The Evolution of Immortality

ted and unthinking man still believes, no doubt, that we are all the descendants of a first man whose body God fashioned mechanically out of the earth's matter, not more than four or five thousand years ago, that this body was lifeless and inert until God by a second specific act placed within it an immortal soul. His soul was to his body very much what live steam is to a motionless engine. It was created apart from the body, and complete in itself. It possessed the maximum of intellectual vigor, and was morally faultless. The man thus constituted was perfect, and would have been undying had he not by a wanton choice forfeited his immortality by an act of disobedience. This conception is so nai've and simple, so easily presented before the mind, and has been so long optative, that it is very difficult indeed to disengage it. Many a man who has long since dismissed it as impossible still believes it when he is off his guard. But the intelligent world generally has... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.