误传千年的三句话
1、无毒不丈夫
原句：量小非君子，无度不丈夫。——————民间谚语联对量小非君子，无毒不丈夫，这句话绝对是中国众多以讹传讹的话中最搞笑的一个例子之一，就算是刚完成九年义务教育的初中生，也能轻易看出这其中的不妥之处，首先，这无毒不丈夫，就跟我们认识的古人崇尚的价值观念大大背离了，大丈夫，自然是说那些坦坦荡荡胸怀宽广的男人，什么时候恶毒阴损，暗箭伤人这种前缀也能放在前边来形容大丈夫了？ 原来，这句来自民间的谚语本来应该是“量小非君子，无度不丈夫”，这本来是个很好的句子，里边充分运用了对仗。显示出了一份阳刚有力的气魄，一个胸怀坦荡的男人形象就跃然于纸上，可惜劳动人民口耳相传的这一句话，到了朝廷上那些所谓的学高八斗的“君子”嘴里就变了个味。为什么呢？这要从古时候文人的习性说起，在这副对联式的谚语里，“度”为仄声字，犯了孤平，念着别扭，很容易读为平声字“毒”，那些对音律美感要求甚高的学者们某天吃饱了没事儿干，便发挥他们的专长自做主张，把这句改为“无毒不丈夫”了，于是这句话，终于成了典型的“信言不美，美言不信”的例句，成了迂腐文人的笔下的又一个牺牲品，“量小非君子，无度不丈夫”，原话里一个君子对一个丈夫，一个度对另一个量，本来是很完美的一个句子，可经过上千年的以讹传讹，竟成了“无毒不丈夫”这句现在我们挂在嘴边的口头禅。
2、以德抱怨
原句：“或曰‘以德报怨，何如？’子曰“何以报德？以直报怨，以德报德” ————《论语 宪问》以德抱怨，是我们常听到的一句话了，人们通常理解的“以德抱怨”什么意思呢？就是说：孔老夫子教我们，别人欺负你了，你要忍，被打碎牙齿也要往肚子里吞，别人来欺负你，你反而应该对他更好，要用你的爱心去感化他，用你的胸怀去感动他。这就让人感觉很有点肃然了。但事实上，我们根本曲解了孔子的原意，我当初，也万万没想到原来在孔子这句“以德抱怨”的后边还跟着另外一段话，什么话呢？子曰：“以德抱怨，何以报德？以直报怨，以德报德！”看完以后，幡然醒悟，原来我们都被某个断章取义的孔子FANS给玩了一把！当时的真实情况是怎么样的呢？孔子的一个弟子问他说：师傅，别人打我了，我不打他，我反而要对他好，用我的道德和教养羞死他，让他悔悟，好不好？孔子就说了，你以德抱怨，那“何以报德？”别人以德来待你的时候，你才需要以德来回报别人。可是现在别人打了你，你就应该“以直抱怨”，拿起板砖飞他！看！就因为被人故意省略了一句话，刚烈如火的孔老夫子一下就被扭曲成了现在这个温婉的受气包形象。
3、民可使由之，不可使知之。
原句“子曰：民可使由之，不可使知之。”——————《论语·秦伯》又是孔老先生的话，小小景仰一下下先。民可使由之，不可使知之，这句话什么意思呢？是说，国家统治人民，指使驱赶他们去做事就行了，不要让他们明白他们在做什么。这句话在现在看来，绝对很明显就是封建统治阶级几千年来一直在玩弄的愚民权术，小老百姓嘛，让他们知道那么多干什么？最好都是昏昏噩噩，只知道照着我们的意思去庸庸碌碌一辈子，这句训诫不可谓不恶毒，它被千百年来中国的大小封建统治者奉为至宝，抹杀了多少真理与人民的创造性，但同时，我们的问题就来了，这样的一条愚民之术，真是孔子这位致力于教化人民的教育家的本意吗？原来，这又是后人别有用心地断章取义，刻意在句子的中间用一个不恰当的“句断”使这句话产生了歧义的缘故。我们结合上下文的语境，很容易就能得出这句话正确的分句方法：“子曰：兴于诗，立于礼，成于乐。民可，使由之，不可，使知之。”孔子的整句话就是说，诗、礼、乐这三样东西是教育民众的基础，一定要抓好，如果人民掌握了诗礼乐，好，让他们自由发挥，如果人民还玩不来这些东东，我们就要去教化他们，让他们知道和明白这些东西。”
2008年7月12日星期六
2008年7月11日星期五
2008年7月10日星期四
灵魂的重量(转)
American Medicine
April, 1907
Hypothesis Concerning Soul Substance Together with Experimental Evidence of The Existence of Such Substanceby Duncan MacDougall, M.D. of Haverhill, Mass.
