he could dispense with that also at need - 'Will
ye also go away?'
But there is a great deal more involved than easy companion-
ship or superficial popularity. That has happened to many, but
what is of greater account here is the more profound impact
which Jesus made on those around him, that which made the
evangelists speak of people being astonished, amazed, dumb or
filled with fear, not fear of something immediately impending,
but the sort of awe which goes with the sense of great sanctity and
holiness. Men could be much at ease with him, but they could
also be quite subdued, he spoke 'with power' and as one having
'authority' very different from that of the scribes. When they
wondered who he might be their thoughts turned to John the
Baptist, alleged by Jesus himself to be the greatest of the prophets
but who in turn is said to have declared himself unworthy to
perform the meanest service for Jesus, and to Moses and Elijah,
the great charismatic prophetic heroes of their remarkable moral
and spiritual tradition. There could have been none more
eminent with whom to compare him, it looked as though the
greatest of the prophets had come again. And let us not forget to
whom this happened. The Jews, like other nations, stoned the
prophets, but the prophets are par excellence of the Jews, it was
among them that they appeared, they produced them if you like
to put it so, and they could recognise a prophet. It means some-
thing when they speak of teaching with authority and of being
overcome in his presence. We are certainly not dealing with just
anybody in the Gospels.
But is this all? By no means. As yet we have barely got beyond
the periphery, although the matters with which we have dealt
have their distinctive and important place in the pattern. The
168 Persons and Life After Death

weightier considerations have still to be noted. Among these is

the peculiar ethical penetration ofjesus, the scope of it, its being
so unerringly right when it is most unexpected, the balance and
precision ofit in so many different settings. We see this in part in
general declarations, because their tone and their relation to one
another bring us to a very different world from similar pro-
nouncements before them and elsewhere. We find the Golden
Rule, to love others as ourselves, in many places, but I do not
think one is likely to be thought guilty of any bias in claiming to
find a peculiar penetration and sensitivity in the enunciation of it
in the Sermon on the Mount, as it is called, and elsewhere in the
New Testament. But it is not in general exhortation that we find
the peculiar glory and distinctiveness of the moral teaching
ascribed tojesus.
We find that in the special way the whole is presented in
response and reaction to all sorts of occasions and to people of
such vastly different natures and circumstances. This is why so
many of the descriptions ofJesus and the labels, convincing and
illuminating enough up to a point, are also so very inadequate
and misleading- 'Jesus, the Agitator', 'the man for others'. He
was of course an agitator, a rebel, like his followers shortly after-
wards 'turning the world upside down'. But he does not begin to
fit our normal picture of an agitator. There was so much gentle-
ness, patience, respect, conformity too of its kind and up to a
point. He could be stirred, but he was never a wild man. Cate-
gories and labels may help but they may also miss the main point
and be gravely misleading; what in fact we find is some quite
remarkable way of being so exactly right, most unexpected as his
reaction often was but also when it comes so amazingly right, not
in precise formulations to be mechanically applied in all other
circumstances, but as the disclosure of a way oflife and attitude
of mind for us to try to follow. It is not that precise practical pro-
blems are evaded so that we are left without explicit guidanc~,
much less, as has indeed sometimes been thought, that we are
offered some kind of Christian spirit or attitude or some un-
defined acceptance that is compatible with almost anything and
everything in outward demeanour- that sort of antinomianism
has been the bane of Christian witness down the ages. The precise
practical challenge is a very bold one, and it often asks more, in
sacrifice and selflessness, than we sometimes begin to realise. It
 The Person of Christ 169

can be quite revolutionary and make devastating demands. But

it does not always take the same form. On the one hand, we have
the story of the rich young man who went away 'sorrowful', for he
had 'great possessions', and, on the other hand, in the same
context, the curiously paradoxical promise to his followers that
they 'shall receive a hundred-fold now in this time', and shall
lack nothing, though 'with persecutions'. No one should take
this promise literally, it did not happen that way to Christ or his
disciples, but neither is it just words; and in a context only
slightly later we have the story of the anointing of his head with
costly oil - 'A man for the poor', the 'friend of outcasts and
sinners', and as such the disciples expected him to condemn 'this
waste'. It all went differently. With profound sensitivity and
graciousness Jesus saw much deeper and praised this action as
one peculiarly appropriate to his Kingdom and Gospel -
'Wherever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world,
there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a
memorial of her'. How remarkable and how significant. The
action of the woman was wholly in line with the gospel, as the
sorrow ofthe rich young man was so far from it.
Thus at every point, surprise and novelty and in all cases so
exactly right, wholly convincing even when it remains bewilder-
ing, in all sorts of conditions and with all manner ofpeople, with
old and young (his fondness for children was obviously deep
and natural and his observations show how easily he entered into
their world- few notable persons have approached him in this),
with sick and maimed people, some of whom were in shocking
and revolting conditions of deterioration with no provision for
care or relief, with outcasts whom most people shunned if they
could (and who would have gone so far as to kiss the leper?), with
poor or simple or naive people, with people in all sorts of distress,
with prominent and sophisticated people (he clearly increased
in favour with them also), with happy people and those engaged
in some special celebration, making a feast or killing their fatted
calf and making sure to please their host by wearing the appro-
priate dress (proud of his own seamless garment notwithstanding
that he also said we should take no thought for raiment), with
foolish people and wise people, with kind and simple people and
some devoted to him and mindful of his comfort, with troubled
and perplexed people and those earnestly seeking, with the over-
170 Persons and Life After Death

confident and with the reluctant, with vicious people and those
cunningly trying to encompass his downfall or openly hostile,
with the few who were spiritually, though not always with full
awareness and discernment close to him and to whom he showed
a special tenderness - in all this, and in an astonishing variety of
situations, this extraordinary man, at an age we would still
consider immature for many purposes, seemed to take the often
surprising but so exactly and unfalteringly right stance; he knew
what was in a man, he understood unerringly men's attitudes to
one another and to himself and was quietly firmly certain of his
own response in this very wide compass of his dealings with all
sorts of people.
The episodes we have are not complete, the gospels are not
strict or researched biographies, but surely we have enough to
set before us a teacher of altogether profound and unfailing,
challenging and demanding, practical wisdom, neat and explicit
in an astonishing variety oflive situations, and such that it is very
hard indeed to think of anything in the history of moral thought
and insight that begins to approach it, a phenomenon all of its
own, an inexhaustible wonder.
If this does not give us the immediate answer to all our
practical problems, and no one need claim that it does, it
certainly gives us the way of life, if only we follow it, in which the
answer must be sought. It is also amazingly distinctive, notwith-
standing all that went before it, in the same setting or elsewhere.
From time to time, in the course of presenting this theme, I
have been reminded of other distinctive ethical insights and of
other scriptures for which uniqueness may also be claimed.
During a recent lecture tour in India the Gita was often men-
tioned to me in this way. Most of us are quite familiar now with
the Gita, though less so than people in other cultures are on the
whole with our scriptures. There is no doubt much nobility in
the Gita, and it certainly speaks to the condition of those who are
attracted to its peculiar form of transcendence; the note of
personal involvement, in the love of God and of man to each
other, becomes very moving and challenging, but much of the
splendour is also external and magical, the many eyes and
mouths and so on, however symbolical; and the perplexed young
warrior is left with very little explicit guidance at the end. The
final impression is that, provided one fulfils the duty of one's
 The Person ofChrist 171

