The Western Tradition is that humans are partially spiritual beings with an immortal destiny. This tradition is under heavy attack, most of all perhaps from neuroscience. According to Richard Watson, biographer of Descartes, the future looks like this: "When humankind finally faces the fact that the mind is the brain, that there is no independently existing mental soul to survive the death of the body, that none of us chirpy sparrows is immortal . . ., then there will be a revolution in human thought the like of which none has gone before." Th at prediction is based on contemporary...