Immortality[1]
PREFACE
In this lecture the general concept of Immortality will be stressed, and the reference to mankind will be a deduction from wider considerations. It will be presupposed that all entities or factors in the universe are essentially relevant to each other’s existence. A complete account lies beyond out conscious experience. In what follows, this doctrine of essential relevance is applied to the interpretation of those fundamental beliefs concerned with the notion of immortality.
I
There is finitude — unless this were true, infinity would have no meaning. The contrast of finitude and infinity arises from the fundamental metaphysical truth that every entity involves an indefinite array of perspectives, each perspective expressing a finite characteristic of that entity. But any one finite perspective does not enable an entity to shake off its essential connection with totality. The infinite background always remains as the unanalysed reason why that finite perspective of that entity has the special character that it does have. Any analysis of the limited perspective always includes some additional factors of the background. The entity is then experienced in a wider finite perspective, still presupposing the inevitable background which is the universe in its relation to that entity.
For example, consider this lecture hall. We each have an immediate finite experience of it. In order to understand this hall, thus experienced, we widen the analysis of its obvious relations. The hall is part of a building; the building is in Cambridge, Mass.; Cambridge, Mass., is on the surface of the Earth; the Earth is a planet in the solar system; the solar system belongs to a nebula; this nebula belongs to a spatially related system of nebula; these nebulæ exhibit a system with a finite temporal existence; they have arisen from antecedent circumstances which we are unable to specify, and will transform into other forms of existence beyond our imagination. Also
- ↑ Ed. Note: This second part of Professor Whitehead’s “Summary” was originally delivered on April 22, 1941, as the Ingersoll Lecture at the Harvard Divinity School.
