LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVCKSITY OF 
 CALItORNIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 THE PLACE OF DEATH 
 IN EVOLUTION
 
 THE PLACE OF DEATH 
 IN EVOLUTION 
 
 BY 
 
 NEWMAN \SMYTH 
 
 1 The face of Death is toward the Sun of Life, 
 His shadow darkens earth." 
 
 TBNNYSON 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 1897
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 KTorfaooB tyrtsa 
 
 1. S. Curbing It Co. - Berwick k Smith 
 Norwood Man. U.S.A.
 
 o a 
 
 WHOSE MEMORY 
 MAKES RICHER AND MORE REAL 
 
 LIFE'S PROMISE TO FRIENDSHIP 
 
 OF THE FUTURE 
 
 iastcr
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THIS volume is the first fruit of a fur- 
 ther and larger purpose which the author 
 has long had in mind, and which in some 
 future season may possibly become ripe 
 for its harvesting. It springs from a pro- 
 found conviction that the one theological 
 task which waits to be accomplished is 
 a thorough and comprehensive demonstra- 
 tion of the fact, which the disciple of old 
 perceived, that the Life was manifested in 
 the Christ; and hence it will prove true 
 that His essential words meet and match 
 the great principles of life which have 
 been hidden in nature's heart from the 
 beginning. It will be shown how natur- 
 ally, and as the appointed heir of all 
 things, Christianity wins and wears the 
 crown of life. 
 
 The next reconstruction of Christian 
 theology will be a vital one; it will re- 
 sult from a deeper knowledge and a truer
 
 Vlll PREFACE 
 
 interpretation of the sacred Scripture of 
 Life, which the hand of God has written 
 in nature. The coming theologian, there- 
 fore, the next successful defender of the 
 faith once given to the saints, will be a 
 trained and accomplished biologist. Not 
 only will his thought, descending from 
 the heights of solitary abstraction, and 
 forsaking the cloistered shades of the 
 schoolmen, ancient and modern, proceed 
 like the wayfaring Son of man along the 
 familiar paths of human life, in closest 
 touch with the common heart of human- 
 ity; but also each organic form will tell 
 to him the story of its origins, and the 
 least living cell will unveil the secret 
 chambers of its divinity. Partial and 
 hurried efforts, indeed, have been made 
 in recent years to set our primal faiths 
 in their large vital connections; Mr. 
 Drummond's Natural Law in the Spiritual 
 World, and Mr. Kidd's Social Evolution, 
 are stimulating efforts in this direction; 
 but the value of these first endeavors lies 
 in their true apprehension of the work 
 needing to be done, rather than in their
 
 PREFACE IX 
 
 permanent contribution to its solution. 
 The science of biology itself has been far 
 too crude, and its theories are still too 
 tentative, and even conflicting at many 
 points, to warrant us as yet in building 
 upon them over-confidently the higher 
 conclusions of the Christian reason. 
 Nevertheless, within the past thirty 
 years, and since Darwin, some sure 
 ground has been gained by evolutionary 
 science, and biology in particular is open- 
 ing fields of knowledge which invite 
 fresh inquiry on the part of thoughtful 
 believers. 
 
 The larger work, in this attractive 
 field, to which the author looks forward, 
 may never be brought by him to its 
 accomplishment: it is so large and many- 
 sided that it can be achieved only by the 
 toil of many minds, and as the result of 
 prolonged studies and discoveries of the 
 laws and processes of life, from the mar- 
 vel of the microscopic germ up to nature's 
 highest miracle of the potency of human 
 thought and love. Both that earlier won- 
 der of the living cell, and the later marvel
 
 X PREFACE 
 
 of the living soul, belong to the same con- 
 tinuous order, and are a revealing of the 
 same divine mystery of life. All our 
 science of nature and the history of man 
 may come back at last to the Master's 
 single word of interpretation : " It is the 
 spirit that quickeneth." 
 
 One reason for the present publication 
 of this portion of the author's work is the 
 hope that it may stimulate other minds to 
 enter, in the pursuit of similar inquiries, 
 that field of evolutionary research which 
 not long ago it was thought to be perilous 
 for theologians to traverse, and past which 
 devout believers were inclined to hasten, 
 as though it were a forbidden region, 
 haunted with destructive doubts; but 
 which we now generally perceive to be 
 a field of the Lord, fresh with fruits of 
 wholesome knowledge, and bright with 
 promise for Christian faith. 
 
 The author ventures also to hope that 
 the line of thought which is pursued 
 through the following pages may lead 
 some readers to surer courage for daily life 
 amid its trials and sorrows. It may bring
 
 PREFACE XI 
 
 help especially to those who must receive 
 inward renewal and cheer, if at all, not 
 merely from the breath of spiritual fra- 
 grance which may be borne in occasionally 
 through the soul's open windows they 
 hardly know from whence and how; but 
 rather from their thoughtful entertain- 
 ment of those serious truths which knock 
 for entrance into our minds, as they come 
 in plain and honest simplicity from the 
 workshops of our sciences, and from the 
 fields of laborious investigations. Only 
 thus, through an open-minded and fear- 
 less hospitality towards all observed and 
 reasoned truths, can our Christian faith 
 escape the weakness of a pleasing but 
 ineffectual desire, and continue to be our 
 reasonable service. 
 
 Although the author's main purpose is 
 still in the process of growth, suggestive 
 circumstances and the warmth of friend- 
 ships whose light is in part the joy of 
 present life, and in part the influence of 
 the unseen, have caused this single branch 
 of his thought to come more quickly to its 
 ripening; and because as a study it is
 
 Xll PREFACE 
 
 complete in itself, it is now given to the 
 public. 
 
 If the sustenance and comfort for our 
 dearest and deathless hopes here offered, 
 should seem at first taste to any readers 
 to be enclosed in a too scientific rind, the 
 author trusts that within the harder sci- 
 entific reasonings much sweetness and 
 strength may be found for our vital 
 faiths. In order to render the matter of 
 it more easy of access for the general 
 reader, necessary technical scientific ma- 
 terial and extended citations of authori- 
 ties have been relegated to notes in an 
 appendix. These notes, however, should 
 not be overlooked in any critical review 
 of the subject. 
 
 The pursuit for several years of such 
 studies increases the conviction in which 
 this volume has been written, that new 
 light is breaking from evolutionary sci- 
 ence, and that in that light we shall see 
 coming out again more clearly and more 
 surely the simple and immortal faiths of 
 our human hearts and homes. 
 
 NEW HAYEK, April, 1897.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH IN 
 
 NATURE 1 
 
 II. THE PATH OF LIFE THROUGH THE EVIL 
 
 IN NATURE 44 
 
 III. SCIENTIFIC PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 57 
 
 IV. THE FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH . . . 107 
 
 V. THE BIOLOGICAL AND THE BIBLICAL VIEW 
 
 OF DEATH 136 
 
 VI. THE METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 IN THE LAW OF DEATH 163 
 
 207
 
 THE PLACE OF DEATH IN 
 EVOLUTION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH IN 
 NATURE 
 
 IN recent years biological investigations 
 have penetrated within the veil of mi- 
 croscopic cells, and learned secrets of life 
 and death which were little dreamed of in 
 our philosophy. Traces of an infinitesi- 
 mal structure, which before had not been 
 suspected, have been lately discovered 
 within the least and simplest living 
 cells; and arrangements of invisible 
 molecules of matter in an orderly and 
 organized service are now known to be 
 provided in the contents of each cell in 
 which life has its abode. One of the 
 last wonders of modern science consists
 
 2 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 in the disclosure of the intricate mechan- 
 ism of the nucleus of each cell, and in 
 the revelation of regular processes of its 
 marvellous development. Further expla- 
 nation of the problem of heredity and 
 the causes of variation, which Darwin- 
 ism opened, but did not solve, is now 
 eagerly sought by many keen-eyed bio- 
 logical students, equipped with the high- 
 est powers of the microscope, who peer 
 into the structural texture, and observe 
 the behavior of the vital units within the 
 mystery of the egg. The living cell, that 
 "long-expected child of time," "the pre- 
 cious nursling of the ages," as it has been 
 called, has recently drawn to itself an im- 
 mense amount of scientific attention; and 
 doubtless upon the fascinating mystery of 
 its origins, its aptitudes, and its growth, 
 it will concentrate still more the interest 
 of thoughtful observers who would inter- 
 pret with definite knowledge nature's un- 
 ceasing drama of life and death. 
 
 Neither of these familiar powers of life 
 or death has disclosed to our most in- 
 quisitive biological science its last, inner-
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 3 
 
 most secret. The science which has en- 
 tered so far within the cell, and which is 
 observing with exact definition the last 
 hiding-places of life, nevertheless does not 
 hear the first creative word, and cannot 
 tell the final cause of the origin of life. 
 Probably it never will ; for to see life re- 
 vealed in its first truth might be to see 
 the living God. Our science, which thus 
 pursues life until it is lost from view in 
 some mystery of godliness, has not suc- 
 ceeded any better in disclosing the ulti- 
 mate nature or final cause of death. Yet 
 the nearer approach of recent biological 
 science to the origins of life brings knowl- 
 edge closer also to the beginnings of 
 death in the organic world. Some new 
 light is thus thrown by recent science 
 over the dark problem of mortality. By 
 the scientific method, that is, by rea- 
 soning which proceeds from a basis of 
 observed facts, we may now make a fur- 
 ther and profitable study of the origin and 
 function of death in nature, and thus be 
 enabled to interpret more intelligibly its 
 mission for life.
 
 4 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 Until quite recently our evolutionary 
 science was content either to pass by the 
 place and work of death without exact 
 observation of its uses in nature ; or else 
 it has regarded the universal prevalence 
 of death throughout the organic world as 
 a necessary consequence of the struggle 
 of life, and has dismissed it from further 
 questioning as an incidental factor in 
 evolution. Thus Mr. Spencer was satis- 
 fied with a philosophical determination 
 and definition of the nature of vital pro- 
 cesses, which included the possibility of 
 death within the terms of the definition. 
 More attention was called to this neglected 
 factor in organic evolution by the publi- 
 cation in 1881, and again in 1883, by a 
 German investigator, Weismann, of some 
 results of his studies concerning heredity, 
 in the course of which he discussed the 
 nature of death, and the causes for the 
 limitation in different species of the du- 
 ration of life. About the same time an- 
 other German zoologist, Biitschli, who had 
 carried on extensive researches among the 
 lowest organisms, began to entertain ideas
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 5 
 
 somewhat similar to those which Weis- 
 mann first published in his essays on 
 Life and Death and the Duration of Life. 
 Mr. Wallace, who shares with Darwin the 
 honor of originating the modern concep- 
 tion of the part which has been played by 
 natural selection in evolution, in a note 
 to his volume on Darwinism (published 
 in 1889) remarks that an idea similar to 
 that advanced by Weismann, concerning 
 the utility of natural death, had occurred 
 to him some twenty years before, and 
 been noted down, but subsequently for- 
 gotten. 
 
 Later investigations seem to require the 
 modification in some particulars of the 
 ideas originally advanced by Weismann, 
 and to put back the first appearance 
 of natural death nearer to the earliest 
 manifestations of life than he had sup- 
 posed. Much work of painstaking re- 
 search in this direction remains to be 
 accomplished ; and biological theories con- 
 cerning the nature of heredity and the 
 fundamental laws and processes of life and 
 death are still too largely in the air, and
 
 6 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 they will need to be anchored more se- 
 curely to observed facts before we can 
 trust entirely our faiths to them. Never- 
 theless, much knowledge has been gained 
 concerning the origin and functions of 
 death in the course of the development 
 of life by the researches already under- 
 taken; and the facts disclosed, as well 
 as the theories advanced by some trained 
 biologists, fairly open the new and inter- 
 esting question whether death itself does 
 not fall naturally under some principle 
 of selection and law of utility for life. 
 Enough ground, at least, has been won 
 by our tentative science to give our phi- 
 losophy further, and somewhat more ad- 
 vanced foothold in the path of inquiry, 
 along which the reason of man makes 
 ceaseless effort to surmount the hard in- 
 evitableness of death, and in clearer light 
 to gain firmer hope of immortality. 
 
 These studies of life which our newer 
 biologists, since Darwin, are carrying on, 
 may be described in the graphic words of 
 one of the oldest observers of nature and 
 human life, who was also a tried and
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 7 
 
 troubled theologian, " Man setteth an end 
 to darkness, and searcheth out to the fur- 
 thest bound the stones of thick darkness 
 and of the shadow of death."* Like one 
 who sets miners' lamps along the course 
 which he would explore, so man in these 
 more recent sciences searches to the fur- 
 thest bound, and finds there the stones 
 which mark for the present the end of 
 his inquiry into the thick darkness and 
 the shadow of death. Our science of life 
 is reaching into the darkness, and farther 
 and farther from the borders of the near, 
 the tangible, and the visible, it is remov- 
 ing the bounds of knowledge out into the 
 mystery of life and death. 
 
 Familiarity with the successes, and also 
 with the failures, of evolutionary science 
 since Darwin will serve to produce, in 
 regard to all such inquiries, a reverent 
 spirit, if not also an expectant attitude 
 of faith. Men who have but slight ac- 
 quaintance with the work needing to be 
 done, which still lies before our biolo- 
 gists, may conjure lightly with the word 
 * Job xxviii. 3.
 
 8 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 evolution, as though it explained all mys- 
 teries, and dispensed with any necessity 
 of faith; but men who have learned how 
 knowledge as well as faith requires pa- 
 tience for its perfecting will understand 
 the wisdom both of the caution and the 
 hope which finds expression in this re- 
 mark of one of our American biologists: 
 "My last word is, that we are entering 
 the threshold of the Evolution problem, 
 instead of standing within the portals. 
 The hardest tasks lie before us, not be- 
 hind us, and their solution will carry us 
 well into the twentieth century."* 
 
 While our biological science has thus, 
 until quite lately, not ventured so far as 
 it might into the darkness of the shadow 
 of death over nature, our theology, on the 
 other hand, has been and is still contented 
 to regard the law of death as a law of sin, 
 originally connected with man's fall, and 
 as presenting chiefly a human problem to 
 
 * Osborn, The. Hereditary Mechanism and the 
 Search for the Unknown Factors of Evolution^ in 
 Biological Lectures, Wood's Holl, for 1894, p. 100.
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 9 
 
 our faith. The fact of the prevalence of 
 death in nature before man's fall has been 
 left vaguely in the background of theology. 
 It has sometimes been ignored as a prob- 
 lem of evil with regard to which we have 
 no clear word of revelation ; or, when the 
 problem of natural evil has pressed like a 
 burden upon the heart of faith, the en- 
 trance of death into the creation before 
 man has been hesitatingly explained as a 
 necessary anticipation of the curse which 
 was predestined to fall, and Avhich nature 
 consequently must, from the beginning, 
 make ready to let drop in due time upon 
 the sin of man. Death, occurring in the 
 natural order of life, has thus been re- 
 garded as a part of the preparation of the 
 stage for the tragedy of man's sin and 
 the victory of his redemption. 
 
 Our theology may be excused for not 
 gaining any larger and more intelligent 
 conception of the appearance of death in 
 nature beneath man, so long as our bio- 
 logical science has had little or nothing 
 to say as to the exact point in the evolu- 
 tion of life where death first entered, and
 
 10 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 while also it has been unable to offer any- 
 thing better than a general conjecture con- 
 cerning the natural function and possible 
 service of death in the evolution of life. 
 But our Christian theology would be wor- 
 thy of blame, should it not be quick to 
 take up into its conception of the divine 
 order of benevolence any hints which re- 
 cent biology may have to suggest with 
 reference to the probable natural utilities 
 of death. It is of religious concern, as 
 well as of scientific interest, for us to 
 learn, and to think out, as far as we 
 possibly may, all the facts and sugges- 
 tions which prolonged and microscopic 
 researches may bring to our knowledge 
 concerning the minute processes, or most 
 intimate and hidden laws of life and 
 death. For if we, children of an age of 
 questioning and of change, are to keep a 
 rational faith in spiritual reality, strong 
 and genuine as was our fathers' faith ac- 
 cording to their light, ours must be a faith 
 that shall strike its roots down deep into 
 all knowledge, although light from above 
 alone may bring it to its perfect Christian
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 11 
 
 trust and sweetness. If, then, our bio- 
 logical science is running the lines of 
 its investigation deeper across familiar 
 ground, as well as over fields of knowl- 
 edge not hitherto upturned, our faiths 
 should quickly follow, sowing again their 
 seed of promise in the freshly worked 
 soil. Nor should we despise any hints 
 which biology may bring of larger utili- 
 ties in nature than we have imagined, 
 because such facts may seem at first 
 thought to be slight and insignificant. 
 The least facts of nature may be germi- 
 nal with high spiritual significance and 
 beauty. 
 
 Analogies indeed from natural laws 
 are not proofs of spiritual processes ; and 
 they should never be pressed beyond 
 the probabilities of reason which may lie 
 within them. The demonstration of the 
 spiritual order cannot lie in the natural. 
 Nevertheless, if the universe be framed 
 in one divine thought, and its laws, in 
 different realms of it, proceed from the 
 same Intelligence, we should expect to 
 find that knowledge, shining suddenly in
 
 12 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 any part of it, will throw revealing light 
 also over other outlying regions, and es- 
 pecially over those dark spiritual places 
 which may lie contiguous to the points 
 which some science is lighting up; for 
 the different spheres and orders of the 
 cosmos, from the lowest to the highest, 
 are not so many separate and closed 
 spaces, but the universe is connected in 
 all its parts, its rooms are all open- 
 windowed, and its successive chambers 
 lead into one another; there are many 
 mansions and one house of the Father. 
 
 What is thus true in general of the 
 value of any single science for the 
 broader illumination of life, does not 
 hold false of the service which biology is 
 beginning to render to our conception of 
 the law of death. If we may discover 
 and carefully observe the working of a 
 power favorable to life's best ends in 
 the utilities of death in nature, we shall 
 have thereby a light in our hands by 
 means of which our reason may possibly 
 find its way still farther through the mys- 
 tery of death in our human life. It is
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OP DEATH 13 
 
 true that under the existing limitations 
 of our earthly experience we may not ex- 
 pect to reach a full explanation of any of 
 the great laws of nature, and a final dis- 
 covery of the one benevolence in them 
 all; but partial explanations are better 
 than none, the child's imaginations may 
 seize upon enough of the truth to satisfy 
 the mind of the child, until it shall put 
 away childish things, and know as it is 
 known. We should not neglect therefore 
 as insignificant the least divine hints 
 which may have been dropped amid the 
 silences of nature; for any such sugges- 
 tions may prove a very present help to 
 reason while faith waits for the final 
 revelation. 
 
 We shall seek, therefore, to gather up 
 such knowledge as recent biological sci- 
 ence may have to offer concerning the 
 place and function of death in the order 
 of nature; and then we shall proceed to 
 inquire whether such knowledge has any 
 further interpretative value in relation to 
 the law of our human subjection to death, 
 and its attendant suffering.
 
 14 ENTKANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 What has been from the first the r61e 
 appointed for death to play in the unfold- 
 ing drama of life in nature? Looking 
 down through the history of ever-ad- 
 vancing life on the earth, looking back to 
 the first appearance and working of death, 
 do we discover any signs which indicate 
 that death, contrary to our common judg- 
 ment of it, has had appointed to it all the 
 while a benevolent part, that it has not 
 been the natural enemy, but in reality a 
 servant of life, a helpmeet for ever 
 more abounding, higher, and happier life 
 on the earth? 
 
 The first fact which has been observed 
 is, that natural death does not appear im- 
 mediately at the beginning of the history 
 of life on the earth. There was no such 
 thing as death, or at least nothing like a 
 dead body, when life first stirred, and for 
 some indefinite period after life began to 
 increase and multiply in earthly matter. 
 
 The earliest and the simplest organism 
 consists of a single cell. That unicellular 
 organism is now known to be not com-
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 15 
 
 pletely homogeneous, or without begin- 
 nings of distinctions between its parts; 
 but within the divine simplicity of a 
 single cell, the infinitesimal tracing of 
 whose marvellous structure may be de- 
 tected by our microscopes, while its per- 
 fect discrimination defies their powers, 
 life begins its work, never henceforth to 
 cease, of organizing matter for increasing 
 sentience, for developing function and 
 faculty, and for final aptitude and ser- 
 vice for self-conscious thought and love. 
 Our human interest in the problem of 
 the origin and the destiny of life may be 
 concentrated in the study of this earliest 
 and simplest living organism, composed 
 of a single cell. What Tennyson sang 
 of the "Flower in the crannied wall" 
 would be now more true of the efflorescence 
 of life in the little cell which the biologist 
 plucks " out of the crannies " : 
 
 " I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, 
 Little flower but if I could understand 
 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
 I should know what God and man is." 
 
 If we could read the whole secret of that
 
 16 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 living cell, we might know the mystery 
 of our origin and our destiny. Before it 
 or within it, is there any trace to be 
 discovered of a pre-existing life, or any 
 hint to be found of life's coming glory? 
 Does life in its earliest known beginnings 
 contain any revelation of a Spirit that was 
 before it, or disclose any mystery of Mes- 
 sianic promise of its coming divinity? 
 
 These questions, however, concerning 
 the ultimate origin and possible spiritual 
 direction of life, we hold in reserve for a 
 later place in our present plan of discus- 
 sion; we are content to begin with a 
 strictly biological conception of life as a 
 peculiar property of matter, or, as it has 
 been tersely stated, " as matter in a pecu- 
 liar state or condition." Whatever may 
 have been the origin of life, we may read 
 with scientific eye its story, after it has 
 come to write upon the records of the 
 earth its history and its prophecy. We 
 may notice the point where, so far as 
 known, death first enters the course of 
 life. 
 
 That which actually occurs, after life
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 17 
 
 has come far enough out of the unseen 
 for us to see and to touch it, and to 
 keep its growth under the eye of our 
 science, may be summarily described as 
 follows: The first one-celled organism 
 does not exist for a season, produce an- 
 other like itself, and then decay, and die, 
 and totally disappear ; it does nothing of 
 the sort ; the one thing it does is, not to 
 die, but to live on. It succeeds in living 
 on, and on, by a very simple yet persis- 
 tent process ; for after a while it divides 
 itself into two cells, each like itself, and 
 thus it continues to exist, living in these 
 cells a double life; and this process of 
 simple division and multiplication is car- 
 ried on for a number of successive genera- 
 tions without the appearance of any dead 
 ancestor, or of anything like that which 
 we mean when we speak of a dead body. 
 The simplest forms of life, if left to them- 
 selves, if left under favorable conditions, 
 and without accident, to follow their 
 natural course, do not die ; they bud and 
 divide, they increase and multiply. 
 
 This process of cell-division and multi-
 
 18 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 plication, it was supposed by Weismann, 
 might naturally continue in an endless 
 succession among the unicellular organ- 
 isms; hence he held that such organisms 
 are potentially immortal. As the entire 
 substance of each cell passes into the cells 
 into which it divides, the process leaves 
 behind it no trace of anything resembling 
 a dead and decaying animal form, and 
 hence it has been said of these lowest 
 organisms that "no Amoeba has ever lost 
 an ancestor by death." 
 
