MIND AND SOUL 203 



other active. So in like manner, I take it, life is dormant or 

 invisible when not clothed in a material or bodily surrounding, 

 awaiting to be recalled to visibility by re-creation or rebirth. 

 Then I will endeavour to show how the hypothesis of immor- 

 tality that I am about to suggest in this chapter appears to 

 me to be the most rational conception of immortality, because 

 it is based on the same process of evolution as is that of 

 material, plant and animal existence. 



Now let us, for example, take a grain of corn ; the life of 

 the future seed is the same life that is existent in the parent 

 plant, only that it is reproduced in greater multitudes of the 

 same seed or germ that produced the parent plant, in the head 

 of the new ear of corn, but it is the same life and has never 

 ceased to live. It has only kept up one continuous stream of 

 intermittent activity, of construction and reconstruction, dur- 

 ing the whole growth of the seed and plant, so the life of the 

 present seed and of plant is the same life as that of the parent 

 seed and plant ; it is only the shapes, the motion of electrical 

 activity, and the chemical action that have stopped or been 

 intermittent, and the stages of inactivity between its different 

 stages of germination, growth, flowering, seeding and its drop- 

 ping from the parent husk, a perfect seed to grow again re- 

 active in its rebirth in the life of the new seedling that have 

 temporarily ceased. But there is no such thing as death in 

 any of these changes, only activity, rest, chemical action and 

 dormant electrical inactivity, such as when we eat, drink, walk 

 or sleep, talk or keep silent is only a change in our activities. 



The real death of the seed only takes place when 

 unsuitable conditions destroy its possibility of re-creation 

 or future activity, such as prolonged periods of fermentation 

 at the time of stooling or malting, which will destroy its power 

 to form roots, or by an excess of moisture under unsuitable 

 conditions of temperature which are adverse to correct fer- 

 mentation, by creating a false fermentation conducive to rot 

 or decomposition, thus destroying for ever afterwards its power 

 of re-creating a like plant. So the souls of the good are im- 

 mortal, and the souls of the bad will some day cease to exist, 

 or, if they do not cease to exist, at least remain as a bi-product 

 of life re-absorbable by vital portions of creation, but minus 

 the power of re-creation or rebirth, or as in the Crustacea who 

 discard their shells and grow new ones, the loss of the shell is 



