On October 19, 1876 a group of leading French citizens, joined together to form the Society of Mutual Autopsy, with the aim of proving that souls do not exist. With this group as its focus, The End of the Soul is a study of science and atheism in France in late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It shows that anthropology grew out of a struggle between tradition (especially Catholicism) and modernism, and that it became for many a secular religion, with such adherents as Emile Zola, Margaret Sanger, and Arthur Conan Doyle.