Probable Future Advances in Evolution 849 



But is immortality unthinkable or impossible as a future 

 heritage for mankind? In reply we might first quote the 

 following by an eminent psychologist: "Science," he says, 

 "opposes to any doctrine of individual immortality an un- 

 broken and impregnable barrier." But, while, with our present 

 knowledge, almost insuperable difiiculties stand in the way 

 of an acceptance of immortal life for the individual, the possi- 

 bility is by no means unthinkable. We have tried to demon- 

 strate that all terrestrial bodies exhibit an advancing molecular 

 complexity from primitive ether atoms through hydrogen atoms 

 and other atomic bodies to simple bivalent molecules, next 

 to trivalent and quartivalent ones often associated with colloid 

 substances. From these we have passed to the higher quartiva- 

 lent and the pentavalent, so typical of biotic and cognitic 

 life. Next, in hexavalent and heptavalent compounds we 

 recognize the highly complex bodies associated with cogitic 

 activity of higher animals, while these again suggest that even 

 eight "elements" may enter into composition of the highest 

 human activities. With these advancing molecular aggrega- 

 tions we have correlated thermic, lumic, chemic, electric, biotic, 

 cognitic, cogitic, and spiritic energies, as ever more condensed 

 conditions or states of motion, in relation to inert ether par- 

 ticles. 



Now if the sum total of such "states of motion" exist in 

 a definite ratio as the energy-characteristic of each human 

 being, and are constantly being diminished by expenditure 

 of energy, but as constantly rebuilt again to continue the 

 individual, it follows that if at death the energy, and specially 

 the cogitic-spiritic, can leave the then deenergizing body, and 

 pass in the same related ratio into any other terrestrial or 

 ultra-terrestrial body, such might continue to absorb fresh en- 

 ergy to perpetuate itself, from supplies of it in solar space, and 

 thus live on at least as indefinitely as has living substance 

 since its first evolution on the earth, many millions of years 

 ago. But the whole speculation demands so much of what 

 now appears unlikely, forced, and artificial that we can only 

 put it aside by saying that individual immortality in a per- 



