Probable Future Advances in Evolution 845 



desire for immortality is an instinct, and can reasonably be 

 regarded as an indication of that which the author of this 

 desire wills to do." But an instinct is invariably the outcome 

 of definite actions oft repeated in the history of an animal and 

 which has become correspondingly easy of repetition (p. 560). 

 But, as Ferguson puts it, what has really happened is that 

 man has so long thought of and pictured out the idea of immor- 

 tality that the act itself must be a reality, which is a begging 

 of the whole position. 



But, before accepting or rejecting such a possible state, 

 we may try to learn whether a natural and connected expla- 

 nation can be given of the belief in man, as originating from 

 spiritic action in relation to proenvironal effort or stimulus. 



The history of nations and of the individuals composing 

 them, as well as the personal experience of each aspiring human 

 being, give proof that the individual often strives to com- 

 memorate his or her personality to succeeding generations. 

 Equally true is it, specially in the case of distinguished per- 

 sons, who may have industriously labored to blot out or erase 

 the commemorative records of their contemporaries or pred- 

 ecessors. Nowhere has this been more extensively shown 

 than in Egypt, the land that fostered — if it did not actually 

 give rise to — the first clear teachings on the doctrine of immor- 

 tality. Thus the records of the splendid achievements and 

 the ambitions of Queen Hatshepsut were so definitely oblit- 

 erated by her early successors that we only know of these by 

 collateral or neglected evidence. But long prior to her reign 

 many of the Egyptian kings had claimed the homage due to 

 gods, and later were viewed as immortal beings. 



Further, many circumstances prove that primitive man 

 early viewed death as a separation of the material or bodily 

 part from the immaterial or mento-spiritual part. The latter 

 also was regarded as a form of existence that lived on under 

 different conditions or to practically indefinite extent. Thus 

 originated the Brahminic "transmigration of spirits" idea, and 

 the greatly more elaborate worship of the dead in their "houses 

 of eternity" by the Egyptians. It is now universally con- 



