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die our bodily functions, including brain functions, will cease to be 

 performed. Are we, then, annihilated? The answer of scientists is 

 decisively "Yes, so far as we are concerned as sentient individual 

 beings." | Science teaches us that the three things which make up con- 

 sciousness, or man's mental side, are thought, emotion, and velkion ; 

 that they are inseparably bound up with the brain and the nervous 

 system, whose functions they are ; and that when the brain dies these 

 functions cease. This is undeniable. Therefore, if there is any future 

 existence, it is not one of consciousness. The power of muscular 

 movement is arrested at death, and, therefore, we must admit that 

 the power of thought, emotion, and volition ceases at death. Why 

 should the appearance be deceptive in one case and not in the 

 other ? It is not the case of a separate entity in the body, but of a 

 distinct function an effect which ceases with its proper cause. It is 

 absolutely certain, from the teaching of science, that the consciousness 

 grows as the brain and body grow, varies according to the standard of 

 health in the brain, and declines as the general vigour of the brain 

 declines ; and, therefore, we can but admit that it dies with the brain, 

 We also learn from Embryology that consciousness evolved by slow 

 degrees from unconsciousness, and that once there was no thought in 

 any of us. \ Even if science were to admit that man's consciousness 

 continued after death, it would be equally rational to admit that animals 

 also had a future consciousness ; for it is quite clear we have slowly 

 evolved from the lowest germ of animal life. Man's very attributes are 

 found in a lower degree in animals, and yet it is the possession of his 

 lofty attributes which he says entitles him to conscious immortality. The 

 intellectual qualities in animals differ from those in man only in, degree, 

 while in the possession of some of the highest moral attributes 

 such as courage, fidelity, patience, self-sacrifice, and affection some of 

 the lower animals, as the dog, the horse, and the ant, far surpass him. 

 Even among human beings themselves these higher qualities, mental 

 and moral, exist in all degrees, from their almost total absence in the 

 savage up to the mental and moral splendour of a Buddha, a Socrates, 

 a Disraeli, or a Gladstone, f Are all these lower animals, savage men, 

 and intellectual and moral geniuses, to have individual conscious im- 

 mortality ? If, as some say, man only and not animals are immortal, 

 then the question naturally arises, When and how came man so ? If he 

 was always immortal, so were animals. If he became immortal later 

 on, he must either have slowly acquired the gift, or it must have been 



