It is an easy and a
pleasant task to interpret the facts of history from this standpoint.
Everything fits together and harmonizes, and each turn in the
historical development of civilization when observed from this point
of view acquires a simple and a clear causality.
I cannot enlarge on this topic, engaging as it is, but here a further
question obtrudes itself. May there not be some connection between the
actual immortality of the germ cells, the continuity of their series
and the importance of the part they play, and the origin of the idea
of an immortal soul? May not the former have given rise to the latter?
As a matter of fact, the series of reproductive cells possess the
essential attributes of the human soul; they are the immortal living
part of a man, which contain, in a latent form, his spiritual
peculiarities. The immortality of the reproductive cells is only
potential and is essentially different from that absolute eternal life
which certain religions ascribe to the soul.
We must not, however, forget that at the time when the conception of a
soul arose among men, owing to a defective knowledge of the laws of
logic, no clear distinction was made between a potential immortality
and an absolute life without end.
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