 In the multicellular organisms, those 
 composed of several cells, or groups of 
 cells, life grows more complex. The 
 germinal cells those which bear the 
 hereditary matter and the continuous 
 reproductive power of life are distin- 
 guished, according to Weismann's theory, 
 from the somatic cells, those forming 
 the body, which support, while they are 
 themselves fashioned by, the germ-cells. 
 These latter cells, Weismann supposed, 
 in their differentiation from the former, 
 lost the power of indefinite multiplication ; 
 and probably for the benefit of the other
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OP DEATH 19 
 
 germinal cells, which contain the undying 
 germ-plasm, or continuous, hereditary mat- 
 ter of life, the somatic (body) cells became 
 limited in the number of their possible 
 divisions ; that is, they acquired mortality, 
 and acquired it as an advantageous adap- 
 tation to the ends of life. Hence death 
 first appeared among the multicellular or- 
 ganisms (Metazoa), and it appeared on 
 account of its utility. 1 
 
 This supposition, however, of the poten- 
 tial immortality of the lowest organisms 
 through an endless process of cell-division 
 must be modified by the results of later 
 experiments which were conducted with 
 much painstaking by the French biologist, 
 Maupas. 2 His investigations consisted of 
 the careful culture and observation of suc- 
 cessive generations of several species of 
 the unicellular animals (the Ciliated In- 
 fusoria). He was able to follow in differ- 
 ent cultures the history of from two to 
 over six hundred successive generations of 
 these minute organisms. Two methods 
 of reproduction had previously been ob- 
 served among these organisms, the one
 
 20 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 by fission, an asexual method ; and the 
 other by something resembling fertiliza- 
 tion, through the meeting and partial 
 blending of the contents of two cells, a 
 conjugation of cells, after which each of 
 them continued to multiply by dividing 
 into daughter cells. These researches of 
 Maupas showed that among these higher 
 Protozoa the preservation of the species is 
 maintained by occasional intervention of 
 this higher method of conjugation, and 
 that without it the power of cell-division 
 and multiplication becomes enfeebled and 
 in time is completely lost. " The evident 
 result," remarks Maupas, "after long and 
 fatiguing experiments, is that the life of 
 the species with the Cilies is divided into 
 evolutionary cycles, having each for its 
 point of departure an individual regen- 
 erated, and its youth renewed by a sexual 
 completion."* 
 
 By isolating individual Infusoria, and 
 
 thus preventing them from renewing their 
 
 power of reproduction by meeting other 
 
 more distantly related forms of their own 
 
 * Comptes Rendus, 1887, pp. 356-369.
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 21 
 
 species, Maupas discovered among the 
 descendants of the isolated individual 
 increasing signs of enfeebled life, senes- 
 cence, and loss of the power to multiply; 
 and finally the succession of their genera- 
 tions came to a complete pause, and a dead 
 cell was left at the end of it.* At this 
 point natural death, so far as now known, 
 first appears. In the light of these inves- 
 tigations, life is seen to continue through 
 a rudimental form of sexual rejuvenescence 
 reaching on towards further and still more 
 highly organized forms ; while life in its 
 primitive method of multiplication by 
 simple cell-division begins to droop, and 
 at last to die. A double line of life is 
 thus observed: the one, that composed 
 of the sexually reinforced cells, branching 
 up, and bringing forth more fruit; the 
 other, that composed of the isolated, un- 
 reinforced cells, continuing for a while, 
 but at length, as though overshadowed by 
 the more fruitful branch, and as no longer 
 
 * " In nature, however, this limit is probably 
 seldom if ever reached." Sedgwick and Wilson, 
 General Biology, p. 170.
 
 22 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 advantageous for nature's end of a more 
 abundant life, left to wither, and because 
 no longer useful to come at length to an 
 end. This end of this less advantageous 
 method of the propagation of life is death ; 
 thus nature produces and abandons the 
 first known body of death in the history 
 of life. 
 
 These researches of Maupas show that 
 death may have entered into the course of 
 life, earlier than Weismann had at first 
 supposed, among the simpler unicellular 
 organisms. If their universal validity 
 should be admitted, they would compel us 
 to modify the supposition of the immor- 
 tality of the Protozoa by limiting it, among 
 the Infusoria, to such organisms as are 
 kept in the cycle of an ever self-rejuvenat- 
 ing life. Death would overtake those (if 
 there are in nature any such) who fall out 
 of this improved cyclic method of self- 
 reproducing life. Some doubt, however, 
 seems to be thrown over the universal 
 validity of these experiments; and even 
 if we admit that they indicate a general 
 law of the continuation of life among the
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 23 
 
 higher classes of the Infusoria, they do not 
 necessarily prove, as Maupas himself was 
 careful to observe, that a similar cyclic 
 rejuvenescence obtains among still lower 
 and simpler organisms. Simpler forms 
 may (upon Weismaun's theory of the con- 
 tinuous germ-plasm they must) possess 
 indefinite power of cell-division without 
 any interruption by death.* But these 
 investigations, however they may modify 
 the original supposition of the immortality 
 of all the Protozoa, serve to determine more 
 exactly the point in nature where death 
 enters ; and they also throw new light over 
 the earliest working and use of death 
 among the simplest organisms. 3 
 
 An important fact of far-reaching sig- 
 nificance, which these microscopic re- 
 searches reveal, is the connection between 
 the first observed occurrence of death and 
 the earliest observed occurrence of sex, or 
 something resembling sexuality in nature. 
 
 * "It is not known whether or not the Amoeba 
 ever dies of old age." Sedgwick and Wilson, General 
 Biology, p. 166.
 
 24 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 Their intimate connection in the time of 
 their appearance does not show that the 
 one is the cause of the other; but it does 
 show that both are introduced together in 
 the process of life as co-operative factors 
 for the furtherance of life's mission on the 
 earth. Death enters, so far as now known, 
 in connection with the alternation between 
 two methods of reproduction and multipli- 
 cation of life; it occurs naturally in the 
 course of the change from the asexual 
 method of simple cell-division to the 
 method of fertilization, which in time 
 comes to be nature's dominant method not 
 only of preserving life, but also of giv- 
 ing it variety, richness, and plastic power 
 of adaptation to different environments. 4 
 With the rudiments of sex appear also the 
 beginnings of death. With the entrance 
 of the new method for the enrichment and 
 diversification of selected life through sex, 
 enters also the law of decay and death for 
 that remainder of life which is not caught 
 up into this higher potency of nature's 
 fertilization. In this first discrimination 
 of nature between the reinforced cells,
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 25 
 
 destined to live, and the unrejuvenated 
 cells, destined to die, there is seen to be a 
 resemblance to the last judgment of life, 
 as the Scripture describes it: "Then shall 
 two be in the field ; the one shall be taken, 
 and the other left." So death in the ear- 
 liest judgment of life signifies that which 
 is left, and left as the least available organ 
 for life. 
 
 Death by its timely coming completes 
 nature's first work of keeping in the field 
 the form capable of the better life and its 
 further development. 
 
 Death is thus discovered to be a second- 
 ary, and not a primary, event in the course 
 of life. It did not come in at once as the 
 necessary termination of the first individu- 
 alized form or organ of life; for, as Mau- 
 pas' investigations show, these simplest 
 organisms may survive without a dead 
 ancestor among them for at least a large 
 number of generations. The reign of 
 death cannot be said to have been univer- 
 sal from the beginning; for whole cycles 
 of infusorian life escape it. Its reign
 
 26 ENTRANCE AND TTSE OF DEATH 
 
 began with the coming of a new, more 
 powerful dynasty of life. From the begin- 
 ning life was more than death. The law 
 of life has been the dominant law ; the law 
 of death was at first partial and secondary. 
 Moreover, the known facts seem to justify 
 the assertion of some biologists that death 
 may be regarded as itself a product of life. 
 "It is more probable," remarks Mr. Cope, 
 " that death is a consequence of life, rather 
 than that the living is a product of the 
 non-living."* 
 
 This view of the secondary and subordi- 
 nate function of death, which is thus indi- 
 cated by our knowledge of its earliest 
 working, is not to be set aside by any 
 explanation which may be offered of the 
 ultimate cause, or causes, which render 
 the entrance of death possible in nature. 6 
 It is an unproved assumption that there is 
 any inherent necessity of death in the 
 nature of organization, or in some inevit- 
 able limitations of the recuperative and 
 reproductive powers of life. A possibil- 
 ity, it is true, for the original appearance 
 
 * Primary Factors of Organic Evolution, p. 483.
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 27 
 
 of natural death may be inherent in the 
 instability, or in some other unknown con- 
 ditions, of the molecular matter of life; 
 but the possibility of death is not a neces- 
 sity for it, as the continuance of the germ 
 of life from one form to another shows, or 
 as the self-rejuvenescent conjugations of 
 the Infusoria, according to Maupas' inves- 
 tigations, demonstrate. 
 
 Nature's possibilities are not always her 
 necessities. A physical possibility of 
 death may be converted into a natural 
 necessity for it under the operation of 
 other laws, like that of natural selection, 
 and as an adaptation to other ends of 
 nature. With regard to the ultimate 
 cause of death, biology finds itself before 
 very much the same question which con- 
 fronts it in the study of the cause of varia- 
 tion. We have as yet too little exact 
 knowledge to enable our science to settle 
 confidently upon any one theory of the 
 original cause of variation; but uncer- 
 tainty with regard to the factors which 
 produce variations does not prevent us 
 from recognizing the function and service
 
 28 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 of variability as a primal principle of life. 
 So uncertainty with regard to any primal 
 possibilities of death, which nature may 
 have left open, need not prevent us from 
 recognizing its utility as a means of 
 further life when it does find entrance 
 into the course of nature. 6 
 
 From these observed facts, therefore, 
 concerning the origin and earliest work- 
 ing of natural death, we may proceed to 
 further reasonings concerning its future 
 mission in the process of the higher or- 
 ganization of life. It is seen to be an 
 ever-recurring step of nature in the ascent 
 of life. 
 
 As life becomes more organized and 
 complex, death prevails. It comes to 
 reign on earth, because it comes to serve. 
 At length in the history of life a living 
 form arose, so multicellular and so well 
 organized, that it ceased to continue the 
 course of life simply by dividing and mul- 
 tiplying itself into daughter cells ; it had 
 acquired the power of giving up its life 
 for another ; it died in order that its off-
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 29 
 
 spring might continue its life in forms 
 struggling to still higher organization, 
 and better fitted to survive while it must 
 perish. 7 One parent form passes away in 
 order that others may catch up the motion 
 of life, and in turn transmit to others 
 life's rhythm and joy. Thus death comes 
 in to help, and not merely to hurt; to 
 help life further on and higher up, not to 
 put a stop to life. It evidently became 
 advantageous to life as a whole that cer- 
 tain primitive forms should be left by the 
 way to perish. The column of the living 
 marches on, though individual organisms 
 fall by the wayside; life, ever regnant, 
 continues through death, and past death, 
 on to more life and richer. In other words, 
 in the first struggle of animate exis- 
 tence, by bringing into the field regiments 
 of better equipped forms, life scores a vic- 
 tory, although to win it, it must leave its 
 dead upon the field. 
 
 This fact of the utility of death for life 
 will become still further intelligible, if we 
 attempt to conceive what might have been 
 the result if death had not kept the stream
 
 30 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 of life from clogging up and becoming 
 stagnant. For if death had not entered, 
 then the more finely organized, the more 
 masterful, and the fairer forms of life 
 would not have appeared. There would 
 have been no stimulus and response of life 
 for their production. There would have 
 been no call for their appearance under the 
 law of natural selection ; they would not 
 have been needed for the maintenance of 
 life. Death breaks up the crust of nature 
 so that the germinant life may spring up, 
 and grow into the light. Death ends the 
 monotony of the same kind of continued 
 life, and gives it occasion for a new spring, 
 and existence upon a higher level. The 
 course of life would have been arrested, 
 had not death come with helpful hand to 
 clear away products of life no longer use- 
 ful, to remove outworn and mutilated 
 forms, and to let the deepening stream 
 flow on. If we suppose other laws and 
 processes of nature to remain such as we 
 know them to be, we may assert that there 
 could have been made on this earth no 
 garden, no flowers, no birds, no leafy trees
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 31 
 
 for them to sing in, had it not been for the 
 entrance and the ministry of death; had 
 death never been sent along life's way to 
 take from life its useless burdens, and to 
 set its energies free for better adaptations 
 and results ever more fair and fruitful. 
 Man himself might not have been made of 
 the dust of the earth, if that dust had not 
 been mingled of the elements of the dead 
 forms which were before him. We owe 
 our human birth to death in nature. The 
 earth before us has died that we might 
 live. We are the living children of a 
 world that has died for us. 
 
 Biology furnishes thus to philosophy a 
 suggestion of profound truth, and of far- 
 reaching significance. For if we once 
 recognize the adaptation and use of any 
 factor in the organic world, we are already 
 within sight of some rational apprehension 
 of its benevolent function. This concep- 
 tion of the natural utility of death in its 
 original working throws a new light into 
 one of the dark places of natural theology. 
 In the mechanism of nature it means that 
 death itself is one of the methods or con-
 
 32 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 trivances which nature has devised and 
 steadily uses in order to carry her work- 
 manship on, and to make finer products. 
 It means that death in the course of nature 
 is not to be regarded as a disaster, the 
 breaking of a wheel or parting of a belt in 
 nature's workshop, but rather as the in- 
 troduction of a new device for turning out 
 improved manufactures. As an original 
 adaptation of means to ends, death is to be 
 regarded as a mark of beneficence rather 
 than as a natural sign of evil. It has been 
 brought about, as other adaptations have 
 arisen, in order that nature may do better 
 work; just as the ear or the eye are 
 adaptations which have been fashioned 
 and achieved in nature, in order that the 
 range and the joyousness of animal life 
 might be enhanced. So death as an adap- 
 tation in the divine economy of nature is 
 introduced as a means of life, of ever-in- 
 creasing and happier life. 
 
 There is another sign of the natural 
 utility of death to be found farther down 
 in the course of life, which we proceed
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 33 
 
 next to point out. The duration of life 
 for the individual members of different 
 species seems to have been determined 
 upon the principle of utility, for the 
 preservation of the species. The length 
 of the average lifetime among the higher 
 organisms may, to a considerable extent, 
 be measured upon a scale of advantages to 
 the species. We have just been observing 
 the fact that near the unicellular beginnings 
 of life death slips in for the benefit of life 
 on its way up to higher organization ; we 
 adduce now the further consideration that, 
 after a considerable degree of animal or- 
 ganization has been reached, death contin- 
 ues to work for the maintenance of the 
 best issues of life ; and it works thus benefi- 
 cently for the species by regular inter- 
 ventions at periods of time which are, on 
 the whole, most adapted to the purpose 
 of preserving the several species. The 
 length of the life of the golden eagle, for 
 instance, seems to sustain some arithmeti- 
 cal proportion to the time in which the 
 individual eagle should be permitted by 
 nature to live, if the species of eagle is to
 
 34 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 be preserved. The single bird is naturally 
 permitted to live as long as it is expedient 
 in order to secure enough eagle's eggs, 
 and to save enough young eagles, to keep 
 some eagles always in existence circling 
 in the air or perched on loftiest crag. 
 
 Upon this principle of the advantage or 
 disadvantage to the species of a longer or 
 shorter lifetime for the individual organ- 
 isms, the duration of life seems in some 
 instances to have been lengthened, while 
 in other instances it has been shortened ; 
 sometimes, also, in the same species the 
 lifetime of one sex has been prolonged, 
 while the brief day of existence for the 
 other sex has been hastened to its end. 
 The females of one kind of moths rarely 
 live for more than three or four days ; but 
 " the males which fly swiftly in the forests, 
 seeking for the less abundant females, live 
 for a much longer period, certainly from 
 eight to fourteen days." On the other 
 hand, the queen bee lives two or three 
 years, and often longer; but the drones 
 live only four or five months, as long 
 as it is of any use to the colonies of bees
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 35 
 
 for the drones to exist. " Their value to 
 the colony ceases with the nuptial flight, 
 and from the point of view of utility it is 
 easy to understand why their lives should 
 be so short." There are instances, like- 
 wise, in which the lifetime of both sexes 
 seems to have been shortened ; and the ex- 
 planation is the same, that on the whole 
 the shortened lifetime was more advan- 
 tageous to the existence of the species, and 
 that a longer time would have been use- 
 less. Here, also, in determining the dura- 
 tion of the time granted to her many 
 children for existence on this earth, nature 
 makes no haste or waste, but gives to each 
 that which is best. The may-flies furnish 
 an instance of the reduction of the lifetime 
 to a brief hour of existence, which is long 
 enough, however, to insure a constant suc- 
 cession of swarms of ephemeral insects 
 over the pools of water. Thus it may be 
 regarded as a general principle of life, 
 which further researches will not discard, 
 but illustrate and confirm, that death 
 comes to different species when it is best 
 for the species that it should intervene;
 
 36 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 when, that is, all natural advantages and 
 disadvantages taken together, it is most 
 expedient that the individual should give 
 up its separate existence. Natural selec- 
 tion, which is nature's method of promot- 
 ing the best interests of life, has seized 
 upon death as a means of doing further 
 good work for the benefit of life. 
 
 Other considerations, such as the size of 
 an organism, its complexity of structure, 
 its physiological condition, and other 
 relations to the sum-total of animated 
 existence, may have had influence in de- 
 termining the lifetime of different species ; 
 but the total result of all these deter- 
 minants of the period of life, and the neces- 
 sity at stated times of the intervention 
 of death, may be expressed in terms of 
 utility. The equation of the life-periods 
 of species may be written as an equation 
 of known and unknown utilities. 
 
 From these curious studies and these 
 intimate researches into the nature and 
 the causes of death among the more highly 
 organized forms of life, one definite fact 
 seems further to become clear with refer-
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 37 
 
 ence to the natural utility of death. It 
 is seen to prevail in connection with an 
 increasing division of labor among the 
 parts of an organism. In the least differ- 
 entiated cell, no such division of labor 
 could exist. Such a cell would be a whole 
 being to its environment at every point of 
 contact with it. It would owe its success 
 to precisely the same principle as that to 
 which an English statesman once said his 
 success in life was due, that of " being 
 a whole man to one thing at a time." 
 Because it is so unspecialized, the one- 
 celled organism (although not without 
 some structure) can readily divide without 
 loss of life ; the lowest organisms also may 
 reproduce parts which are mutilated or 
 lost. To some extent, but with decreas- 
 ing power, the higher organisms still pos- 
 sess this facility to repair or to replace 
 injured parts. But this power of self- 
 reproduction decreases and finally comes 
 to an end, as organization grows more 
 complex and many-sided. The higher 
 animals stand in manifold relations to 
 their environment. The body of an ani-
 
 38 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 mal is a mechanism in which the principle 
 of division of labor has been carried to a 
 high degree of complexity and perfection. 
 Now it is worthy of further note that the 
 function which nature has given death to 
 fulfil, seems to be connected with this in- 
 crease of the division of labor between 
 different parts of the higher organisms. 
 The prevalence of death accompanies this 
 increased specialization of function; and 
 the function of death may further be said 
 to be one of the natural means for the ac- 
 complishment of this increasing differen- 
 tiation of organs and division of labor, 
 which in turn are necessary to the full 
 development and perfection of life. This 
 consideration leads us, however, directly 
 towards another, and still more interesting 
 suggestion, which recent biology may offer 
 to our moral philosophy concerning the 
 nature and use of death. 
 
 Some signs may be discovered of a sacri- 
 ficial service of death in the natural course 
 of life. Some living cells seem to have 
 been born in order that they might give
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 39 
 
 up their life to other cells. In fulfilling 
 their appointed functions, they themselves 
 suffer dissolution. They complete their 
 work by dying. Hence our naturalists 
 sometimes speak of the principle of sacri- 
 fice as one of the great principles of as- 
 cending life in the economy of nature. 
 We find a trace or suggestion of this sacri- 
 ficial method in the lowliest beginnings, 
 and amid the simplest functions, of organ- 
 ized life. Instances of animal devotion 
 are familiar; and we are accustomed to 
 find an instinctive anticipation, at least, 
 of the moral law of sacrifice in the habit 
 which impels many wild animals to pro- 
 tect the lives of their offspring at the cost 
 of their own. But our biology carries 
 this natural principle of sacrificial function 
 deeper down, and farther back, into the 
 elements and fundamental processes of 
 life. Our physiology has its substitu- 
 tionary theories of the replacement of cells 
 in the discharge of many vital functions. 
 Indeed, the specific function of certain 
 cells, as in the secretory glands, for in- 
 stance, seems to be to dissolve, and to be
 
 40 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 cast off, for the benefit of the organism. 
 How these cells acquired this natural vir- 
 tue of self-effacement ; under what process 
 and discipline of kindly nature living 
 cells, whose inner energy prompts and 
 stimulates them to continuous self-preser- 
 vation, achieved this habit of becoming re- 
 jected and despised, perishing themselves, 
 while the whole body survives and grows, 
 this is hardly as yet a matter of scien- 
 tific conjecture ; but the sacrificial property 
 which such self-effacing cells have ac- 
 quired as their specific character is a 
 matter of observation. 
 
 We should be careful not to transfer 
 moral quality from our self-consciousness 
 to processes of nature in the sentient life 
 beneath us; it should be regarded as an 
 abuse, rather than a profitable use of 
 natural analogies, to employ the words 
 which express the culmination of our 
 supreme life of love, when we would 
 describe animal instincts or physiological 
 movements, which may nevertheless bear 
 suggestive and sometimes even striking 
 resemblances to the higher laws of our
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 41 
 
 spiritual nature. To assume an identity 
 between these lower and these higher 
 functions of life would not be to carry 
 up natural law into the spiritual world, 
 but rather to bring the spiritual into bond- 
 age again to the physical. The begin- 
 nings of altruism in the social instincts 
 and habits of many animals are not in 
 themselves a moral process, as the begin- 
 nings of sensibility in the movements of 
 protoplasm are not an intellectual process ; 
 but the lower may form a physical basis 
 for the higher, and the beginning may 
 prefigure the eventual issue of life; for 
 both the lowest and the highest, both the 
 laws of motion and sensibility in the 
 humble origins, and the laws of conscious- 
 ness and freedom in the diviner issues of 
 life, proceed from the same source, bear 
 marks of the same ideal, and are evidence 
 of the same immanent Intelligence, in 
 which all things are rationally wrought 
 and directed. 
 
 We adduce, therefore, at this point 
 this further fact of a principle of life 
 to be discerned among the constituent
 
 42 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 
 
 cells of some tissues, which may be de- 
 scribed as substitutional and sacrificial, 
 not because of any moral import which 
 may be imputed to it from our self-con- 
 scious life, but because it offers further 
 and direct evidence of the natural utility 
 of death. Individual cells cease to exist, 
 and have, in some way not as yet suffi- 
 ciently investigated, acquired the habit of 
 ceasing to exist, in order that the welfare 
 of the organism as one whole may be 
 maintained. Primitive sacrificial death 
 in nature thus falls under the law of the 
 survival of life. 
 
 We may now sum up in one general 
 statement the facts, and the direct sug- 
 gestions of the facts, which our recent 
 biological study brings within reach of 
 our reasonings. We find that death has 
 many uses in the economy of nature ; that 
 it is indeed so useful that life itself has 
 to call forth death to help it forward on 
 its endless way. We discover that natural 
 death is only in appearance an enemy; 
 that in reality it is a servant and helpmeet
 
 ENTRANCE AND USE OF DEATH 43 
 
 of life. We might go so far as to assert 
 the seeming paradox that, if it had not 
 been for the early entrance of death, life 
 itself might not have risen to its full 
 potency, and in its best and fairer forms 
 it could not have continued to exist. In 
 consequence of death, life develops, and 
 the ministry of death is throughout a 
 service for life, for the increasing ful- 
 filment of life's promise, and for the at- 
 tainment of the greatest possible variety, 
 richness, beauty, and universal joyousness 
 of life. The one regnant, radiant fact of 
 nature is life, and death enters and 
 follows as a servant for life's sake.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE PATH OF LIFE THROUGH THE EVIL 
 IN NATURE 
 
 WE pause for a moment at this point 
 in our inquiry to look abroad over 
 the facts and evidences of nature now open 
 before us, and to observe whether we have 
 thus far gained any position of advantage 
 from which to survey more intelligently 
 the whole problem of natural evil. We 
 have not at this point attained by any 
 means the last height of nature's great 
 argument for life and immortality; but we 
 have reached a higher ground from which 
 we may comprehend in a larger horizon 
 the province of evil in nature. 
 
 Moral philosophy has generally hitherto 
 been content to enter a plea of abatement 
 in behalf of the benevolent design of nat- 
 ure against the impeachment of it by the 
 prevalence of evil in the world. Ethics 
 44
 
 THE PATH OF LIFE THROUGH EVIL 45 
 
 has borrowed from natural science mate- 
 rials for its argument in extenuation of 
 the sufferings which are involved in the 
 struggle of life, and in the seemingly cruel 
 necessities of death. But there has been 
 lacking some one single, clear principle 
 of justification for the entrance of death 
 into nature, and the further possibilities 
 of suffering connected with death. Pleas 
 of extenuating circumstances may relieve, 
 but only the discovery of some all-perva- 
 sive principle of action, in itself clearly 
 benevolent, can justify the temporary ex- 
 istence of suffering ; the final moral expla- 
 nation of natural evil will be furnished 
 by the revelation of some law of divine 
 procedure in the evolution of life and its 
 fruits, which in itself shall be seen to be 
 rational, and which will be recognized in 
 its whole working and issue as a law of 
 love. Our theologies have always in their 
 several ways been seeking after such a 
 theodicy a justification on some clear 
 moral principle of the general procedure 
 of God in the course of nature. Of late 
 years our evolutionary science has brought
 
 46 THE PATH OF LIFE THROUGH EVIL 
 
 fresh eyes to the old task of discerning the 
 good at the heart of things evil; and in 
 general, evolution may be said to furnish 
 a thoroughly hopeful philosophy of natural 
 evil; it finds argument of increasing good 
 in the development of nature, and becomes 
 optimistic even in its last outlook over 
 the dissolution of worlds and the passing 
 away of this present order of nature. 
 
