It may probably be safely said that this steadily growing conviction of the social consciousness, of the essential likeness of all men, which is daily confirmed afresh, and the more confirmed the more careful the study, is not likely to take kindly to the idea--which comes into a part of Dr. McConnell's argument concerning immortality, in his interesting book, _The Evolution of Immortality_--that living creatures classed as men on physical grounds are not, therefore, to be so classed on psychical grounds.[67] The considerations and illustrations brought forward by Dr. McConnell, in connection with this proposition, I cannot think would seem at all conclusive to either the trained psychologist or sociologist. It is exactly the like-mindedness of men which the social consciousness affirms, and it has not come hastily to its conclusion. It will not quickly surrender that conclusion. There _is_ an "evolution of immortality," and it has been age-long, but it is pre-human. The belief in immortality so far as it does not rest purely on the question of the moral quality of a given human life (where the hypothesis of "immortability" may properly enough come in) is grounded upon characteristics--like that of the possibility of absolutely indefinite progress[68]--which in sober scientific inquiry cannot safely be denied to any man, and must be denied to all creatures below man. In any case, the new theory of "immortability," so far as it is based upon the proposition here considered, has its battle to fight out with this established conviction of the social consciousness of the essential like-mindedness of all men.