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IX

HEAVEN AND HELL¹

Swedenborg's interior eyes penetrated the profoundest secrets of heavenly beatitudes, contrasted with the dismal wretchedness of the infernal state. He imparts the true philosophy of opposite mental and spiritual conditions.² Men have suffered more from imaginary ills than from actual causes of sorrow. In Christendom the most solemn subject is the eternal fate of a large part of the human family. There is evil and there are consequently doers of evil; there is vice and hence there are vicious characters; there is sin and this means that there are sinners; crime involves criminals. For all these heaven is too good a place, and so arises that condign realm of the wicked which is called hell. It is most important to escape this eternal penitentiary, most natural to desire the safety of children and relatives; hence obedience to fundamental rules of salvation, the practice of religion and morals.

Every thinking mind believes that everlasting happiness is the just destiny of those who are called virtuous, pure and truly righteous. On the other side of the subject the Bible says that "the wicked shall go away into everlasting punishment," and here is the contrast to that

¹ See Beyond the Valley, pp. 264-268, condensed.
² This must not be understood as an unqualified endorsement of the doctrine in Swedenborg's celebrated work, entitled Heaven and Hell. On the surface it is obviously an expression of concurrence with the spirit of that work, but even here the general views of Davis concerning the after-life offer a correction at large to this utterance of the moment.

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Heaven and Hell

state of the just made perfect, of whom it is said that they shall "enter into eternal life." The despair of thousands arises out of this contrast. And yet, as spiritual philosophers, we must contemplate the fact that there are evils, sin, wickedness; and, as philanthropists, we cannot repress feelings of sympathy and solicitude concerning the sorrowful condition of a large portion of the human race.

The personal existence of each human being unfolds a world of perplexing problems. When did this human fact begin? No mind can comprehend fully the when and where of such origin. In man's physical body we find vestiges of all states through which he was evolved physically. We find also in his mental equipment, and more obviously in his propensities and appetites, distinct traces of the mentalities and vital potentialities which have served as his progenitors. He is the immediate result of the marriage between a man and woman, but who can calculate the forces which, acting in and through father and mother, culminated in his individual life.

The foundation of hell in man is his mind, affections, passions and wilful propensities to generate discords. So too is man's heaven founded upon his mind, his love of truth, purity, justice, peace and universal good will.¹ But it is not true that man is individually the creator of his own misery or happiness, for "no man liveth to himself," alone among causes and effects as their lord and master. He is part of a stupendous whole and must move with the whole. The hell of any individual is the

¹ This is, roughly speaking, the doctrine of Swedenborg in a somewhat crude reflection rather than in a summary form. Davis says expressly that the Swedish seer endowed the human soul with freedom and rationality, but that these attributions will not bear the light of science and fact. If Davis, however, is speaking of the soul as a vesture of Divine Spirit, according to his later view, then the seed of postulated freedom and reasonableness is obviously not in the vesture; but if he is speaking of the spirit itself, an individualised Divine Essence apart from rationality and freedom is not a thinkable proposition.

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The Harmonial Philosophy

accumulated discord of causes and effects in society, within him and without. He is part of an irresistible social machine, a part of positive political life, part of an endless river of being which ebbs and flows in every good as well as in every evil channel. It is thus as a part and medium, not as a creator and not as an original force, that man experiences so much of hell as reaches into his consciousness, and also enjoys alternatively what little of heaven may succeed in pressing itself between the meshes of the discords into his waiting heart.¹

If therefore we permit reason to carry us intelligently into higher realms, into the vast spiritual spheres beyond the tomb, we shall behold this truth—that the individual is—to some extent—in hell or heaven according to his actual condition and surroundings. His faculties of will and rationality are important but they are not causes, not the projecting creators, of his companions and scenery in the Summer Land. Man's rationality and will-power, I repeat, are inseparable agents in unfolding and fixing the condition and experiences of his present and future.² The perpetuity of hell on the left and of heaven on the right do not depend on the individual. Whatever is true in these terms depends on the system of the Divine Mind, which is "harmony not understood."

¹ Davis is seeking to express the view that man is largely made what he is by circumstance and inherited tendency. We shall find, however, later on that man is affirmed to be master of his circumstances, while the doctrine of progress which Davis propounds everywhere shows—ipso facto—that he can overcome disqualifying tendencies. Moreover, the notion of a Divine Nature in man which is above sin and discord renders all these considerations the essence of fantasy. It is just, however, to add that this notion was brought in unwarily by Davis, that it has no place in his system and is indeed thereby excluded.
² It should be understood that liberty and reason are only denied to the soul as part of a declamation against Swedenborgian and other Christian eschatology. Man free and accountable gave colour to the conventional idea of rewards and punishments, and Davis did not see that there was another way of escape, in the liberty of the divine subject.