station, one need not worry. Whether we live or die, whether we

are ill or well, prosperous or hungry or troubled, none of this
matters, not even duty itself, worship and devotion are all that
count.
However we qualify this, as is also done in some transcenden-
talist forms of Western religions, by insistence that the right
things will in fact be done, the centre of gravity is the devotion
itself. 'Even ifhe is a very evil liver, but worships me with single
devotion, he must be held good, for he has rightly resolved.'
Contrast this with the one who moved as a man among men, who
sups with us and us with him, and who discerned, with astonish-
ing sensitivity and insight, just what this precise human condition
required, who leads in the ways oflife as we know it, the master
as much at ease with his friends as when kissing the leper, aware
of joy and sorrow and despising neither, fully in the world even
if not ofit, pointing the way as certainly in matters of inner intent
as in outward performance, and in all this so unerringly,
surprisingly right.
But this itself is not a matter to be formally established, any
more than it is a blind determination to allow no fault on one's
own side, to go on waving one's own banner, confessing one's
own loyalty, whatever the facts. It is a matter of living thought-
fully in the world of these insights, ofkeeping in the way ourselves,
until the authority of it imposes itself in our own convictions. He
becomes the Way for us.
But also more than the Way. For these astonishing ethical
responses take their shape for us in the context of the profoundest
spiritual awareness. They are of this world but also deeply
embedded in the life beyond. The sense of the presence of God
pervades the whole story. This is not peculiar to Jesus. God had
made himself known before; 'in diverse times and places', and I
have discussed elsewhere 4 how these disclosures are to be
recognised and established. But to any who are sensitive to such
disclosure, who recognise the modes and distinctiveness of it, it
becomes also very apparent how much all this is present in its
finest, roundest form inJ esus. Do we know of any place where the
life beyond is so finely intertwined with the here and now? This
appears sometimes in explicit references to what comes to us
'from above', to 'my Father's house', 'your heavenly father', the
fleeting, transitory character of earthly attainments. But it is
172 Persons and Lift After Death

equally evident, and in some respects more impressive, in the

withdrawal into solitude and meditation, by the lake, or in desert
places or the mountain. This profound inner spiritual life is surely
one of the main themes of the story, and we cannot possibly get a
fair picture ofJesus without careful heed to the abiding place of
prayer in his life, prayers of the serene inner flow of spiritual
awareness and the constant sense of the peculiar closeness of God,
and the very distinctive 'My Father' and 'my Father's house', as
well as the disturbing, explosive agitations ofspirit, the agonising
cry of dereliction which is not heard solely from the Cross, the
rupturing of present existence by a power 'from Beyond' which
at the same time leaves the serene sense of the proper place of
present things undisturbed, the calm confident flow of the con-
cerned understanding of this world and how it should be minded.
The finest, simplest prayer that we have was taught us by
Jesus, it is a prayer that is perfectly blended with his own life,
and although this life of deep spiritual awareness was so much a
matter of course to him, as natural as breathing, no one stressed
more the need for effortful cultivation of the life of prayer. To
remain reflectively aware of this and the sense of the sacred
which is also intimate and blended with present existence, as the
story moves from the temple and the synagogue to the city and
the countryside, to do this is an essential part of coming to see
what is in the picture.
Is there more in the picture? Before I reply let me pause here
to note how very remarkable a picture it is, in all its aspects and
in its distinctive wholeness. We begin to understand already how
people who do not wholly share a Christian viewpoint, like
Martin Buber, admit that they find it extremely difficult to know
how to classify Jesus. He seems to be already almost breaking out
of the framework of our finitude and beyond any ordinary
pattern we can convincingly shape. But we are still not quite
beyond the periphery. There is one thing that matters yet more
decisively, the best wine, to vary our metaphor, which we bring
out last, and that is the Obedience, the total and unfaltering com-
mitment ofJesus himself to all that he commended and his own
wayoflife.
The marvel of this becomes all the more evident when we
consider the pitfalls that lay in his path. How easy it would be for
a young man of such extraordinary powers and insights, and so
 The Person ofChrist 173

obviously winning favour in high places and in low, to adopt or

bend his expectations on occasion, not for personal gain, but to
win the closer co-operation of others, especially those in high
places and positions of influence. There were good men as well
as hypocrites among the leaders of his people, he himself never
failed in his regard for the temple and the synagogue and the
scriptures, he was not a ruthless iconoclastic revolutionary but
a highly sensitive man capable himself of pointing out narrow
excesses. Why not move more cautiously within the recognised
media, how much more effective might it not be in the long run
to compromise a little, what influence for good might he not have
if he worked along with other good men in high places where he
could easily win the greatest esteem himself and promote high
and holy ends. His gifts would easily win him respect and in-
fluence, and out of that great and certain good could come. Why
not move a little, like Bunyan's pilgrim, to the somewhat
smoother path that might seem to go exactly in the same way-
but in fact to the slough? He saw, in fact, very clearly the perils of
this alluring shift and resisted it in all his ways.
He was likewise impervious to the false allurements and claims
that might seem involved in his own deep affections and friend-
ships. His friends undoubtedly thought at times that he was
making things needlessly difficult for himself; how trying it must
have been to have to stand at times against their own suscepti-
bilities and their fondness for him; Jesus was a person in whom
tenderness of feeling was peculiarly marked, and it must have
gone hard with him to disappoint the expectations of those to
whom he was peculiarly close, his disciples, his friends and his
family, and even to stand aloof at times. But at no stage is there
any hint of wavering or the slightest deviation from the course to
be followed.
This, and more, is very evident in the stories of the Temptation,
and Luke does well to note that it was only 'for a time' that Satan
left him. The Temptation was not a once for all event, but a
continuing feature of his life, more so for him th<tn others on
account of his remarkable gifts and powers and because of the
exceptional strain and exhaustion of the course he had set himself
and the unutterable loneliness it would involve in some respects,
all of which would have been much relieved by relaxing a little
of the demands of his total commitment and self-giving. The
174 Persons and Life After Death

foxes have lairs but the Son of Man not wherewith to lay down
his head, not of course because he was literally destitute, there
were many homes where he was loved and welcomed and many
were eager to serve him, but there were aspects of his life and
commitment where no one could carry his burdens for him or
even know what they were. But however evident the strain, there
is no sign of weakening, not even in the terrible hours when he
prayed that the cup should be removed from him. The complete-
ness of his commitment, in sanctified assurance, without either
ostentation or an affected show of humility, firm and gentle in
the same instant, easy and natural in his dealings with those most
dear and close to him, this seems to set him altogether apart, fully
man indeed but one in whom also there is no shadow of turning;
neither kindly gesture nor despiteful use, neither the marvel of
the flowers of the field nor the loyalty and care of those devoted
to him, caused the slightest deviation from the way to be followed.
There is an astonishing wholeness about the short life so lived to
its terrible end. We do not indeed have the whole story, but what
need is there? We have enough to see, beyond the remarkable
maturity of judgement and wisdom, a total mastery of his own
movements and spirit; and the picture is so complete in all
essentials that we can confidently set aside any possibility of
anything inconsistent with it. This is a story, in the area of all our
most crucial concerns, in which everything tha.t happens is so
unexpectedly right as to spell out its own finality and vindicate
itself with an authority inherent to itself.
To what then does it come? What are we finally to say? In the
first place, it would seem highly implausible now to suppose that
the entire story was invented by some quite extraordinary genius.
There is no hint of any or the slightest indication of who he might
be; and although some works of creative literature, most notably
of all in my view Shakespearean drama, are astonishingly
rounded and convincing, the main characters having almost the
reality of genuine history for us, yet it would seem just impossible
to ascribe the quite peculiar blend of majorinsights and attitudes,
in their rich particularity, as they come in the Gospel narrative,
to the ingenuity and inventiveness of some genius of great
originality, least of all when we bear in mind the immediate
impact of the story and its far-reaching influence directly at the
time. Surely the early witnesses were talking about things they
 The Person ofChrist 175

