THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 193 



the existence of a spiritual mind or soul, differentiating him 

 from the brute and constituting him a being unique, despite 

 the unmistakable homologies discernible between bestial 

 organisms and the human body. Everywhere and always man- 

 kind as a whole have manifested, by the universal and uniquely 

 human practice of burying the dead, their unswerving and 

 indomitable conviction that man is spirit as well as flesh, 

 an animal, indeed, yet animated by something not present 

 in the animal, namely, a spiritual soul, deathless and inde- 

 structible, capable of surviving the decay of the organism and 

 of persisting throughout eternity. 



But, if the human mind or soul is spiritual, it is clear that 

 it cannot be a product of organic evolution, any more than 

 it can be a product of parental generation. On the contrary, 

 each and every human soul must be an immediate creation of 

 the Author of Nature, not evolved from the internal poten- 

 tiality of matter, but infused into matter from without. The 

 human soul is created in organized matter, but not from it. 

 Nor can the Divine action, in this case, be regarded as a 

 supernatural interposition; for it supplements, rather than 

 supersedes, the natural process of reproduction; and, since 

 it is not in matter to produce spirit, a creative act is demanded 

 by the very nature of things. 



Evolution is nothing more nor less than a transmutation 

 of matter, and a transmutation of matter cannot terminate 

 in the annihilation of matter and the constitution of non-mat- 

 ter or spirit. If nothing of the terminus a quo persists in the 

 final product, we have substitution, and not transmutation. 

 The evolution of matter, therefore, cannot progress to a point 

 where all materiality is eliminated. Hence, whatever proceeds 

 from matter, either as an emanation or an action, will, of 

 necessity, be material. It should be noted, however, that by 

 material we do not mean corporeal; for material denotes not 

 merely matter itself, but everything that intrinsically depends 

 on matter. The term, therefore, is wider in its sense than 

 corporeal, because it comprises, besides matter, all the prop- 



