Collected Works (Vol. II)

278 TIME Myst. To be secretive is to be blatant. Scept. To be frank is to be mysterious. Adyst. I wish your poet-martyr! (I do not refer to Chatterton) could hear us. Scept. To return, I would have you note the paradox that unconsciousness must be reckoned as a-form of consciousness, since otherwise the last state of consciousness of a dying person is for him eternity. That this is not so is-shown by the phenomena of anzesthesia. Myst. Is it, though? Is the analogy so certain? Is there nothing in the attempt of all religions to secure that a man’s last thoughts should be of triumph, peace, joy, and their like ? Scept. I have been reading that somewhat mawkish book ‘‘The Soul of a People.” Disgusted as I was by its ooze of sentiment- ality, I was yet not unobservant of its cogni- sance of this fact, and I was even pleased— though this is by the way—to see that the author recognises in-the ridiculous First Pre- cept of the Buddhist Faith, or rather in the orthodox travesty of Buddha's meaning, a mere survival of some fetichistic theophagy. Myst, Doesn’t it say somewhere that ‘* Long words butter no parsnips” ? Scept. It ought to. But pray proceed with your defence of religion—for I presume it is intended as such. Myst. I was saying that if unconsciousness be not reckoned as consciousness, the death- thought is eternal heaven orhell, as it chances to be pleasant or prinful. But, on the other hand, if it be so reckoned, if that and that alone has in death no awakening, no change, then is it not certain that there is the Great Peace? Disprove immortality, reincarnation, all survival or revival of the identical Scept. Identical? Hm! Myst.—of the consciousness which the man calls “I” Scept. Which Haeckel has pretty effectively done. Myst. And Nirvana is ours for the price of 1 The re’erence, presumably ironical, is to the late Oscar Wilde. a packet of arsenic, and a glass of Dutch courage. Scept. In a poem called ‘‘ Summa Spes,”’? a gifted but debauched Irishman has grossly, yet effectively, stated this view. ‘‘ Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die!”’ is the Hebrew for it. Butif we survive or revive Myst, The problem is merely postponed. If ‘death is a sleep”: why, we know what happens after sleep. Scept. The question resolves itself, there- fore, into the other which we both of us anticipated and feared : What is this ‘‘identi- cal consciousness” which is the cause of so much confusion of thought. We have in the phenomena of mind (a) a set of simple im- pressions; (4)? a machinery for grasping and interpreting these; of sifting, grouping, organizing, co-ordinating, integrating them; and (c) a *‘central’’ consciousness, more or less persistent, that is to say, united to a long series of similar states by the close bond of the emphatic idea, I, which ‘‘ central” con- sciousness takes notice of the results pre- sented to it by (4). A state which can be summoned at will Myst. What then is ‘‘ will” ? Scept. You know what I mean. God knows I am bothered enough already without being caught up on a word! Which can be summoned at will: which in a succession of simple, though highly abstract states, ob- serves the results (forgive the repetition !) presented to it by (4). But if we turn the consciousness upon itself, if we add a sixth sense to the futile five? Myst. It is resolved after all into a simple impression, indistinguishable, so far as I can see, from any other. That is, logically. Scept. Animpression, moreover, on what? It is not the (c) that is really examined ;. for (c) is the examiner: and you have merely formulated a (@) expressible by the ratio 1 See p. 200. 2 This (4) may be divided and subdivided into certain groups ; some, perhaps all of them, liable, in the event of the suppression of (a), to become (automatically ?) active, and prevent (c) from becoming quiet.—A. C.