Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/178

Rh original dust, and arc no more as Individuals, but only survive in their respective species. This belief gladdens him, yet it is a sad thought—Nothing sentient beyond the grave but man alone;— while all other forms of life and beauty go out forever?

Doubtless this development theory—of Darwin and others, is mainly true—so far as it goes,—but it fails to go far enough. It is eminently unsatisfactory to every true thinker and hoper for life beyond death; and the same class of persons find it utterly impossible to predicate immortality upon the materials furnished for that purpose by those who are mainly interested in the firm establishment of the grand idea. They ask ? but no logical reply is given. I shall present it here and now.

No one, that I am aware of, contends that monkeys, either large or small, are capable of overriding the billows of Death, and swimming safely to the etheral shores beyond, (they probably deserve that power quite as much as some men do), yet man is, physically, but an improved ape, which fact has a singular proof in this: viz., the higher simia will, and do, inter-breed with the lower human. Proof—the tailed "Men" of Namaqua Land: the dwarf peoples of gorilla-land, and the offspring of Hottentot women captured and impregned by the giant apes of Nigritia. But it does not follow that the monstrous progeny thus generated are immortal, even if, as is doubtful—the humanesque parent may chance to be so; nor does it follow that all who are undoubtedly human, are also possessed of power to exist consciously subsequent to actual death; for unquestionably all are not thus endowed who possess the external and ordinary characteristics of humanity; and there are thousands who pass and repass us in the streets every day of our lives who are no more immortal than the fish they ate for dinner; for that power, fact, quality, call it what you will, is a development, an outgrowth, a result, the principia of which I herein purpose to briefly set forth and, so far as my limits permit, explain. And first let me define what the world and myself understand as the true definition of the term Immortality:—

The body is supposed to contain within itself an electrical form just like itself—head, eyes, brain, tongue, arms, legs, sex-organs;