If personal continuity after the event of bodily death is a fact, if the psychic functions continue to exist as a separate individually or personality after the death of brain and body, then such personality can only exit as a space occupying body, unless the relations between space objective and space notions in our consciousness, established in our consciousness by heredity and experience, are entirely wiped out at death and a new set of relations between space and consciousness suddenly established in the continuing personality. This would be an unimaginable breach in the continuity of nature.
It is unthinkable that personality and consciousness continuing personal identity should exist, and have being, and yet not occupy space. It is impossible to represent in thought that which is not space-occupying, as having personality; for that would be equivalent to thinking that nothing had become or was something, that emptiness had personality, that space itself was more than space, all of which are contradictions and absurd.
Since therefore it is necessary to the continuance of conscious life and personal identity after death, that they must have for a basis that which is space-occupying, or substance, the question arises has this substance weight, is it ponderable?
The essential thing is that there must be a substance as the basis of continuing personal identity and consciousness, for without space-occupying substance, personality or a continuing conscious ego after bodily death is unthinkable.
According to the latest conception of science, substance, or space-occupying material, is divisible into that which is gravitative, solids, liquids, gases, all having weight, and the ether which is nongravitative. It seemed impossible to me that the soul substance could consist of the ether. If the conception is true that ether is continuous and not to be conceived of as existing or capable of existing in separate masses, we have here the most solid ground for believing that the soul substance we are seeking is not ether, because one of the very first attributes of personal identity is the quality of separateness. Nothing is more borne in upon consciousness, than that the ego is detached and separate from all things else - the nonego.
We are therefore driven back upon the assumption that the soul substance so necessary to the conception of continuing personal identity, after the death of this material body, must still be a form of gravitative matter, or perhaps a middle form of substance neither gravitative matter or ether, not capable of being weighed, and yet not identical with ether. Since however the substance considered in our hypothesis is linked organically with the body until death takes place, it appears to me more reasonable to think that it must be some form of gravitative matter, and therefore capable of being detected at death by weighing a human being in the act of death.
My first subject was a man dying of tuberculosis. It seemed to me best to select a patient dying with a disease that produces great exhaustion, the death occurring with little or no muscular movement, because in such a case the beam could be kept more perfectly at balance and any loss occurring readily noted. The patient was under observation for three hours and forty minutes before death, lying on a bed arranged on a light framework built upon very delicately balanced platform beam scales.
The patient's comfort was looked after in every way, although he was practically moribund when placed upon the bed. He lost weight slowly at the rate of one ounce per hour due to evaporation of moisture in respiration and evaporation of sweat.
During all three hours and forty minutes I kept the beam end slightly above balance near the upper limiting bar in order to make the test more decisive if it should come.
At the end of three hours and forty minutes he expired and suddenly coincident with death the beam end dropped with an audible stroke hitting against the lower limiting bar and remaining there with no rebound. The loss was ascertained to be three-fourths of an ounce.
This loss of weight could not be due to evaporation of respiratory moisture and sweat, because that had already been determined to go on, in his case, at the rate of one sixtieth of an ounce per minute, whereas this loss was sudden and large, three-fourths of an ounce in a few seconds.
The bowels did not move; if they had moved the weight would still have remained upon the bed except for a slow loss by the evaporation of moisture depending, of course, upon the fluidity of the feces. The bladder evacuated one or two drams of urine. This remained upon the bed and could only have influenced the weight by slow gradual evaporation and therefore in no way could account for the sudden loss.
There remained but one more channel of loss to explore, the expiration of all but the residual air in the lungs. Getting upon the bed myself, my colleague put the beam at actual balance. Inspiration and expiration of air as forcibly as possible by me had no effect upon the beam. My colleague got upon the bed and I placed the beam at balance. Forcible inspiration and expiration of air on his part had no effect. In this case we certainly have an inexplicable loss of weight of three-fourths of an ounce. Is it the soul substance? How other shall we explain it?
My second patient was a man moribund from tuberculosis. He was on the bed about four hours and fifteen minutes under observation before death. The first four hours he lost weight at the rate of three-fourths of an ounce per hour. He had much slower respiration than the first case, which accounted for the difference in loss of weight from evaporation of perspiration and respiratory moisture.