remembered, however imperfectly and however distorted in the

telling; if they did not at least seem to themselves to be talking
about things they had themselves seen and heard they could
hardly have remained so unshaken and courageous about it
under quite exceptional stress. Their devotion and commitment
is not the kind they would bring to the service of a fable, and if
they were being imposed upon in all this, in the presence of so
many who could have challenged their claims outright from the
start, how did the original inventor manage to conceal his
identity or have it totally concealed for him? The narrative has
at least the stamp of being taken at the time to be a report of
actual events and it can hardly be thought, with any plausibility,
to be, in its context and the circumstances of the time, a complete
fabrication or a fraud, deliberate or otherwise.
We need not therefore pay much attention to the supposition
that the story is the deliberate invention of some individual of
genius who somehow imposed his invention as actual history on
credulous minds, though this is undoubtedly something which,
in other forms and conditions, can be conceived and has almost
certainly happened from time to time. Could we then suppose,
more plausibly, that the story somehow grew up or shaped itself
in the consciousness of the first witnesses or the alleged 'experi-
ence of the early Church'? But how could any of that have
happened, without something to induce or stimulate it? What
produced their conviction? 'Divine inspiration', it may be
replied. But is not this even more incredible? No doubt some
remarkable things have sometimes been composed seemingly
out of nothing, and have been ascribed to direct divine interven-
tion. The Book of Mormon is a good example. This book has some
remarkable features, its vastness and the swing and flow and
occasionally very genuine eloquence of its style, for example. It
was presumably produced within a short time, a matter of
months, either by John Smith himself or a very small group of
collaborators, making the claim, as we all know, which few
accept, that it was a copy of Golden Tablets from Heaven, since
withdrawn. There is certainly some mystery about this book,
even allowing for the very close familiarity with Biblical narrative
and language on which it is based. If one man poured it all out in
a short time it was an astonishing feat, for in point of literary
style it is certainly not rubbish. But what this book contains after
176 Persons and Lift After Death

all is extensive imitation of the narrative parts of the Old Testa-

ment, often in the crudest and, out of context, cruellest parts,
with much actual reproduction from the Old and the New
Testament, in great measure, in a shapeless jumble and without
any reference at all to established history before or after. What-
every mystery attaches to this composition, it is hardly possible
for us, with any intelligence, to ascribe it to direct divine inspira-
tion, least of all with the New Testament as a model for us of what
is usually ascribed to divine inspiration. But what then of the
New Testament itself? Is the notion ofdirect inspiration plausible
here, and in a form which by-passes all historical evidence? I can
only say that, if someone can believe that God gave the words of
Scripture to particular persons - and nothing besides - he can
believe anything. Indeed, we must ask: 'Would it be consistent
with the character of God to deceive us in that way and mirac·
ulously induce a small number of people, but countless others
through them, to believe something which never happened at
all?' 'Quite so', it may be answered, 'but that is not properly
what is being claimed here'. What then?
The most plausible suggestion here seems to be that the
'experience of the early Church' was formed by embroidering
and imaginatively expanding some hard core of genuine fact or
history that was available. But how much fact was required for
this purpose and how precisely is 'divine inspiration' supposed to
operate? If the substance of the narrative itself is only the result
of subsequent inspiration and reflects nothing that men had
reason to believe had in fact occurred, then we are back with the
earlier situation and God again becomes a deceiver inducing men
to believe something that had no foundation in fact. In short,
is there any point at all in talking about the 'experience of the
early Church' without a secure historical foundation for what is
testified? To claim otherwise would certainly be a radical
departure from the substance of traditional Christian faith and
would in the eventual result give us a very attenuated and well-
nigh secular form of Christianity.
But, someone may add, with more scepticism and also, I
would claim, more integrity; it is not with divine inspiration at
all that we have to deal here but simply that all that came to be
affirmed took shape and ripened naturally in the consciousness
of the first 'disciples' on the basis of some things at least which
 The Person ojChrist 177

they remembered. This seems to be the real challenge, and we

have to bear well in mind that to concede it and fail to meet it
would involve the surrender of the essentials of a Christian
attitude. Perhaps we have to make this surrender, for we certainly
cannot today affirm and commend our faith, out of grim deter-
mination to cling to it come what may, on the basis of assumptions
we can no longer accept on their merits. That would only be
another lapse into dogmatic fundamentalism, and the time for
that is long past; it is idle to try to induce people to believe
contrary to reason, for the cause of true religion can never be
served by religious brain-washing of any kind, and intelligent
youngsters will not thank us for trying. There must be essential
integrity in all worthwhile conviction.
The real answer to the more modest and rational scepticism
I have just been noting has to be found, as I have already
intimated, in the essentials of the narrative itself. Can we
reflectively read this story and continue to suppose that it may
be only inspired legend? That is the final test. Admittedly we
have to make allowance for many of the forms of thought and
assumptions peculiar to a very different age. How do we deter-
mine the dispensable contemporary ingredients, where does
illuminating legend and provisionally conditioned expectation
end? I shall make no attempt here to answer that question
closely, except to note how Jesus himselfhas given us the essential
clue. It is not the signs and wonders that matter most of all,
however we view them, but rather the more essential features of
the personality that is disclosed. Can we ascribe these to credulity
and legend? Fable and legend are curious things, often a mixture
of the fine and the trivial and indeed the unworthy, and they are
often very crudely of this world. The style and character of
legend is not what we find in the essentials of the 'testimony' with
which we are now concerned, they are too amazingly apt in their
variety and fullness for that, in detail and as a whole; and we
could hardly expect anything so inherently fitting and coherent
to take shape in the attitudes and responses of a large company of
people, however fine and committed - and that was certainly
not true of all members of the earliest Christian bodies, as the
Epistle to the Corinthians makes very plain. To suppose that the
most distinctive features of the story just grew up in the form that
we have it in some collective experience with no important items
178 Persons and Lift After Death

of actual history behind it is much more incredible than the less-

sophisticated supposition that there had actually been at the
time such a person as is presented. In short it is very hard indeed,
in the light of what the story itselfis like, to understand how any-
one can believe that the New Testament, and not just the
Gospels, could have come into existence at all without there also
having been a little while earlier the kind of person around whom
the account revolves from start to finish. Disbelief is sometimes
harder to explain than belief. The credulity of scepticism is
sometimes the most incredible.
Very well then, suppose it is agreed that a historical person is
reflected in the New Testament along the lines indicated earlier,
what in addition can we say of him? At this point we have, I
submit, to be very cautious and perhaps find ourselves in the
position of seeming to prevaricate or be evasive ourselves in turn.
It is certainly not a case, at this point, of drawing further con-
clusions formally from the peculiarities of the figure that appears
in the portrait. On the contrary we have to stay, to 'wait' in the
term recently familiar here, in alert contemplation in the world
of the evidence, to live with the testimony in the sense of conform-
ing with the way and requirements of it as far as our initial
convictions allow; and we should do this, not in the expectation
that we can will to believe or bemuse ourselves into accepting
what we would like to accept, much less to drift easily into the
consolations and comfort of traditional belief and practice- that
would be most out of accord with the spirit of the Gospels
themselves - but to discern truly what is shaping itself in the
variety and richness of the testimony; this was after all the appeal
of the first disciples: 'come' and see.
What I see is the portrait of a person whom we just cannot
contain entirely within the framework of a finite understanding.
He is in one way wholly of this world and yet not ofit. He extends
beyond the limits of all we expect. Martin Buber, himself not a
Christian, declared that he found it impossible to place jesus in
any special category. But to appreciate this, to cultivate the kind
of contemplation that yields the proper insight here, we have also
to be attuned to what had already been disclosed about God and
his enactments in the world and history.Jesus did not appear in a
cultural and religious void, and I find myself constantly remind-
ing my own students of the wise observation of the late Austin
 The Person of Christ 179

