in 1836 he returned to his official duties and literary pursuits. He died at Düsseldorf on the 25th of August 1840.
Immermann had considerable aptitude for the drama, but it was long before he found a congenial field for his talents. His early plays are imitations, partly of Kotzebue’s, partly of the Romantic dramas of Tieck and Müllner, and are now forgotten. In 1826, however, appeared Cardenio und Celinde, a love tragedy of more promise; this, as well as the earlier productions, awakened the ill-will of Platen, who made Immermann the subject of his wittiest satire, Der romantische Oedipus. Between 1827 and 1832 Immermann redeemed his good name by a series of historical tragedies, Das Trauerspiel in Tirol (1827), Kaiser Friedrich II. (1828) and a trilogy from Russian history, Alexis (1832). His masterpiece is the poetic mystery, Merlin (1831), a noble poem, which, like its model, Faust, deals with the deeper problems of modern spiritual life. Immermann’s important dramaturgic experiments in Düsseldorf are described in detail in Düsseldörfer Anfänge (1840). More significant is his position as a novelist. Here he clearly stands on the boundary line between Romanticism and modern literature; his Epigonen (1836) might be described as one of the last Romantic imitations of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, while the satire and realism of his second novel, Münchhausen (1838), form a complete break with the older literature. As a prose-writer Immermann is perhaps best remembered to-day by the admirable story of village life, Der Oberhof, which is embedded in the formless mass of Münchhausen. His last work was an unfinished epic, Tristan und Isolde (1840).
Immermann’s Gesammelte Schriften were published in 14 vols. in 1835–1843; a new edition, with biography and introduction by R. Boxberger, in 20 vols. (Berlin, 1883); selected works, edited by M. Koch (4 vols., 1887–1888) and F. Muncker (6 vols., 1897). See G. zu Putlitz, Karl Immermann, sein Leben und seine Werke (2 vols., 1870); F. Freiligrath, Karl Immermann, Blätter der Erinnerung an ihn (1842); W. Müller, K. Immermann und sein Kreis (1860); R. Fellner, Geschichte einer deutschen Musterbühne (1888); K. Immermann: eine Gedächtnisschrift (1896).
IMMERSION (Lat. immersio, dipping), the act of being
plunged into a fluid, or being overwhelmed by anything; in
astronomy, the disappearance of a heavenly body in the shadow
of another, especially of a satellite in the shadow of its
primary.
IMMIGRATION (from Lat. in, into, and migrare, to depart),
the movement of population, other than that of casual
visitors or travellers, into one country from another (see
Migration).
IMMORTALITY (Lat. in-, not, mortalis, mortal, from mors,
death), the condition or quality of being exempt from death
or annihilation. This condition has been predicated of man,
both body and soul, in many senses; and the term is used by
analogy of those whose deeds or writings have made a lasting
impression on the memory of man. The belief in human immortality
in some form is almost universal; even in early
animistic cults the germ of the idea is present, and in all the
higher religions it is an important feature. This article is confined
to summarizing the philosophical or scientific arguments for,
and objections to, the doctrine of the persistence of the human
soul after death. For the Christian doctrine, see Eschatology;
and for other religions see the separate articles.
In the Orphic mysteries “the soul was regarded as a part of the divine, a particula aurae divinae, for which the body in its limited and perishable condition was no fit organ, but a grave or prison (τὸ σῶμα σῆμα). The existence of the soul in the body was its punishment for sins in a previous condition; and the doom of its sins in the body was its descent into other bodies, and the postponement of its deliverance” (Salmond’s Christian Doctrine of Immortality, p. 109). This deliverance was what the mysteries promised. A remarkable passage in Pindar (Thren. 2) is thus rendered by J. W. Donaldson (Pindar’s Epinician or Triumphal Odes, p. 372). “By a happy lot, all persons travel to an end free of toil. And the body, indeed, is subject to the powerful influence of death; but a shadow of vitality is still left alive, and this alone is of divine origin; while our limbs are in activity it sleeps; but, when we sleep, it discloses to the mind in many dreams the future judgment with regard to happiness and misery.”
The belief of Socrates is uncertain. In the Apology he is represented as sure that “no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death,” but as not knowing whether “death be a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or a change or migration of the soul from this world to the next” (i. 40, 41). In the Phaedo a confident expectation is ascribed to him. He is not the body to be buried; he will not remain with his friends after he has drunk the poison, but he will go away to the happiness of the blessed. The silence of the Memorabilia of Xenophon must be admitted as an argument to the contrary; but the probability seems to be that Plato did not in the Phaedo altogether misrepresent the Master. In Plato’s thought the belief held a prominent position. “It is noteworthy,” says Professor D. G. Ritchie, “that, in the various dialogues in which Plato speaks of immortality, the arguments seem to be of different kinds, and most of them quite unconnected with one another.” In the Phaedrus (245 c) the argument is, that the soul is self-moving, and, therefore, immortal; and this argument is repeated in the Laws (x. 894, 895). It is an argument that Plato probably inherited from Alcmaeon, the physician of Croton (Arist. De An. i. 2, § 17 405 a 29), whose views were closely connected with those of the Pythagoreans. In the Phaedo the main argument up to which all the others lead is that the soul participates in the idea of life. Recollection (anamnesis) alone would prove pre-existence, but not existence after death. In the tenth book of the Republic we find the curious argument that the soul does not perish like the body, because its characteristic evil, sin or wickedness does not kill it as the diseases of the body wear out the bodily life. In the Timaeus (41 a) the immortality even of the gods is made dependent on the will of the Supreme Creator; souls are not in their own nature indestructible, but persist because of His goodness. In the Laws (xii. 959 a) the notion of a future life seems to be treated as a salutary doctrine which is to be believed because the legislator enacts it (Plato, p. 146). The estimate to be formed of this reasoning has been well stated by Dr A. M. Fairbairn, “Plato’s arguments for immortality, isolated, modernized, may be feeble, even valueless, but allowed to stand where and as he himself puts them, they have an altogether different worth. The ratiocinative parts of the Phaedo thrown into syllogisms may be easily demolished by a hostile logician; but in the dialogue as a whole there is a subtle spirit and cumulative force which logic can neither seize nor answer” (Studies in the Philosophy of Religion, p. 226, 1876).
Aristotle held that the νοῦς or active intelligence alone is immortal. The Stoics were not agreed upon the question. Cleanthes is said to have held that all survive to the great conflagration which closes the cycle, Chrysippus that only the wise will. Marcus Aurelius teaches that even if the spirit survive for a time it is at last “absorbed in the generative principle of the universe.” Epicureanism thought that “the wise man fears not death, before which most men tremble; for, if we are, it is not; if it is, we are not.” Death is extinction. Augustine adopts a Platonic thought when he teaches that the immortality of the soul follows from its participation in the eternal truths. The Apologists themselves welcomed, and commended to others, the Christian revelation as affording a certainty of immortality such as reason could not give. The Aristotelian school in Islam did not speak with one voice upon the question; Avicenna declared the soul immortal, but Averroes assumes only the eternity of the universal intellect. Albertus Magnus argued that the soul is immortal, as ex se ipsa causa, and as independent of the body; Pietro Pomponazzi maintained that the soul’s immortality could be neither proved nor disproved by any natural reasons. Spinoza, while consistently with his pantheism denying personal immortality, affirms that “the human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but there remains of it something which is eternal” (Eth. v. prop, xxiii.). The reason he gives is that, as this something “appertains to the
