i8o Human Personality. 



First, the interlacing neurons let go their hold on each 

 other — and seli-consciousuess of the person vanishes. It 

 goes out, as flame vanishes when atoms of carbon and 

 oxygen no longer combine. 



What next ? 



The heart no longer propels the life tide of refined 

 food in the blood to the brain — as in sleep — and after a 

 few minutes the neurons themselves die from suffocation 

 and starvation. All those thousands of little individual 

 lives vanish, as did the larger self-consciousness of the 

 person ; for in each the consentient bond of living 

 molecules, atoms, and ions is disrupted. 



What next ? 



The dissipation of the brain as cadaver is a somewhat 

 slower, more heterogeneous process, involving invasions of 

 ba,cteria, disintegration, and reduction to more stable com- 

 pounds, but tending ultimately to a return from the 

 highly complex living substance, with all its maze of 

 organization, to the abysmal base of the primeval ions 

 and their lowly endowment of life-potential. 



What was once the soul has been resolved back to this 

 elemental life-potential of unorganized, unconditioned 

 matter. To think of it or represent it as self-conscious 

 is to deny the first principles of Nature. Human self- 

 consciousness is the long-derived result of evolution by 

 organization of cell life. Intellect is the outcome of a 

 million years of brain. The human soul is the flower of 



