Future Life
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a life to succeed this one; a life beyond the tomb. Ethnic Faiths. - The belief in a future life is very widely spread. In its early form no distinction is drawn between for both the souls of men and brutes; another state of existence is reserved. In the lowest form of Animism, a figure of a deceased friend appearing to a survivor in a dream is supposed to be the person dead, whence actual soul of the faith in another state of existence becomes natural and easy. Two distinct forms of belief now diverge, the one leading in the direction of the transmigration of souls, the other maintaining the independent existence of the personal soul after the death of the body. Among the lower races, the moral element in the doctrine of a future life is almost wholly wanting. Judaism. There are but few allusions to a future life in the Old Testament. And many of The most notable one is, " them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise shall ; shine as the brightness of the firmament and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever" (Dan. xii: 2, 3). Christianity.- "Jesus Christ," says St. Paul, "hath abolished death, and hath immortality to light brought life and : 10). The through the gospel" (II Tim. i doctrine in this case is not merely that of the immortality of the soul, not transmigrated, but retaining its separate individuality (see IMMORTALITY); there is the resurrection superadded to this and transformation of the body (see The moral element RESURRECTION). in the doctrine of a future life is here all in all.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's in 1921 was working inside the evolutionary anthropology of E. B. Tylor, ranking beliefs from "the lowest form of Animism" among "the lower races" up to Christianity, where "the moral element ... is all in all." That ladder has been abandoned: since the mid-20th century anthropologists have treated funerary and afterlife beliefs as varied local systems rather than rungs on a single ascent, and the phrase "lower races" is no longer usable. Biblical scholarship has also sharpened the point Collier's made in passing: the verse it quotes, Daniel 12:2-3, is now generally dated to about 165 BC, making it one of the latest passages in the Hebrew Bible rather than an isolated early hint, and the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran from 1947 onward gave firsthand evidence of how varied Jewish views of the dead were in the century around Jesus. What has not changed much is the belief itself: surveys in Britain and the United States still find large majorities or near-majorities affirming some life after death, even where churchgoing has collapsed.
Written for this edition, 2026.