The last fifteen minutes he had ceased to breathe but his facial muscles still moved convulsively, and then, coinciding with the last movement of the facial muscles, the beam dropped. The weight lost was found to be half an ounce. Then my colleague auscultated the heart and and found it stopped. I tried again and the loss was one ounce and a half and fifty grains. In the eighteen minutes that lapsed between the time he ceased breathing until we were certain of death, there was a weight loss of one and a half ounces and fifty grains compared with a loss of three ounces during a period of four hours, during which time the ordinary channels of loss were at work. No bowel movement took place. The bladder moved but the urine remained upon the bed and could not have evaporated enough through the thick bed clothing to have influenced the result.
The beam at the end of eighteen minutes of doubt was placed again with the end in slight contact with the upper bar and watched for forty minutes but no further loss took place.
My scales were sensitive to two-tenths of an ounce. If placed at balance one-tenth of an ounce would lift the beam up close to the upper limiting bar, another one-tenth ounce would bring it up and keep it in direct contact, then if the two-tenths were removed the beam would drop to the lower bar and then slowly oscillate till balance was reached again.
This patient was of a totally different temperament from the first, his death was very gradual, so that we had great doubts from the ordinary evidence to say just what moment he died.
My third case, a man dying of tuberculosis, showed a weight of half and ounce lost, coincident with death, and an additional loss of one ounce a few minutes later.
In the fourth case, a woman dying of diabetic coma, unfortunately our scales were not finely adjusted and there was a good deal of interference by people opposed to our work, and although at death the beam sunk so that it required from three-eighths to one-half ounce to bring it back to the point preceding death, yet I regard this test as of no value.
My fifth case, a man dying of tuberculosis, showed a distinct drop in the beam requiring about three-eighths of an ounce which could not be accounted for. This occurred exactly simultaneously with death but peculiarly on bringing the beam up again with weights and later removing them, the beam did not sink back to stay for fully fifteen minutes. It was impossible to account for the three-eighths of an ounce drop, it was so sudden and distinct, the beam hitting the lower bar with as great a noise as in the first case. Our scales in the case were very sensitively balanced.
My sixth and last case was not a fair test. The patient died almost within five minutes after being placed upon the bed and died while I was adjusting the beam. In my communication to Dr. Hodgson I note that I have said there was no loss of weight. It should have been added that there was no loss of weight that we were justified in recording.
My notes taken at the time of experiment show a loss of one and one-half ounces but in addition it should have been said the experiment was so hurried, jarring of the scales had not wholly ceased and the apparent weight loss, one and one-half ounces, might have been due to accidental shifting of the sliding weight on that beam. This could not have been true of the other tests; no one of them was done hurriedly.
My sixth case I regard as one of no value from this cause. The same experiments were carried out on fifteen dogs, surrounded by every precaution to obtain accuracy and the results were uniformly negative, no loss of weight at death.
A loss of weight takes places about 20 to 30 minutes after death which is due to the evaporation of the urine normally passed, and which is duplicated by evaporation of the same amount of water on the scales, every other condition being the same, e.g., temperature of the room, except the presence of the dog's body.
The dogs experimented on weighed between 15 and 70 pounds and the scales with the total weight upon them were sensitive to one-sixteenth of an ounce. The tests on dogs were vitiated by the use of two drugs administered to secure the necessary quiet and freedom from struggle so necessary to keep the beam at balance.
The ideal tests on dogs would be obtained in those dying from some disease that rendered them much exhausted and incapable of struggle. It was not my fortune to get dogs dying from such sickness.
The net result of the experiments conducted on human beings, is that a loss of substance occurs at death not accounted for by known channels of loss. Is it the soul substance? It would seem to me to be so. According to our hypothesis such a substance is necessary to the assumption of continuing or persisting personality after bodily death, and here we have experimental demonstration that a substance capable of being weighed does leave the human body at death.
If this substance is a counterpart to the physical body, has the same bulk, occupies the same dimensions in space, then it is a very much lighter substance than the atmosphere surrounding our earth which weighs about one and one-fourth ounces per cubic foot. This would be a fact of great significance, as such a body would readily ascend in our atmosphere. The absence of a weighable mass leaving the body at death would of course be no argument against continuing personality, for a space-occupying body or substance might exist not capable of being weighed, such as the ether.
It has been suggested that the ether might be that substance, but with the modern conception of science that the ether is the primary form of all substance, that all other forms of matter are merely differentiations of the ether having varying densities, then it seems to me that soul substance which is in this life linked organically with the body, cannot be identical with the ether. Moreover, the ether is supposed to be nondiscontinuous, a continuous whole and not capable of existing in separate masses as ether, whereas the one prime requisite for a continuing personality or individuality is the quality of separateness, the ego as separate and distinct from all things else, the nonego.
