ON IMMORTALITY. 157 



doctrine of descent, which, it is thought, should finally 

 lay this question of man's immortality for ever at rest. 



According to this argument, which is wholly indepen- 

 dent of the physiological ones just considered, man is 

 only the higher animal slowly evolved from the lower, 

 with intellectual and moral qualities differing only in 

 degree, and not in kind, from the lower ; why, then, should 

 he not share the common final fate of all the animals ? 

 He is not an infinitely superior being, separated, as he 

 once fondly supposed, by an impassable gulf from the rest 

 of living beings ; the very attributes which he possesses 

 only in higher degree, and in virtue of which the claim 

 to immortality has been preferred in his behalf, the other 

 animals possess in some degree, and, indeed, together with 

 intellectual qualities not inconsiderable, in the possession 

 of some of the highest moral attributes courage, fidelity, 

 patience, self-sacrifice, affection some of the lower 

 animals, the dog, the horse, the ant, far surpass him ; 

 while in the human species itself, as is well known, these 

 same higher qualities, mental and moral, exist in all 

 degrees, from their almost total absence in the savage 

 whether untutored or civilized, up to the intellectual 

 height of a Shakespeare or a Newton, and to the moral 

 splendour of a Socrates or a Buddha ; is it, then, to be 

 contended that every man, from the saint, the sage, and 

 the martyr, to the savage, the fool, and the man " more 

 brutish than the brute," and still more that every animal, 

 from the man down to the mollusc, is to possess the dread 

 and extraordinary attribute of immortality? No, cer- 

 tainly ; not every animal ; only the man, we are told. 

 But even with this sharp separation of man, there would 

 be abundant difficulties in admitting all men equally to 

 immortality, as we have just seen. Unfortunately, how- 

 ever, this separation, this arbitrary exclusion of the lower 



