AS THE BIOLOGIST SEES IT 



if he is not a bigoted biologist, that he has 

 no right to say and will not say that there 

 cannot be a human spirit life, nor a human 

 immortality, despite the fact that he has 

 seen no spirits and that the only immortal- 

 ity he has been able to discover among liv- 

 ing creatures is that of those one-celled ani- 

 mals and plants which, barring accident, 

 reach in a few hours or days after birth a 

 maturity, not followed by natural death, 

 but by a division of the whole body into 

 two parts each of which is an independ- 

 ent new individual, requiring but another 

 few hours or days to grow and develop and 

 reach maturity, and to divide, in turn, 

 into two more continuing individuals. 

 Even this immortality seems to require 

 for its full realization certain occasional 

 special stimulating physical or chemical 

 conditions, for after a few hundred suc- 

 ceeding generations of this self -perpetua- 

 tion the series tends to run out. Natural 

 death tends to appear. So that perhaps 

 after all this, at first sight, tangible, observ- 

 able material immortality is only delusion. 

 117 



