1 6 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



crown, who suggested that the motions, the 

 combinations and separations, of the atoms were 

 determined by the love and strife, even as we still 

 talk, of affinities ; and who went so far as to con- 

 ceive that there was a struggle for existence among 

 primitive organisms, with a survival of the fittest. 

 Most interesting is his picture of the unfit forms 

 that perished. " It (Love) made many heads 

 spring up without necks, and arms wandered bare 

 and bereft of shoulders. Eyes strayed up and 

 down in want of foreheads. . . . Many creatures 

 with faces and breasts looking in different direc- 

 tions were born ; some offspring of oxen with faces 

 of men, while others, again, arose as offspring of 

 men with heads of oxen." 



But most interesting of all to us is this theory 

 of immortality based on the indestructibihty of the 

 atoms : " And I shall tell thee another thing. There 

 is no coming into being of aught that perishes, nor 

 any end for it in baneful death ; but only mingling 

 and separation of what has been mingled. 



" Coming into being is but a name given to 

 these by men. . . . But when the elements have 

 been mingled in the fashion of a man, and come 

 to the light of day, either in the fashion of the 

 race of wild beasts, or plants, or birds, then men 

 say that these came into being ; and when they are 

 separated, they call that, as is the custom, woful 



