There are both factual and theoretical objections to the ethical argument for immortality. The more we know about habit, the more we realize that character is pretty well "set" by middle life. The creative period of human life ends all too soon. Character is not an abstract possession separable from human tasks and needs. It is not like a work of art which can be polished and re-polished. But, when all is said and done, ethics must abide by the facts of the case. Take character abstractly enough and apart from its human and organic setting, and the dream of continuous perfecting may have meaning; but so would the dream of continuous intellectual advance. Yet the scholar knows all too well the judgment passed by the coming generation upon the older one: "They can't adjust themselves to this new point of view." Would progress come if the generations did not pass? The philosophical aspect of the question can be touched upon only briefly and in an untechnical way. The basic problem may be put in this way: Can human personality be included in nature in a theoretically satisfactory way? It has been customary to stress the difficulties which confront such an attempt {149} and to be silent in regard to the problems which the separation of body and personality has always found facing it. Yet I think that few philosophers would deny that it is the very irrationality of the traditional dualism which makes a living monism of mind and body so desirable and so urgently sought after. There is good reason to believe that the persistence of the mind-body puzzle has been due to two conditions, the lack of an adequate theory of knowledge, and an ultra-mechanical, or non-evolutionary, view of the physical world. Scientists and philosophers, alike, were possessed by an inertia which prevented them from taking the principle of evolution seriously. They refused to readjust their ideas so as to admit that organization of a high grade, such as characterizes the nervous system, has a synthetic way of acting of its own, not reducible to the mere chain-like action of externally related units. There are many signs pointing to the conclusion that a broader and more flexible naturalism is forming which will sweep away the artificial problems and stereotyped contrasts which have stood in the way of a candid inclusion of human thought and activity within nature. When that day comes, the hesitations which have encouraged the faith in immortality in the face of empirical difficulties of an ever-increasing weight will pass away. I am inclined to prophesy that psychology and physiology will reach an adjustment of their principles before many years have passed, and that consciousness and mind will take their places along with mass and energy in the scientific view of nature. The old dualism of soul and body will pass away and give place to a flexible naturalism.