To my mind therefore the soul substance cannot be the ether as ether; but if the theory that ether is the primary form of all substance is true, then the soul substance must necessarily be a differentiated form of it.
If it is definitely proved that there is in the human being a loss of substance at death not accounted for by known channels of loss, and that such loss of substance does not occur in the dog as my experiments would seem to show, then we have here a physiological difference between the human and the canine at least and probably between the human and all other forms of animal life.
I am aware that a large number of experiments would require to be made before the matter can be proved beyond any possibility of error, but if further and sufficient experimentation proves that there is a loss of substance occurring at death and not accounted for by known channels of loss, the establishment of such a truth cannot fail to be of the utmost importance.
One ounce of fact more or less will have more weight in demonstrating the truth of the reality of continued existences with the necessary basis of substance to rest upon, than all the hair-splitting theories of theologians and metaphysicians combined.
If other experiments prove that there is a loss of weight occurring at death, not accounted for by known channels of loss, we must either admit the theory that it is the hypothetical soul substance, or some other explanation of the phenomenon should be forthcoming. If proved true, the materialistic conception will have been fully met, and proof of the substantial basis for mind or spirit or soul continuing after the death of the body, insisted upon as necessary by the materialists, will have been furnished.
It will prove also that the spiritualistic conception of the immateriality of the soul was wrong. The postulates of religious creeds have not been a positive and final settlement of the question.
The theories of all the philosophers and all the philosophies offer no final solution of the problem of continued personality after bodily death. This fact alone of a space occupying body of measurable weight disappearing at death, if verified, furnishes the substantial basis for persisting personality or a conscious ego surviving the act of bodily death, and in the element of certainty is worth more than the postulates of all the creeds and all the metaphysical arguments combined.
In the year 1854 Rudolph Wagner, the physiologist, at the Gottingen Congress of Physiologists, proposed a discussion of a "Special Soul Substance." The challenge was accepted, but no discussion followed and among the 500 voices present not one was raised in defense of a spiritualistic philosophy. Have we found Wagner's soul substance?
April, 1907
Hypothesis Concerning Soul Substance Together with Experimental Evidence of The Existence of Such Substanceby Duncan MacDougall, M.D. of Haverhill, Mass.
If personal continuity after the event of bodily death is a fact, if the psychic functions continue to exist as a separate individually or personality after the death of brain and body, then such personality can only exit as a space occupying body, unless the relations between space objective and space notions in our consciousness, established in our consciousness by heredity and experience, are entirely wiped out at death and a new set of relations between space and consciousness suddenly established in the continuing personality. This would be an unimaginable breach in the continuity of nature.
It is unthinkable that personality and consciousness continuing personal identity should exist, and have being, and yet not occupy space. It is impossible to represent in thought that which is not space-occupying, as having personality; for that would be equivalent to thinking that nothing had become or was something, that emptiness had personality, that space itself was more than space, all of which are contradictions and absurd.
Since therefore it is necessary to the continuance of conscious life and personal identity after death, that they must have for a basis that which is space-occupying, or substance, the question arises has this substance weight, is it ponderable?
The essential thing is that there must be a substance as the basis of continuing personal identity and consciousness, for without space-occupying substance, personality or a continuing conscious ego after bodily death is unthinkable.
According to the latest conception of science, substance, or space-occupying material, is divisible into that which is gravitative, solids, liquids, gases, all having weight, and the ether which is nongravitative. It seemed impossible to me that the soul substance could consist of the ether. If the conception is true that ether is continuous and not to be conceived of as existing or capable of existing in separate masses, we have here the most solid ground for believing that the soul substance we are seeking is not ether, because one of the very first attributes of personal identity is the quality of separateness. Nothing is more borne in upon consciousness, than that the ego is detached and separate from all things else - the nonego.
We are therefore driven back upon the assumption that the soul substance so necessary to the conception of continuing personal identity, after the death of this material body, must still be a form of gravitative matter, or perhaps a middle form of substance neither gravitative matter or ether, not capable of being weighed, and yet not identical with ether. Since however the substance considered in our hypothesis is linked organically with the body until death takes place, it appears to me more reasonable to think that it must be some form of gravitative matter, and therefore capable of being detected at death by weighing a human being in the act of death.