 The mitigating circumstances which may 
 be adduced in alleviation of the hard facts 
 of the existence of suffering and death 
 throughout the animal kingdom have been 
 happily put by Mr. Wallace in his remarks 
 upon the " Ethical Aspect of the Struggle 
 for Existence."* He holds that the 
 amount of animal suffering is "greatly 
 exaggerated; that the supposed 'tor- 
 ments ' and ' miseries ' of animals have 
 little real existence, but are the reflection 
 of the imagined sensations of cultivated 
 men and women in similar circumstances ; 
 and that the amount of actual suffering, 
 caused by the struggle for existence among 
 animals, is altogether insignificant." In 
 * Darwinism, pp. 36-40.
 
 THE PATH OF LIFE THROUGH EVIL 47 
 
 evidence of this more cheerful view of 
 animal suffering, he adduces the facts that 
 " animals are entirely spared the pain we 
 suffer in the anticipation of death a pain 
 far greater, in most cases, than the reality " ; 
 that consequently animal life is a perpetual 
 enjoyment without "any serious dread"; 
 that violent deaths, which are the rule 
 under nature's general law of prey, "if 
 not too prolonged, are painless and easy " ; 
 death, likewise, through gradual weakness 
 and exhaustion is not necessarily painful. 
 In the other scale, outweighing the suffer- 
 ing, Mr. Wallace puts the enjoyments 
 which nature has provided for the lives of 
 most animals, such as their coming into 
 existence usually at the time of year when 
 "food is most plentiful, and the climate 
 most suitable," and the "continual round 
 of healthy excitement and exercise, alter- 
 nating with complete repose," which is the 
 rule of life among animals as they reach 
 their maturity. " We must therefore con- 
 clude," he remarks, "that animals, as a 
 rule, enjoy all the happiness of which they 
 are capable. . . . Thus the poet's picture of
 
 48 THE PATH OF LIFE THROUGH EVIL 
 
 ' Nature red in tooth and claw 
 With ravine,' 
 
 is a picture the evil of which is read into 
 it by our imaginations, the reality being 
 made up of full and happy lives, usually 
 terminated by the quickest and least pain- 
 ful of deaths." 
 
 To this appeal which Mr. Wallace makes 
 to the facts of animal happiness on the 
 whole, may be added some further con- 
 siderations which Mr. Drummond has 
 pointed out in his chapter on "The 
 Struggle for Life." * He reminds us that, 
 when it is said an animal struggles, "all 
 that is really meant is that it lives ; " that 
 " with exceptions, the fight is a fair fight. 
 As a rule there is no hate in it, but only 
 Hunger." He lays stress upon the fact 
 that essentially the struggle for life is 
 "the attempt to solve the fundamental 
 problem of all life Nutrition." And, 
 what is still more important, Mr. Drum- 
 mond urges that the principle of the 
 struggle for life itself undergoes, and is 
 destined to undergo still further changes ; 
 * Ascent of Man, pp. 203 sq.
 
 THE PATH OF LIFE THEOUGH EVIL 49 
 
 every animal feature of it, in enlarging 
 regions, is "discredited, discouraged, or 
 driven away"; and "the amelioration of 
 the Struggle for Life is the most certain 
 prophecy of science." * 
 
 The further apology for natural evil, 
 which may be made from the side of moral 
 philosophy, has been argued with much 
 particularity, as well as force and beauty, 
 by Mr. Martineau in his discussion of 
 "Alleged Blemishes in Nature."! He 
 argues with Plato that the crowning glory 
 of creative Power is its " ungrudgingness" ; 
 that the waste of life does not involve any 
 moral "breach of promise" on nature's 
 part; that an incidental end realized by 
 her method is " the investiture of the world 
 with a glorious exuberance, furnishing it as 
 a majestic palace with endless galleries of 
 art and beauty, instead of as a cheap board- 
 ing-school, with bare benches and scant 
 meals." He lifts the argument with nat- 
 ural evil up into the higher terms of the 
 "moral structure and discipline of this life. " 
 
 * Ascent of Man, pp. 211, 212. 
 
 t A Stirfy of Religion, Vol. I., p. 330.
 
 50 THE PATH OF LIFE THROUGH EVIL 
 
 After all this is said, we still miss, 
 however, one clear principle of moral pro- 
 cedure, in relation to which all kinds and 
 degrees of natural evil may be surveyed, 
 estimated, and finally judged. To gain a 
 sure and clear apprehension of some unify- 
 ing and all- justifying principle of benevo- 
 lence in nature and throughout the history 
 of life, may be a spiritual achievement far 
 too high as yet for the human reason to 
 compass, or for the human heart to rest 
 in with untroubled trust. The Omnis- 
 cient alone can reveal the full and final 
 theodicy. There are many questions with 
 regard to which even devoutest believers 
 must accept Erasmus' saying that we must 
 let them wait, not to the next Ecumenical 
 Council, but " till the veil is removed and 
 we see God face to face." 
 
 Without presuming, however, that we 
 may be able to gain through the expansion 
 of knowledge a scientific comprehension of 
 the whole mystery of evil, any research is 
 welcome which indicates that some intel- 
 ligent and straightforward method of pro- 
 cedure has been followed by nature through
 
 THE PATH OF LIFE THROUGH EVIL 51 
 
 the mystery of evil. We should not 
 lightly esteem even the least facts which 
 at any intermediate point may indicate the 
 direction towards final good of the long, 
 winding, but ever-onward path of life and 
 death which nature is following. Do the 
 facts, then, which recent biology is open- 
 ing to our further inquiry, cast any inter- 
 preting light upon the function and use 
 for life of natural evil ? 
 
 It may be urged without exaggeration 
 of its significance that to establish clearly 
 a law of utility in the function of death, 
 would bring our reason nearer to the fun- 
 damental principle and continuous method 
 of divine benevolence with regard to all 
 natural evil. If such a law is firmly es- 
 tablished in our science, to return again 
 to Job's imagery, it will mark another 
 course of known boundary stones in our 
 search towards the end of thick darkness 
 and of the shadow of death. For if, as we 
 have observed, death entered into life, not 
 at the beginning, and for the immediate 
 disappointment of its promise, but farther 
 on, and later down, and in order to help
 
 52 THE PATH OP LIFE THROUGH EVIL 
 
 clear the way for richer fulfilment of life's 
 promise, then death, in its primary intent 
 at least, is justified; in its original and 
 working relation to life and the ends of 
 life, death, which seems to man to sum up 
 all evil, is seen itself to illustrate a prin- 
 ciple of natural benevolence; as much 
 so, at least, as any other natural adapta- 
 tion may be alleged to be evidence of good 
 purpose, and not of evil design. If it can 
 be scientifically shown that death falls 
 under the general method of natural selec- 
 tion, by means of which nature has seized 
 upon every point of advantage for the 
 benefit of life ; then the working of death 
 becomes as true to life, and as beneficent, 
 as the general law of natural selection, 
 under which it works, may be affirmed to 
 have been true throughout to life's best 
 ends, and to operate as a benevolent prin- 
 ciple of perfection. It affords our moral 
 philosophy a position of no small advan- 
 tage to be assured by our biological science 
 that the natural evil which accompanies 
 death, is evil let into the world through a 
 door which was opened for the further out-
 
 THE PATH OF LIFE THROUGH EVIL 53 
 
 going and larger outlook of life. Death, 
 with its attendant evils, does not spring 
 up in the path of life as a sudden foe, to 
 turn life back, to frustrate its purpose of 
 good, to mangle the form, to wound the 
 spirit, or to break the heart of nature ; but 
 it enters and follows in the path of life as 
 a servant, burying the useless waste, re- 
 moving the outworn garment, and provid- 
 ing ever-needed nutriment, as life strug- 
 gles and marches on to its height and joy. 
 It is much if we may perceive with some 
 scientific precision that the happiness of 
 animated existence is due to the func- 
 tion of death as well as to the energy 
 of life. 
 
 When in the fresh summer air we see, 
 and reflect in our own cheerful mood, the 
 delight in existence with which all nature 
 teems, we may find a better reason for our 
 trust in the divine benevolence than that 
 which Paley gave, when he regarded this 
 provision for the happiness of animated 
 existence as the outcome of a series of 
 divine acts of mechanical drawing and 
 designing; for with a better theological
 
 54 THE PATH OF LIFE THROUGH EVIL 
 
 belief in the living One, in whom all live 
 and move and have their being, and from 
 a science which traces more intelligently 
 the continuous lines of his working, we 
 may be assured that all this life and joy- 
 ousness of the summer's day is the sure 
 and increasing issue of his whole proce- 
 dure and order of nature; that in nature's 
 larger method death serves life, and evil 
 is for good; that to the vital powers, which 
 include, also, and use the forces of decay 
 and dissolution, the joy and melody of 
 forest and field are due ; that the beauty 
 of the flowers and every song of bird in 
 the sunny air is a tribute of nature to the 
 timely friendliness of death as well as to 
 the constancy of life, through which 
 both of them working together such 
 color and fragrance, such balancing of 
 wing and circling flight, and such out- 
 burst of melodious sound have in nature's 
 fulness of time become possible in the 
 garden of the Lord. 
 
 Contemplating, therefore, the facts which 
 have thus been brought within the range
 
 THE PATH OF LIFE THKOTJGH EVIL 55 
 
 of our observation, and which indicate the 
 useful function of death under the prin- 
 ciple of natural selection, we may reason 
 with the greater theological confidence 
 that the existence of natural evil offers 
 no necessary or finally inexplicable re- 
 proach against the method of the Creator 
 in fitting the earth for the abode of ani- 
 mated existence, and in leading life on to 
 ever-increasing fruitfulness and joyous- 
 ness. Unless we could presume that on 
 the whole a much better universe might 
 have been devised for the attainment of 
 the ends of life, and we have no knowl- 
 edge or reason to warrant such measure- 
 less presumption, we can assert that 
 whatever is an essential factor of the ex- 
 isting order, and is seen to work helpfully 
 with it, and not obstructively against it, 
 partakes of the general character of the 
 whole system, to which it belongs, and is 
 good, if the order as one whole is benefi- 
 cent. 
 
 In view of the utilities of natural death 
 which are coming to be known, we may 
 the more confidently conclude that the
 
 56 THE PATH OF LIFE THROUGH EVIL 
 
 Creator will never need to apologize to 
 the creation for having permitted the door 
 for the entrance of natural evil to stand 
 open for a while into nature. For it has 
 been opened for life's sake.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SCIENTIFIC PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMOR- 
 TALITY 
 
 facts which we have thus far drawn 
 1 from recent biological science do not 
 seem at first glance to yield us any firmer 
 footing, if we seek to find our way further 
 out into the vast mystery of our possible 
 human life after death. They enable us 
 to perceive that the way of death is a way 
 of advantage for the life of the race as a 
 whole ; but we are not yet helped on in 
 the argument of our human hearts for per- 
 sonal immortality. 
 
 Our biological sciences, while assuring 
 us of the general utility of the law of 
 death, might seem to be no better com- 
 forters to hearts overwhelmed with personal 
 sorrow than were Job's three naturalistic 
 friends, who reasoned with him as hope- 
 fully as they could, but without healing 
 
 67
 
 58 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 balm in their words, from man's knowledge 
 then of birds and plants, and the many 
 dark processes of nature up to the bands 
 of Orion, and the sweet influences of the 
 Pleiades. Yet it is something to gain 
 once more, with sure footing on observed 
 facts of nature, an Old Testament belief 
 in the continuance of a royal line of life, 
 and the immortality of the chosen race. 
 The Old Testament faith in national and 
 social immortality is not yet the gospel of 
 the Life which was manifested, and 
 which is risen in the Christ to personal 
 immortality ; but the Old Testament faith 
 in the continuance and the perfection of 
 the glory of the royal succession of life in 
 Israel, was the preparation for the gospel 
 which brought life and immortality to 
 light. Should the help, then, of recent 
 biological science desert us altogether at 
 this point, and offer no further suggestion 
 in aid of our personal quest after a surer 
 confidence in our life beyond death, we 
 might still be grateful for this contribution 
 of evolutionary science to the fundamental 
 Old Testament conception of a selected
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 59 
 
 line of life, from which a Christian faith 
 may lift higher its immortal hope. But 
 the suggestive aid of modern biology does 
 not cease altogether at this point. If with 
 the facts already adduced we group other 
 results of evolutionary studies, and follow 
 them all out as far as we reasonably may, 
 we shall discover, planted before us, 
 several further stepping-stones across the 
 stream towards the end of darkness and of 
 the shadow of death. 
 
 Before proceeding, however, to pass in 
 review the facts and considerations which 
 science may contribute in furtherance of 
 the argument for personal immortality, we 
 need rightly to conceive of the nature of 
 the aid which we may rationally expect 
 the bodily senses to bring to faith, and 
 which the science of sensible phenomena 
 may leave for the argument of divinity. 
 
 This aid of natural science to moral and 
 spiritual faith may be of a threefold nature. 
 First, it may remove objections to the 
 higher possibilities of nature and life, 
 which our religious faiths assume. Ad- 
 vancing knowledge may overcome the
 
 60 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 obstacles which appear at first sight against 
 spiritual affirmations. Later science may 
 lay level difficulties of faith which ear- 
 lier science has raised. Increasing vis- 
 ion may open larger possibilities than 
 are seen as yet. If there is an unseen 
 universe, connected with the seen by 
 intangible bands, and continuous with 
 it through invisible transformations of 
 energy; then the science of the seen, as 
 it exhausts in its analysis the measurable 
 energies of the universe, may render the 
 more irresistible the conclusion that there 
 must be an immeasurable and living Power 
 within and beyond all visible phenomena. 
 The closing act of all science will be 
 silently to leave the reason face to face 
 with the mystery of the unseen. Hence 
 final presumptions of natural science may 
 become the first assumptions of faith. 
 Where the sight of the eye ends, the vision 
 of the reason begins. A rapid survey of 
 the results to which evolutionary science 
 in many directions is coming, would in- 
 dicate that such is in part the aid which 
 it is destined to render to a new, natural
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 61 
 
 theology. At some of the very points 
 where at first it raised seemingly impas- 
 sable objections, it has itself in time sur- 
 mounted its own difficulties, and given 
 larger scope and increased energy to the 
 argument of divinity which once it 
 seemed to bring to a full pause. The 
 fate, for instance, of the argument from 
 design in the hands of evolutionists il- 
 lustrates this power of growing science to 
 overcome its own darker scepticisms. At 
 first evolution interposed a sudden stop to 
 the reasoning from mechanical analogies 
 of design, which theology had confidently 
 pursued through whole series of Bridge- 
 water Treatises. Paley's evidences were 
 dropped from the course of a liberal edu- 
 cation. But the same evolutionary science 
 is now introducing a truer and larger tele- 
 ology of its own. The argument from the 
 watch, as Mr. Fiske would say, has been 
 superseded by the argument from the 
 flower. A better natural theology is to 
 be gained by beholding the lilies in their 
 growth than by reasoning from the con- 
 struction of a timepiece. This is only
 
 62 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 saying that God's creative thought in 
 nature's evolution is not as our thought 
 in designing an artificial mechanism. 
 The evidences which indicate that some 
 way of evolution has been nature's uni- 
 form method serve likewise to reveal 
 closer thought and deeper wisdom in 
 nature. Her ends are immanent in her 
 workings. If nature in its separate parts 
 appears to be mechanical, as one ordered 
 whole it is rational. Evolution, indeed, 
 proceeds more like a process of thought 
 than like a piece of handiwork. 
 
 A second aid to faith, which may rea- 
 sonably be expected from the advance of 
 natural science, will consist in an increas- 
 ing presumption, of positive force, in 
 favor of moral and spiritual interpreta- 
 tions of the world. Thus the new tele- 
 ology the enlarged argument for design 
 to which we have just referred, not only 
 furnishes an instance of the manner in 
 which science may be left to overcome 
 its own spiritual difficulties, but also it 
 offers an example of the further positive 
 presumption which increasing knowledge
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 63 
 
 may render faith. As nature in her most 
 intimate processes becomes better known, 
 it is to be expected that the reason of man, 
 ever at work on its moral task, will find 
 more material of knowledge to be reformed 
 and refashioned with improved methods 
 into more attractive patterns of religious 
 belief; and the history of science justifies 
 this expectation. For only to superficial 
 observers, or to intellects shut up in their 
 own unvital, and hence unyielding, habits 
 of thought, has there ever seemed to be a 
 warfare between science and religion. No 
 reconciliation of the two is needed, when 
 both are honest and true. The only real 
 question is, and it is a question always 
 fascinating to candid inquirers, what 
 may nature further teach science, and what 
 more may faith learn from the science to 
 which nature is teaching new truth ? 
 
 Besides these two kinds of help, which 
 natural science may lend to faith, there is 
 still a third possible aid by no means to be 
 despised, the service, namely, of science 
 to the spiritual imagination. The diffi- 
 culty of faith at many points does not lie
 
 64 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 in any intrinsic unreasonableness of it, 
 but in its inconceivableness. The trouble 
 is one of the imagination. The difficulty 
 sometimes is not that the reason is not 
 willing, but that the imagination is weak. 
 Imagination often becomes a worse sceptic 
 in us than the reason. Imagination by 
 its weakness sometimes betrays faiths 
 which no reasoning could take by assault. 
 One cause why the faith of little children 
 is so quick and undoubting is to be found 
 in childhood's power of making its beliefs 
 vivid and real in concrete and distinct 
 imaginations. Even when rationally con- 
 vinced of a truth, we may need to become 
 as children again in imagination, in order 
 that we may walk in the faith of the spirit. 
 Thus the difficulty of conceiving how 
 thought and love can continue when no 
 longer manifested through a bodily pres- 
 ence, and the utter exhaustion of our 
 imaginative power in the effort to render 
 intelligible the conditions of the life be- 
 yond death, may produce an oppression of 
 heart and numbness of spiritual response 
 to the Christian hope, which is not an un-
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 65 
 
 familiar mood even to devout believers. 
 Hence any aid which science may offer to 
 the spiritual imagination is an acceptable 
 service. If a spiritual law may be ren- 
 dered more conceivable in some analogy 
 of natural law, or if a scientific concep- 
 tion may readily lend itself to some fur- 
 ther spiritual use, timely aid will be thus 
 given to faith where its strength often 
 fails, and where help is most grateful. 
 
 Moreover, though science may fail to 
 bring any material form to the positive 
 help of faith, it may still render good ser- 
 vice by showing that this difficulty of 
 imagination is nothing peculiar to the 
 spiritual sphere. A similar failure of the 
 imagination follows all our inquisitive 
 sciences. One of the hardest tasks given 
 to the modern mind is to realize in dis- 
 tinct and definite concepts the fundamen- 
 tal truths of physics or biology. Yet with 
 sure and strenuous persistence science 
 leads us through worlds of unimaginable 
 things. The nature of the ether, the sub- 
 tilties of molecular combinations, the com- 
 plexity of processes in the growth of an
 
 66 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 organism from the inwrought marvel of a 
 vital cell, surpass our powers of concep- 
 tion; yet for that reason neither physics 
 nor biology tarries or stops in its course 
 of reasoning from observed facts. No 
 scientific conclusion, if required by strict 
 reasoning, is lightly to be cast aside 
 because we have no imagination for it. 
 We may gain, then, from the pursuit of 
 scientific inquiries needed aid for our 
 spiritual faiths in our hours of imaginative 
 weakness and unbelief. 
 
 The limits also of the possible service 
 of science to the spiritual faiths of man 
 should be observed. We shall injure 
 rather than help our faith, if we seek for 
 more knowledge through the science of 
 the senses than they are organized to re- 
 ceive. Arguments from visible analogies 
 may be helpful, until overdriven. More- 
 over, we may submit more cheerfully to 
 the limitations of our spiritual knowl- 
 edge, when we see clearly within what 
 bounds must necessarily be kept the help 
 which can possibly be brought, either for 
 the reason or the imagination, from the
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 67 
 
 restricted, but not unfriendly, realm of 
 natural science. 
 
 Thus we must not expect any science to 
 bring within reach of our senses a demon- 
 stration of the vast outlying spiritual 
 reality of the universe. There are only 
 two conceivable demonstrations of the life 
 beyond. The one is such evidence as 
 the disciples received, when they saw the 
 appearance of their risen Lord, and when 
 by his manifestation to them of his same 
 thought and love he convinced them that 
 it was He, and not another, the Master, 
 and not the gardener, who said, "Mary." 
 His spiritual identity was the essential 
 part of his self-revelation to the disciples. 
 The manner in which he may have mani- 
 fested that, is the least important truth of 
 the resurrection. The other, the only 
 other way now conceivable of the demon- 
 stration of the future spiritual life, will be 
 our personal experience of it, when we 
 shall rediscover ourselves after our escape 
 from this mortality. 
 
 With these preliminary remarks, there-
 
 68 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 fore, concerning the possible useful ser- 
 vice, and the necessary limitations of the 
 aid, which any knowledge of visible nature 
 may be expected to lend to faith, we now 
 resume the discussion of the suggestions 
 of recent evolutionary science concerning 
 death and immortality. 
 
 We shall seek first to gain the broad 
 vantage-ground for the argument for im- 
 mortality, to which evolutionary science 
 leads, observing the enlargement of our 
 whole prospect of life, which it opens 
 before us; then, secondly, we shall point 
 out the new and promising view, in the 
 direction of the life beyond, which may 
 be gained from our present inquiry con- 
 cerning the natural law of the utility of 
 death. 
 
 A broader and more luminous concep- 
 tion of the universe as existing in some 
 all-pervasive Intelligence, this, in a 
 single sentence, may be said to be the 
 rational conception of the creation to 
 which we are led by all our scientific 
 observation of it. Evolutionary science 
 exalts and enlarges the spiritual prospect
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 69 
 
 of man, if we follow it far enough, and 
 are intellectually strong enough not to be 
 stalled in any materialistic morass across 
 which its first course may run. The stur- 
 dier thinkers among our recent evolution- 
 ists are not hopelessly swallowed up in 
 the bog of materialism; Darwin never 
 affirmed that in tracing the earthly descent 
 of man he had solved the whole problem of 
 his being and destiny ; Tyndall and Hux- 
 ley never owned the materialism of those 
 coarser thinkers who, like Vogt, could 
 compare the relation of thought and the 
 brain to that of the gall and the liver; 
 Mr. Wallace gets clear across the Serbo- 
 nian bog, and reaches firm, high ground 
 on which to build man's moral and spiritual 
 faiths, when, in the closing chapter of his 
 Darwinism, he holds that his interpretation 
 of the evidence enables us to " accept the 
 spiritual nature of man, as not in any way 
 inconsistent with the theory of evolution, 
 but as dependent on those fundamental 
 laws and causes which furnish the very 
 materials for evolution to work with."* 
 * Darwinism, p. 476.
 
 70 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 And Romanes' Life and Letters, together 
 with his Thoughts on Religion, show 
 how the way may be opened and trav- 
 ersed by a persistent reasoner from an 
 abandoned mechanical theism, along a path 
 of strictly scientific thought, towards a 
 high and clear faith in the One omnipres- 
 ent Mind, in which alone the universe, as 
 one ordered and reasonable whole, can 
 find its ultimate explanation. Similar 
 signs of return towards belief in some 
 intelligent direction and spiritual causa- 
 tion of the phenomena of life may be dis- 
 cerned in the reasonings of several of our 
 biologists. The conception, which an 
 apostle of old had gained, does not lie far 
 from our modern biology, that there is a 
 living One, in whom we live and move 
 and have our being. It is distinctly 
 recognized as the ultimate biological in- 
 ference by some investigators, and it lies 
 philosophically close to the conclusions 
 of others, who do not discern so distinctly 
 the theistic tendency of their own work. 
 Thus Professor Cope regards conscious- 
 ness not as a product, but as an essential
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 71 
 
 condition of life.* We may notice in 
 much recent scientific literature a state of 
 mental quiescence, if not of acquiescence, 
 towards religious faiths. It may be de- 
 scribed as a promising pupa condition of 
 modern evolutionary thought. Although 
 it may not as yet respond actively to spir- 
 itual stimuli and suggestion, it lies in a 
 transitional condition, which is interest- 
 ing and hopeful; for it would seem to 
 show that one period of scientific negation 
 of the spiritual life has come to its natural 
 close, and to indicate the possibility of a 
 further unfolding and upspringing of sci- 
 entific thought into the light of a higher 
 life in spiritual energy and joy. A sign 
 of this mental condition and its promise 
 may be found in a passage with which 
 Weismann closed his essay on the Dura- 
 tion qf Life, after he had reached the 
 scientific conclusion that the organic world 
 must once have arisen, and further, that 
 it will at some time come to an end. But 
 before he can drop the whole matter with 
 this conclusion, he adds these words: 
 * Primary Factors of Organic Evolution, pp. 508 sq.
 
