CREATION 41 



choice but because that beneficent Being who 

 created them has willed that they shall be so. 

 They cannot cease to be because God resolves 

 to uphold them in an eternal existence. 



Socrates admitted the immortality of all animal 

 life, and maintained that " the bodies of men and 

 beasts are warm and living as long as they breathe, 

 and as soon as the breath leaves the body, not only 

 do warmth and motion cease, but the body begins 

 to decay. Life, therefore, is breath, and breath is 

 air, and as air is eternal and inseparable in its very 

 nature, therefore the soul or portion of air which 

 gave animation to the body will not perish at 

 the dissolution of the body." Elihu conveys the 

 same idea when he says : " The Spirit of God 

 hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty 

 hath given me life." Therefore if the breath 

 which inflated Adam's nostrils was a particle of 

 Divine essence which imparted immortality to man, 

 then we must conclude that all other animals have 

 the same kind of immortality, for they received the 

 same kind of breath. 



As Solomon says of man and the lower animals, 

 " They have all one breath ; so that a man hath no 

 preeminence above a beast." 



