178 MAN'S PRIMITIVE STATE 



that immortality pertains exclusively to the soul, and 

 does not depend upon continuance of the body. This 

 reply cannot consistently be made by those who, from 

 the standpoint of naturalism, maintain that what is 

 called the soul is naturally and wholly dependent upon 

 the physical organism to discharge its proper functions 

 and to express itself. In any case, man is not a dis- 

 embodied soul, but is by nature constituted by an 

 union of body and soul. When they are divided, the 

 man is dead; and the survival of his soul after the dis- 

 solution of the body is not human immortality. It 

 is rather the death of the man, and the survival of an 

 entity which all natural investigation shows to be 

 insufficient to itself, apart from the human organism. 

 The aspiration of human beings after immortality must 

 be interpreted in a sense that does not utterly disagree 

 with what we know of human life and death. It 

 means aspiration after immortality of the whole man 

 — the only man that can be said to live. Whatever 

 may have been the original words and meaning of a 

 certain passage in the Book of Job, the English ren- 

 dering, "In my flesh shall I see God," ^ expresses the 

 only consummation that can adequately satisfy man's 

 natural instinct and heart-desire. 



bases his curious theory of the immortality of the protozoa and the 

 germ-plasm of higher species (see Evolution Theory, pp. 260-263), I 

 cannot take seriously Dr. Orr's use of that theory to establish the 

 notion that man was originally in possession of natural immortality 

 {God's Image, ch. vi). That writer's belief in the protestant doc- 

 trine that man's primitive state was a purely natural one handicaps 

 his apologetic in various ways. ' Job. xix. 26. 



