HUMAN LIFE 



great problem. Is death really just what 

 it seems and what the biologist describes 

 it to be, or is it what so many would like 

 it to be, hope it is, and even firmly believe 

 it is? Can the human individual have an 

 ethereal spirit existence apart from, or 

 after, his bodily machine existence? Is 

 man immortal? That is what we insist 

 on asking the biologist who assumes a 

 knowledge beyond that of most of us 

 concerning human life. 



The biologist, unless he be a scientific 

 bigot, confesses at once the limitations of 

 his knowledge. He does not claim that 

 his description of individual death neces- 

 sarily tells the whole story. But he claims 

 that it tells it as far as the kind of evi- 

 dence which he can accept as telling him 

 things he can rely on now permits. His 

 attention has been called to a great and 

 heterogeneous array of alleged evidence 

 or proof of spirit existence. We confront 

 him by the great intellectual difficulty 

 that most of us have in accepting what 

 seems the awful waste of Nature and of 



