It took at least thirty thousand
years to evolve the crystalline lens of the human eye, and it required
many thousands of years to evolve from the crude savagery of the early
Jews the elaborate theories of the modern Buddhists, Islamites, and
Christians.
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.
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