 72 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 "Yet who can maintain that he has dis- 
 covered the right answer to this important 
 question? And even though the discov- 
 ery were made, can any one believe that 
 by its means the problem of life would be 
 solved ? If it were established that spon- 
 taneous generation did actually occur, a 
 new question at once arises as to the con- 
 ditions under which the occurrence became 
 possible. How can we conceive that dead 
 inorganic matter could have come together 
 in such a manner as to form living proto- 
 plasm, that wonderful and complex sub- 
 stance which absorbs foreign material and 
 changes it into its own substance, in other 
 words, grows and multiplies ? " 
 
 " And so, in discussing this question of 
 life and death, we come at last as in all 
 provinces of human research upon prob- 
 lems which appear to us to be, at least for 
 the present, insoluble. In fact, it is the 
 quest after perfected truth, not its posses- 
 sion, that falls to our lot, that gladdens 
 us, fills up the measure of our life, nay! 
 hallows it." * The hallowing of life, from 
 * Essays upon Heredity, p. 36.
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 73 
 
 the consciousness that our science does not 
 possess the secret of it, and in the felt 
 presence of some larger mystery around 
 and above it all, comes very near being 
 that fear of the Lord which is the begin- 
 ning of wisdom. 
 
 From several directions scientific 
 thought approaches, and with increasing 
 reverence, the spiritual mystery of the 
 creation. The sublimation of matter 
 the supersensuousness of the primal con- 
 ceptions of physics indicates the dis- 
 tance which scientific thought is compelled 
 to go from the visible phenomena of 
 nature, and the closeness of its approach 
 to the unseen realities of the created uni- 
 verse. Hence it is not surprising that 
 the more speculative physicists, having 
 passed beyond atomic matter in their con- 
 ception of the ether, from which the atoms 
 were presumably derived, raise the further 
 question, whether the initiative of all that 
 we see and may know, is not to be postu- 
 lated as " a something existing beyond the 
 ether," capable of acting upon it, yet not 
 necessarily in any such mechanical rela-
 
 74 PRESUMPTIONS OP IMMORTALITY 
 
 tions to the ether as those which we may 
 observe in the laws of molecular energies 
 on this atomic side, so to speak, of the 
 ether.* 
 
 Still more the study of the phenomena 
 of life presses biological thought on 
 through all molecular changes towards 
 the outlying idea of the Spirit. The un- 
 veiling of the intricate tracery of structure 
 in the living cell; the observation of mi- 
 croscopic machinery of segmentation in 
 the nucleus of the egg ; the effort to follow 
 still further the involved, but definite, 
 lines of hereditary development, have 
 already shown that the phenomena of evo- 
 lution are far too complex to be reduced 
 to any single formula, such as the laws 
 announced by Darwin and Spencer of the 
 struggle for existence, adaptive selection, 
 and survival of the fittest. No one exist- 
 ing biological school, with its favorite 
 principle of selection, use and effort, 
 growth-force (bathmism), or any mechani- 
 cal pressures and planes of cleavage, 
 commands general assent, or offers an 
 * See Biological Lectures, Wood's Holl, 1895, p. 81.
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 75 
 
 explanation adequate to the diversified 
 facts of life. Each new issue of our sci- 
 entific periodicals will contain some fresh 
 suggestion or question (and too often some 
 barbarously compounded new word), if 
 not some further light upon the organic 
 factors of evolution. It is true that the 
 once recognized school of vitalists have 
 been of late generally excluded from good 
 biological society. Their supposition that 
 there is a special vital force is discredited, 
 as indeed it should not be assumed, in a 
 science which limits itself strictly to the 
 observation of material phenomena. The 
 science of life must be a knowledge in 
 which distinctive vital phenomena are 
 seen and traced in their relations to other 
 known processes and energies of nature; 
 life can be scientifically studied only as 
 a series of phenomena connected with cer- 
 tain molecular constitutions and chemical 
 changes. As seen from the physical side, 
 there can be in vital phenomena no breach 
 of continuity. Nevertheless, the fact that 
 life may be known, up to a certain extent, 
 as a mechanical process, should not be suf-
 
 76 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 fered to obscure the further fact that it can 
 thus be known only in part, and that not 
 the most intimate and significant part of 
 it. The reserved mystery of life, beyond 
 any known physical and chemical rela- 
 tions, is vastly deeper and larger than the 
 single perplexing question which concerns 
 its origin on the earth. Spontaneous gen- 
 eration an exception to the uniform law 
 of biogenesis has never been proved; 
 but even though its possibility under 
 earlier and favorable conditions of matter 
 should be admitted, the problem of life 
 would not thereby be solved; the question 
 as to its nature arid the directive law of 
 its development would then only be raised. 
 The problem of heredity is a remaining, 
 and a more inscrutable part of the prob- 
 lem of life. 
 
 The attempt to think out any imagi- 
 nable theory of heredity (including in 
 it the directive determination of vital 
 energies and the constancy of vital repe- 
 titions, as well as the tendency to varia- 
 tion, and the processes of adaptive devel- 
 opment) constitutes a mental task which
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 77 
 
 baffles imagination, if it does not put 
 the most strenuous reasonings to final 
 confusion. When Weismann first began 
 his work, he said that we have no theory 
 of heredity; and since he has published 
 his theory of the germ-plasm, with its 
 shifting ingenuities, the statement may be 
 made with still greater assurance, there 
 is now no one theory of heredity which 
 commands general scientific assent. A 
 vast deal has been learned; the facts of 
 heredity are more distinctly known; but 
 the primal and directive laws escape the 
 microscope. Of the hereditary matter, 
 which Weismann assumes, he remarks, 
 "Its structure must be far more complex 
 than we can possibly imagine. " * The diffi- 
 culty of the imagination in conceiving its 
 complexity, and in tracing the lines of its 
 mystic workings, does not grow less, but 
 becomes greater, the farther we follow this 
 eminent biologist in his endeavor to meet 
 with his ever-plastic theory the multi- 
 plicity of the vital facts which require ever 
 new explanations. The problem of the 
 * Germ-Plasm, p. 108.
 
 78 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 schoolmen concerning the number of 
 angels that might be conceived as stand- 
 ing on the point of a needle, may be said 
 perhaps to equal, it hardly can surpass, 
 the question which is thus raised by our 
 latest biology as to the number of "bio- 
 phors " (bearers of life) which may find a 
 quiet resting-place 'within the confines of 
 a single biological unit. We are not 
 arguing that the difficulty of rendering a 
 scientific theory imaginable is a sufficient 
 reason for its rejection, if it is a necessary 
 scientific deduction ; we are simply stating 
 the fact that the most persistent effort to 
 comprehend all the phenomena of life, 
 which modern science has witnessed, 
 drives us to the very borders of the things 
 which are seen, and leaves us attempting to 
 handle something which we cannot grasp, 
 and to touch that which is intangible. 
 
 The marvel of development from the 
 microscopic nucleus of a germ-cell may 
 be put before the imagination by a sim- 
 ple illustration. Suppose we could see a 
 small heap of brick, scraps of metal, and 
 pieces of mortar, gradually shaping them-
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 79 
 
 selves into the walls and interior structure 
 of a building, adding needed material as 
 the work advanced, and at last presenting 
 in its completion a factory furnished with 
 varied and most finely wrought machinery. 
 This would be an apt image of the transfor- 
 mation which our science declares actually 
 occurs in the development of the constitu- 
 ent elements of life from the egg into the 
 structure, organization, and play of func- 
 tions, which we behold in the finished 
 animal form. Admitting that vital devel- 
 opment follows lines of mechanical con- 
 struction; that every higher part rests 
 upon the parts beneath it; that each 
 wheel of its complicated mechanism works 
 in perfect adjustment to every other por- 
 tion of the machinery, nevertheless, the 
 building up of the building is the wonder 
 of it all philosophically to be accounted 
 for. 
 
 We may take as another illustration of 
 the marvel of the mechanism of life this 
 passage from a recent text-book on Gen- 
 eral Biology: "We may perceive how 
 extraordinary these properties are by sup-
 
 80 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 posing a locomotive engine to possess like 
 powers : to carry on a process of self-repair 
 in order to compensate for wear ; to grow 
 and increase in size, detaching from itself 
 at intervals pieces of brass or iron en- 
 dowed with the power of growing up step 
 by step into other locomotives capable of 
 running themselves, and of reproducing 
 new locomotives in their turn. Precisely 
 these things are done by every living 
 thing, and nothing like them takes place 
 in the lifeless world."* But it is pre- 
 cisely these things in the mechanism of 
 life which it is difficult to reduce to any 
 physical equivalence, or to determine in a 
 quantitative analysis. We may work out 
 these vital quantities in our mechanical 
 equations, but the terms at the end of the 
 calculation, as at the beginning, are un- 
 known factors of life. This reserved sig- 
 nificance of life, beyond that which may 
 be expressed in its mechanical equiva- 
 lents, is admitted by many biologists who 
 have studied closely the material relations 
 and conditions of vital phenomena. No 
 * Sedgwick and Wilson, General Biology, p. 4.
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 81 
 
 one in our day has pursued life, as a form 
 of material energy, with a more curious 
 and persistent inquisition than has Pro- 
 fessor Weismann; yet while stoutly 
 maintaining the necessity of a purely 
 mechanical conception of the processes 
 of nature as alone justifiable, he writes: 
 "I nevertheless believe that there is no 
 occasion for this reason to renounce the 
 existence of, or to disown, a directive 
 power; only we must not imagine this to 
 interfere directly in the mechanism of the 
 universe, but to be rather behind the latter 
 as the final cause of the mechanism."* 
 He adds: "But just as we must assume 
 behind the phenomenal world of our senses 
 an actual world of the true nature of which 
 we receive only an incomplete knowledge, 
 ... so behind the co-operative forces of 
 nature which * aim at a purpose, ' must we 
 admit a Cause, which is no less incon- 
 ceivable in its nature, and of which we 
 can only say one thing with certainty, 
 viz., that it must be teleological." This 
 knowledge "leads us to foresee the true 
 
 * Theory of Descent, II., p. 708. 
 
 o
 
 82 PRESUMPTIONS OP IMMORTALITY 
 
 significance of the mechanism of the 
 universe."* 
 
 An American biologist, who finds it diffi- 
 cult to conceive of life apart from matter, 
 nevertheless is compelled to include the 
 mechanical conception of it in some larger, 
 prior element of life: "I think it possible 
 to show that the true definition of life is, 
 energy directed by sensibility, or by a 
 mechanism which has originated under 
 the direction of sensibility."! Others, 
 like the philosopher Hartmann, are in- 
 clined to carry the mystery of life still 
 further back, and to suppose that the 
 atoms are endowed, besides their other 
 known properties, "with an elementary 
 sensibility." But even though all matter 
 should be thus regarded as having in some 
 sense vital properties, its development 
 along definite lines, and with an imma- 
 nent design, is still the unexplained me- 
 chanical problem of life. 
 
 There is a scientific arrogance which 
 seems to forget how great is the remaining 
 
 * Theory of Descent, II., p. 712. 
 t Cope, Origin of the Fittest, p. 425.
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 83 
 
 mystery of life, when the eager hand of 
 an experimenter succeeds in lifting some 
 corner of the veil of the fine physical and 
 chemical process under which its secret of 
 living intelligence is hidden. In contrast 
 with such premature exultation may be 
 put the following conclusion of one of the 
 soberest and most careful investigators 
 among our American school of biologists, 
 who has recently published a valuable 
 contribution to general biology ; his 
 words illustrate the wisdom which Dr. 
 Chalmers happily described as the modesty 
 of true science. " When all these admis- 
 sions are made, and when the conserving 
 action of natural selection is in the fullest 
 degree recognized, we cannot close our 
 eyes to two facts ; first, that we are utterly 
 ignorant of the manner in which the idio- 
 plasm of the germ-cell can so respond to 
 the play of physical forces upon it as to 
 call forth an adaptive variation ; and sec- 
 ond, that the study of the cell has on the 
 whole seemed to widen rather than to nar- 
 row the enormous gap that separates even 
 the lowest forms of life from the inorganic
 
 84 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 world."* The presumption of a purely 
 mechanical conception of nature's highest 
 manifestation of feeling and thought is 
 well hit by the keen philosophic wit of 
 this remark of the late Clerk Maxwell: 
 " The atoms are a very tough lot, and can 
 stand a great deal of knocking about, and it 
 is strange to find a number of them combin- 
 ing to form a man of feeling." f Increas- 
 ing and intimate acquaintance with vital 
 phenomena will not serve to diminish the 
 force of the following conclusion of this 
 same typically scientific mind: "I have 
 looked into most philosophical systems, 
 and I have seen that none will work 
 without a God. "| The theory of some 
 super-physical direction in the origin and 
 development of life is more easily conceiv- 
 able than an exclusively mechanical theory, 
 which would leave intelligence entirely 
 out of all the determination of the world. 
 It is not at least impossible to conceive 
 of vital movements, and of all physical 
 
 * Wilson, The Cell in Development and Inheritance, 
 p. 330. 
 
 1 Life, p. 391. J /6td., p. 426.
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 85 
 
 processes, as existing in, and proceeding 
 through, an omnipresent Intelligence; as 
 we know that ideas, and whole trains of 
 thought, pass in a definite arrangement 
 and logical order of succession through the 
 human mind. Such a conception is more 
 thinkable, because more analogous to our 
 own consciousness, than is any merely 
 mechanical conception of the play of forces 
 in nature. The moment biology lifts up 
 its eye from its experiments and begins 
 to philosophize, it perceives that life has 
 a larger spiritual background. Vital phe- 
 nomena are not only related to molecular 
 properties and forces in the foreground 
 of nature, but they must also exist in con- 
 tinuous correlation with the "unknown 
 factor of evolution," that Potential be- 
 hind all material processes, and beyond 
 all finite measurement, which evolution 
 must everywhere presuppose. 
 
 This advance of thought towards the 
 unseen and the eternal, which proceeds 
 from the deepening of our knowledge of 
 nature, is itself to be regarded as one of 
 the significant tendencies of the evolution
 
 86 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 of modern science. If one could start a 
 shaft from the sunny surface of the earth, 
 which should sink with constant descent 
 into its depths, at the end of that ever- 
 descending shaft would be at first dark- 
 ness, and still lower down we hardly know 
 what ; but if we can suppose such artesian 
 shaft to be sunk, without stoppage in any 
 impenetrable stratum of rock, down ever 
 deeper, until it should reach clear through 
 to the other side of the earth, the point of 
 the shaft would come out once more into 
 the sunlight on the skyward side of the 
 world. At both ends would be opened the 
 light of the day and the infinite heaven. 
 Something like this already seems to be the 
 case with man's research into the depths 
 of material nature. Our thought starts 
 from the light of our spiritual conscious- 
 ness, and it ends with outlook towards 
 the spiritual light. Unbelief is only a 
 shaft sunk a little way down into the 
 darkness. Our unbelief is a sign that our 
 reason has not yet succeeded in working 
 its laborious way clear through things. 
 If it can keep on, in any investigation of
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 87 
 
 nature, and go far enough, it will find the 
 sky again, the same spiritual sky which 
 we first looked up to in our childhood's 
 happy trust. As one complete and 
 rounded whole, nature lies ensphered in 
 the Eternal Light. Already, indeed, as 
 we have just indicated, our natural sci- 
 ences in the descent of their inquiries into 
 the ultimate nature of matter and the pro- 
 found secrets of life, have gone so far that 
 they seem to draw near to intimations and 
 gleamings of some spiritual sphere and 
 reality beyond. Our physics, which began 
 by turning from all metaphysics, is itself 
 creating a new metaphysics. Natural 
 science is becoming a spiritualization of 
 the material; our current conceptions of 
 matter are sublimated and ethereal; at 
 points only a thinnest crust seems to be 
 left between the natural and the spiritual, 
 between mortal darkness and the eternal 
 light. 
 
 We have now to consider more defi- 
 nitely how the argument for our immortal- 
 ity is affected by these general tendencies
 
 88 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 of thought towards the spiritual, which 
 we have just described. It follows that in 
 the present state of human knowledge and 
 speculation we have at hand more material 
 fit for refashioning into the philosophic 
 argument for immortality, than Socrates 
 could have possessed in the knowledge of 
 his time. A Plato might discourse more 
 divinely now, with the facts of science 
 for his analogies, than he could reason 
 when he had only the mythologies of his 
 age for illustrations of his supernal ideas. 
 This general material of the argument for 
 our spiritual faiths, moreover, has been 
 wrought into definite and attractive forms 
 by several recent scientific philosophers. 
 It will be necessary for us to review these 
 reasonings, in order that we may pass on 
 to the further extension of the argument 
 for immortal life to which our present in- 
 quiry points. 
 
 One of the later scientific reinforce- 
 ments of the philosophic argument for 
 immortality has been drawn from the 
 principle of continuity. This principle 
 has been used by the authors of the Unseen
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 89 
 
 Universe as the basis for the construction 
 of an elaborate argument for the continua- 
 tion of our life after death; and still fur- 
 ther, with the help of other admitted 
 physical truths, they have sought to ren- 
 der conceivable the possibility of another 
 sphere of existence connected with this, 
 yet superior to it, in which we have now 
 our spiritual birthright, and into which 
 after death our life shall without personal 
 loss be transformed. According to this 
 view, death would become a transference 
 of individual existence from this visible 
 universe to some other order of things inti- 
 mately connected with it. * The conclusion 
 of their reasonings with regard to life in 
 its connection with matter, they have 
 expressed in this sentence: "In fine, we 
 maintain that what we are driven to is 
 not an under-life resident in the atom, but 
 rather, to adopt the words of a recent 
 writer, a Divine over-life in which we 
 live and move and have our being, "f 
 Their hypothesis that life, as well as mat- 
 
 * Unseen Universe, p. 97, ed. 1886. 
 t Ibid., p. 246.
 
 90 PRESUMPTIONS OP IMMORTALITY 
 
 ter, has been developed from the Unseen, 
 they hold to be the only possible method 
 of avoiding a breach of the principle of 
 continuity ; and to break with that would 
 be to break with modern science. Death, 
 they reason, in consistency with their sci- 
 entific principles, will furnish no barrier 
 to the intellectual development of the in- 
 dividual ; and they further conceive it to 
 be possible that this whole material order, 
 coming in time to an end of its available 
 energy, may be ultimately resolved into 
 the higher order, with which it is always 
 related, and that in the final universe, 
 which has never been unreal, though now 
 unseen, this visible universe "may bury 
 its dead out of sight." * 
 
 We will not pursue further, nor pause 
 to criticise, any portions of this interest- 
 ing scientific speculation concerning the 
 possible conditions and laws of our con- 
 tinuous spiritual being ; it is enough for 
 our present purpose to show by refer- 
 ences to such opinions that science affords 
 to some of her own votaries new points 
 * Unseen Universe, p. 157, ed. 1886.
 
 PBESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 91 
 
 of leverage for the argument of their 
 faith. 
 
 The authors of the Unseen Universe are 
 physicists, and draw the material of their 
 reasonings mainly from their acquaintance 
 with the facts and hypotheses of modern 
 physics. Their argument might in some 
 parts of it be further illustrated and en- 
 forced from recent biological materials. 
 Thus Weismann's speculation concerning 
 the natural immortality of the germ- 
 plasm; his assertion of the continuity of 
 life ; and his affirmation that " every indi- 
 vidual alive to-day even the very high- 
 est is to be derived in an unbroken line 
 from the first and lowest forms,"* might 
 lend additional force to the skilful reason- 
 ings of these authors from the physical 
 principles of the "conservation of mass," 
 and of energy, and from the continuity of 
 nature. It is a living as well as a physi- 
 cal continuity. 
 
 Another and interesting course of rea- 
 soning has been pursued by Mr. John 
 Fiske in his book on the Destiny of Man. 
 * Essays upon Heredity, L, p. 161.
 
 92 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 He accepts the belief in the immortality of 
 the soul as "a supreme act of faith in the 
 reasonableness of God's work."* He was 
 led to this supreme act of faith through 
 the revelation, which finally came to him 
 in his studies of evolution, that there are 
 distinct intimations of a dramatic ten- 
 dency in evolution, which culminates in 
 man, and in the development of his 
 exalted spiritual qualities. Darwinism, 
 which seemed at first to degrade man, 
 has in reality replaced him upon the 
 throne of creation. This new exaltation 
 of man as the goal toward which the 
 whole dramatic movement of evolution 
 has tended, this re-enthronement by evo- 
 lutionary science of man as the head of 
 creation, may best be described in Mr. 
 Fiske's own words : " That which the pre- 
 Copernican astronomy naively thought to 
 do by placing the home of man in the 
 centre of the physical universe, the Dar- 
 winian biology profoundly accomplishes 
 by exhibiting man as the terminal fact 
 in that stupendous process of evolution 
 * Destiny of Man, p. 116.
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 93 
 
 whereby things have come to be what they 
 are. In the deepest sense it is as true 
 as it ever was held to be, that the world 
 was made for man, and that the bringing 
 forth in him of those qualities which we 
 call highest and holiest is the final cause 
 of creation." Of this new conception of 
 man he writes : " When, after long hover- 
 ing in the background of consciousness, 
 it suddenly flashed upon me two years 
 ago, it came with such vividness as to 
 seem like a revelation."* He reasons, 
 further, that "he who regards Man as the 
 consummate fruition of creative energy, 
 and the chief object of Divine care, is 
 almost irresistibly driven to the belief 
 that the soul's career is not completed 
 with the present life upon the earth, "f 
 He sees no more occasion for throwing 
 away our belief in the permanence of the 
 spiritual element in man, than there is 
 reason to throw away our belief in the 
 constancy of nature. "Now the more 
 thoroughly we comprehend that process 
 
 * Idea of God, p. xxi. 
 t Destiny of Man, p. 111.
 
 94 PKESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 of evolution by which things have come 
 to be what they are, the more we are 
 likely to feel that to deny the everlast- 
 ing persistence of the spiritual element 
 in Man is to rob the whole process of its 
 meaning."* 
 
 Such, in brief, is the argument for our 
 immortality which forces itself upon 
 the minds of many thoughtful observers, 
 who take into their view the regular 
 course and manifest tendency of evolu- 
 tion considered as a whole. Investi- 
 gators who are buried in the tasks of 
 special observations may not discern these 
 larger implications of their science, as one 
 at the bottom of a tunnel can have only 
 the narrowest horizon, and no outlook; 
 but Mr. Fiske's conclusions in his Destiny 
 of Man may be regarded as fairly repre- 
 sentative of the faith which a scientific 
 mind may reach, when it rises above the 
 details of its measurements and out of its 
 specializations, and surveys nature as one 
 significant and rational process. Evolu- 
 tion, when regarded as one persistent 
 * Destiny of Man, p. 115.
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 95 
 
 method, and when followed through the 
 vast orbit of its movement, is seen to pro- 
 ceed with sure intent, and with face 
 which, though often veiled from us, is 
 turned always one way and towards the 
 same goal, from the dark mystery of all 
 origins up to the glory that excelleth. So 
 that the argument in general for the per- 
 manent exaltation of man's spiritual being 
 is not only, as Mr. Fiske puts it, a "su- 
 preme act of faith in the reasonableness of 
 God's work " ; it is confidence especially 
 in the reasonableness of the creation in 
 relation to God's work in man, and for 
 man, in his organization, capacities, and 
 aptitudes for perfected life. 
 
 The same processes in nature which 
 impressed Mr. Fiske as indications of a 
 dramatic tendency which finds its culmi- 
 nating scene in man's destiny, impressed 
 an eminent German botanist, Nageli, so 
 profoundly as to lead him to assume "a 
 principle of perfection " in organic evolu- 
 tion.* Nageli, indeed, disclaims the in- 
 troduction under this phrase of any mystic 
 * Theorie der Abstammungslehre, p. 12.
 
 96 PRESUMPTIONS OP IMMORTALITY 
 
 principle, and regards it as a formulation 
 of purely mechanical processes. He de- 
 fines it likewise as a principle of progres- 
 sion. He regards perfection in nature as 
 twofold, a perfection of structure or 
 form, and also a perfection of adaptation 
 of any organism to its environment. But 
 however we may determine the mechanical 
 method in which the principle of perfec- 
 tion in nature works, the recognition of it 
 carries us beyond mechanics for its rational 
 explanation. Whether we regard the ten- 
 dency towards perfection as a consequence 
 of forces external to the organism, work- 
 ing under the law of natural selection ; or 
 whether we incline to the views of Nageli, 
 and other evolutionists, who would find 
 internal causes of growth and variation 
 within the organism, the recognition of 
 the fact that in some way nature works 
 towards perfection involves the discern- 
 ment of an immanent aim and a definite 
 end in evolution. 
 