Farrer: 'Men knew that God was God before they knew that he
would send his only begotten son into the world'. Indeed, they
knew a great deal more, for God had already spoken 'at sundry
times and places', there had already been divine disclosure in
experience and history. The mode of this, and the reasons we
have for acknowledging it and discriminating between the
genuine and the apparent, is a vast subject in itself; and I have
tried, in my book Our Experience of God, to indicate what the main
considerations should be in estimating the soundness of the
claims made for allegedly divine disclosures. I shall not repeat
here what I have said at more length elsewhere, 6 I can only
insist now that, to appreciate the full significance of Christian
witness we have to heed carefully the way in which God had
already become a living presence in the world of men and his
dealing in a particular way with a 'chosen people', not mainly in
the externalities of their life and history, but in the hearts and
understanding of men, notably in the high peaks of prophecy,
and the effect of this on their stance and attitudes in the good and
ill turns of their fortunes. Christ, we are firmly told, came 'in the
fullness of time', with the impression that what had been astir in
the life of this remarkable people was now getting close to some
exceptional denoument - for them and for all. No one saw
clearly the form this would take, though some came very close.
But with the coming of Jesus, and in knowing him moving
amongst them, they found him, as we may do also, filling the
pattern of divine disclosure so completely that we can no longer
regard him, like the prophets and others before him, as one
further stage in a process of disclosure to men and their under-
standing of the special ways of God and of the love which is ofhis
very essence, but rather as one in whom the complete pattern
concentrates itself, the image of the invisible God becoming so
markedly clear now, filling this strange personality with all that
pertains so distinctively to himself, the image of all we come to
recognise as most essential to infinity itself, that we can no longer
say anything convincingly about him except as was said by the
first doubter to be overcome in the presence- 'My Lord and my
God'.
But Thomas said this when the Resurrection had also
happened. Have I overlooked that victory and its significance?
By no means, but it has also to be viewed in relation to the story
180 Persons and Life After Death

in its entirety. It is not just any 'appearance' that will do, not any
Empty Tomb, indeed, not an empty tomb as such at all, but the
unmistakable presence, however that came to be, of the man they
had already come to know in the cities and by the lake. Otherwise
there would be no more than being stunned by some amazing
supernatural occurrence; and although the circumstances of this
strange appearance, and its like, and the profound experience of
the Pentecost, were indispensable for the first disciples to convert
their dismay and disappointment into a triumphant vision, this
could only happen as an appreciation of what had already
occurred in their midst, of what they had already found, some-
what more dimly, in the person of Jesus. It was not just in the
Upper Room that Thomas found in him his 'Lord and God', and
he would not have addressed him so without having been in his
presence already.
It is what we 'see', as it emerges from the fullness of the testi-
mony that matters, and that does not come lightly to anyone.
The saints have made that very plain, it is only by persistent
effort that the vision is attained, obstacles and hindrances have
to be cast aside, there is a discipline of looking and maintaining
spiritual concentration, but this has little to do in essentials with
physical postures or psychological exercises as such, though no
doubt holy people may have stumbled on aids of this kind,
including restraint or suppression of grossly materialistic con-
cerns which hinder spiritual awareness and sensitivity. What
matters, and it is a supremely difficult business in itself, is that we
should live our rounded lives, pursuing our necessary and
legitimate aims, in the spirit of the testimony and with our
thoughts often centred expressly upon it in enlivened imagina-
tion, looking and waiting for the essential features of the story to
renew themselves for us in their full and proper significance. This
is what we should mean by prayerful seeking and commitment.
It has many pitfalls and many easy sentimental substitutes. The
yoke, in one sense, is easy, but for a proper Christian insight we
need to be wholly committed people, as very few seem to be today.
In an increasingly sophisticated age such commitment must
also be alert and critical of itself, but it is not beyond our reach.
The vision that men have had in the past is also available to us
today, provided we can break through the habits of merely
formal and superficial worship and bring a rounded intelligent
 The Person ofChrist 181

Christian commitment in to the service of 'spiritual discernment',

the discernment that begins and ends with the evidence and has
no place for pseudo-spiritual esoteric religious pastimes. The
time for trivial religious indulgences is past, and the state of the
world is too serious for religious exercises that are not both con-
sistent with our intellectual advances and demanding at the same
time. Subject to that warning the vision, enriched by the
experience of Christian people down the ages, is as fully in our
reach as for men in times past.
In essentials, it is the vision that was crystallised formally for
us many centuries ago at Chalcedon, however we may need to
vary some of its modes of expression. What we also find ourselves
saying, in the final analysis, is 'Very God, Very Man'. I commend
this, not out of regard for tradition as such, but because that is
how the matter seems to me. We must respect tradition without
being tied to it. I have myself been highly critical of a great deal
of traditional theology. But on the present central issue I find
myself, in thought as in meditation and prayer, never very far
from the centre of the path that leads from the traditions that
culminated in the 'Apostle's Creed' through Nicea to Chalcedon.
But how, it may well be asked, is it possible for anyone to be
'Very God' and also 'Very Man'? To this there is only one
answer we can give- 'We do not know'. And with that I may
appear myself to be the most slippery of customers. Having made
the boldest affirmation possible, I am, it may appear, not willing
to defend it but just slip away slyly from the field. That, however,
is not wholly so. There are certain things, in the world of thought,
which, as I have maintained at more length elsewhere, we have
to recognise without being able to explain them further, our
awareness of our own identity for example. We have to hold on
to this principle without becorrling, or seeming to become,
dogmatic and unwilling to discuss and argue, and with a good
understanding of just where argument is proper. How much
more in dealing with the mystery which is inevitable at some
point in matters of faith? In the present concern, we just seem
forced to recognise something of which it is not possible to give a
further account. It must have been possible somehow for God,
while remaining God (as was inevitable for God to be God),
to subject himself also to the limits and consciousness of a
finite being, we must take this to be somehow possible, for that
182 Persons and Life After Death

is just how we read the evidence. We know that it must have been
that way, although we do not know how. We may perhaps find
some shadow of what must have happened in the strange
limitations that occur at times in our own consciousness, in
dreams for example, or in childhood or senility and forgetfulness.
But these are dim shadows, and the mystery remains. It is a
truth to be believed without being comprehended, but the belief
does not become shaky for that reason or less firm and explicit. It
is as highly rational beings that we come to recognise what is
beyond our understanding- 'beyond', it should be stressed, not
contrary to or irrational.
One of the most regrettable features of religious thought and
theology has been that men, understandably indeed~ have
persisted in trying to provide explanations at precisely those
points where explanation ends. How was Christ related to God
in eternity, had they distinct centres of consciousness or how, in
other ways, are the two natures related? Did Christ simply
appear to be man without being so in fact, did he become God by
some kind of adoption? This is how the heresies begin, and
although they were anathema to many and the occasion of bitter
conflict and hate, we can well understand their attraction. What
we have to bear in mind, as wise men have often stressed, is that
we are in the present matters always moving very close to the
edge of the precipice. We certainly do not ascribe two selves, two
persons to Christ. He is one being, and we certainly must not
waver on that. Indeed, I have stressed very much elsewhere that
persons are essentially distinct and that we cannot merge or fuse
two persons in one, as a drop of water becomes part of the sea.
The point to which we must cling is that we have no need to be
cast down or finally perturbed, or suppose that we bring our
reason into contempt, when the substance of the appropriate
evidence compels us to recognise something which goes entirely
beyond our comprehension. 'Great is the mystery of godliness'
and great also is the mystery of the unending wonder of what is
disclosed to us in Scriptures and the experience ofthe saints.
But having got thus far the rest follows. What was the purpose
of this special intervention? We have again to remember that we
are moving along a very narrow path at the edge of the precipice.
Traditional theologians have been most regrettably bold at this
point. The Gospel is essentially Reconciliation, between God and
 The Person ojChrist 183

man and between men and one another in the bond of their
fellowship with God, and this came about by God himself
becoming one of us. He did so because our inclination to put
ourselves first, to make ourselves the main, sometimes the
exclusive, centre of interest gets the better of us so often, though
we are free to do otherwise. This has happened so extensively in
the past and in the community by which we are much con-
ditioned, that each one is forced back upon his own resources,
which are soon exhausted. We are left in the inner loneliness of
one's own spirit, however full and sociable our existence may be
on the surface. Our sensitivity to the true reality of 'the other' is
enfeebled, and we are confined to that small inner world of our
own in which we cannot properly nourish and sustain ourselves.
This is that 'sombre solitude' of which even an agnostic of such
varied and exhilarating interests as Bertrand Russell is found
complaining. 'The way of the ungodly shall perish' and, as I once
vividly heard it presented by a notable Welsh divine, it comes to
perish by being abandoned; and it is we ourselves, comporting
ourselves in ways that do not accord with the divine presence and
proper fellowship, that bring this appalling fate upon ourselves.
It is this death that is the 'penalty of sin', and the only way in
which we can be finally restored and brought again to the
unsearchable riches of the wholeness of our fellowship with God-
and, thereby, with one another- is for God to disclose himself to
us as one whose love is such that he is himself with us in this
appalling wretchedness. He does not just feel for us in the remote-
ness of his infinitude, but sups with us on the bread ofour sorrows;
and thus we have him, in jesus Christ, despised and mocked and
made visibly an object of revulsion in death and rejection, coming
to the limit of our own need and darkness till the darkness is
lightened and the wound healed in the marvel of this humbling
and the unsparing totality of the commitment. As the Lordjesus
himself - and how else can we now think of him? - dispensed
with all external aids at need, yielding nothing to the establish-
ment and not depending on it or even on the affection of those
closest to him, so also in him God dispenses with the supports of
his own infinitude, except in so far as that itself is unlimited love,
and taking on him the form of a servant, being himself
'abandoned' in the agony and total dissolution of death,
'obedient unto death, yea, the death of the Cross'.
184 Persons and Life After Death