My first subject was a man dying of tuberculosis. It seemed to me best to select a patient dying with a disease that produces great exhaustion, the death occurring with little or no muscular movement, because in such a case the beam could be kept more perfectly at balance and any loss occurring readily noted. The patient was under observation for three hours and forty minutes before death, lying on a bed arranged on a light framework built upon very delicately balanced platform beam scales.
The patient's comfort was looked after in every way, although he was practically moribund when placed upon the bed. He lost weight slowly at the rate of one ounce per hour due to evaporation of moisture in respiration and evaporation of sweat.
During all three hours and forty minutes I kept the beam end slightly above balance near the upper limiting bar in order to make the test more decisive if it should come.
At the end of three hours and forty minutes he expired and suddenly coincident with death the beam end dropped with an audible stroke hitting against the lower limiting bar and remaining there with no rebound. The loss was ascertained to be three-fourths of an ounce.
This loss of weight could not be due to evaporation of respiratory moisture and sweat, because that had already been determined to go on, in his case, at the rate of one sixtieth of an ounce per minute, whereas this loss was sudden and large, three-fourths of an ounce in a few seconds.
The bowels did not move; if they had moved the weight would still have remained upon the bed except for a slow loss by the evaporation of moisture depending, of course, upon the fluidity of the feces. The bladder evacuated one or two drams of urine. This remained upon the bed and could only have influenced the weight by slow gradual evaporation and therefore in no way could account for the sudden loss.
There remained but one more channel of loss to explore, the expiration of all but the residual air in the lungs. Getting upon the bed myself, my colleague put the beam at actual balance. Inspiration and expiration of air as forcibly as possible by me had no effect upon the beam. My colleague got upon the bed and I placed the beam at balance. Forcible inspiration and expiration of air on his part had no effect. In this case we certainly have an inexplicable loss of weight of three-fourths of an ounce. Is it the soul substance? How other shall we explain it?
My second patient was a man moribund from tuberculosis. He was on the bed about four hours and fifteen minutes under observation before death. The first four hours he lost weight at the rate of three-fourths of an ounce per hour. He had much slower respiration than the first case, which accounted for the difference in loss of weight from evaporation of perspiration and respiratory moisture.
The last fifteen minutes he had ceased to breathe but his facial muscles still moved convulsively, and then, coinciding with the last movement of the facial muscles, the beam dropped. The weight lost was found to be half an ounce. Then my colleague auscultated the heart and and found it stopped. I tried again and the loss was one ounce and a half and fifty grains. In the eighteen minutes that lapsed between the time he ceased breathing until we were certain of death, there was a weight loss of one and a half ounces and fifty grains compared with a loss of three ounces during a period of four hours, during which time the ordinary channels of loss were at work. No bowel movement took place. The bladder moved but the urine remained upon the bed and could not have evaporated enough through the thick bed clothing to have influenced the result.
The beam at the end of eighteen minutes of doubt was placed again with the end in slight contact with the upper bar and watched for forty minutes but no further loss took place.
My scales were sensitive to two-tenths of an ounce. If placed at balance one-tenth of an ounce would lift the beam up close to the upper limiting bar, another one-tenth ounce would bring it up and keep it in direct contact, then if the two-tenths were removed the beam would drop to the lower bar and then slowly oscillate till balance was reached again.
This patient was of a totally different temperament from the first, his death was very gradual, so that we had great doubts from the ordinary evidence to say just what moment he died.
My third case, a man dying of tuberculosis, showed a weight of half and ounce lost, coincident with death, and an additional loss of one ounce a few minutes later.
In the fourth case, a woman dying of diabetic coma, unfortunately our scales were not finely adjusted and there was a good deal of interference by people opposed to our work, and although at death the beam sunk so that it required from three-eighths to one-half ounce to bring it back to the point preceding death, yet I regard this test as of no value.
My fifth case, a man dying of tuberculosis, showed a distinct drop in the beam requiring about three-eighths of an ounce which could not be accounted for. This occurred exactly simultaneously with death but peculiarly on bringing the beam up again with weights and later removing them, the beam did not sink back to stay for fully fifteen minutes. It was impossible to account for the three-eighths of an ounce drop, it was so sudden and distinct, the beam hitting the lower bar with as great a noise as in the first case. Our scales in the case were very sensitively balanced.
My sixth and last case was not a fair test. The patient died almost within five minutes after being placed upon the bed and died while I was adjusting the beam. In my communication to Dr. Hodgson I note that I have said there was no loss of weight. It should have been added that there was no loss of weight that we were justified in recording.