 The significant facts, written large 
 before the common observation of men, 
 and written small, likewise, in the micro-
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 97 
 
 scopic structure and definite, though 
 unknown, determinants of the simplest 
 organisms, are that life is wondrously 
 persistent, and also that it persists 
 towards perfection. Life will not con- 
 sent to be subject unto death; it has 
 manifestly come in some form to stay; 
 and, being thus deathless in its energy, 
 it will not stop nor tarry until it has pro- 
 duced its perfect work. That work will 
 be perfect both in its form and in its 
 adaptation to environment. But, as Mr. 
 Drummond has insisted in his chapter on 
 "Eternal Life," perfect correspondence to 
 environment is a scientific conception of a 
 possible eternal life which finds fulfil- 
 ment in the Christian conception of the 
 perfection of the soul in knowing God.* 
 That which we now see manifested is only 
 the tendency toward perfection, not as 
 though in man's present existence it had 
 " already obtained," or were " already made 
 perfect." But we see nature "forgetting 
 the things which are behind, and stretch- 
 ing forward to the things which are before." 
 * Natural Law in the Spiritual World, p. 221.
 
 98 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 The last perfection of structure may have 
 been already reached in the spiritual nature 
 which is embodied in man, the living 
 soul. But the perfection of adaptation to 
 environment towards which, also, how- 
 ever mechanically, all evolution tends, is 
 not yet reached in the present relation of 
 the soul and the body; the new adapta- 
 tion, the perfection of adaptation, may be 
 realized, and realized under a larger law 
 of natural selection than we may yet com- 
 prehend, in the body of the resurrection. 
 We behold life struggling and marching 
 on through advancing forms which become 
 more highly organized in their structure, 
 and which consequently are better fitted to 
 survive in a larger and more varied range 
 of adaptations ; we see life calling in and 
 using both the gracious aid of sex, and 
 the silent help of death, to enable it to 
 gain new and more richly diversified form 
 and color, until in man's nature it seems 
 to reach a consciousness of its own worth 
 beyond which it cannot go, and in which 
 it aspires to continue, rejoicing in itself, 
 forever.
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 99 
 
 In the development of plants and ani- 
 mals, a variation from the parental form 
 will reach in time a "selective value," 
 as it is called, when it becomes con- 
 siderable enough to be useful to the 
 plant or animal in its effort to nourish or 
 to protect itself. The variety is regarded 
 as having obtained a "survival-value" 
 also, when the advantage, which it has 
 acquired, fits it to survive better than 
 others around it. Man seems to have 
 gained nature's final survival- value. For 
 the only fitting end of the entire dramatic 
 tendency of life, the crowning result of the 
 whole struggle of existence, the gain 
 of which may justify all loss below it, 
 is the rise and perfection of a being 
 whose life has acquired selective value for 
 the powers of the world to come to seize 
 upon, a being who shall consequently 
 attain to a survival- value beyond the reach 
 of natural death. With a true interpre- 
 tative insight into this continuous and 
 irresistible principle of perfection in 
 nature, we may regard it in its inner and 
 real meaning as a tendency of nature
 
 100 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 towards immortality. The living soul of 
 man seems to itself, and is declared by 
 the perfect Man, in whom it came to its 
 perfect realization, already to have " passed 
 out of death into life," and to have the 
 eternal life. Or to express again its inner 
 consciousness of worth and power after 
 the analogy of our biological science, the 
 living soul has at length attained con- 
 scious " survival- value " for immortality. 
 
 The force of this argument for immor- 
 tality from the tendency towards perfection 
 in nature, is heightened by two further con- 
 siderations, which are justified by the facts 
 of life. The first relates to the value of 
 sacrifice as a means, but not as an end, of 
 life. Alike in our religious conception 
 of it, and in the use of it in nature, sacri- 
 fice is to be regarded as a means of life, 
 which would forfeit its moral value, and 
 lose all its beauty, if it should be chosen 
 as an end of life. In evolution sacrifice 
 appears to be a method followed by nature 
 for the advantage of a species, or for the 
 introduction of a higher order of organic
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 101 
 
 development. Each evolutionary order 
 is sacrificed, not as though nature took 
 pleasure in sacrifices, or in the blood of 
 bulls and goats, but for the benefit of the 
 order above it, as though at any cost 
 nature must press on to the goal, and win 
 the crown of life. Thus the inorganic is 
 broken up in order that from its dust the 
 plant may spring and blossom ; the plant 
 in turn gives up its fruit that the animal 
 may be nourished; and the law of prey 
 among animals is not to be regarded as 
 a reckless thirst in nature for blood, 
 but it indicates rather the existence of a 
 scale of adaptations for offence and de- 
 fence, and of a system of sacrifice and 
 reprisal, by means of which on the whole 
 vital organization is specialized, refined, 
 rendered more agile and responsive, and 
 eventually made meet for the kingdom of 
 mind, to which man comes in the power of 
 the spirit. 
 
 The other consideration relates to the 
 immanence in nature of this sacrificial 
 tendency for the sake of perfection. This 
 is not a discipline imposed upon nature
 
 102 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 from without; it is not a course of sacri- 
 fice for the sake of higher survivals to 
 which nature is with difficulty held by 
 external compulsion; it is an instinct of 
 nature's own heart. It might be called a 
 constitutional law of nature's order; and 
 as such it has the highest significance in 
 any rational interpretation of the world. 
 For it is thus seen to be, not an accidental 
 or temporary contrivance, but a permanent 
 and persistent tendency of life towards 
 perfection. It is the working out of the 
 indwelling and dominant principle of life 
 in its outward evolution. A reaching 
 towards perfection is the unconscious and 
 instinctive attitude of nature. This is no 
 " device " ; it is an indwelling end of all 
 evolution. 
 
 We simply project this immanent law 
 and process of life into the future, and 
 believe in its manifest destiny, when we 
 hold that the sacrifice of life, which we 
 now everywhere see manifested, shall 
 eventually attain its end in a perfec- 
 tion and joy of life which is not yet made 
 manifest. Its apparently predetermined
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 103 
 
 and inevitable result would be some order 
 of life which, in the use of all below it, 
 has itself passed beyond the need of sacri- 
 fice for the sake of any conceivably higher 
 life above it. From life's topmost bough 
 the spirit takes wing, and soars and sings 
 into "the heavenlies." Thus we are 
 brought back again to the conclusion that 
 the tendency of nature towards perfection 
 is an upreaching towards an order, and 
 range, and freedom of life, which shall not 
 merely have sacrificial value for the sake 
 of something beyond it, but also an eter- 
 nal survival- value because it is fitted to 
 live for the glory of God in the highest 
 forever. 
 
 We may use the glowing words of Mr. 
 Fiske to describe the favorable point of 
 view which we have now reached in the 
 argument for immortality : 
 
 "According to Mr. Spencer, the divine 
 energy which is manifested throughout 
 the knowable universe is the same energy 
 that wells up in us as consciousness. 
 Speaking for myself, I can see no insuper- 
 able difficulty in the notion that at some
 
 104 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 period in the evolution of Humanity this 
 divine spark may have acquired sufficient 
 concentration and steadiness to survive 
 the wreck of material forms and endure 
 forever. Such a crowning wonder seems 
 to me no more than the fit climax to a 
 creative work that has been ineffably 
 beautiful and marvellous in all its myriad 
 stages."* 
 
 In these reasonings we are only apply- 
 ing to the higher nature of man in its 
 structural aptitudes the principle of the 
 correspondence between faculty and en- 
 vironment, which obtains as a constant 
 law and a sure prophecy of coming life 
 throughout the whole sphere and opera- 
 tion of nature beneath man. The lung, 
 developing from the gills of the fish, finds 
 the clear air waiting above the water's 
 surface to be breathed. The wing of the 
 bird finds a buoyant element in which it 
 may be safely spread. The eye, growing 
 from some primitive spot of more sensitive 
 pigment, when at last nature has finished 
 it, finds the whole broad day waiting for 
 * Destiny of Man, p. 117.
 
 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 105 
 
 its opening. The existence in any creat- 
 ure of a structural aptitude and a growing 
 power is a scientific presumption of the 
 existence also of some corresponding en- 
 vironment, for which it has been selected 
 and adapted. Lungs, or wings, or roots 
 of the plant, would not be capacity for 
 vital breath, or graceful flight, or swift 
 motion, or fair blossoming, if nature were 
 not true to her own prophecies, and did 
 not justify her anticipations by making all 
 things ready, and supplying in due time 
 to each and every power of life its fitting 
 and festal element. Without the com- 
 pleting element, these organic faculties 
 would be false prophesyings, only un- 
 intelligible anticipations of something 
 unrealized as yet. Now if this principle 
 hold true of all powers and functions of 
 nature up to the life of man, why should 
 it suddenly become false with man's di- 
 vine faculty of thought, will, and love? 
 Why should nature's uniform truth break 
 its promise only to our human hearts? 
 Why should this universal principle of 
 adaptation of power to environment, by
 
 106 PRESUMPTIONS OF IMMORTALITY 
 
 which we know that if the one be given 
 the other also shall in time be made mani- 
 fest, unexpectedly break short off with 
 man's higher life and hope? We read 
 alike in Scripture and in nature that there 
 is a faithful Creator. Nature's gospel of 
 life, her mystery of grace, long hid- 
 den in the lowest organisms, but now 
 revealed, to such as have eyes to see, in 
 her highest manifestations of the Life, is 
 one gospel of hope, and it is true through- 
 out. The existence of spiritual power 
 within us is likewise presumption that 
 some fitting environment waits for the 
 spirit when it shall be perfected and set 
 free. Or, as a prophet of old put it: God 
 "worketh for him that waiteth for him."* 
 
 * Is. Ixiv. 4.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 
 
 general review in the previous 
 1 chapter of the argument for immor- 
 tality, as it may be advanced in the light 
 of modern science, leaves before us the 
 distinct possibility that in the living soul 
 of man evolution may have reached a per- 
 fection of life which is so far independent 
 of its present physical embodiment that it 
 can persist, and enter into other, though 
 to us as yet unknown, relations with the 
 universe. We have further seen the rea- 
 sonable probability that this possible con- 
 tinuance of spiritual life under new 
 conditions to which it is adapted, shall 
 be realized; as otherwise the whole pro- 
 cess of evolution would fail of its evi- 
 dent tendency towards perfection, and 
 the entire history of life would be robbed 
 of its rational interpretation. With the 
 107
 
 108 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 
 
 advent of man, evolution closed its old 
 testament, in which the selection and 
 preservation of the chosen species had 
 been the law of the kingdom, rather than 
 the separation and perfection of the indi- 
 vidual. It began with man its new testa- 
 ment, in which the life the true, the 
 eternal kind of life comes to its hour of 
 individual calling and consciousness, and 
 has its work of the Son, and not the ser- 
 vant, given it to do in the Father's house. 
 Like the world's second Bible, the 
 spoken word of God, so also the first 
 pictorial Scripture of nature the reve- 
 lation of life which, though not audibly 
 spoken, was depicted and acted in the suc- 
 cessive scenes and throughout the whole 
 dramatic presentation of life on the earth 
 is to be read and interpreted as a book 
 of prophecy which shall end in an apoca- 
 lypse. Unless read as prophecy, the whole 
 book of life becomes unintelligible. Nat- 
 ure's prophecy of life ends with man and 
 his future as its apocalypse. 
 
 In the new course which evolution 
 began with the advent of man, we see
 
 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 109 
 
 that almost immediately the field of ac- 
 tion was changed, and in time older 
 methods also of natural life became sub- 
 ordinated to new modes of spiritual pro- 
 cedure. The change of the field for the 
 struggle of life was from the physical to 
 the psychical, from the body, which is 
 finished, to the soul, which has begun to 
 live. Atomic matter seems to have been 
 carried to the last possible degree of 
 molecular serviceableness in the intricate 
 subtleties of the human brain; and our 
 evolutionists assure us that there is little 
 reason to expect the appearance on this 
 earth of any being of superior physical 
 organization to man. Evolution, in one 
 word, seems to be through with the body, 
 when it has fairly begun with the soul. 
 It has reached in our selfhood, conscious 
 of its continuous identity, a new realm or 
 order of existence; it has crossed the 
 threshold, and stands as a child of the 
 Eternal in the Father's presence. The 
 same self-conscious being who preserves 
 his moral identity through the incessant 
 changes of the molecular processes with
 
 110 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 
 
 which his life is connected in this body, 
 has already reached a point of spiritual 
 independence, although not yet of com- 
 plete detachment from atomic matter ; that 
 detachment, with possibility of new and 
 better connection with the elemental 
 forces, may be the last possible step in 
 the evolution of the soul the last trans- 
 formation which is the beginning of the 
 end and the possession of the final glory 
 of life. 
 
 This conception of man's increasing 
 spiritual independence and perfectibil- 
 ity, which science does not forbid, but 
 which, on the contrary, fulfils its constant 
 and ascending course of adaptations and 
 selection, is the doctrine of the future 
 survival of the soul which is declared in 
 the Biblical revelation of the two orders, 
 the natural and the spiritual, and the 
 completion of the former in the latter. 
 We read, " If there is a natural body, there 
 is also a spiritual body." In the light of 
 our science we may affirm that as the one 
 order is part and product of evolution, so 
 also shall the other be its end; nature's
 
 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 111 
 
 whole is large enough to include both. 
 We read, " Howbeit that is not first which 
 is spiritual, but that which is natural; 
 then that which is spiritual. The first 
 man is of the earth, earthy: the second 
 man is of heaven." So also in the book 
 of the history and the prophecy of life we 
 read that the first chapter of evolution is 
 of the earth; the second volume, which 
 is not yet finished but only begun in our 
 spiritual being and possibilities, is of a 
 higher element. "And as we have borne 
 the image of the earthy, we shall also bear 
 the image of the heavenly." There is no 
 breach of continuity ; it is all orderly and 
 progressive ; it is life rising from the dust, 
 and growing to its perfect flower and 
 fruitage. And in this continuity of life, 
 death also is recognized as necessary and 
 useful, both in the inspired chapter of 
 the resurrection, and in the Scripture of 
 nature ; for do we not read in both : " Thou 
 foolish one, that which thou thyself sow- 
 est is not quickened, except it die "? 
 
 Our recent biological science may fur- 
 nish us at this point an analogy of help
 
 112 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 
 
 also to the spiritual imagination, if we 
 endeavor to conceive of the life of the 
 resurrection. In working out the theory 
 of a separation in the process of organiza- 
 tion between the cells of the body which 
 are mortal, and the imperishable germ- 
 plasm, which is regarded as the bearer of 
 all the inherited and formative powers of 
 the body, Weismann maintains that the 
 living germ not only persists and is poten- 
 tially immortal, but also that "under 
 favorable conditions " it seems capable of 
 surrounding itself with a new body. * This 
 biological speculation is far from being 
 accepted science, and we would build 
 upon its tentative basis no religious su- 
 perstructure. But as a conception, which 
 is held to be admissible in a working- 
 theory of biology, we may use it as an 
 analogy in aid of the spiritual imagina- 
 tion. With this biological conception in 
 mind, even if it is no more than a scien- 
 tific imagination, we may ask, if a vital 
 germ can thus be supposed to gather 
 around itself, from material elements 
 * Essays upon Heredity, I., p. 123.
 
 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 113 
 
 under favorable conditions, a new and 
 better body of life, what may not a spir- 
 itual germ the energy of a living soul 
 prove capable of selecting for its use, 
 from elements still more ethereal, for the 
 celestial body of its continued thought and 
 love? 
 
 The philosophic argument for immor- 
 tality takes up the scientific presump- 
 tions, which we have been reviewing, and 
 sets them in the larger logic of the moral 
 order of the universe; it finds the su- 
 preme probability of life after death in the 
 spiritual worth of life. It would carry 
 us beyond the limits of our present more 
 definite inquiry, should we seek to pur- 
 sue this philosophic argument along those 
 high and luminous ranges of reasoning 
 where Plato walks, discoursing with the 
 divine ideas ; and there follow him a noble 
 company of minds, to whom, as to the 
 Master of them all, it has been revealed 
 that the life is more than the food which 
 nature's age-long toil has prepared for it, 
 and that man does not live by bread alone.
 
 114 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 
 
 But we may pause for a moment to observe 
 somewhat more particularly how, at this 
 point in our study of evolution, the philo- 
 sophic argument for immortality may take 
 a sure departure from the general pre- 
 sumptions of evolutionary science. 
 
 A definite and clear line of philosophic 
 reasoning towards belief in immortality 
 proceeds from the fact that life, as mani- 
 fested in man's self-knowledge, has become 
 an extra-physical potency. It is still in-' 
 woven with the meshes of fine molecu- 
 lar changes; but it is a life which has 
 escaped from bondage to a purely physical 
 service. Mind does not now exist in 
 a body merely as a physical adaptation 
 for the better preservation of the body. 
 Indeed, if mind were only a means for 
 the better discharge of bodily functions, 
 natural selection might long ere this have 
 eliminated a too intense and consuming 
 self-consciousness from the perfection 
 of animal existence. Natural selection 
 would dispense with an overgrowth of 
 mind as a variation not advantageous to 
 the physical well-being. To some degree
 
 FINAL DISCHARGE OP DEATH 115 
 
 natural selection among men works 
 towards a reduction of mental develop- 
 ment, although this tendency is interfered 
 with and superseded in human history by 
 a higher law of spiritual selection for 
 more than physical uses. Consciousness, 
 however, is not necessary to a discharge 
 of the purely physical functions, and often 
 too much of it seriously interferes with 
 them. But it is necessary to the perfec- 
 tion of man. His life is raised out of the 
 physical process ; mind has no definite and 
 observed materiality. When subjected 
 to the most searching tests of physical 
 analysis, mind is found to contain a re- 
 sidual element a reserved potency of 
 being which is known directly in the 
 light of thought and in the glow of love. 
 To the most expert mental physiology the 
 mind of man remains like the mystery of 
 the prophet's vision, a creation more 
 wonderful than nature's most complex 
 mechanisms ; for the " spirit of the living 
 creature was in the wheels." So far, then, 
 from having reduced the world of man to 
 nothing but dust and ashes, evolution pre-
 
 116 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 
 
 sents the universe to our philosophy as ex- 
 isting in two kinds, matter and spirit ; 
 the last testament of God in the creation 
 is offered in these two kinds; the sacra- 
 ment of the life is both bread and wine. 
 Matter and mind are the emblems always 
 with us of the real presence of the one 
 unseen Lord of all. We must find the 
 primal unity, for which all philosophy 
 seeks, in the Giver, not in the gifts. 
 The Lord is one God; and his creative 
 word is one sentence ; but it is composed 
 of a noun and a verb, each existing in re- 
 lation to, and neither made perfect with- 
 out, the other; it is both a substantive of 
 body, and an action of the spirit; it is 
 both conjoined, the matter of life, and 
 the energy of will. 
 
 Neither need this philosophic argument 
 for immortality be overburdened with 
 difficulties which the imagination would 
 throw upon it, in its inability to conceive 
 of a continued life of the soul without 
 some physical basis for its future exist- 
 ence. The actuality of mind is the living 
 fact which we know in our self-conscious-
 
 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 117 
 
 ness; the conception of a material sub- 
 stance is a doubtful idea, which we add to 
 our experience of the actual existence and 
 energy of the mind. But this imagina- 
 tion of some physical substance, or mate- 
 rial basis for the mind, is not necessary in 
 reason to its actual presence and energy. 
 Even in our modern physics the primary 
 concepts of matter, light, and the ethereal 
 transmission of energy, have become so 
 attenuated that they elude the grasp of 
 the common imagination of men. Mate- 
 riality itself is becoming a vanishing 
 point; energy is known to us as a living 
 will. 8 It were a pure assumption to sup- 
 pose that spirit must forever remain teth- 
 ered to an atom. We do not know what 
 now is the limit of its dependence upon 
 atomic matter. Spiritual energy may 
 have other carriage, and more ethereal con- 
 veyance, than the motions of the molecules 
 which it now makes subservient to its uses. 
 No ignorance of the possible future envi- 
 ronment of our spiritual being can offset 
 present knowledge of its actual existence 
 and energy. The philosopher, then, can-
 
 118 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 
 
 not be gainsaid by the physicist, when he 
 affirms that the most exhaustive analysis 
 of the last product of evolution, man's 
 self-consciousness, reveals three extra- 
 physical factors, thought, love, and, as 
 the union of these two, the personal will to 
 live. These results, transcending as they 
 do the physical, have been gained only 
 through a long and strenuous struggle and 
 toil of life ; each of them marks a victory 
 over the sensuous and the material. 
 
 Of the first result it is not enough to 
 say that animal instinct comes to itself in 
 man's reason. It is truer to affirm that 
 the primal Intelligence which formed 
 the microscopic spindle, and wove the web 
 of film, and divided with equal hand the 
 mystic rods within the nucleus of the first 
 living cell, and which throughout the 
 whole development of nature has followed 
 definite lines of variation, until in the 
 human brain it has fashioned and fin- 
 ished at last the exquisite mechanism of 
 the molecules for the touch of thought 
 and the play of the spirit has itself 
 become manifest in the life, and is in-
 
 FINAL DISCHARGE OP DEATH 119 
 
 carnate in the Son of man who knows the 
 Father. 
 
 Of the second of these ultimate results 
 of evolution, love, it is not enough to 
 say that the tendency towards maternity, 
 which was hidden in the need of rejuve- 
 nescence of the lowly protozoan, possessed 
 of but a single cell, has come, after ages 
 of waiting and of growth, to its fair con- 
 summation in "the evolution of a mother." 
 It is truer to affirm that the Word of 
 Love, which was in the beginning with 
 God, and which is God, has reached the 
 supreme expression of its divine beatitude 
 on earth in the holy mother and the child. 
 "We love," so said the disciple of the 
 deepest insight, thus making his unlim- 
 ited word true text for the genesis and 
 history of all love, " because he first 
 loved us." The book of life, if read with 
 the strict eye of the biologist, does not 
 run, according to Mr. Drummond's happy 
 phrase, "as a love story." It is not scien- 
 tifically true that any ethical altruism can 
 be discovered in the law of reproduction 
 when considered as a natural law; for
 
 120 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 
 
 hunger and want the hard imperative of 
 nutrition may have determined the first 
 meeting of Protozoa, and it was no love 
 match when one Amoeba first embraced 
 and enclosed another as its food, although 
 it may thereby have set in motion the 
 mechanism for the subsequent division of 
 itself into two daughter-cells. The low- 
 est and the basest, as we deem it, lies at 
 the root of the highest; and love is always 
 a transfiguration of the natural. But Mr. 
 Drummond's characterization of the book 
 of life as "a love story " has deeper truth 
 in it when, in St. John's vision of the 
 Spirit, the history of life from beginning 
 to end is read as the one increasing and 
 deepening story of the Love which was 
 before it with the Eternal, and which, as 
 the true Word, was the light of every man 
 coming into the world. 
 
 The third ultimate disclosure of our 
 human consciousness, likewise, the per- 
 sonal will of life, cannot be interpreted 
 in the terms of physical energies. Into 
 the spiritual will to live the will to live 
 on and worthily thought brings its free-
 
 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 121 
 
 dom, and love pours all its deathless 
 passion. The moral personality in its 
 spiritual will and action becomes one of 
 the great and permanent powers; it is 
 an energy of formative and organizing 
 potency, superior to any chemical energy 
 which may build up or destroy the mole- 
 cules of the body. It is not lightly to be 
 dissolved by any changes or reactions of 
 its environment. Man's spiritual will of 
 life is more than the tendency towards 
 the preservation of the species, which per- 
 vades the mute unconscious prophesying 
 of nature's struggle for existence. It is 
 an acquisition of a higher tendency; it is 
 the attainment of a definite and formative 
 energy a constructive and reconstructive 
 spiritual determination. It is a personal 
 will to live always and worthily, which 
 not only characterizes man in his achieve- 
 ment or his heroism ; it does not fail him, 
 it reveals often its transcendent virtue, in 
 the hour of his weakness and his mortality. 
 For man does not die as the animal dies ; 
 death comes not to him as an accident to 
 which he submits in passive dissolution ;
 
 122 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 
 
 it is an event of life which he will meet 
 with a foreseeing and concentrated energy 
 of his spirit. The brute that perishes 
 wanders from the herd, and lies down in 
 the forest by itself to die; man gathers 
 his friends about him, and with memories 
 and hopes of love given and received, he 
 passes on, greeting his future. Man will 
 take thoughtful part in his own dying, and 
 show spiritual possession of himself as he 
 passes hence. "Man," said Pascal, in 
 one of his profoundest Thoughts, "knows 
 that he dies." His departure seems at 
 times, when a great, clear soul goes before 
 us, as the march and the triumph of a spirit 
 into the unseen and the eternal. This 
 spiritual supremacy over death was wit- 
 nessed in its supernal manifestation, when 
 He whose will of life had been to do the 
 Father's will, was nailed to a Cross, and 
 who, when he had cried with a loud voice, 
 said, " Father, into thy hands I commend 
 my spirit: and having said this, he gave 
 up the ghost." 
 
