Surely it is a most pertinent inquiry, How does his theory of the advancement of man from some lower organized form bear on the immortality of the soul? and it is no answer to this inquiry to say that upon no hypothesis of man's origin can we determine at what precise period he becomes an immortal being. That the idea of an Omnipotent God, capable of creating a spiritual essence, or an immortal soul, is not denied by Mr. Darwin, is doubtless to be inferred from his strong affirmation that our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance the grand sequence of events which the birth both of the species and the individual presents to our view. That variations of structure, the union of pairs in marriage, the dissemination of seeds, and similar events, have all been ordained for some special purpose, is the hypothesis according to which he regards them as events brought about by the laws of natural selection, which laws were ordained by the Creator and left to operate. Now, while this hypothesis excludes, or tends to exclude, the idea of blind chance, it still remains to be considered whether the soul of man, or the essence which we call intellect, is in each case a direct creation of a special character, or whether it is a result from the operation of the laws which have been ordained for the action of organized matter. If it is the former, the soul may survive the destruction of the body. If it is the latter, the soul as well as all the other manifestations or exhibitions which the material body gives forth in its action, may and in all probability must cease with the organs whose action leads us falsely to believe that we are animated by an immortal spirit while we are in the flesh. If it is a necessary result of any theory that what is supposed to be the immortal soul of man is a product of the operation of certain laws imposed upon organized matter, without being a special creation of something distinct from matter, it is immaterial whether the organized form of matter with which the soul is connected, or appears to act for a time, was a special creation, or was an evolution out of some lower form, or came by blind chance. Nor is it material that we can not determine at what precise period in the genesis of the individual, by the ordinary process of reproduction, he becomes an immortal being. The question is, Does he ever become an immortal being, if in body and in mind he is a mere product of organized matter, formed from some lower type through the laws of variation and natural selection, resulting in an animal whose manifestations or exhibitions of what we call intellect or mind are manifestations of the same nature as the instincts of the lower animals, differing only in degree?