Jesus did not pFetend to die, lapsing into unconsciousness and

awakening in a few hours. Whatever death is for us, and it
certainly has a finality all its own, and whatever we make of the
mystery of the Third Day, Jesus died as we also die. Our vain
presumption must not obscure that. And whatever else the
victory over death may involve, it is one with the victory of the
obedience.
The tragic thing is that, instead of holding to our deepest
awareness of these astounding things (and sustaining that in all
that we do) we persist in seeking to theorise on the mode and
meaning of this redemption in a very earthly way and with very
little appreciation of its mystery. That is how there came to be
the most distressing heresies and the ones furthest removed from
the spirit of Christ and the light of the Gospel. In particular,
profound truths have been lifted out of their context in the
fullness of the testimony, and analogies or figurative terms have
been taken, again out of context, in a very literal mechanical way
as the main and most final test for faith and doctrine. The symbol
has become oppressive and a snare instead of a help, and in this
way we have come to fashion and commend strange and
needlessly offensive doctrines- about the total and unavoidable
corruption of our nature, about the sinfulness of our under-
standing and our gifts, about the most tender and self-sacrificing
acts of human beings being only the filthy rags of their self-
seeking and their pride, and about the way all this, including the
sincerity of the honest doubter or his unorthodoxy, calls for
retributive punishment in the form of eternal torment, were it
not that Christ came to save at least the elect by bearing the
punishment in a vicarious or substitutionary way for us and in
this way, victim of the wrath of God himself, 'paid the debt'.
Have there not been furious debates about the mode of this
'payment', payment to God or to the devil?
I readily agree with the distinguished philosopher and
historian of thought, Professor F. C. Copleston when he observed
that there can be few things less compatible with the spirit of
Christ and his Gospel than the idea of eternal punishment. This
is hardly the place to discuss this and like topics closely. But I
would much like to urge that we approach the basic affirmations
of our faith, and all questions of doctrine, in the light of what
happens to us in our own most intimate and personal relation-
 The Person of Christ 185

ships. The Christian religion is a theistic one, and this means that
we think essentially of God as a person, notwithstanding his
transcendence, and of his dealings with us as personal ones. We
should therefore consider what happens in our dealings with one
another, how good personal relations are maintained, and what
destroys them, how do things go wrong in our relations with one
another and how even love and endearment can convert them-
selves into estrangement and hate, and above all the mode and
conditions of restoration and the price that must be paid by
someone somewhere to ensure genuine reconciliation. What does
forgiveness mean for us, and what is the cost of it for him who
gives it and for him who receives?
These considerations are no doubt but pale shadows of
profounder spiritual things. Talk of God can never be wholly
secularised, and we must not ignore the mystery. But the hints I
have noted will serve us much better than dwelling on the images
of the court, the judgement seat and the condemnation. Admit-
tedly, the marvellous truth of the Gospel itself may shine
resplendently sometimes through these comparisons, and there
are of course very sombre aspects of the way the Son of Man
came to seek and to save that which was lost. It is not for nothing
that there is a strong apocalyptic element in the Gospels and the
reference to the fear that came on all. The shadows deepen, if
they fail to recede, in the Presence. It is not a little thing to
become aware of'so great a love' and stand in the presence of its
holiness. The Cross is a place of dread as well as release. All the
same, a great deal of the work of evangelism and mission and the
powerful preaching of the past has lost much of its virtue and its
efficacy for lasting good by dawdling too much, sometimes in the
luxury of an easy emotionalism, on the very mechanical drama-
tisation of what is to be distilled out of the symbolism of 'the
Great Assize' and itslike.Jesus Christ is the judge of all as he is the
saviour of all. But in all this also we have to remember carefully
that we are again moving very near the edge of the precipice.
I shall make no attempt to pursue these matters further here,
this address being a good deal longer than was intended. But I
would like, in closing, to present the substance of what I have
been maintaining in terms of a somewhat personal analogy.
I remember one occasion when I was with my father on one of
his pastoral visits to a home in our village. My father, ifl may
186 Persons and Life After Death

say this myself without impropriety, was a very gifted man. He

won open scholarships to both Oxford and Cambridge and,
choosing the former, distinguished himself there in mathematics
before, as one of his friends put it, he lapsed into the Ministry of
the Presbyterian Church of Wales. He spent forty years in the
village near Caernarvon where my brother and I were brought
up. He gave himself fully to all aspects of the life of his com-
munity; and did so in a quiet unassuming way. He was many
things besides the local minister, as was customary then, and was
much loved and respected. He was a very serene and genial
person, not easily ruffled - unlike his son some might say - and
people still talk of the warmth and the kindliness of his smile. I
do not know how I came to be with him. Ministers know well
enough that it is not the place of their children to be with them
on their pastoral visits, except by some special invitation. We
preferred to be at our own work or play, mostly play. But for
some reason I happened to be with my father that day.
He had certainly no idea what was awaiting him. There was a
woman in the house in very great distress. I am not certain what
had caused this, the loss of a child or a husband I believe, and it
could be that my father had failed in some way. The picture I
have is of this unhappy woman, in extreme agitation, with both
her fists drumming at his chest - 'Why me, why me'? And that
is a question which most of us have asked, inwardly if not overtly,
at one time or another. My father remained calm, he, the gentle,
if anything rather soft person, firm and unshaken that day, like a
stout oak tree, and that wisp of a remarkable smile just wrinkling
the edge of his lip. The woman became quiet, and I like to think
that she received the blessing and comfort of the sacred ministry
in which some of us still believe; and we left the house to climb
the hill and take the turn for our home, when I chanced to look
up and saw his face - tears! It was news to me that grown-ups
cried. I said nothing, but, in my little boy's way, I began to see
very deeply that day into some of the profoundest and most
precious things in life: 'the chastisement of her peace' was upon
him.
It is in this way, ifl may compare small and ordinary things
with sacred, that I see Jesus, moving from the intimacy of the
home in Bethany, and a solemn ritual supper with his closest
friends, straight to the tempest of betrayal - what is worse than
 The Person of Christ 187

betrayal- the hostile questioning, the beatings and being hustled

bound from one court to the other at dead of night. It is well for
some of our younger friends to remember that Jesus also stood
trial, with neither minister nor friend to witness or speak for him,
and no question of press or other publicity, just a verdict on the
spot for immediate execution, the sorry little procession and the
thrust to his place between the thieves. And when I see him in
this way and call to mind who he was in the light of the total
evidence, I have no difficulty, at least not an intellectual one
though there are plenty of other things, in speaking, not just in
the solemnity of public worship and the company of the faithful
but in any company, however sophisticated- the difficulty is not
to speak- of the price that was paid and the costly sacrifice.

