[FN#223] ‘The Eternal Life,’ p. 26.

Professor Munsterberg tries to distinguish sharply life as the causal system of physiological and psychological processes, and life as a system of interrelated-will-attitudes, and denounces the former as fleeting and valueless, in order to prize the latter as eternal and of absolute value.  How could he, however, succeed in his task unless he has two or three lives, as some animals are believed to have?  Is it not one and the same life that is treated on the one hand by science as a system of physiological and psychological processes, and is conceived on the other by the Professor himself as a system of interrelated-will-attitudes?  It is true that science treats of life as it is observed in time, space, and causality, and it estimates it of no value, since to estimate the value of things is no business of science.  The same life observed as a system of interrelated-will-attitudes is independent of time, space, and causality as he affirms.  One and the same life includes both phases, the difference being in the points of view of the observers.

Life as observed only from the scientific point of view is bare abstraction; it is not concrete life; nor is life as observed only in the interrelated-will-attitude point of view the whole of life.  Both are abstractions.  Concrete life includes both phases.  Moreover, Professor Munsterberg sees life in the relationship entirely independent-of time, space, and causality, saying:  “If you agree or disagree with the latest act of the Russian Czar, the only significant relation which exists between him and you has nothing to do with the naturalistic fact that geographically ’an ocean lies between you; and if you are really a student of Plato, your only important relation to the Greek philosopher has nothing to do with the other naturalistic fact that biologically two thousand years lie between you”; and declares life (seen from that point of view) to be immortal and eternal.  This is as much as to say that life, when seen in the relationship independent of time and space, is independent of time and space-that is, immortal and eternal.  Is it not mere tautology?  He is in the right in insisting that life can be seen from the scientific point of view as a system of physiological and psychological processes, and at the same time as a system of interrelated-will-attitudes independent of time and space.  But he cannot by that means prove the existence of concrete individual life which is eternal and immortal, because that which is independent of time and space is the relationship in which he observes life, but not life itself.  Therefore we have to notice that life held by Professor Munsterberg to be eternal and immortal is quite a different thing from the eternal life or immortality of soul believed by common sense.

11.  Life in the Concrete.