 When known and interpreted together 
 as the living unity of consciousness, these
 
 FINAL DISCHARGE OP DEATH 123 
 
 three, thought, love, and the personal 
 will to live always and worthily, present 
 to philosophy a final extra-physical product 
 and issue of the whole evolution of life. 
 It is not merely a last flower on the tree 
 of life, blooming but to decay; it is life's 
 ripe fruit which contains within itself the 
 seed of a new beginning. And if we 
 keep our thought simply true to our self- 
 knowledge, it is perceived to be the seed 
 of the spiritual order which has been sown 
 in the natural; it is the beginning on 
 earth of the heavenly. In this living per- 
 sonality Life is raised to its highest power, 
 and is possessed in itself of energy which 
 the outward universe may not destroy. 
 The matter of all the spheres shall wait to 
 do it service. It is that "Holy One," 
 which " cannot see corruption. " * Of Him 
 all the prophets and apostles of Life from 
 the beginning declare that " it is not pos- 
 sible " that He should be holden of death, f 
 
 * Acts ii. 24-27. 
 
 t This reasoning from the personal will to live the 
 author has presented somewhat more fully in its ethi- 
 cal implications in his Personal Creeds, pp. 134-141, 
 and Christian Ethics, pp. 336-339.
 
 124 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 
 
 We have thus reached a position where 
 the lines of the argument for immortality, 
 hitherto generally advanced, have come to 
 a close. With these scientific presump- 
 tions in mind, and in the strength of the 
 philosophic argument for immortality from 
 the worth of personal life and in view of 
 the moral order of the world, we are now 
 ready to proceed again in the direction of 
 our present more specific inquiry concern- 
 ing the use and function of death. One 
 further and confirmatory step will be ren- 
 dered possible, if we turn now to the 
 facts and conclusions which we gained in 
 our first two chapters. Taken together 
 with one other law of nature, still to be 
 mentioned, which our evolutionary sci- 
 ence has disclosed, we shall see that the 
 natural law of the utility of death opens 
 before us still another intimation of im- 
 mortality. 
 
 We have already observed that death 
 enters at a point of service for life. It 
 is advantageous to the preservation of the 
 species that certain organized forms should 
 be left by the wayside to perish. Under
 
 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 125 
 
 the law of natural selection the rein- 
 forced cells survive; with the admission 
 of the improved method of fertiliza- 
 tion, the unfertilized cells are gradually 
 dropped, and after living awhile to them- 
 selves alone, they naturally die. More- 
 over, in organisms which have acquired a 
 body composed of several cells (MetazooT), 
 and in which distinctions of sex are more 
 marked, death has become the rule. It 
 is the price, we are told, which is "paid 
 for a body," and such animals "die be- 
 cause they have to reproduce."* Hence 
 both sex and death take place and rank 
 among nature's utilities. Death, then, has 
 reason in it, so long as it has use. Death 
 has a selective and adaptive function to 
 fulfil, so long as sex continues to repro- 
 duce, to elevate, to enhance and beautify 
 life. Shall there come a time is there a 
 pitch and perfection of spiritual organiza- 
 tion to be reached when neither of these 
 first friends and helpmeets of life shall be 
 longer needed? Shall life at last attain 
 
 * The Evolution of Sex, Geddes and Thomson, 
 pp. 256, 260.
 
 126 FINAL DISCHARGE OP DEATH 
 
 a freedom and perfection where the con- 
 stant attendance of these two servants, 
 sex and death, shall be no longer useful, 
 and may therefore be dispensed with ? 
 
 We know that it is a principle of evolu- 
 tion that an organ through disuse may 
 become rudimentary. Without raising at 
 this point the question, which is still 
 mooted between different schools of biolo- 
 gists, how a functionless organ may lapse, 
 and eventually be disinherited, it is 
 enough for our purpose to point to the 
 admitted fact that nature does not keep 
 too long in her economy any useless ser- 
 vant. In the higher animals muscles and 
 bones, and entire structures, which were 
 advantageous to organisms lower down, 
 have become rudimentary, and in some 
 instances have disappeared. Ceasing to 
 have "selection-value, " value of advan- 
 tage in the maintenance and struggle of 
 existence, they lose "survival- value," 
 and tend to disappear. There is a silent, 
 yet constant, process of elimination in 
 nature, which ever accompanies the posi-
 
 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 127 
 
 tive process of evolution. What nature 
 has no further use for, give her time, 
 and she will bury it out of sight. It is a 
 part of the intelligent economy of nature 
 to reduce the useless to its lowest possible 
 terms. Throughout nature the Life is 
 ever proclaiming to those who have ears 
 to hear, "Follow me; let the dead bury 
 their dead." 
 
 In view, then, of this law of the dimi- 
 nution and ultimate disappearance of the 
 useless from the order and employ of 
 nature, we may at once raise the further 
 presumption whether death likewise shall 
 not be discarded, if ever there shall arise 
 a being so constituted and so endowed 
 that his further subjection to death would 
 cease to be- useful to the ends of life ? It 
 will also be antecedently probable that, if 
 in the ascent of life a height and perfec- 
 tion is reached where sex shall be no 
 longer advantageous, and therefore may 
 be discarded, the distinctions of sex will 
 then vanish; and hence at that same 
 point, through that same door opening 
 into life's further perfection, death also
 
 128 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 
 
 with sex shall go out, never to return 
 again. The question, therefore, of our 
 immortality assumes this new form and 
 takes on this further natural probability, 
 as it may now be put in this more specific 
 way: Has not the evolution of life, 
 through sex and death, among other 
 means, reached in our spiritual being and 
 possibility that kind of existence, that 
 point of perfection, intended from the 
 beginning, in which it has become capa- 
 ble of surviving the death of a body no 
 longer fitted to its use, arid of persisting 
 afterwards in some other form and rela- 
 tionship, in which it shall no longer need 
 death or regeneration to help it further on ? 
 Or, to put in other phrasing the same 
 thought of death: Has not life in our 
 spiritual nature gone already so far as to 
 have no more need of dying in order that 
 in others beyond us the fulness of life may 
 be attained ? Death, we may see and be- 
 lieve, as the means of disentangling this 
 body, in which the old order ends, from 
 the spiritual, in which the new order 
 begins, must still have place and func-
 
 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 129 
 
 tion ; and hence it remains a mortal neces- 
 sity for us all; but after the dissolution 
 of this mortality, it will have no more 
 dominion over us, for it can be of no fur- 
 ther service or use in carrying forward 
 life to its perfection. There shall be for 
 the perfected life of spirits no need of an 
 endless series of transformations, of births 
 and rebirths ; individual deaths will not be 
 needed for the preservation of the species 
 of perfected spirits, for death shall have 
 fulfilled all possible function when this 
 mortal shall have been left behind, and, 
 as no longer useful, even according to the 
 principle of natural selection, death will 
 have disappeared forever. 
 
 For this conclusion there is an immense 
 presumption at least in our spiritual favor 
 from the natural history of life and of 
 death. For it is only reasoning that in 
 this respect, as in others, nature will be 
 proved to be of one piece ; that the end of 
 her processes shall be in accordance with 
 her beginnings; that the same intelli- 
 gence which is observed in her initial 
 utilities will be found also to seal and to
 
 130 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 
 
 consummate her ultimate utilities. If, 
 then, death can be proved to have come in 
 under the law of natural selection and for 
 use, under the same law, when it is no 
 longer useful, it may rationally be sup- 
 posed that it shall go out. It shall disap- 
 pear through the door exactly opposite that 
 through which it entered; for its course 
 has been throughout straightforward, de- 
 termined by the same principle and end 
 in nature ; for use it came, and because no 
 longer useful it goes out. Utility and 
 uselessness these opposite points mark 
 its entrance and its exit ; and its whole 
 mission lies as an intelligible service be- 
 tween this beginning and this end of it. 
 Death, we have been observing, was not 
 introduced at the outset for the sake of 
 annihilating life, but that it might help 
 and hasten life on, until it should reach 
 its present point of comparative indepen- 
 dence in our spiritual being. Up to us, 
 and up to the extent of its service in 
 breaking down, and in time removing 
 from sight every worn and senescent body 
 of this flesh, death has been naturally use-
 
 FLNAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 131 
 
 fill, and it fulfils faithfully its appointed 
 function; but it would not be advanta- 
 geous to us personally, or to the spiritual 
 ends of further life, when largely con- 
 ceived, should death follow life farther, 
 beyond the body and into the soul. When 
 it comes close to our minds, our powers of 
 thought, our capacity of immortal love, 
 death, in the sense of their definite arrest, 
 or a final annihilation of their identity, 
 would become an enemy; it would lose 
 its character, and cease to be the natural 
 friend of life which it has always been. 
 In the end, therefore, its work done, it 
 shall be discharged. It shall no more 
 have dominion over us. 
 
 This discharge and ultimate disappear- 
 ance of death for the human race as a 
 whole may be a process which shall re- 
 quire a whole world-age for its comple- 
 tion; as nature always takes time to 
 render any organ functionless and rudi- 
 mentary. But the present reigning of 
 death, according to this view, is the ap- 
 pointed time and process of its gradual 
 completion of its work and the ending of
 
 132 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 
 
 its stewardship. When shall death be no 
 more? The Scripture answers, when the 
 Lord of life shall come, then the reign of 
 perfect life shall be manifested. From 
 our science of the law of the service of 
 death, the answer is echoed back, death 
 shall go when no longer useful for life. 
 When will death cease to reign ? When 
 life can better go on without death, but 
 not till then. So long as it can help, 
 death, life's servant, shall remain, doing 
 God's will. So long as the human race 
 needs in this way of suffering to be made 
 perfect, God will keep death in his earthly 
 employ. But God will keep no servant 
 in his house, when the service is no longer 
 required for his household. It is contrary 
 to the divine economy of force, which 
 nature teaches, to keep anything beyond 
 its appointed use. The economy of the 
 creation dismisses useless servants. The 
 goodness of the Lord of all will put a stop 
 to death also, when He can do no more 
 good through it. 
 
 The Biblical doctrine of the resurrection 
 assures us that at last death shall be swal-
 
 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 133 
 
 lowed up of life. It will disappear in the 
 abounding life. Death, we are told, shall 
 be no more. Then, at last, when life in 
 its spiritual renewal and power shall have 
 gained the heights of immortality, the 
 ladder may be cast aside up which it has 
 climbed, the long, arduous ladder of 
 life, in which birth and death, and life 
 again, have been the ever-recurring 
 rounds. 
 
 One other feature of the Biblical dis- 
 closure of immortal life arrests at this 
 point our attention ; it is a feature which 
 corresponds with singular truthfulness to 
 an aspect of the law of death in nature 
 which our science is unveiling. We have 
 already noticed the close and even star- 
 tling connection between the entrance of 
 death and of sex into life, and the con- 
 stant relation also of these two methods 
 of the reproduction and advancement of 
 life. The one attends the other through- 
 out life, from the first rudimentary begin- 
 nings in the Protozoa up to the purest joy 
 and the deepest sorrows of human homes. 
 The connection throughout nature between
 
 134 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 
 
 death and sex is so intimate, so constant, 
 so mutually serviceable, that it is not 
 going too far to say that the one probably 
 could not have existed without the other. 
 
 If we object to the presence of the one 
 in nature, we must give up the hope of 
 the other. God has joined the two to- 
 gether in the service of life, and for its 
 final glory, which is His glory. Now the 
 Scriptural fact, which this connection 
 renders strikingly significant, is that in 
 the same word in which the Christ an- 
 nounces the end of the reign of death, he 
 declares the end, likewise, of the reign of 
 sex: they both belong to this world, and 
 shall cease, as no longer of service, in the 
 realm of the spiritual. As nature an- 
 nounces the entrance of both at the same 
 time into the world, so the gospel of the 
 resurrection announces the departure of 
 both together from the heavenly life: 
 "For in the resurrection they neither 
 marry, nor are given in marriage, but are 
 as angels in heaven." * 
 
 Life, having drawn from nature its sub- 
 * Matt. xxii. 30.
 
 FINAL DISCHARGE OF DEATH 135 
 
 tlest essence, and having been endowed 
 with the last and richest gifts of the 
 creation, being already raised in man, both 
 male and female, to the spiritual inde- 
 pendence of a child of God, and possessed 
 of the potencies of thought and of love in 
 the highest, when through suffering and 
 death it shall at last be made perfect, will 
 have need no more in its immortality of in- 
 crease or of diminution, of generation or 
 of regeneration, of marriage or of being 
 given in marriage ; for love shall be made 
 complete, and what God hath already 
 joined together in the fidelities and the 
 joy of human hearts and human homes 
 shall continue, beyond power of time or 
 death henceforth to put asunder; for in 
 the resurrection they are as the angels of 
 God in heaven.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 ONE of the difficulties which has ren- 
 dered the theological mind reluc- 
 tant to accept the evidence in behalf of 
 the theory of evolution, is the apparent 
 divergence between the evolutionary idea 
 of the rise of man, and the Biblical narra- 
 tive of his creation and his fall. We are 
 concerned in this essay with this diver- 
 gence of view only so far as it relates to 
 the origin and the use of natural death; 
 but the principles which we shall follow 
 in comparing the Biblical and the evolu- 
 tionary views of the law of death may be 
 applied also to other points of resemblance 
 or difference between scientific and Bibli- 
 cal teachings. 
 
 In the conception of death which we 
 have derived from a biological study of it, 
 138
 
 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 137 
 
 it is regarded as part of the natural econ- 
 oiay of life; in the conception of death 
 which we derive from the narrative of the 
 fall in the Bible, it is represented as a 
 punishment in the moral economy of 
 man's history. The two conceptions are 
 divergent, because they are reached from 
 different levels and from distant points 
 of view. The two representations are 
 different, but not conflicting, because they 
 depict the same great range of facts, 
 although not in the same way or under 
 the same light. An attempt to harmonize 
 them by laying the one representation over 
 the other, and seeking to make their vari- 
 ant lines match, would succeed no better 
 than have most of the labored endeavors 
 to reconcile religion and science by artifi- 
 cial harmonies of Genesis and geology. 
 
 Not by reading science and the Bible as 
 two parallel columns of revelation, which 
 must be made exactly to correspond, are 
 we to do justice to the truth of either, or 
 to discover their real relation and mutual 
 helpfulness. The right method, and the 
 only profitable method, is to determine the
 
 138 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 
 
 position which each has gained, and to 
 observe the aspect of the world and of the 
 life of man which has been opened up 
 from each point of view. Then we may 
 be able to compare different conceptions, 
 to determine further whether two specta- 
 tors have been surveying the same range 
 of facts, and to judge also whether obser- 
 vations taken from approaches so far apart 
 may be comprehended in one larger knowl- 
 edge of the truth. 
 
 The scientific approach to the whole 
 subject of the origin and law of death is 
 entirely from the side of natural law, and 
 it follows exclusively the course of the 
 natural development of life. It proceeds 
 with instruments of exact measurement, 
 and traces the processes of nature from 
 antecedent to consequent as one orderly 
 and measurable evolution. Whenever it 
 reaches a point where its measuring chain 
 can be carried no further, and beyond 
 which there lies something vast and vague, 
 which cannot be quantitatively deter- 
 mined, then it has found the limits of its 
 field, positive science has no concern
 
 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 139 
 
 with the immeasurable. Any antecedent 
 which cannot be followed into its conse- 
 quent, or any consequent which has no 
 determinable antecedent, would lie beyond 
 the range of purely scientific investiga- 
 tion. The super-physical lies beyond the 
 telescope, and beneath the microscope, 
 although it may be near as thought to 
 the mind, and close as love to the heart. 
 When therefore in a scientific way we 
 reach the conclusion that death falls into 
 the line of evolution, and is an adapta- 
 tion to the further ends of life, we have 
 thereby apprehended the law of death from 
 one distinct side of our possible knowl- 
 edge of it. It is precisely the view of 
 death which discloses itself to an eye 
 looking from the level of the principle of 
 natural selection, and following the courses 
 of natural law. Beyond this and above it 
 biology as a science cannot go. More- 
 over, so far as the strictly scientific view 
 extends, death is seen to fulfil the same 
 function in the life of man which it is 
 found to have discharged in the evolution 
 of life below man. This determination,
 
 140 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 
 
 however, of the natural function of death 
 does not prevent or contradict any other 
 possible meaning and use of it, which may 
 be discovered when it is contemplated in 
 its relation to some other economy than 
 that of the physical order. 
 
 The Biblical point of view, on the con- 
 trary, is moral and religious; when re- 
 garded from that direction, there is no 
 occasion for determining with exactness 
 its natural place and use. The motive 
 of the Biblical narrative is man's relation 
 to the moral law, and what is observed is 
 the work of death also under that law. 
 The Biblical concern with the universal 
 fact of death is a human concern with it, 
 what is its significance in the moral 
 destiny of man ? 
 
 The entire unconcern of the Biblical nar- 
 rative about the existence of death before 
 man in the world, is to be explained from 
 this definition of its point of view. The 
 scope of its survey is limited by the aim 
 of its teaching to the human interest in 
 death. It is a part of the providential 
 order of man's history that the human
 
 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 141 
 
 interest, which is also the religious, 
 always precedes a purely scientific inter- 
 est in things. The human, religious con- 
 cern with life and death is first and last ; 
 the intellectual interest is intermediate. 
 Hence in the first chapters of Genesis the 
 connection of the law of death with the 
 law of sin is the central and absorbing 
 topic. The chosen prophets of humanity 
 can remain unobserving and uninterested 
 spectators of the prevalence of death 
 throughout the animal creation, because 
 they are supremely concerned with the 
 entrance of death into the tragedy of 
 human history. This human and reli- 
 gious interest, which comes naturally first 
 in man's life and in his Bible, may lead 
 in time to an intellectual interest, and 
 even provoke a spirit of scientific inquiry. 
 We find the manifestations of this ten- 
 dency within the covers of the Bible itself 
 in some of the Wisdom-literature, which 
 was not excluded from the Old Testament. 
 When later on, in the increase of knowl- 
 edge, man comes to take a general scien- 
 tific interest in the world about him, and
 
 142 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 
 
 with curious intellect searches out its oc- 
 cult processes and laws, his science may 
 seem for a while to conflict with his faith ; 
 in reality it will prove to be only an in- 
 termediate knowledge between his primi- 
 tive and his final trust in the Eternal. 
 If, then, as one result of this leisurely 
 and protracted study of the outward world, 
 the universal prevalence of death shall 
 become more intelligible as an orderly fact 
 and utility of nature, then the gaining of 
 this new view from a different interest in 
 life is not to be regarded as a necessary 
 abandonment of the older faith; on the 
 contrary, it may prove to be a needed com- 
 plement to it, a departure from it which 
 returns enriched to it. The new view 
 may enable us to set the moral relations 
 of death to man in some larger interpreta- 
 tion. The Biblical view of death may be 
 found to extend the lower view of its 
 natural function and use, instead of con- 
 tradicting it. It may show that as an 
 original adaptation of nature it has also 
 aptitudes for higher use in the moral and 
 spiritual order of the world.
 
 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 143 
 
 No one would expect, indeed, to find an 
 exact correspondence between a picture 
 of a landscape which had been taken on 
 the level of the scene depicted, and another 
 view of it which is opened as one looks 
 down from a mountain-top. The same 
 facts will be observed, but in a different 
 perspective, and in a changed light. But 
 though the two pictures cannot be har- 
 monized in the sense of being made to 
 overlap and correspond, line for line, and 
 point by point, we may expect that in both, 
 however different may be the perspective, 
 the color, or the light thrown upon the 
 scene, we shall recognize the same general 
 features, and know that we have two dif- 
 ferent views of the same watercourses, 
 fields, or villages. The one view will not 
 belie the other. Similarly, the natural 
 and the Biblical view of death may be seen 
 to complete each other. These two state- 
 ments hold true of the moral conception of 
 death, which theology gains chiefly from 
 the Bible, and the view of it to be ob- 
 served on the level of a scientific survey 
 of the facts; viz., (1) the moral view of
 
 144 THE TWO VIEWS OP DEATH 
 
 the function of death does not remove or 
 deny the landmarks of the natural law of 
 death; (2) the later scientific knowledge 
 of it further shows how the natural func- 
 tions of death may fit into and subserve its 
 uses in the moral order. The moral and 
 religious idea, reflected downwards, will 
 not throw confusion over the scientific 
 observation; and the truth observed in 
 nature, reflecting its light upwards, will 
 serve to clarify and illustrate the moral 
 and spiritual conception. 
 
 Thus it is true that there is nothing in 
 the Biblical conception of the moral func- 
 tion of death which conflicts with the ap- 
 pearance of death as a fact in nature, or is 
 incompatible with the part which it is 
 seen to play in the natural development of 
 life. As closely related and successive 
 steps in the course of moral development, 
 the narratives of the Book of Genesis bring 
 out these primal and dominant facts: the 
 spiritual beginning of the creation; the 
 orderly process of it through a succession 
 of creative days; the introduction of life 
 from God; the differentiation of sex in
 
 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 145 
 
 nature, and especially in man; the fall, 
 the awakening to moral consciousness, 
 and the entrance of death (after man had 
 been made male and female); and still 
 further the acquired character of death for 
 man as a penalty for his sin. Death be- 
 comes, as it was not originally, a terror 
 and a curse ; it wears henceforth a puni- 
 tive aspect to man's guilty conscience. 
 None of these primal facts of the creation 
 are described in the Biblical narrative 
 exactly as one writing a natural history 
 of the world would see and define them ; 
 indeed, our most recent biology is not 
 equal to the task of writing an exact nat- 
 ural history of the origins of things; 
 but in the Bible these facts are seen and 
 described in their moral connections, and 
 as one writing a moral history of life 
 would depict them. The only question 
 to be raised between these two different 
 descriptions, so far as the law of death is 
 concerned, is this: Is there anything in 
 the natural origin and function of death 
 which would prevent it from acquiring 
 the further moral function which is as-
 
 146 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 
 
 cribed to it in the Bible ? But, when put 
 in this way, the question would seem to 
 answer itself. It will repay, however, 
 more definite elucidation. 
 
 There are two ways in which natural 
 death may acquire a new function as a 
 part of the moral order, so that it may be 
 truly represented as introduced for a moral 
 purpose, and as subserving a moral end. 
 Already existing as an adaptation for a 
 natural use, it may be seized upon by the 
 higher law of spiritual selection, and 
 fitted to a moral use; and also when so 
 used in connection with moral powers, 
 it may receive an increased retroactive 
 energy as a natural force. An animal 
 appetite, for example, when taken up into 
 the higher relations of human affection 
 and care, may become a means of blessing, 
 or a curse; and, moreover, by its moral 
 reactions the processes of the animal life 
 may themselves be changed for better, or 
 for worse if the natural appetite be mor- 
 ally abused. Appetite, thus, in the life 
 of man plays a more important part either 
 for good or evil than it can possibly do in
 
 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 147 
 
 the life of animals. It is often true that 
 a natural factor may be raised to a moral 
 energy, and become a bane or a blessing. 
 So death in the life of man may acquire 
 secondary moral character; and this sec- 
 ondary character may become in time even 
 more pronounced than its original natural 
 function. 
 