NOTES
l.Op.cit.,p.l27.
2.0p.cit.,p.l37.
3. Professor Davies' treatment of the topic in Chapter 5 of the short work
cited can be warmly commended to the layman.
4. In Our Experience ofGod.
5. Our Experience ofGod, Chapter V-VIII.
Index of Names

Aaron, R. 1., 6-10, 21, 26 Fawkes, G., 84

Aquinas, StThomas, 57-8, 100 Findlay, J. N., 134
Arendt, H., 142 Flew, A., 31-2, 94-109
Aristotle, 5, 73 Francis, St, 163
Armstrong, D. M., 129-30 Franklin, B., 98-100
Aurobindo, Sri, 81
Ayer, A. j., 2, 137 George IV, 61
Gibson,J., 161
Baillie, J., 5, 153
Barnes, J., 71 Hegel, G. W. F., 1
Berkeley, G., 21-3 Hesperus, 125
Bonhoelfer, D., 163-4 Hick, J., 158
Boyd, R., 129 Hitler, A., 164
Bradley, F. H., 1-2 Hobhouse, L. T., 142
Broad, C. D., 13, 39, 82, 90, 93, 151 Hume, D., 11, 107
Buber, M., 27, 172, 178
Bunyan, J ., 173 John the Baptist. 167
Butler, J., 105-6 Johnson, W. E., 113
joseph, 166
Campbell, C. A., 2, 158
Cook Wilson,J., 4-6, 13,21-2,26-7 Kant, E., 7-9, 111, 152
Copleston, F. C., 184 Kripke, P., 125-130
Coward, N., 101
Leibnitz, G., 63
David, St, 163 Lewis, D., 130
Davies, W. D., 162, 187 Lewis, H. D., 49-55, 57-74, 94,
Dawood, N.J., 98 97-107, 109
Descartes, R., 14, 76, 89,96-7, 103-4, Locke, J., 7, 105, 161
113, 138-9 Lucretius, 102
Luke, St, 173
Elijah, 167
Epicurus, 102 Malcolm, N., 20-1
Ettinger, R. C. W., 129 Mars, 127
Ewing, A. C., 2, 14, 158 Martin, C. B., 97
Mary, 166
Farquharson, A. S. L., 4 Mascall, E. L., 78, 80, 101
Farrer, A., 157, 178-9 Mill, J. S., 20
190 Persons and Lift After Death

Muhammad, 162 Shakespeare, W., 174

Moore, G. E., 3-4, 6, 16, 22, 25-6 Shoemaker, S., 31, 86, 110-31,
Moses, 167 133-45
Munitz, M., 130 Smith,]., 175
Socrates, 108, 156
Parmenides, 156 Spinoza, B., 15, 54, 70, 89
Passmore, J., 139 Stout, G. F., II
Paul, St, 154, 162 Strawson, P. F., 26, 31, 76-7, 95, 100,
Penelhum, T., 108 137, 142
Phosphorus, 125
Pickard, Cambridge, 25 Teilhard de Chardin, 35
Plato, 7-8, 13-15, 18, 33, 70, 89, 96, Temple, W., 76
102-4, 108, 133-4, 138, 153-6 Tennant, F. R., 89
Price, H. H., 38-9,82, 86, 90, 92, 151 Thomas, St, 179-80
Pritchard, H. A., 4, 13 Toulmin, 24

Quinton, A. M., 49, 55-9, 61-74, 96, Venus, 127

104-5
Ward,J., 89
Rorty, A., 129 Watson, J. B., 50
Rose, W. D., 4, 13, 24-6 Williams, B., 49, 56-70, 72-4, 137
Rosenthal, D. M., 130 Williams, H., 161
Russell, B., 26, 94, 153, 183 Wittgenstein, L., 14, 20, 64, 107,
Ryle, G., 56, 59, 76, 107, 139, 144 138
Index of Subjects

Abstract entities, 121 Bethany, 186

Abstract forms, 157 'Beyond', 45, 157, 172, 182
Abstract systems, 142 Bhagavad Gita, see Gita
Accidents, 109 Bible, 79, 156, see also Christian
Accountability, see Moral accounta- scripture
bility Bible- as history, 164
Adoptionism, see Christian heresy Biblical scholarship, 79, 156
Allah, 98 Body/bodies, passim, 10-11,37,41,49,
Alternative logic, see Logic 52-3,56-63,66-7,70,75-109,
Ancestor worship, see Worship 110-13, 117, 131-4, 137, 139,
Anthropology, 106 143, 154, 159
Anti-dualist, see Dualist astral, 36-7, 52, 80-4, 95-7, 101-9,
Antinomianism, 168 132
Apocalyptic Gospels, see Gospels biophysical components of, 80
A priori; see Knowledge dream, 52-3, 60, 81, 102
Art, 45, 48, 156-7, see also Christ as image, 10, 81-2, 86-8, 102
artist scriptural, 79
Association of ideas, 2 subtle (or aura), 81
Astral body, see Body Bodily characteristics, 10 I
Astronomy, 39 continuity, 27, 36, 68, 83, 105,
Atheism, 95 131
Atheist, 153 duplication, 67, 99
Attributes, 68 identity, see Identity
infinite, 15, 89, 141 out-of-the-body experience, see
Authority, 174 Experience
Avatar, 156 recompositionjreconstitution, 78,
80, 99-100, 132
Behaviour, 36, 121, 123, 125-30, 144 resurrection, 51, 58, 76, 78,99-101,
'Behavioural output', 112-13, 116,136 II 0, 150, see also Christ
Behaviourism, 56, 57 Resurrection
Behaviourist(s), 50, 137 transformation, 80, 101, 110, see
Belief, 5, 8, see also Christian belief, also Transfiguration
Belief in Life After Death Brain, 55--6, 59, 68, 105, 110, 113,
contrary to reason, 17 7 117, 120--4, 130, 136
real/notional, 75 specialists, 83
Berkleyan - view of external world, states and processes, 59, 113, 122-4,
see World 143, see also Mental processes
192 Persons and Lift After Death

Buddhism, 84 Common Sense- philosophy of, 2-4,

Mahayana, 148 6, 12, 22, 27
Theravada, 148 Communication,53-4, 70-1,86-8,138
with the dead, 37-8, 41, 87, 90-2,
Cartesian, 31, 104, 137, 144 97, 121, 150-1
Dualism, see Dualism, see also Communion- Holy, 158
Platonlc Cartesian 'Conceptual Connection Thesis', 130
Causation, II, 12, 41, 122, 136, 139, Conditioned Reality, see Reality
143, 145 Consciousness, 6, 9, II, 36, 48, 85-6,
Causation at a distance, 41 105-6, 118, 176, 181-2
Central state theory of materialism, modes of, 114
see materialism unindividuated, 137
Certainty- primal, 10, see also Primal Conscious being, 62, 65, 127
and absolute knowledge Consequentialists, 26
subjective, 9, 10 Contemplation, 154, 178
'C-Fibres' (Fictitious neurophysi- Continuant (in relation to substance),
ology), 122, 125 113, 115, 120, 136
Chosen people, I 79 Contradiction - law of, 9
Christ- jesus, person of, 161-87 Corporealism, 36-7, 55
as artist, 165 Corporealist, 83, see also Persons -
his commitment, 172-4, 183 corporealist view of
his disciples, 169, 173, 176, 178, 180 Cross, the, 166, 172, 183, 185
his ethics, 168 Culture(s), 158, 162, 165-6, 170
his historicity, 163-6, 178
his impact, 166-9 Damnation, 97, 184
his obedience, 172, 184 Dementia, 63
his relation to God, 182 'Democratic- The ... Man', 153
his resurrection, 78, 101, 132, 179, Demonology, 46
184 Dialectic, 13
his sacrifice, 187 Discipline, 180
his virgin birth, 166 Disembodied, see Existence
the way, 171 Dispositions, 50, 56, 58-60, 62, 66,
Christian(s), passim, esp. 5, 39, 50, 84, 154
100, 150, 158-60, 162, 165, Dispositional properties, 115
178, 181 Distinctness of persons: see Persons
Christian, attitude to death, 76-7, 91, Dogma, 144, 177
93, 97, 132, 159 Dogmatism, 19-20, 138, 152, 160, 181
belief and faith, 5, 7, 9, 151-2, 156, Dream(s), 9-10, 21, 24, 41, 52-3,
159-60, 163-4, 169-72, 176-7, 58-60, 68-71, 182
179, 181-2, 184 image, see Images
commitment, 152, 159, 175, 180-1, body, see Body
creeds, 181 Dualism, 10, 32, 110-47, see also
Evangelism, 185 Mind/body problem
Early Church, 161, 175-6 Cartesian, 112-31, 136-40, 147
heresy, 182, 184 Minimal, 112-29, 136
its authenticity and historicity, Non-Cartesian, 113-31, 133, 136,
161-3, 174-8 139-40
saints, 180, 183 Dualist(s), 89, 138-9
scripture, 79, 161-3, 166-70, 173-8, Anti-dualist, 110-11, 129, 131
182-5, see also Old and New Duty, 25, 170-71
Testament Gospels
Clairvoyance, 41-2, 90, 151 Ecstatic states, see Experience
'Cogito' (ergo sum), 138 Ego, 32
 Index 193

