William Osler's philosophy / by Ludwig Edelstein.

  • Ludwig Edelstein
Date:
1946
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: William Osler's philosophy / by Ludwig Edelstein. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    18/30 page 284
    endeavors to remove scientific objections to the assumption of immortality and the contentions of pragmatists like Schiller that the possibility of a scientific proof of the existence of the soul must be acknowledged.4 Nay, he proceeds to show that, contrary to the claims recently made, from the point of view of science even the reality of the problem at stake must be questioned. A few years before Osier’s talk, the American Branch of the Society for Psychical Research had issued a questionnaire that was meant “ to determine the nature of men’s actual sentiments and actual bias ” in regard to death. Schiller had expressed his hope that this inquiry, even if the majority of people should prove to be indifferent in the matter, would stimulate interest in the problem and thus make it a real one; for to him even the possibility of knowledge depended on the “ social atmosphere.” The answers to the questionnaire were critically discussed by Schiller in 1904.5 Osier, on the evidence of his own research which he had begun long ago, denies that men of his generation, even in the last hours of life, are still troubled by any concern with immortality. It thus appears that the scientist, unable as he is to give a positive solution of the problem, is also dealing with a sham question.6 President Eliot, so the story goes, had long wished that a physician should discuss the subject of immortality, and when he invited Welch to do so and the latter refused because “ Science had nothing to say on the subject of immortality,” Eliot answered that that was just what he wanted him to say. After Osier’s speech, however, Eliot “ expressed himself as greatly disappointed, for instead of hearing a scientific discourse on the subject, if there could be such a thing, he had listened merely to a brilliant and charming essay.” 7 This reaction at first seems astonishing. For one 4 Contrast Student Life, 126 f., with James, Memories, 145 ff. [1901], and Human Immortality, 1898, 24 f. (Ingersoll Lecture) ; cf. also F. C. S. Schiller, Humanism, 1903, 288 (the book was in Osier’s possession [Bibliotheca Osleriana, no. 5422] ; the editors rightly draw attention to the fact that the three last papers deal with immortality). Incidentally, the two references to Schiller in Cushing, II, 515, 559, concern the pragmatist Schiller; the index lists the references under F. von Schiller (p. 559 deals with Schiller’s paper in Studies in the History and Method of Science, ed. by C. Singer, I, 1917, 235 ff; which of the medical papers of Schiller is referred to on p. 515, I cannot say). 5 The questionnaire is reprinted in Schiller, Humanism, 243-245; cf. 228, n. 1. For Schiller’s own views, ibid., 245, 248 f. Osier possessed the collected answers (Bibliotheca Osleriana, no. 5423). 6 Student Life, 117. For Osier’s investigations, cf. also Cushing, I, 294, who stresses Osier’s deep philosophical interest in the problem of death, and notes that a great number of his books concerned this question. 7 Cushing, I, 597, 639. Eliot approved only that part of the speech in which Osier spoke of the last sensations of the dying (ibid., I, 639).
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