 Such acquired adaptations of natural 
 processes to spiritual uses are in accord- 
 ance with a certain principle of economy 
 which is seen to obtain both in the nat- 
 ural and the spiritual spheres. The 
 Creator does not seem to call forth two 
 principles in nature to do the work of one; 
 a new factor is not introduced until it is 
 needed to carry forward a process which 
 existing factors can bring no further. 
 Scientifically, this might be designated 
 as the law of the economy of means in 
 nature. Theistically, it might be named 
 as the law of spiritual reserve in nature 
 and history. More spiritual energy is not 
 imparted at any one moment in the crea- 
 tive and redemptive order than is required 
 for the work to be done. This principle
 
 148 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 
 
 of economy is illustrated by the develop- 
 ment of beauty in nature; and we will 
 dwell upon this example of it in order 
 that this principle of divine procedure 
 may be distinctly apprehended. Darwin- 
 ism has taught us that the line of beauty 
 is the line of utility. For a considerable 
 length, no doubt, a striking coincidence of 
 these two lines, that of advantage to the 
 preservation of the species, and that of 
 adornment and protective coloration, may 
 be observed. We should be far from ad- 
 mitting, however, that this coincidence 
 extends throughout the whole range and 
 rule of the beautiful in nature. There is 
 an overplus of beauty in nature, which it 
 is difficult to explain from any known 
 facts of its utility for the fertilization of 
 seeds, or for any protective mimicry of 
 animal forms and colors. A theistic argu- 
 ment, to which full justice has not yet 
 been done in the books, is to be drawn 
 from the existence of this overplus of 
 beauty in nature beyond any known ad- 
 vantage of it to life. The excess of beauty 
 the ornamentation of nature beyond her
 
 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 149 
 
 vital uses indicates that the beauti- 
 ful exists for its own sake as an end in 
 nature, and consequently for the delight of 
 some Intelligence, from whose counsels of 
 perfect form, true curvature, and harmony 
 of all colors it proceeds. These two 
 aspects of beauty in nature, that of use 
 and that of ornamentation, are distinct as 
 is the beauty of the curve of a sword- 
 blade, which results from its perfect adap- 
 tation to its use, and the added beauty 
 of ornamentation, which may have been 
 traced on its hilt and along the side of the 
 blade. 
 
 It would carry us too far afield to fol- 
 low through the flowers and among the 
 colors of animals, as well as along the 
 creation's high architectural lines, this 
 theistic argument from the prevalence and 
 superabundance of the beautiful ; our pres- 
 ent reference to it concerns only the illus- 
 tration which it furnishes of the principle 
 of economy in nature. Thus the sharp 
 curve of a sword-blade subserves at one 
 and the same time a double purpose, it 
 is exactly the curve best fitted for its use,
 
 150 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 
 
 and also it is a line of beauty. Through- 
 out nature, to a considerable extent, but 
 by no means universally, the two princi- 
 ples of utility and of beauty are seen to 
 be coincident. 9 So nature economizes both 
 in energy and in structure. Similarly, on 
 the same principle of adaptive economy, a 
 natural process may subserve also a moral 
 end, and a natural law may carry a moral 
 purpose. Thus death first entering as a 
 natural adaptation for the benefit of life, 
 and continuing as a means of natural de- 
 velopment, may at the same time become 
 the conveyance of a moral intent, and ful- 
 fil also the work of the moral law. The 
 higher moral order fits into the grooves of 
 the natural order, and for a long distance 
 its wheels, bearing the burden and the 
 destiny of the moral history of man, may 
 run along the fixed courses of nature. 
 
 Now it is precisely this over-use, so to 
 speak, this further moral utility, of the 
 natural course of death, which is brought 
 into prominence in the Biblical narrative. 
 It is solely with the acquired moral char- 
 acter of death that the Biblical Genesis has
 
 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 151 
 
 to do. The Scriptural narrative, and St. 
 Paul's commentary upon it, teach that 
 after the introduction of sex, the fall of 
 man, and the knowledge of good and evil 
 consequent upon Adam's sin, the life of 
 the human race entered upon a course of 
 retribution and redemption, in which 
 death became the first curse, as well as the 
 last gain of nature, for the life of the 
 spirit. As the first fear of death followed 
 Adam's sin, and fear entered into the 
 world through sin, so the hope of life and 
 the thought of dying as gain became the 
 consummation of the Christian apostle's 
 faith. Death thus in the moral order de- 
 notes a spiritual crisis; it may usher in 
 life's last fear, or life's great expectation. 
 But this spiritual use of it fulfils its 
 natural law. For natural death likewise 
 marks a critical point of evolution. The 
 occurrence of death in nature, as we have 
 seen, indicates that a decisive point has 
 been reached in the development of life; 
 and its earliest known working is closely 
 associated with the differentiation of life 
 into increased and more fruitful com-
 
 152 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 
 
 plexity. The possibility also of a fall and 
 degeneration becomes a natural possibility 
 in the course of the increasing specializa- 
 tion of life. Nature by the growing 
 instability of her higher organic combi- 
 nations furnishes material of life which 
 grows ever more plastic for some future 
 free choice. With this possibility of the 
 fall of man, natural death offers itself as 
 the means and the sign already furnished 
 by nature for the ends of the moral order. 
 Thus through sin death enters into the 
 world, and sin reigns in death,* as 
 death had never entered, and never had 
 been known in the world, until through 
 fear of it men became all their lifetime 
 subject to bondage.f 
 
 The readiness with which the natural 
 event of death falls into this Biblical use 
 of it, may be seen by considering more 
 closely the intimation just given that the 
 fear of death constitutes the larger part of 
 its moral consequence. Fear is a char- 
 acteristic which natural death may easily 
 acquire when life has gone so far as to 
 * Horn. v. 12, 21. t Heb. ii. 16.
 
 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 153 
 
 attain to the possession of a conscience. 
 The contrast between the fear for life 
 which leads an animal to fly from imme- 
 diate peril, and the human fear of death is 
 at this point instructive. As we have 
 before observed (p. 47) animals are not 
 subject to the anxiety which we may 
 suffer in anticipation of death; and 
 Mr. Wallace is probably right when he 
 says that "their constant watchfulness 
 against danger, and even their actual 
 flight from an enemy, will be the enjoy- 
 able exercise of the powers and faculties 
 they possess, unmixed with any serious 
 dread." * Death, which as a natural event 
 may thus occur without its approach being 
 feared or its consequences dreaded, becomes 
 the moral crisis around which the alarms 
 of conscience may be gathered. Natural 
 death, by reason of its sometimes sudden 
 occurrence and by the mystery of its in- 
 evitable change, as well as on account of 
 nature's inability at once to bury her dead 
 out of sight, becomes in man's knowledge 
 of it the momentous fact, in anticipation 
 * Darwinism, p. 37.
 
 154 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 
 
 of which conscience arouses the soul's 
 mortal fear of offended justice, and sends 
 the spirit of man as a suppliant to the 
 power of an infinite grace. In this im- 
 pressive moral use and aspect of it, there- 
 fore, the Bible has right and truth in 
 connecting natural death with the curse 
 of sin and with the need of redemption. 
 
 Moreover, in this connection it is a fact 
 of luminous meaning that the course of 
 redemption tends gradually to divest death 
 of this moral consequence which it re- 
 ceives from man's fear of it, and to drop 
 it back once more to its primitive place 
 and original function in the benign pro- 
 cess of ascending life. In the Christian 
 hope of endless life death loses its ac- 
 quired character as a curse, and becomes 
 to faith a natural and often happy transi- 
 tion to another and better life. It is seen 
 to be a part and step in the progress and 
 perfecting of spiritual life. The descent 
 into the valley of the shadow of death is 
 a conception which belongs to the Old 
 Testament. The sepulchre in the garden, 
 with the stone rolled away, and the pres-
 
 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 155 
 
 ence of the angel of the Lord making 
 bright the darkness of the tomb, is the 
 sign of the New Testament gospel of 
 the risen and ascending life. Death to 
 the Christian conscience, becoming nat- 
 ural again, loses fear. "Perfect love 
 casteth out fear."* With fear cast out, 
 death becomes as the gate of life; and 
 such in the lower order of nature we have 
 seen it to be, a further way of life. So 
 again in our moral consciousness, as in 
 nature, death lies near to birth; and the 
 first Christians, clothing themselves in 
 white, commemorate the days when their 
 martyrs died as the festivals of their birth- 
 days into the eternal life. 
 
 The Biblical doctrine of death as a con- 
 sequence of sin runs in still another groove 
 of the course of natural law ; for there is to 
 be observed through the life of man a retro- 
 active working of sin upon the physical 
 process of death. Sin may render death 
 naturally more evil ; its reaction may tend 
 to make it an actual curse. The inti- 
 mate connection between mind and matter 
 * 1 John iv. 18.
 
 156 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 
 
 involves not only effects of physical con- 
 ditions upon mental states, but also reac- 
 tions of the mental and moral life upon 
 the physical well-being. These reactions 
 of the higher upon the lower life, accumu- 
 lating through the courses of heredity, be- 
 come notably marked in the transmission 
 of the physical consequences of continued 
 disobedience to nature's first command- 
 ment of a pure life. By these reactions, 
 inherited and accumulated in the flesh and 
 the blood of the race, death may acquire 
 a retributive character which was not at 
 first natural to it; and thus, in its second 
 nature, it becomes the curse of sin. It is 
 true, on the other hand, that the extreme 
 specialization of living matter in the body 
 and the brain of man, and the unstable 
 complexity of his organization, capable as 
 it is of adapting itself to the widest range 
 of external conditions, render man liable 
 to new and ever-changing attacks from the 
 outer world upon his physical integrity; 
 that the very perfectness of his being ex- 
 poses him to peril of worse suffering and 
 more awful death. But we cannot affirm
 
 THE TWO VIEWS OP DEATH 157 
 
 that this greater exposure of his organiza- 
 tion might not have been compensated by 
 his keener intelligence and his recupera- 
 tive spiritual energy, if sin had not thrown 
 its natural consequences as a heavy coun- 
 terweight into the scale, and brought the 
 glory of his life down into a deeper con- 
 demnation. The facts are known and 
 obvious, that disease and death have 
 assumed in man's life forms of suffering, 
 terror, and loathsomeness, unknown in 
 the animal creation, which has neither 
 risen like man to moral freedom, nor ex- 
 perienced the retroactive consequences of 
 a life false to nature and unworthy of 
 itself. Mortality becomes most corrupt- 
 ible among sinners. Death is a curse of 
 no animal, except man. In this view of 
 it, likewise, the Bible keeps close to the 
 truth of nature, when it represents death 
 as entering man's world in consequence 
 of his sin. Moreover, in this respect also, 
 the redemptive forces all tend to restore 
 death to its natural state and period, as 
 they enter and work through purifying re- 
 actions in the life-blood of the Christian
 
 158 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 
 
 family; as they begin to accumulate new 
 store of health, more abounding life, and 
 power of quick, pulsing joy, in the veins 
 and the blood, in the brain and the heart, 
 of the children of light and the resurrec- 
 tion. While sin and every fall of man 
 works downward as a covenant and curse 
 of death from one generation to. another, 
 so also spiritual birth into newness and 
 light of life works upward from children 
 to children's children as a covenant of 
 mercy, giving back to nature her blessing 
 when the Lord pronounced all things 
 good, including in that good the natural 
 end of all the organic life in the world 
 before man was created. 
 
 We hold, then, the Biblical teaching that 
 death follows sin in a course of retribution, 
 to be true to its acquired moral function, 
 while it does not contravene, but rather 
 attaches itself to its natural origin and 
 utilities. The Biblical view is thus seen 
 to present the truth, yet not the whole 
 truth, concerning the law of death. It 
 presents that part of the truth which is 
 adapted to the ends of a moral revelation ;
 
 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 159 
 
 but not all of the truth which may be 
 learned, and which, in consonance with 
 the objects of revelation, it were better to 
 leave man to learn for himself in the 
 gradual prosecution of his studies of his 
 nature and his environment. This con- 
 ception of the limitation of the scope of 
 revelation to moral ends, and the conse- 
 quent incompleteness in many directions of 
 the truth which it discloses, may not in- 
 deed be satisfactory to the dogmatist who 
 would find in his Bible a complete system 
 of the divine counsels ; but it should sat- 
 isfy all those inquirers and pupils of the 
 Spirit, who have learned in the humility 
 of their faith to say with that apostle to 
 whom abundant revelations had been 
 given: "For we know in part, and we 
 prophesy in part ; but when that which is 
 perfect is come, that which is in part shall 
 be done away." * 
 
 Before beginning a new chapter with 
 
 the further problem, which we have as yet 
 
 barely touched, concerning the utility of 
 
 the suffering to which we are exposed by 
 
 * 1 Cor. xiii. 9-10.
 
 160 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 
 
 our mortality, we may take a rapid look 
 over the commanding position to which 
 our discussion thus far has led us. We 
 have seen that death first entered into the 
 course of nature for the sake of life, and 
 to help life up and on; we have found 
 reason further to believe that life has at 
 length reached in our spiritual being and 
 energy such power and perfection that 
 after its breaking loose from this body of 
 the flesh, death will no more have any 
 utility of life to subserve, and hence, with 
 this bodily mortality, will pass away, 
 just as any process, function, or organ 
 which ceases to be advantageous to life 
 becomes atrophied and eventually disap- 
 pears. Spiritual life at last shall succeed 
 in rising above any further necessity of 
 mortality. Or to put the same principle 
 theistically, instead of biologically, the 
 living God will no longer keep death in 
 his employ in the home of the children of 
 the resurrection, because He shall have no 
 further good to do for their life through 
 the service of death. We have found 
 that this view is in moral harmony with
 
 THE TWO VIEWS OF DEATH 161 
 
 the service of death which is emphasized 
 in the Bible. The Scripture assures us 
 that in the end mortality shall be swal- 
 lowed up of life. Death itself shall thus 
 be consumed for the nourishment of life's 
 immortality. "Now he that wrought us 
 for this very thing is God, who gave unto 
 us the earnest of the Spirit." * 
 
 Assuming, then, that an immortal kind 
 of life has been attained in our spiritual 
 nature, and its future possibilities, with 
 its present earnest of the Spirit, a life 
 so aflame with love and winged with intel- 
 ligence that death can never again over- 
 take and quench it, we find still before 
 us a question of our mortality, into which 
 our reasoning thus far has not entered, but 
 with which we have the deepest concern. 
 We are confronted by a further problem 
 of our life's inevitableness, which often 
 seems to rise before men, hard and for- 
 bidding as the face of the precipice, upon 
 which no sunlight lies. It is the problem 
 of mortal suffering, and especially of the 
 frequent overplus of suffering beyond any 
 * 2 Cor. v. 5.
 
 162 THE TWO VIEWS OP DEATH 
 
 seeming necessity, if nature's end be 
 merely to bring life to a seasonable close. 
 We shall proceed to show that from the 
 nature-side of it some light not, in- 
 deed, as of the full day, but some gleam as 
 of the morning may be thrown upon the 
 dark inevitableness of our mortality.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 IN THE LAW OF DEATH 
 
 IN approaching this more personal part 
 of the problem of mortality, we shall 
 seek first to apprehend the utilities of 
 physical death for the immortality of the 
 human race as a whole ; for if we succeed 
 in grasping the nearer end of any great 
 principle of life, our thought may swing 
 itself up by it to higher and more fruitful 
 conceptions of the truth.* Ignoring for 
 the moment our personal desires of life, 
 and man's many sorrows, it will prove of 
 advantage if we may gain some clear, 
 broad view of the utility for our hu- 
 manity, as a whole, of the natural law of 
 death. If we succeed occasionally in see- 
 ing things as a whole (as a prophet once 
 
 * The author has indicated the usefulness of this 
 method of faith in his Personal Creeds, pp. 55 seq. 
 163
 
 164 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 said), it will become less difficult for us to 
 understand and to accept with cheerful- 
 ness our personal place and part in an 
 order of providence which in its largeness 
 and completeness is seen to be benign. 
 
 One of these first more evident utilities 
 of death for human life as a whole consists 
 in the immense enlargement, through its 
 means, of this earth as a field for the birth 
 and training of a race of immortals. 
 
 In natural history one of the vital ques- 
 tions concerns the field for life; whether 
 it is large and rich, or sheltered enough 
 to secure the maintenance and spread of 
 vegetation, and to afford animal life ample 
 opportunity for its increase. If the field 
 is crowded or barren, or if it lies exposed 
 to destructive elements, then among the 
 plants and animals the struggle will be- 
 come severe; and the possible amount of 
 the variety, beauty, and joyousness of life 
 in that too limited field will be reduced 
 to narrow limits. Upon the same field of 
 life the possibilities of existence are some- 
 times restricted to a few kinds of flowers 
 or trees. If a garden is left to run wild,
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 165 
 
 several kinds of weeds may at first take 
 possession of it; but these will be sup- 
 planted by others, and in time not only 
 the original flowers, but the earliest weeds, 
 will have alike disappeared.* Many in- 
 teresting illustrations have been described 
 by Darwin, Wallace, and other observers, 
 which show how the life of plants and 
 animals is modified, limited, and deter- 
 mined by the nature and the changeable 
 elements of the field for the battle of life. 
 There has occurred in some forests a silent 
 conflict of the trees for possession of the 
 soil, and after a long-continued struggle 
 whole regiments of a single kind of trees 
 have been driven from their native soil, 
 while its nutritive wealth is taken posses- 
 sion of by other species of trees. There 
 has been, for instance, a succession 
 among the forest trees of Denmark, 
 and repeated invasions by one kind of 
 trees against others which held possession 
 of the land before it ; in a field of life in- 
 capable of maintaining them all together, 
 the steps in the survival of the fittest have 
 * Wallace, Darwinism, p. 15.
 
 166 METHOD OP POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 been marked by the successive prevalence 
 of the aspen, birch, fir, oak, and beech, 
 the last conqueror of them all.* It is 
 thus seen to be nature's method to limit 
 some field of life in such ways as to 
 compel a struggle for existence, and to 
 secure surviving forms, which are best 
 trained and fitted for the kind of life 
 which the special field can most fruitfully 
 cherish and preserve. Nature does not 
 furnish one and the same field for all 
 kinds of life, and in the same day of her 
 grace. A field for life affording sufficient 
 shelter and sustenance, and yet presenting 
 just difficulties and exposure enough to 
 keep life vigilant, active, and in the 
 main successful, seems to be the desirable 
 field, the most benevolent field, for nat- 
 ure's ends of life. And nature could not 
 keep any field clear and fertile for the pro- 
 duction of the greatest possible abundance 
 of the life best fitted to it, were it not for 
 the swift succession of her organic forms 
 and companies across it, for the passing 
 of the flowers, and for the falling one after 
 * Wallace, Darwinism, p. 22.
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 167 
 
 another of different orders of her trees ; or, 
 in one word, were it not for the frequent 
 aid of death in the service of her more 
 abounding life. 
 
 If, then, we regard ourselves for the 
 moment as merely animals, no better than 
 the beasts which perish; and if we con- 
 sider also this earth as a limited field for 
 human life ; it is not difficult to see how 
 this same law of physical succession, by 
 the help of the regular interventions of 
 death, may be nature's best possible 
 method of securing always fresh, young, 
 thrifty life, and in the greatest possible 
 exuberance also and joy of it. Moreover, 
 the hint thus derived from nature's 
 method in the bestowal and increase of 
 her gifts of physical life may carry our 
 thought beyond this merely material wis- 
 dom and beneficence. If we are become 
 aware of ourselves as immortals, and if 
 we reflect how narrow this little earth is 
 as a field for the birth and the training of 
 a race of immortals, we may likewise dis- 
 cover a similar advantage in the succession 
 of the generations of men on earth; and
 
 168 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 consequently the law of death, by means 
 of which this overflowing abundance of 
 life is obtained within a field so narrow, 
 will wear a new aspect of benevolence. 
 It is thus seen to be the Creator's chosen 
 method of securing from a limited field 
 the greatest possible number and variety 
 of immortal beings; it is the way of a 
 divine wisdom in reaping the largest and 
 richest conceivable harvest of an immortal 
 society from this earthly and temporal field 
 of life. 
 
 This earth is a comparatively small 
 field for the birth and nourishment of 
 a great company of spirits, who are to 
 have a universe for their occupancy, and 
 eternity for their lifetime. If, then, no 
 succession of generations could be secured 
 by death; if all who are born here were to 
 live and linger on until the last day ; this 
 narrow, earthly field of immortal life 
 would soon become choked, exhausted, 
 incapable of sustaining further multipli- 
 cation of the human race. Without the 
 succession of generations, each having 
 time enough here, and no more, for its
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 169 
 
 birth and training for immortality ; with- 
 out the succession of generations which 
 death in the service of life's larger fruit- 
 fulness maintains ; the human race would 
 yield on the whole a meagre harvest of 
 life, not the multitudinous host, the 
 innumerable array of those whose names 
 are written in heaven. Let us suppose, 
 therefore, that God's good design is to 
 use this little earth in such way as to 
 produce for eternity the richest variety 
 and happiest multitude conceivable of 
 immortal souls, or, in one word, to 
 render earth's contribution of life to 
 heaven the largest and best possible. In 
 order to secure that end, so far as we can 
 infer from the constitution and laws of 
 nature below us, the Creator would have 
 to introduce death, or the succession of 
 generations through the intervention of 
 death, in this earthly field of life. For 
 there are only two ways thinkable by us 
 for securing finally the fullest harvest of 
 immortal life. For the graduation, so to 
 speak, of many undying souls into real 
 life, either there must be a large number
 
 170 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 of schoolrooms, or else there must be a 
 constant succession of scholars through 
 the same limited schoolrooms, and that 
 succession must be as rapid as the pur- 
 poses of a good Christian education for 
 eternal life will allow. Or possibly, 
 since creation is vast and God is infinite, 
 the two methods might be combined, and 
 there may be many schoolrooms for eter- 
 nity in his universe as well as a ceaseless 
 succession of scholars through them. It 
 is conceivable that Jesus' word may have 
 cosmic applications, and that at last all 
 the systems of the constellations may 
 send up their spiritual hosts to confirm 
 the word of this earth's Lord, that there 
 shall be many folds, but one flock. But 
 however God may be working for eternity 
 in other temporal worlds besides our own, 
 of that we have no knowledge, 10 it is 
 the fact that the method which He actu- 
 ally has adopted of gathering the largest 
 number of sheaves possible from this 
 limited earthly field, is the method of 
 brief seasons, and a swift succession of 
 souls springing up to everlasting life;
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 171 
 
 and for this desirable end the reaper, 
 death, must be kept ever busy in God's 
 service. 
 
 Besides this, another consideration, 
 which has been mentioned in our review 
 of the natural uses of death, comes to 
 mind to help out our thought just at this 
 point. The lifetime of each living organ- 
 ism, whether animal or plant, as we have 
 seen, seems to have been determined with 
 reference to the preservation of its spe- 
 cies, each organism existing as long as 
 seems most advantageous for its species. 
 So likewise the age of a man on this earth 
 may be allotted to him under a similar 
 law of utility, and the average duration 
 of human life be determined by wise adap- 
 tation to this end of producing on the 
 whole the largest possible evolution of 
 spiritual immortality from this mortality. 
 Our personal affections and desires might 
 compass at the widest not more than 
 five generations. Our grandparents and 
 parents, our brothers and sisters, our chil- 
 dren and children's children, these are 
 the generations which our personal affec-
 
 172 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 tions and care might possibly embrace; 
 and a warm heart indeed would be needed 
 to light up with its one love so many 
 generations even as these. Rarely are so 
 many as five permitted by nature to co- 
 exist on this narrow field of life. It is 
 not a field large enough to permit of the 
 profitable coexistence, the advantageous 
 survival, of all its generations of men 
 within the narrow limits of its opportu- 
 nity for the birth, growth, and training of 
 a race of immortals. We can conceive 
 of many disadvantages, and of some checks 
 and restraints put upon human progress, 
 should so many as only five generations 
 be permitted ordinarily to dwell under the 
 same narrow roof together. It is better 
 not so. Frequent interruptions of death 
 render human progress possible from gen- 
 eration to generation; death helps man 
 make history. We find well secured in 
 the successful processes of evolution a 
 sufficient period of time for the continu- 
 ance here of each human generation, but 
 no longer lifetime than is needed; and 
 this measured period seems to be in many
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 173 
 
 conceivable ways best adapted for the 
 moral and spiritual ends of the life of 
 humanity considered as a whole. It is 
 well fitted to maintain continuous pro- 
 gress in the intellectual and moral life of 
 man, to secure social stability with the pos- 
 sibility of social improvement. It affords 
 also to the individual life time enough 
 for spiritual gestation in the womb of the 
 natural, in order that at death it may come 
 full-grown to the birth into the freedom 
 of the spiritual ; while at the same time it 
 renders this little passing earth among the 
 stars most fertile in its total contribution to 
 the final society of the kingdom of heaven. 
 The disadvantages are obvious which 
 would result from an entire absence of 
 death, involving an uninterrupted con- 
 tinuance of old age, even if we could sup- 
 pose the overcrowding of the earth by all 
 her generations to be possible. Were 
 there no natural term of human life, the 
 consequent struggle of an innumerable 
 multitude of men to keep foothold on the 
 earth might of itself bring in death as an 
 artificial necessity, an imposed and un-
 
 174 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 avoidable self-destruction of humanity. 
 The extension to great length of the dura- 
 tion of human life, if otherwise permis- 
 sible, would probably involve more social 
 loss than gain. No village could bring 
 its fresh life to best endeavor and fullest 
 fruition, if it were overshadowed and 
 dominated by too many hoary Methuse- 
 lahs. Habit might become too strong, or 
 the social crust too thick, for life's fresh 
 fruitfulness. An ingenious writer has 
 remarked that one of the first necessities 
 of civilization is to form a " cake of cus- 
 tom " ; * and the next necessity is to break 
 it up. One of the laws of ascending life, 
 which biologists regard as among the 
 necessary vital conditions, is the law of 
 plasticity. The matter of life must be 
 plastic, or responsive to changed external 
 conditions ; both stability of the germinal 
 matter and some plasticity are indispen- 
 sable to life's advance and enrichment. 
 But too long a period for a human genera- 
 tion might prevent this primal condition 
 of progress. 
 
