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Immortality in the Light of Synechism

There is a famous saying of Parmenides {esti gar einai, méden d’ ouk einai}, “being is, and not-being is nothing.” This sounds plausible; yet synechism flatly denies it, declaring that being is a matter of more or less, so as to merge insensibly into nothing. [—]

Synechism, even in its less stalwart forms, can never abide dualism, properly so called. [—] In particular, the synechist will not admit that physical and psychical phenomena are entirely distinct, – whether as belonging to different categories of substance, or as entirely separate sides of one shield, – but will insist that all phenomena are of one character, though some are more mental and spontaneous, others more material and regular. [—]

Nor must any synechist say, “I am altogether myself, and not at all you. [—]

Synechism refuses to believe that when death comes, even the carnal consciousness ceases quickly.

The word synechism is the English form of the Greek {synechismos}, from {synechés}, continuous. For two centuries we have been affixing -ist and -ism to words, in order to note sects which exalt the importance of those elements which the stem-words signify. Thus, materialism is the doctrine that matter is everything, idealism the doctrine that ideas are everything, dualism the philosophy which splits everything in two. In like manner, I have proposed to make synechism mean the tendency to regard everything as continuous.

[—] I carry the doctrine so far as to maintain that continuity governs the whole domain of experience in every element of it.

…the synechist will not admit that physical and psychical phenomena are entirely distinct, – whether as belonging to different categories of substance, or as entirely separate sides of one shield, – but will insist that all phenomena are of one character, though some are more mental and spontaneous, others more material and regular. Still, all alike present that mixture of freedom and constraint, which allows them to be, nay, makes them to be teleological, or purposive.