Emotions, 62--4, 73, see also Feeling Genetics, 94

Emotionalism, 185 Gita (Bhagavad), 170
Empiricism, 7, 20, see also Materialism God, see also Christ Jesus, 5-6, 17, 21,
Empiricist, 7, 16 33,39,45,48,51, 70, 73,77-8,
Esoteric religion, see Religion 80, 91, 95, 97, 99, 101, 103,
Essenes, 156 109, 132, 134-5, 147, 157-60,
Eternal, JOB, 15 7 163--4, 166, 170-2, 175-6,
Eternity, 110, 182 178-83, 185
Ethical principles, 5 his disclosure, 171, 175-6, 179
theory, 5 'Incognito in Christ', 163--4
Ethics, 12-16, 24-6 as incorporeal, 95, 109
Christ's, see Christ infinite, 179, 183
meta-ethics, 12 his love, 157-9, 170, 179, 183,
Euthanasia, 63 185
Evangelists, 167, see also Christian necessary existence of, 134
evangelism his omnipotence, 77-8, 80, 99, 103,
Evil, 2, 89, 133, 156-8, 171 132
agencies, 46 personal, 77, 95, 109, 185
Evolutionfevolutionary,l 7 ,35,127,144 his presence, 171, 179, 183, 185
Existence, passim, 9-10, 13, 17, 41, his purpose, 147, 178
43-5, 51-2, 68, 70, 79, 84, 88, his reconciliation, 182
106, 110, 121, 131-7, 141-3, transcendence, 185
146, 148, 151, 156, 172, 183 his will, 135
disembodied, 54, 56, 69, 77, 88-9, Good - the form of, see Platonic forms
95, 108, 110-12, 124, 126, utilitarian principle of, 25
130-1, see also Life after Death transcendent, 13
future, see Life after Death Goodness - non-natural quality of, 25
of God, see God Gospel(s), see also Christian scripture,
modes of, 89, 132 Testament (New), 79, 90,
necessary, 134 161-2, 167, 169-70, 174-5,
pre, 85-6, 95, see also Reincarnation 178, 182, 184-5
universal, 147 apocalyptic, 185
Experience(s), passim, 1, 9-16, 21, 31, authenticity, 174-5
36-7, 43--4, 46-7, 53, 64, 73, synoptic, 162
86, 104-5, 107, Ill, 138-9,
144, 156, 159, 166, 179 Heaven, 98, 156, 175
continuity of, 84 Hegelian idealism, see Idealism
dream, 53 Hell, 98
ecstatic, 42-3, 4 7 Hinduism, 84
of the future, 59 Holy Communion, see Communion
out of body, 41, 121 Humanists, 40-1, 160
of pain, 50, 53, 122, 124, 143-6 Humpty Dumptyism, 97
Hypostatisation, 3, 142
Faith, 100, 152, 158-60, 164, see also
Christian belief/faith Iconoclasm, I, 116, 130
renewal of, 154, 159 Idealism, 1-2, 22, 35
Feeling, II, 26, 64 Hegelian, 35
Forgiveness, 185 post-Hegelian, 22, 137, 142
Forms/form of the good, see Platonic Identity- personal or self, passim, 2-3,
forms 6, 10-11, 16, 21, 26-7, 31-3,
Freedom, 2, 3, 24 37, 49-74, 75-109, 110-31,
Free will, 24 132-47, 148-60, 181, see also
Fundamentalism, 177 Persons, Self, Soul
194 Persons and Life After Death

Identity- personal or self-continued Life after Death, Immortality, Sur-

bodily, II, 26, 51, 75, 80, 89, 95, vival, 10, 35-41, 47, 49-74,
100-1 75-109,110-47,148-60,171
non-corporeal, 52, 95, 104, 139 Life eternal (everlasting): 110, 150,
through time, 116, 139 160
Identity- embodied and disembodied, Linguistic -analysis, 35
m esp. 49-75, 75-109, 110-47, convention, 23
>ee also Dualism, Life after practice, 24
Death Logic, 147
Identity thesis, 36, 50-I, 75, 77, 130 alternative, 3, 9
Idolatry, 45 Bradley's, 2
Images, 53, 163, 185 modal, 122
body, 10 Logical principles, 9
dream, 71
mental, 53 Magic(al), 41, 43, 170
Immaterialism, 22 Martyr, 164
Immaterial properties, 114 Mathematics, 14
states, 123-8 Matter, 54, 78
Immortality, see Life after Death Materialism, 35-6, 50, 55, 57, 59, 91,
Induction - principle of, II Ill, 119, 121, 124, 128-30, 143
'Inner Eye', 24 central state, 55, 59
Intellect - Platonic, Aristotelian theory of, 35, 57
theories of, 96 Materialist, 119, 122, 124-6, 129-30,
Intellectual, 68-74, 181 139, 143, 180
Intentions, 26, 27, 50, see also Purpose view of persons, see Persons
Intuition(s), 4, 13-14, 24-6, 45 Meditation, 43, 154, 172, 181
Intuitionism, 5 Memory, 54-6, 59-65, 68, 84-7, 91,
Intuitionist, 25-6 94, 105-6, 146
Islam, 98 loss of, 63-4, 146, 182
Mental concepts, causal analysis of,
Jesus Christ, see Christ 122, 143
Jews, 167 Mental images, see Images
Justice, 85 Mental states - processes, 37, 49-51,
56-7, 59, 67, 89, 104-5, 112-
Karma, 85 16, 121-9, 136-7, 141-7
Knowledge, 7-10, 21, 23, 106 properties, 58-9, 108, 114, 116,
a priori, 14, 31, 85, Ill, 116, 122-6
118, 121, 124-7, 135-6, 138, Meta-ethics, see Ethics
147 Metaphysics, 2, 10, 12, 14-16
a posteriori, 124-5 methodological, 16
absolute, 8 rationalist, 2
certain, 149-50 revisionary, 15-16
.of others, 10, 26-7, 53-4, 56-7, 71, Mind(s) passim, 10, 21, 26, 53-6, 87,
86-7, 138, 144 96-7, 104, 116-17, 121-3,
primal, 8 129-30, 137, 139, 145, 147, 152
of self, see Identity Mind/body problem, see also Dualism,
theory of, 12, 57 Platonic/Cartesian way, 10,
Koran, see Qu'ran 35, 49-75, 97, 103, 105, 110-
33, 139
Language, 7, 16, 24, 55, 130 causal interaction, 129-30, 139, 145
figurative, 4 7 Mind- universal, 137
Laws - of nature, see Natural Minimal dualism, see Dualism
physical and non-physical, 87 Modal logic, see Logic
 Index 195

