362 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



As in the history of animals and plants there are 

 graduations in the phenomena of life ; so do we see 

 numerous stages of psychical progress in man in this 

 world. Some men have been and are highly intellectual 

 giants, others are religious saints. From them are all 

 stages downwards, whether as individuals or races. Some 

 are " survivals " with only " rudimentary ideas," just as 

 there are still living lowly organised plants and animals. 



When is psychical evolution to end ? If it has taken 

 millions of years to evolve the body of man, may it not 

 take millions of years to perfect the human soul ? It is 

 very far from perfection now ? We must live in Faith 

 and Hope and not on/y by Sight. 



Now let us turn to Monists and Rationalists and hear 

 what they have got to say. I will take Haeckel's views 

 first. 



He calls the conception of the immortality of the soul 

 the " highest point of superstition, which is regarded as 

 the impregnable citadel of all mystical and dualistic 

 notions ". He attributes the belief to " the selfish interest 

 of the human personality, who is determined to have a 

 guarantee of his existence beyond the grave at any price "} 



" Thanatism," as he calls the mortality of the soul, " is 

 the opinion which holds that at a man's death not only 

 all the other physiological functions are arrested, but his 

 " soul " also disappears — that is, that sum of cerebral 

 functions which psychic dualism regards as a peculiar 

 entity, independent of the other vital processes in the 

 living body ", . . . " Personal psychic activity is extin- 

 guished like every other physical function." '^ 



' Op. cit., p. 192. 



^ I am not concerned here with Weismann's theory that unicellular 

 organisms, multiplying by division, are immortal. Ilacckcl repudiates it 

 altogether {op. cit., pp. 193, 194, 195). 



