Those who maintain the doctrine of what is called the immortality of the soul, contend for the existence of a living, thinking spirit, which, they say, is not the body, and which, they urge, will continue when the body has ceased. The burden of proving this “soul” rests on those who maintain and assert it. It is clear that there is no identity between life and “soul;” life commences, varies, and ceases, in accordance with the growth, decay, and dissolution of the body. The orthodox contention for soul must be that its existence is independent of the body, and this shows that soul is not life. Nor is there any identity between mind and soul. All perception is dependent on the (bodily) perceptive ability and its exercise. All thought has some action of the bodily organism for its immediate antecedent and accompaniment. As the soul is not life, is not mind, and cannot be body, what is it? To call it spirit, and to leave the word spirit undefined is to do nothing. Religionists talk to me of my “soul;” that is, an individual soul continuing to exist, they say, with a continuing consciousness of personal identity after “I” am dead. But if a baby two months old dies, what consciousness of personal identity continues in such a case? Or, if an idiot from birth dies at the age of eighteen: or if a person, sane until twenty, becomes insane, lives insane until forty, and then dies: in either of these two cases what is it that is supposed to be the personal identity which continues after death? And what is meant by my “soul” living after “I” am dead? The word “I” to me represents the bodily organism, its vital and mental activities. To tell me that my body dies and that yet my life continues is a contradiction in terms. To declare that my life has ended, but that I continue to think is to affirm a like contradiction. Religionists seem to think that they avoid the difficulty, or turn it upon us, by propounding riddles. They analyse the body, and, giving a list of what they call elementary substances, they say: Can oxygen think? can carbon think? can nitrogen think? and when they have triumphantly gone through the list, they add, that as none of these by itself can think, thought is not a result of matter, but is a quality of soul. This reasoning at best only amounts to declaring, “We know what body is, but we know nothing of soul; as we cannot understand how body, which we do know, can think, we therefore declare that it is soul, which we do not know, that does think.” There is a still greater fault in this theological reasoning in favor of the soul, for it assumes, contrary to experience, that no quality or result can be found in a given combination which is not also discoverable in each or any of the modes, parts, atoms, or elements combined. Yet this is monstrously absurd. Sugar tastes sweet, but neither carbon, nor oxygen, nor hydrogen, separately tasted, exhibits sweetness; yet sugar is the word by which you describe a