Monism, 156, see also Mysticism Pain, see Experience

Morality, 151 Pentecost, 180
Moral accountability, 15, 24 Perception, passim, esp. 2, 6, 12, 15-16,
certainty, 8 22-3, 51, 69, 149
distinctions, 15 extra sensory (ESP), 83
obligation, 5 mystical, 157
requirement, 135 Person(s), see also Identity, Personal or
thought, 170 self, 6, 26-7, 33, 37, 49-74,
Mormon -The Book of, 175 75-109, 110-29, 136, 140-51,
Muslim, 162, see also Muhammad, 157-8
Qu'ran concept of, 52, 142
Mystery, 175, 181-5 Corporealist/inaterialist view of,
ultimate, II 50, 75, 83-4, 91, 99, 110-29,
Mystic, 157, see also Perception, see also Materialism, etc.
mystical distinctness of, 2, 90
Mysticism, 137 essential or real, 101, 103
monistic, 43 'Former persons', 95, 100
Myth, 96, 163 individuation of, 58, 116, 137, 139
Mythology, 79 shadow, 101
simplicity - indivisibility, 118-19,
'Naturalistic Fallacy', 25 127, 133-6, 141
Nature - law of, 55 Personal encounter, 156
order of, 135 relations, 156, 185
world of, see World Personality, corporate, 142
Neurophysiology, 121-2, 143 split, 146
New Testament, see Testament Perspectival distortion, 21, 24
Noesis, 18 Perversity, 156
Nominalism, 3 Phenomenalism, 3
Non-Cartesian dualism, see Dualism Philosophical doubt, see Doubt
Non-contradiction - principle of, 17 Physical body, see Body
Non-identical, 112 Physical properties and attributes,
Non-phenomenonalist, 79 101, 113-14, 126-8
Non-spatial relationships, 115-17 reality, 3, 105
states and processes, 52, 59-60, 89,
Objectivist, 79 104, 112, 123, 125-6, 143, 147
Occasionalism, 129 world, see World
Old Testament, see Testament Physicalist, 27, 137
Omnipotence of God, see God Physics, 80
Ontological argument, 77, 134, 147 'Platonic- Cartesian Way', 81, 102-3
Oral transmission, 163 Platonic - Cartesian Soul, see Soul
Oriental religion, see Religion Platonic forms, 3, 108, 134, 155
'Other', The, 183 the form of the good, 18, !54, 156
Plurality, 73-4
Pacifism, 150 Poltergeist, 82
Parables, 165 Positivist, 3
Paradigm case, 24 Post-Hegelian, see Idealism
Paralogisms (of Kant), Ill Prayer, 43, 172, 181
Paranormal, 41-8, 52, 90-1, 151 Precognition, 41-2
communication, 87-8, see also Com- Pre-existence, see Existence, also
munication with the dead, Reincarnation
Experience-ESP, Perception, Preternatural, 45-6, 92
Precognition, etc. Process philosophy, 35
Parapsychology, 35, 150 Prophets/prophecy, 167, 179
196 Persons and Life After Death
Psychical research, 35-41, 4 7, 55, 81, 'Sacramental universe', 157
90-3, 97, 109, 151-2, 158 Sacrifice, 158, 169, see also Christ's
Psychic phenomena, 41, 151 sacrifice
Psychological states, see Mental states Scepticism, 2, 33, 107, 148, 152, 164,
Purpose/purposing, 50, 144-6, see 176-8
also Intentions Schizophrenia, 153
Science, 43, 92, 105, Ill, 131, 135
Scripture, see also Christian, Gospels,
Qu'ran, 98, 162
Testaments, Qu'ran, etc., 162-
3, 166, 170, 173, 176, 183
Radicalism, 107 Secular/secularisation, 148-9, 152, 176
Rationalist(s), 14, 138 Self, see also Identity, personal or self,
Rationality, 97, 182 10, 21, 31, 33, 51, 62, 68, 85,
Realism (and realists), I, 3-4, 21-3, 89, 95, 107, 129, 134-7, 145-7
26-7 essential nature of, 147
epistemology, 4 as pure self, 89, I 04
Reality, 138, 155 simplicity and indivisibility, 134-5,
conditioned, 43 145-7
mental, 141 'substantial view of', 85
non-spatial, 144 as subject, 32, 89, 104, 107-8, 112,
physical, 141 145
Reason, 8, 14, 21, 177, 182 Semantics, 130
Reconstitution(ist), 98-9, 100, 103, Sensation(s), 10, 26, 50, 51-3, 66, 89
107, 109, see also Bodily Sense datum, 7, 24
reconstitution Sensory deprivation, 71-2
Redemption, 158, 160 'input', 112-13, 116, 136
Reincarnation, 50, 52, 55-6, 58, stimulation, 117
84-5, 91, 146, 148 Shinto, 148
Relativism, 152 Sin, 158, 183-4
Relativity, 17 Sixth sense, 42
Religion, see also Buddhism, Christian, Socialism, 150
Hinduism, Islam, Shinto, 5, Solipsism, 26-7, 88
35, 40-50, 72, 77-9, 91-3, Soul, 38, 81, 83, 95-6, 100, 102-3,
97-8, 148-9, 157-9, 177, 185 105, 107-8, 117, 133--4, 136,
esoteric, 181 150, 155-6, see also Identity -
oriental, 33 personal, also Self
primitive, 148 of Epicurus, 102, 108
theistic, 43, 46-7 indestructibility of, 90, 133-4, 136,
transcendalist, 171 155
western, 171 of Lucretius, 102
Religious belief, see also Christian Platonic conception of, 95, 133-4,
belief, 91-2, 94, 109, 148-9 155-6
symbolism, 92 Platonic/Cartesian, 101-3, 107-9
understanding, 152, 164 pre-existence 134
thought, 79, 182 simplicity of, 134, see also Self-
'Replica Objection'- the, 99-100 simplicity and indivisibility of
Resurrection, see also Bodily/Christ's Space, 10, 15,40,43, 78,81-2,87,102
Resurrection, 97, 100, 159 Spatial, contiguity, 117, 139
spiritual, 78 extension, Ill, 116-17, 119
Retribution, see Punishment location, 116-1 7
Revelation, 157, 158, see also God's quasi-spatial relations, 117-19, 130,
disclosure 139, 141
of Allah, 98, 162 relations, 117-18, 137-9
 Index 197

Spirit, 78, 134, 172, 174, 183 'world of thoughts alone', see
Spiritual, awareness, 171-2, 180 World
concentration, 180 Time, 67, 78, 86, 105, 113, 118, 160,
discernment, 154, 181 162
Spiritualism, 72, 97-8 Transcendence, 5-6, II, 43-7, 156-7,
State- metaphysical theory of, 142 170, see also God, Good
Substance(s), 32, 108, 113-14, 117- Transcendalist religion, see Religion
19, 139, 141, 143 Transfiguration, 78, 163
corporeal/material, 103-4, 106, Truth, 77, 94, 106, 109, Ill, 124, 152,
Ill, 113-20, 122, 124, 126, 164, 182, 184-5
129-30, 139, 141, 143 'truth of the heart', 153
incorporeal/immaterial, 97, 103-6, 'truth of the mind', !53
105-9, 111-21, 123-4, 126,
128-30, 139-41, 143 Ultimate(s), 17, 25, 32-3, 43, 54,
spiritual, 97, 108, 114-16, 121, 61-2, 66, 68, 78, 146
126-8, 130, 144 Universals, 155-6
'Substantival view of self', see Self theory of, 3
'Summerland' - the, 98 Utilitarian - principle of greatest
'Supreme Court' - of US, 118-19, good, see Good
141-2 Utilitarianism, 25-6
Survival, see Life after Death
Values, 142
Telekinesis, 41 Verification, 91
Telepathy, 53-4, 72, 87, 90, 138, 151 'Vision- the glass of', 160
Testament - New, 79, 161-3, 168,
176-8 Wisdom, 138, 170, 174
dating of, 161-2 World, 13-14, 45, 55, 67, 83-4, 87-8,
as history, 79, 163, 176-8, see 135, 165, 171-2, 177, 181
also Christian Scripture, Berkleyan view of, 79
Gospels of children, 169
Old, 176 as created, 15 7
Theism, 134, 185, see also Religion dream, 70
theistic external, 5-6, 9, 11, 21-2, 79
Theologians, 159, 182 of images, 53, 70
Theology, 79, 165, 181-2 of nature, 14, 22, 50, 156, 165
Theory of knowledge, see Knowledge of particulars, !55
Thing in itself, 141 physical (material), 3, II, 53, 79,
Thought(s), see also Mental states and 80,86
processes, II, 26-7, 50-1, 54, real, 53
71-2,89, 105, 144-6. 154. 159, W-Soul, 70
165, 177, 181 'of thoughts alone', 54, 81, 88-9,
materialist view of, 50 138
oriental, 143 Worship, 43, 164, 171, 180
western, 135, 142 of ancestors, 148