Certainly this same evolution has much to answer for.  I utterly fail to see how a wish can give rise to a belief that comes before the wish is framed in the mind.  More than this, I know that, even when human beings crave extinction most—­when the prospect of eternal sleep is more than sweet, when the bare thought of continued existence is a horror—­the belief in, or rather the knowledge of, immortality is still there, and the wretch who would fain perish knows that he cannot.

As for the mathematically-minded thinkers, I must give them up.  They say, “Here are two objects of consciousness whose existence can be verified; one we choose to call the body, the other we call the soul or mind or spirit, or what you will.  The soul may be called a ‘function’ of the body, or the body may be called a ‘function’ of the soul—­at any rate, they vary together.  The tiniest change in the body causes a corresponding change in the soul.  As the body alters from the days when the little ducts begin to feed the bones with lime up to the days when the bones are brittle and the muscles wither away, so does the soul alter.  The infant’s soul is different from the boy’s, the boy’s from the adolescent man’s, the young man’s from the middle-aged man’s, and so on to the end.  Now, since every change in the body, no matter how infinitesimally small, is followed by a corresponding change in the soul, then it is plain that, when the body becomes extinct, its ‘function,’ the soul, must also become extinct.”

This is even more appalling than the reasoning of the biologist.  But is there not a little flaw somewhere?  We take a branch from a privet-hedge and shake it; some tiny eggs fall down.  In time a large ugly caterpillar comes from each egg; but, according to the mathematical men, the caterpillar does not exist, since the egg has become naught.  Good!  The caterpillar wraps itself in a winding thread, and we have an egg-shaped lump which lies as still as a pebble.  Then presently from that bundle of thread there comes a glorious winged creature which flies away, leaving certain ragged odds and ends.  But surely the bundle of threads and the moth were as much connected as the body and the soul?  Logically, then, the moth does not exist after the cocoon is gone, any more than the soul exists after the body is gone!  I feel very unscientific indeed as we put forth this proposition, and yet perhaps some simple folk will follow me.

God will not let the soul die; it is a force that must act throughout the eternity before us, as it acted throughout the eternity that preceded our coming on earth.  No physical force ever dies—­each force merely changes its form or direction.  Heat becomes motion, motion is transformed into heat, but the force still exists.  It is not possible then that the soul of man—­the subtlest, strongest force of all—­should ever be extinguished.  Every analogy that we can see, every fact of science that we can understand, tells us that the essence which