140 WHAT IS LIFE ? 



reason as the man does, and the mentally mature man 

 thinks differently from the immature man. 1 All these 

 facts are notorious. They are not new. How true is 

 the saying, " When I was a child I spake as a child, I 

 understood as a child, I thought as a child ; but when I 

 became a man I put away childish things." Science did 

 not exist at the time when the disciple of Jesus Christ 

 uttered these pregnant words. He could not know 

 that it was the slow organic alterations in the brain 

 which produced the differences of thought and action. 

 Then we looked through a glass darkly ; but to-day, 

 through the light of science, we see clearly. 2 



The power of regeneration always depends on that 

 subtle fluid we can now see, and the effects of which 

 we can trace, and we call the fluid Ether. Any other 



1 " Even in the course of our normal life a great number of dis- 

 tinct personalities succeed one another. It is by an artifice that we 

 connect them into one ; for after twenty years' time we no longer 

 have the same feelings or judgments as at the beginning of the 

 period." ("Alterations of Personality," Alfred Binet, 1896, p. 261.) 



2 " With regard to the human ' soul-organ,' the brain, the appli- 

 cation of the fundamental law of biogeny has been finally established 

 by the most careful empiric observations. The same may be said of 

 its functions, the ' activity of the soul.' For the development of a 

 function goes hand in hand with the gradual development of every 

 organ. The morphological differentiation of the various parts of the 

 brain corresponds with its physiological separation, or ' division of 

 labour.' Hence, what is commonly termed the ' soul ' or ' mind ' of 

 man (consciousness included), is merely the sum-total of the activities 

 of a large number of nerve-cells, the ganglia-cells, of which the brain 

 is composed. Where the normal arrangement and function of these 

 latter does not exist, it is impossible to conceive of a healthy ' soul.' 

 This idea, which is one of the most important principles of our modern 

 exact physiology, is certainly not compatible with the widespread belief 

 in the 'personal immortality ' of man." (" The History of Creation," 

 Professor Ernst Haeckel, 4th edition, 1892, vol. ii. p. 494.) 



