ABSTRACT
A more serious error in the ratiocination of a half century ago was the assumption that belief in a life beyond the grave implied belief in immortality. The belief in immortality, of course, represents these various phases from the human point of view. It is quite possible that the notion of human immortality as consisting in successive lives of generations was current alongside of the notion of life in heaven. The men who “get immortality” are thus those who please the gods. Now the way to please the gods is to sacrifice to them. Later Vedic belief, voiced in the speculation which eventually by imperceptible degrees passes into the formal theological and philosophical speculation of the Upanishads, plays with and elaborates the idea of immortality. The Father-god is said to be “half death and half immortality” that is, both mortality and immortality are phases of the supreme divinity.
