MUST NOT IMMORTALITY REACH INTO THE PAST AS WELL AS INTO THE FUTURE?--A far more potent objection is made by the Metaphysician. To him the preceding arguments that the spirit can not have existed prior to birth, and has a common, a cotemporary origin with the physical body, is fatal to its existence after death. He says: Whatever has a beginning must have an end; therefore, when it is asserted that the spirit of man is immortal, it follows that it must have always pre-existed; had an endless past. This is a startling objection and held to be unanswerable, except by the hypothesis of pre-existence and re-incarnation, which maintain that the spirit is an indestructible entity, constantly rehabilitating itself in forms of flesh; but this hypothesis is only a supposition made in the childhood of the race to meet a doubt and objection. In an age of accurate thought it seems an anachronism. If we accept the doctrine of evolution--and, as the immediate explanation of the phenomena of living beings, it is the only, and a complete explanation--then we must also receive as true the corollary that instinct and intelligence are evolved out of the transformations of living beings, and that individualized spirit, if there be such an entity, must be the last link in the vast organic series from which it has sprung into being. In other words, with an indeterminable future it has had a determinable past. If the spirit has existed for infinite time before its incarnation in this life, it has had infinite opportunity for progress, and, logically, should have attained perfection. Not only _should_, but must have become perfect. It is readily observed that the fact of its imperfection necessitates a beginning, and the degree of its imperfection shows the nearness or remoteness of its starting point. If it be held that this apparent imperfection is the resultant of the spirit’s connection with matter, it must be remembered that the theory of pre-existence has for its object to account for the evils of this life, and perfected spiritual beings, such as all must be after an infinite past, would have no need of incarnation to attain purity or excellence already theirs; and should they enter physical bodies, as spirits, according to this doctrine, they would not be contaminated or degraded by their contact with earth and earth-life, but would glorify it. With the physical form given to offspring by their parents is also given spiritual entity which lives after the decay of that body, an independent being, the center of multitudinous forces.