st from three perspectives--immortality as it relates to biology, as it relates to belief, and as it relates to ethics. Montagu begins with the assumption that man is the only creature who thinks about immortality, though we actually have no idea what other animals may think on the subject. Biology says all living things come from other living things, and this in itself is a statement of immortality, for life in one form continues as life in another form. This is not the same as the continuation of consciousness, which is what many mean by immortality. However, Montagu shows how this true sort of immortality moves up the biological chain from the smallest to the largest creature and relates the issue to certain laws of the universe, such as the law of the conservation of energy. At the same time, he shows the limitations of the idea of biological immortality with the belief that the universe will one day end.
Montagu considers the life of the single cell and the process of reproduction and how it relates to the question of immortality before turning to the issue of human life and the reality of human death, noting that all men are under sentence of death and know it. At the same time, human beings believe in immortality. The discussion then turns to the mind-body problem, important in terms of immortality on the basis that many believe the body may be mortal, but the mind, or soul, need not be. This further raises the question of the relationship between mind and body--is the mind some entity like the soul that is detachable from the body, or is it a biological phenomenon that exists only because the body exists? Montagu says that human beings disappear physically at death, but culturally they live on, leaving behind the good and bad they have done.
The belief in immortality is next discussed with the question, why do men believe in immortality? Certainly, it is a belief as old as man, and there is evidence from prehi...