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(Latin, in, mortalis; German, Unsterblichkeit)

By immortality is ordinarily understood the doctrine that the human soul will survive death, continuing in the possession of an endless conscious existence. Together with the question of the existence of God, it forms the most momentous issue with which philosophy has to deal. It belongs primarily to rational or metaphysical psychology and the philosophy of religion, though it comes also into contact with other branches of philosophy and some of the natural sciences.

Belief in a future life of some sort seems to have been practically universal at all times. Here and there individuals have rejected this belief, and particular forms of religion or systems of philosophy logically incompatible with it have had adherents; still, however vague and inconsistent may have been the views among different peoples as to the character of the life beyond the grave, it remains true that the persuasion of the reality of a future existence seems to have been hitherto ineradicable throughout the human race as a whole. The doctrine of immortality, strictly or properly understood, means personal immortality, the endless conscious existence of the individual soul. It implies that the being which survives shall preserve its personal identity and be connected by conscious memory with the previous life. Unless the individual's identity be preserved, a future existence has relatively little interest . From the doctrine of immortality thus explained there have been sundry variations. Some have held that after a future life of greater or less duration the soul will ultimately perish. Throughout the East there has been a widespread tendency to believe in metempsychosis or transmigrationthat individual souls successively animate different human beings, and even the bodies of lower animals. A special form of this view is the theory of metamorphosis, that in such a series of reincarnations the soul undergoes or can undergo evolution and improvement of its condition . Pantheism, if logical, can offer only an impersonal immortality, a future condition in which the individual is absorbed into the absolutethe one infinite being, whether conscious or unconscious. Practically, this differs little from annihilation. For the materialist , the soul, or the conscious life, is but a function of the organism, and necessarily perishes at death. Positivists , however, while adopting this conclusion, would still cheer mankind with the hope of a place in the "choir invisible", that is, a future existence in the minds and on the lips of future generationsa not very substantial form of immortality, and one of a very aristocratic character, the franchise being narrowly limited.

Egypt affords at a very early date the most abundant evidence of an extremely vivid and intense belief in a future life. Offerings of provisions of all sorts to the spirits of the departed, elaborate funeral ceremonies, and the wonderfully skilful mummification of the bodies of the deceased, all bear witness to the strength of the Egyptians' convictions of the reality of the next life. (See EGYPT, especially sections on The Future Life and The Book of the Dead.)

The doctrine of personal survival with a future retribution for good and ill conduct is found in the earliest forms of Brahminism. At a later period a school of Brahmin philosophers evolved a system of vague Pantheism in which absorption into the Infinite Being is the final goal. Still, the popular belief has in practice always tended towards Polytheism, whilst the doctrine of successive reincarnations of the soul in different human beings or animals remained a constant expression of belief in survival. A special form of this belief is the doctrine of Karmathe persisting existence and transmission through re-incarnations of the sum of the past deeds and merits of the individual. Akin to the pantheistic absorption of philosophic Pantheism is the theory of Nirvana, which forms a central feature in strict Buddhism. Whatever Nirvana may mean for the philosophers and saints of Buddhism, for the multitude the ideal liberation from labour and pain is restful quiet, not death or extinction.

In China worship of ancestors is evidence of belief in some form of personal survival which carries us back to the earliest ages of that most ancient and conservative nation. The departed spirits are both helped and propitiated to aid their descendants by sacrifices and sundry services of filial piety (see CONFUCIANISM).

Similarly in Japan, whatever may be the genuine logical theory of the soul in the religion of Shintoism, the popular mind finds in the great institution of ancestor worship instinctive satisfaction and expression for the belief in a future life, which seems so deeply and universally rooted in human nature.

That early Jewish history shows that the Hebrew nation did not believe in a future life, is sometimes stated. It is true that temporal rewards and punishments from God are much insisted upon throughout the Old Testament, and that the doctrine of a future life occupies a less prominent position there than we should perhaps have anticipated. Still, careful study of the Old Testament reveals incidental and indirect evidence quite sufficient to establish the existence of this belief among the Israelites at an early date (see Genesis 2:7; Wisdom 2:22-23; Ecclesiastes 12:7; Proverbs 15:24; Isaiah 35:10; 51:6; Daniel 12:2, etc.). It would, however, on a priori grounds, have been incredible that the Hebrew people should not have held this belief, considering their intimate contact with the Egyptians on one side and the Chaldans on the other (see Atzberger , "Die christliche Eschatologie", Freiburg, 1890).

The Greeks seem to have been among the first to attempt systematic philosophical treatment of the question of immortality. Belief in a future life is clear in Homer, though the character of that existence is vague. Pindar's conception of immortality and of its retributive character is more distinct and also more spiritual . The Pythagoreans are vague and tinctured by Oriental Pantheism, though they certainly taught the doctrine of a future life and of metempsychosis. We have not definite texts defining Socrates' view, but it seems clear that he must have been a believer in immortality. It is, however, in the hands of his great pupil Plato that the doctrine attained its most elaborate philosophical exposition and defence. Plato's teaching on the subject is given in several of his writings, the "Meno", "Phdrus", "Gorgias", "Timus", and "Republic", but especially in the "Phdo". There are many variations and seeming inconsistencies, with liberal use of myth and allegory, in the unfolding of his ideas in these different works. For Plato, the soul is a being quite distinct from the body, related to it as the pilot to the ship, the charioteer to the chariot. The rational soul is the proper soul of man. It is a Divine element, and it is this which is immortal. Among his arguments in favour of immortality are the following:

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CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: Immortality