842 Causes and Course op^ Organic Evolution 



First then we believe that all students of biological phe- 

 nomena will concede direct life continuity for each human 

 being of today, backward through many millions of years, 

 to those primeval forms that started organic being during 

 the archa?an epoch. Furthermore, we have given reasons for 

 belie^•ing that from the primeval forms up to man a slow but 

 advancing integration and evolution has proceeded, in which 

 increasing complexity of molecules and of cells has been corre- 

 lated with increasing complexity of energizing phenomena. 

 In other words the finite immortality — if we may coin such 

 an expression — that each human being is the end-expression 

 of has been bound up in an intimate association of matter 

 and energy, both of which we have considered to be working 

 steadily into more complex relations. On uniformitarian 

 grounds, therefore, we might expect — almost predict w^ith 

 a large measure of certainty — that, so long as environal re- 

 lations continue along their present course, human life will 

 steadily advance to ever higher and more complex conditions. 



But the question of immortality from its earliest suggestion 

 in human history up till now has concerned and been centered 

 round each human individual. When death of each body 

 occurs, does this close existence for each, or is there some 

 essence, some energy, or some indestructible principle that 

 separates from the body and that lives on, possibly even in 

 a higher and more ethereal state, owing to its very disengage- 

 ment from the material body.^ Such has been and is the 

 question that man has been striving to decide during the past 

 5000 years at least, from the time of the early dynastic Egyp- 

 tians. Here we may note in passing the extremely crude 

 view, entertained by many during the past 2000 years at least, 

 and which recent advances in chemical and physical science 

 alone have set in the backgroimd, that the corporeal as well 

 as the s])iritual being will alike live again but in altered and 

 immortalized conditions. When the above sciences were in 

 a crude state, and "philosophy" was alone su])posed to explain 

 man's higher being, such crude views might linger on. Now 

 it is felt and expressed that the field of discussion must rest 

 on and occupy a much higher plane. 