My notes taken at the time of experiment show a loss of one and one-half ounces but in addition it should have been said the experiment was so hurried, jarring of the scales had not wholly ceased and the apparent weight loss, one and one-half ounces, might have been due to accidental shifting of the sliding weight on that beam. This could not have been true of the other tests; no one of them was done hurriedly.
My sixth case I regard as one of no value from this cause. The same experiments were carried out on fifteen dogs, surrounded by every precaution to obtain accuracy and the results were uniformly negative, no loss of weight at death.
A loss of weight takes places about 20 to 30 minutes after death which is due to the evaporation of the urine normally passed, and which is duplicated by evaporation of the same amount of water on the scales, every other condition being the same, e.g., temperature of the room, except the presence of the dog's body.
The dogs experimented on weighed between 15 and 70 pounds and the scales with the total weight upon them were sensitive to one-sixteenth of an ounce. The tests on dogs were vitiated by the use of two drugs administered to secure the necessary quiet and freedom from struggle so necessary to keep the beam at balance.
The ideal tests on dogs would be obtained in those dying from some disease that rendered them much exhausted and incapable of struggle. It was not my fortune to get dogs dying from such sickness.
The net result of the experiments conducted on human beings, is that a loss of substance occurs at death not accounted for by known channels of loss. Is it the soul substance? It would seem to me to be so. According to our hypothesis such a substance is necessary to the assumption of continuing or persisting personality after bodily death, and here we have experimental demonstration that a substance capable of being weighed does leave the human body at death.
If this substance is a counterpart to the physical body, has the same bulk, occupies the same dimensions in space, then it is a very much lighter substance than the atmosphere surrounding our earth which weighs about one and one-fourth ounces per cubic foot. This would be a fact of great significance, as such a body would readily ascend in our atmosphere. The absence of a weighable mass leaving the body at death would of course be no argument against continuing personality, for a space-occupying body or substance might exist not capable of being weighed, such as the ether.
It has been suggested that the ether might be that substance, but with the modern conception of science that the ether is the primary form of all substance, that all other forms of matter are merely differentiations of the ether having varying densities, then it seems to me that soul substance which is in this life linked organically with the body, cannot be identical with the ether. Moreover, the ether is supposed to be nondiscontinuous, a continuous whole and not capable of existing in separate masses as ether, whereas the one prime requisite for a continuing personality or individuality is the quality of separateness, the ego as separate and distinct from all things else, the nonego.
To my mind therefore the soul substance cannot be the ether as ether; but if the theory that ether is the primary form of all substance is true, then the soul substance must necessarily be a differentiated form of it.
If it is definitely proved that there is in the human being a loss of substance at death not accounted for by known channels of loss, and that such loss of substance does not occur in the dog as my experiments would seem to show, then we have here a physiological difference between the human and the canine at least and probably between the human and all other forms of animal life.
I am aware that a large number of experiments would require to be made before the matter can be proved beyond any possibility of error, but if further and sufficient experimentation proves that there is a loss of substance occurring at death and not accounted for by known channels of loss, the establishment of such a truth cannot fail to be of the utmost importance.
One ounce of fact more or less will have more weight in demonstrating the truth of the reality of continued existences with the necessary basis of substance to rest upon, than all the hair-splitting theories of theologians and metaphysicians combined.
If other experiments prove that there is a loss of weight occurring at death, not accounted for by known channels of loss, we must either admit the theory that it is the hypothetical soul substance, or some other explanation of the phenomenon should be forthcoming. If proved true, the materialistic conception will have been fully met, and proof of the substantial basis for mind or spirit or soul continuing after the death of the body, insisted upon as necessary by the materialists, will have been furnished.
It will prove also that the spiritualistic conception of the immateriality of the soul was wrong. The postulates of religious creeds have not been a positive and final settlement of the question.
The theories of all the philosophers and all the philosophies offer no final solution of the problem of continued personality after bodily death. This fact alone of a space occupying body of measurable weight disappearing at death, if verified, furnishes the substantial basis for persisting personality or a conscious ego surviving the act of bodily death, and in the element of certainty is worth more than the postulates of all the creeds and all the metaphysical arguments combined.
In the year 1854 Rudolph Wagner, the physiologist, at the Gottingen Congress of Physiologists, proposed a discussion of a "Special Soul Substance." The challenge was accepted, but no discussion followed and among the 500 voices present not one was raised in defense of a spiritualistic philosophy. Have we found Wagner's soul substance?
2008年7月8日星期二
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