76 Sioux City Academy of Science and Letters. 



brain similar to that found in man. But mind is not by 

 any means absent in those organized beings still lower 

 than the vertebrates. But this part of my subject I must 

 pass over briefly lest my; paper should become too long. 

 All organized beings down to the amoeba, that lowest 

 single-celled animal, exhibit traces of mind. They all 

 show the exercise of choice and will. They all respond 

 to stimulus by reflex action. It is quite probable that 

 those animals that do not possess a brain have very lit- 

 tle, if any, of what we call consciousness. But in their 

 low and simple life they do not need this higher attri- 

 bute. It is safe to say that from moner to man every 

 organic being possesses all the mind that is necessary 

 to a full and complete life in the station where it is 

 found. Even in undifferentiated protoplasm, the foun- 

 dation of all organic life, both vegetable and animal, 

 such as was dredged up from the bottom of the ocean 

 by the British Challenger expedition and named by Hux- 

 ley BatliyUvs Haeckelii, there was found traces of life 

 and mind. It responded to stimulus by reflex action. 

 Life and mind have their beginnings far lower down 

 toward the inorganic world than most of us know or 

 believe. 



In the title at the head of this paper I used the word 

 immortal as connected with mind or soul. In closing I 

 wish to briefly speak of this part of my subject. Immor- 

 tality, or a life after this earthly life is flnished, is justly 

 held to be the most important question confronting civ- 

 ilized man. While we have absolutely no proof to offer 

 in the affirmative of this question, so we have just as 

 little to offer in the negative. It is and must be forever 

 unknown to us while in the body. The finite mind can- 

 not conceive or know the infinite. The mortal can never 

 comprehend the immortal. All our mansions in the sky 

 must be built by faith and planned in imagination will 

 differ as much as do our earthly mansions. In all human 

 religions the ideas of immortality and a life beyond the 

 finite life here are found to be on a level with the 

 mental grade of the people among whom such ideas are 

 held. The personal equation holds in this as in other 

 mental matters. We must all use the tools we possess. 



