It is often asserted by the numerous advocates of personal immortality
that this dogma is an innate one, common to all rational men, and that it
is taught in all the more perfect forms of religion. But this is not
correct. Neither Buddhism nor the religion of Moses originally contained
the dogma of personal immortality, and just as little did the majority of
educated people of classical antiquity believe it, at any rate during the
highest period of Greek culture. The monistic philosophy of that time,
which, five hundred years before our era, had reached speculative heights
so remarkable, knew nothing of any such dogma. It was through Plato and
Christ that it received its further elaboration, until, in the Middle
Ages, it was so universally accepted, that only now and then did some
bold thinker dare openly to gainsay it. The idea that a conviction of
personal immortality has a specially ennobling influence on the moral
nature of man, is not confirmed by the gruesome history of mediaeval
morals, and as little by the psychology of primitive peoples.[17]

If any antiquated school of purely speculative psychology still continues
to uphold this irrational dogma, the fact can only be regarded as a
deplorable anachronism. Sixty years ago such a doctrine was excusable,
for then nothing was accurately known either of the finer structure of
the brain, or of the physiological functions of its separate parts; its
elementary organs, the microscopic ganglion-cells, were almost unknown,
as was also the cell-soul of the Protista; very imperfect ideas were held
as to ontogenetic development, and as to phylogenetic there were none at
all.

This has all been completely changed in the course of the last
half-century. Modern physiology has already to a great extent
demonstrated the localisation of the various activities of mind, and