 * Bagehot, Physics and Politics, p. 27.
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 175 
 
 Mr. Martineau, with his facile pen, has 
 depicted at length many of the disadvan- 
 tages which may be conceived to attend a 
 too extensive prolongation of the term of 
 human life. He has vividly portrayed 
 the evils which might result from the 
 overgrowth of authority, and the blight 
 which might fall upon progress from the 
 too protracted shadow of the continued life 
 even of the princes of science and the 
 benefactors of mankind, as well as the 
 shackles which would become fixed, and 
 the despotisms which would be rendered 
 invincible, by the longevity for half a 
 millennium of a Domitian, a Philip II., 
 or a Napoleon. "Precisely," he remarks, 
 " at the juncture of two generations it is, 
 that errors and prejudices drop out, and 
 the dead resistance of habit to new enter- 
 prises of thought and affection falls away. 
 . . . Death then must not too long de- 
 lay his discharge of these Emeriti, if the 
 future is not to be clogged, instead of 
 cleared, by the conquests of the Past." 
 He adds also a suggestion, which falls 
 into the line of our previous discussion,
 
 176 METHOD OP POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 that for those who in the maturity of their 
 powers are discharged from this life, the 
 transition is a deliverance from the force 
 of habits which have become fixed in the 
 physical organism, the corporeal mechan- 
 ism, to the detriment of the mind. 
 "Death, "he concludes, "may be but the 
 provision for taking us abroad, ere we 
 have stopped too long at home, and un- 
 sealing the closed inlets of wisdom, affec- 
 tion, and reverence, by the surprise of 
 new light. In this aspect Death, instead 
 of frustrating the ends of life, becomes 
 the great arrester of ills, the liberator 
 of souls, for both the visible and the in- 
 visible worlds." * 
 
 We have already observed that under 
 the principle of natural selection the dura- 
 tion of life for each species seems to have 
 been shortened or lengthened, according 
 to the needs of each for the most effective 
 preservation of its life in its environment. 
 If we should accept the earlier traditions 
 of a prolonged lifetime for primeval man, 
 we might infer that under the constant 
 * Study of Religion, I., pp. 372-374.
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 177 
 
 action of the same natural principle of 
 selection, the duration of human life has 
 been shortened ; that our lifetime of three- 
 score years and ten has at length been 
 secured as an adaptation on the whole 
 best fitted to the ends of human life. 
 We go a step farther, yet it is a step 
 which immediately follows, when we 
 reason that this natural law may furnish 
 a point of advantage for a higher princi- 
 ple of spiritual selection ; and that conse- 
 quently the earthly life of man has been 
 divided up into successive generations, 
 and death permitted to prevail as the 
 necessary means of making this division, 
 which not only secures the largest spir- 
 itual harvest, but which also affords to 
 the individual the terms most suited to 
 his attainment of the spiritual ends of 
 human life. 11 
 
 Hence we conclude that by means of the 
 natural utilities of death life's spiritual 
 field has been enlarged and enriched ; and 
 that the result of this whole order of life 
 and death shall be to make available to 
 the largest number this earthly school of
 
 178 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 training for immortality, and in the end 
 to introduce all the generations of men to 
 one another in the most varied, most en- 
 joyable, and glorified society which could 
 by any means conceivable have been 
 brought to the birth, developed, and fitted 
 for exalted companionship on a field of 
 life so limited as is this little earth. 
 This also may prove to be the method 
 which an unerring Wisdom has devised 
 to render heaven itself an ever new and 
 interesting companionship, by gathering 
 together generations so differently born, 
 and educated in times and seasons so vari- 
 ous, that they shall have ever fresh attrac- 
 tion and charm for one another in the one 
 final society ; by this vast variety of its 
 preparation, the everlasting life itself may 
 be prevented from lapsing into perpetual 
 sameness and monotony. 
 
 It now remains for us, in the light of 
 these observations and reflections, to con- 
 sider further the personal sufferings which 
 our individual subjection to the law of 
 death may render inevitable. Here, like- 
 wise, in our thought of the sufferings of
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 179 
 
 our mortality, we are to keep firm grasp 
 upon the strong vital principle that death 
 is sent, and works always in the end, for 
 the advantage of life. Hence we must 
 believe that the sufferings attendant upon 
 the entrance of death into the circle of our 
 friendships, as well as the pains of death 
 through which at any hour one may be 
 called personally to pass, are sent, not to 
 hurt us, or to make our human affections 
 our most cruel tormentors, but for some 
 further good purpose and ulterior benefit 
 of life. We begin with the discovery of 
 a law of natural utility in death. We 
 rise to the conception of a higher law of 
 spiritual selection and use, under which, 
 through the suffering of death, life may 
 be adapted to higher ends, and carried on 
 to nobler uses. We observe, moreover, 
 that an effect or working of nature which 
 may seem to be disadvantageous when 
 viewed in relation to one order of life, 
 may be seen to be advantageous when 
 judged in its relation to some higher 
 order of life. "Degeneracy of parts, or 
 of types of life, has been necessary to the
 
 180 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 advance of other and better organs or 
 forms. " * The end of one kind of existence 
 may be the birth of a new species. A 
 method which works apparently waste- 
 fully in one sphere may be the beneficence 
 of nature in which a superior kind of life 
 is trained and perfected. Suffering in 
 the lower kind may become gain in the 
 higher; the death of the one may be the 
 victory of the other. Thus the natural 
 law of struggle for existence becomes a 
 school of altruism in man's development. 
 We cannot affirm therefore of any suffer- 
 ings which men may have to endure in 
 this lower existence, that they are need- 
 less or wasteful; we should know first 
 their values in terms of the farther and 
 future life. 
 
 When the sufferings and pains to which 
 man is subjected through the reign of 
 death are thus brought under this concep- 
 tion of its utility, physical, moral, and 
 spiritual, the present mystery of suffer- 
 ing is put in the way at least of its ex- 
 
 * Cope, Primary Factors of Organic Evolution, 
 p. 75.
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 181 
 
 planation, although now we are far from 
 able to follow this way of its justification 
 through all darkness into the full and 
 perfect light. But when once fairly ap- 
 prehended from this principle of use for 
 life, although now seen but darkly, pain 
 and sorrow are lifted up, and put in the 
 course of a moral justification: as en- 
 trusted with a vital mission, they await 
 the final explanation in which all God's 
 ways shall be seen to be the paths of life. 
 For what is the real test of benevolence ? 
 What is the final, the supreme test of 
 beneficence? Is it not always the vital 
 test, the decisive test of service for life ? 
 This is the one constant test, which we 
 have found applied in nature throughout 
 her whole course from the lowest micro- 
 scopic cell up to the living soul of man. 
 The critical test has always been the vital 
 test; it is not the question which we are 
 daily asking, How shall any experience 
 affect our feeling? It is the question 
 which God from eternity to eternity pro- 
 poses, What shall it contribute to the life ? 
 "Is not the life more than the food, and
 
 182 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 the body than the raiment? " The diviner 
 interest in us does not concern primarily 
 the effect which the coming of any ser- 
 vant of God, whether with message of life 
 or death, may have upon our sensibility; 
 it is centred rather in the gift which may 
 be brought to our life. The holier, God- 
 like interest in us would seem to be this : 
 What shall His working achieve for our 
 power of living ? What shall it accomplish 
 for the enlargement of our capacity of 
 mind and heart? What shall it finally 
 secure for our abundant entrance into the 
 full life of love, and its blessedness over 
 all forever? God's eye is fixed upon 
 character; He regards its capacity for 
 heaven. This, and this only, is vital test 
 high and holy enough by which to judge 
 God's way with a soul, and by which at 
 last his way shall be made plain from 
 lowest depths of his beginnings to highest 
 heights of his redemptions. 
 
 Even in this present time, dark and 
 lonely as its shadows often are, we may 
 follow much human suffering, and our 
 own grief, along this sure path, trodden
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 183 
 
 before us by the servants of divine Wis- 
 dom, which even in its descent leads along 
 the firm purpose of the Love that is reign- 
 ing and waiting upon the celestial height. 
 Already in many instances we may see 
 signs and discern partial fulfilments of a 
 large and beneficent utility in the minis- 
 try of sorrow; the vital test begins, at 
 least, to render the way of suffering intel- 
 ligible as a way of God's commandment 
 in which hearts are enlarged. When seen 
 in the chastening light of this diviner 
 beneficence, the family-life will often take 
 on new worth and fairer color and beauty. 
 For the beginning, the growth, the se- 
 curity, and the perfecting of the family- 
 life, which He has created, God has sent 
 his two ministering spirits of life and 
 death, each appointed to serve love; the 
 one to call forth the family-life, and to 
 give it strength, identity, and firmness; 
 while, in due time, the other silently fol- 
 lows to sanctify it, to impart to it a spir- 
 itual purity, and to render it altogether 
 worthy and sure of its immortality. Both 
 these angels, by God's appointment from
 
 184 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 the beginning, serve love; and together, 
 working in one ministry from God, and 
 towards one end of love, they shall bring 
 the family-life from this earthliness to its 
 celestial completion. 
 
 Our thought at this point of spiritual 
 outlook may gain distinctness by the aid 
 of an analogy from the simplest process 
 of natural life. It is an analogy to be 
 drawn indeed from an operation of nature 
 which lies far distant from our personal 
 life and affections ; far distant, that is, in 
 time and in the successions of the crea- 
 tion's order, but not distant in the principle 
 of intelligence which it illustrates ; for all 
 God's ways, whether far or near, are one 
 way of intelligence, and lead towards the 
 same ends of reason from all quarters of 
 the created universe. Nature is one do- 
 main of sufficient reason. We may bring, 
 therefore, this parable from the lowest 
 for the highest life. Near the beginnings 
 of organic existence, as we have found, 
 the service of death helped life press on 
 from unicellular to multicellular organ- 
 isms. Life, by the timely aid of death,
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 185 
 
 passed beyond the stage of isolation in 
 the single cell; and for its further pres- 
 ervation and advantage proceeded to form 
 clusters and colonies of cells, by their as- 
 sociation and mutual serviceableness grow- 
 ing into one organism of many parts, and 
 becoming thus more sentient, and more 
 largely responsive. The lower working 
 adumbrates the higher felicity. As in 
 the beginning, so much more in the end- 
 ing, life, having been helped to realize 
 its spiritual ends by death, shall become 
 complete and rich in definite groupings 
 of souls, in choice societies of spirits who 
 shall be mutually serviceable as members 
 of one body, having been "made perfect 
 in one," as the last and heavenly aspi- 
 ration of life has been uttered for us all 
 in the Lord's prayer for the life eternal. 
 
 We can the more readily believe in 
 the final perfection of the family-life, 
 which lies beyond the veil, because we 
 can sometimes see, from those parts of 
 its one circle of love which lie still 
 within our knowledge, how death, which 
 seems to break it, may work beneficently
 
 180 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 for its hallowing and perfecting. As 
 no other servant of the living One, 
 ofttimes death will redeem from selfish- 
 ness, consecrate, and glorify the family- 
 life and the family-love. Death at times 
 seems to raise it to holier and even more 
 blessed consciousness of itself. It will 
 bring back one or another of the house- 
 hold from lives too separate and too self- 
 seeking. In some instances death has 
 seemed to call forth for the first time the 
 full power of love, revealing it to itself, 
 and giving it deeper knowledge of its own 
 abiding worth; the true, full family-love 
 in such instances must needs come to its 
 immortal birth in pain and travail of soul. 
 There are families united as never before, 
 and united forever, around some dear, 
 sacred grave. And always, among pure 
 and trusting souls, the presence of sor- 
 row may soften and render more tender, 
 while it deepens and makes more sure of 
 itself, the heart of an immortal love. So 
 the living One by a twofold working of 
 his grace shall bring to perfection the 
 family-life ; He sends his angel of life to
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 187 
 
 create it, and to fashion its earthly form, 
 fair and full of promise; and He sends 
 erelong his other ministering angel to 
 give the family-life part and possession 
 in both worlds, the seen and the unseen; 
 so that even here and now it may enter 
 by faith, as well as by sight, into that 
 knowledge of love which is sure, sacred, 
 eternal, as is the blessedness of God. 
 
 In this connection there should not be 
 forgotten a use of human suffering, which 
 is very dimly foreshadowed in the lower 
 processes of nature, but which can only 
 come to its appointed service in the moral 
 life; namely, the vicarious use of suf- 
 fering, and of suffering even unto death. 
 Hints, indeed, and dim adumbrations of 
 a vicarious principle seem to be indicated 
 in the method which nature among lowly 
 organisms sometimes employs of the sub- 
 stitution of one part for another in the 
 discharge of the functions of life; or of 
 the dissolution even of some cells in order 
 that an entire organ may be preserved. 
 We have already noticed (p. 39) that 
 there are specific functions in the higher
 
 188 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 organisms which involve the death of the 
 cells which discharge those functions, as, 
 for instance, in the secretory glands ; or as 
 the exercise of their function by the blood- 
 corpuscles involves their dissolution.* 
 
 This sacrificial method of life is fore- 
 shadowed likewise from the earliest be- 
 ginnings in the giving up of maternal life 
 among the lowliest multicellular organ- 
 isms for the sake of reproduction. The 
 female of some Mesozoa, for instance 
 (which seem to be an intermediate class 
 between the single-celled organisms, and 
 those having a body of several cells), 
 forms within herself numerous germ- 
 cells, and then, to set them free, "ter- 
 minates her own life by bursting." Nat- 
 ure thus sacrifices the one form for the 
 many. Another familiar instance is the 
 love-dance, as it is poetically described, 
 of the May-flies, and the death of both 
 parents soon after the fertilized eggs 
 have been deposited on the surface of 
 the water, in order that new, teeming 
 insect life may again take wing in the 
 
 * Weismann, Essays upon Heredity, I., p. 62.
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 189 
 
 sunshine. Nature, indeed, among her 
 higher animal forms has greatly reduced 
 the costliness of birth, and changed her 
 earlier sacrificial method of reproduction 
 into the better way of keeping the mother 
 among the living for the sake of the 
 child; the tragic sacrifice of a life for 
 a life becomes the exception, and is not 
 the rule, since nature brought to human 
 perfectness her "evolution of a mother." 
 
 Such acts, however, and all similar in- 
 stances of substitution or sacrifice of a part 
 for the whole in the discharge of the func- 
 tions of animal life, serve at best as the 
 rudimentary suggestions of a high and 
 fruitful principle of vicariousness, which 
 can find scope and power for its full benefi- 
 cence only in the sphere of freedom, and 
 among the possibilities of love like that 
 which the Father hath for the Son. Hence 
 death may be utilized as the means already 
 furnished and finished by nature for the 
 manifestation of this higher spiritual prin- 
 ciple of vicariousness. Through the suf- 
 ferings which death, having entered into 
 nature, renders possible, love within the
 
 190 METHOD OP POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 family circle, as well as love in its divine 
 comprehension of the world, may find the 
 opportunity for its cross, and through the 
 suffering of the one the many may be made 
 perfect. With a profounder insight into 
 the law of vicariousness (which is one of 
 the great laws of life) than in our careless 
 reading we may have observed, an apostle 
 once wrote of his rejoicing in his suffer- 
 ings for the sake of others; and without 
 hesitancy he put his afflictions for them 
 into the same order as the sacrifice of the 
 death of the Christ, when he wrote : " Now 
 I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, 
 and fill up on my part that which is lack- 
 ing of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh 
 for his body's sake, which is the church." * 
 The overplus of suffering, the kind and 
 amount of sufferings which seem to be 
 beyond any natural necessity for the mere 
 bringing a life to an end, and also to be 
 out of all apparent relations to the desert 
 of the person who endures it, may fall 
 more often and more largely than we may 
 be aware under this same principle of 
 * Col. i. 24.
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 191 
 
 vicariousness, to which the Christ freely 
 subjected himself even unto the death of 
 the cross. The effect of such suffering, 
 which remains in the softening of sympa- 
 thy and the enlargement of heart of some 
 witnesses of it, may have vicarious worth 
 long after the man or the woman, who 
 was anointed to be an example of such 
 patience, may have outlived and forgotten 
 all pain in the happy freedom of the other 
 world. In this vicariousness for the home, 
 for a whole circle of friends, for country, 
 or for mankind, the sufferings of the right- 
 eous, or the flames of the martyrs, can 
 never be regarded as needless. The ex- 
 cess of suffering which sometimes we 
 must witness by the bedsides of persons 
 whose goodness we think should have 
 rendered them most favored of heaven in 
 their exit from this world, may have in it 
 more Christ-like resemblance and virtue 
 than we have discerned, serving, as it 
 does, in the utilities of God's grace a 
 double purpose, not only making perfect 
 the son of God's love, who must endure 
 it, but also having vicarious grace for
 
 192 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 our hearts, who behold it, even as the 
 Master's cross was for the disciples' sake. 
 We have come from some sick-beds as 
 from a sacrament, having received earnest 
 of the Spirit. 
 
 The conclusion of this study of the 
 natural utility of death in the light of 
 science will have been reached, if we gain 
 thereby some firmer, surer standing on 
 the truth which the poet has won sim- 
 ply by following the sure instinct of his 
 interpretative spirit : 
 
 " Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 
 The truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
 That Life is ever lord of Death, 
 And Love can never lose its own! " 
 
 We may now think that this truth of 
 the poet's vision is not utterly unknown 
 to flesh and sense, for our biology itself, 
 unveiling the secret of the living cell, 
 and revealing the continuous power and 
 wondrous ascent of evolution from the 
 least particles of organic structure up to 
 the heart of man, is teaching us that " Life 
 is ever lord of Death"; and if this first 
 line of nature's revelation proves true,
 
 METHOD OP POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 198 
 
 the last line of the poet's spiritual creed 
 would seem to follow in natural rhythm 
 with it, that "Love can never lose its 
 own." Not only, then, through a poet's 
 listening to the heart of life, but by pur- 
 suing with scientific reasoning the ways 
 of nature up to the living soul, we may 
 gain assurance that by the whole appoint- 
 ment of suffering and death the God of 
 love means not to break human hearts, 
 but to make them ; not to destroy, but to 
 fulfil nature's one law of life. 
 
 This profounder view of suffering as 
 the means of making hearts with diviner 
 capacity for love and heaven goes far 
 deeper than the received view of future 
 compensation for present pains. It will 
 bring a stronger comfort than the common 
 idea that for every cross there shall be a 
 crown hereafter. The truth is that our 
 crosses become our crowns. It was not 
 a cross of wood exchanged for a crown of 
 gold. It was the one divine life hasten- 
 ing on through the crucifixion to its glory 
 with the Father. It is not for any dis-
 
 194 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 ciple a trial cast aside, and a joy received 
 instead ; it is a sorrow transmuted into a 
 joy, a trial changed into a glory. With- 
 out the one, the other could not be, at 
 least not so supremely and so perfectly. 
 
 The insufficiency of the merely compen- 
 satory view of the future life either as a 
 reward of our present suffering, or as a 
 justification of God's ways in our tem- 
 poral discipline and death, will appear the 
 moment we turn upon it the light which 
 may have been gained from all our pre- 
 vious discussion. For from the reason- 
 ing which discovers a divine principle of 
 utility in the service of death to life, 
 this word compensation will seem too 
 low and narrow fittingly to represent the 
 aim and march of the divine benevolence 
 through the whole process and period of 
 life, and death, and life again still fuller 
 and richer. Compensation is a word too 
 quantitative and mechanical worthily to 
 represent the indwelling and formative 
 Spirit of life throughout its whole process 
 of evolution. It is an unworthy concep- 
 tion of our loss or gain; as though the
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 195 
 
 Almighty God could employ the resources 
 of measureless love in meting out compen- 
 sations, measure for measure, for our 
 human losses, with one hand filling life's 
 cup, while emptying it with the other; 
 and by and bye, filling it again, or pos- 
 sibly now in this world half-filling it again 
 with joy. But that were not Godlike; it 
 is not like the vital method of God in 
 nature. For the divine process of life 
 and death throughout nature goes straight 
 on, and always towards more and richer 
 life, even though it must go straight 
 through death in order to reach larger life 
 and happier. The divine method of life 
 has in it the patience of the ages, and the 
 longsuffering of grace; but it goes 
 straight on, and cannot miss its deter- 
 mined end. Apparent retrogressions in 
 nature are steps in a further progression ; 
 the descent is but the way to the ascent 
 beyond; the disintegration is for the bet- 
 ter integration ; the inorganic breaks down 
 that the organic may be built up; as the 
 organic likewise is dissolved that new 
 births may appear. The conception of
 
 196 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 evolution as one vast cyclic movement, 
 which in some far-distant age shall return 
 into itself, beginning in chaos and des- 
 tined to end in universal dissolution, is 
 not true to the facts which lie within the 
 compass of our knowledge ; the arc of its 
 course, which we can measure, is but as a 
 span, yet it is enough to determine the line 
 of its direction, and to indicate that God's 
 curve of creation has measureless scope, 
 and is not a circle returning into itself. 
 One order of nature succeeds another in 
 definite ascent, and the promise of the 
 natural opens into the spiritual. There 
 is also in present spiritual beginnings a 
 prophecy of better things which God hath 
 prepared beyond the power of the heart to 
 conceive; the spiritual shows no sign, 
 it gives no evidence, of its falling back 
 again into the natural, from which it has 
 already risen and shall spring up clear 
 and free. The doves let out through the 
 soul's windows do not come back to the 
 ark. 
 
 We greatly err if we mistake momen- 
 tary retrogressions for a faltering pur-
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 197 
 
 pose of life in the heart of nature. The 
 apparent cyclic movements of life are but 
 the rising and the reflux of the wave ; the 
 stream flows on. The divine law of life 
 is not mere process of emptying and fill- 
 ing, of a perpetual ebb and flow; it is a 
 positive law of God's fulfilling himself in 
 many ways. Evolution is ascent and ever 
 more expectant march of life through this 
 mortality toward immortality. From the 
 first to the last known development of life, 
 the process has been a procedure of posi- 
 tive and progressive determination; it is 
 not a series of measured compensations, a 
 mere balancing of loss and gain ; it is de- 
 velopment along definite and predeter- 
 mined lines.* There has been a steady 
 and sure advance of the immanent reason 
 of nature through her successive forms: 
 do we not read, " In the beginning was the 
 Word, and the Word was with God. . . . 
 And the Word became flesh." Evolu- 
 
 * This is not saying that the later organic struct- 
 ure is preformed in the earlier ; but, whatever the 
 chromatin of the nucleus may contain, something 
 there does determine the future organism.
 
 198 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 tion has been a progressive revelation of 
 the Word. " Of the increase of his govern- 
 ment," it was said by a prophet of old, 
 "there shall be no end." The history of 
 life has been the movement of a Messianic 
 prophecy, and of the increase of the king- 
 dom of the Word of life there has been no 
 end. " My Father worketh hitherto, and 
 I work," said the Christ; and the work of 
 the Father and the Son has been and is 
 something positively grander, something 
 more continuously and wondrously benefi- 
 cent and beautiful, than in our common 
 and too beggarly hopes of heavenly gain 
 we are wont to conceive. For it is more 
 than bringing balm to the wounded, or 
 rest for the weary; it is the strong, 
 straightforward work of God from the 
 beginning of bringing life clear through 
 to its last, full, self-conscious perfection 
 and immortal love. It is, and shall be, 
 the one divine work, alone worthy of 
 God, who takes life first from his own 
 self-existence, and plants the divine seed 
 of it in the darkness at the root of the 
 worlds ; who protects, shelters, hides, and
 
 METHOD OP POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 199 
 
 develops it in this earthiness; and who 
 in his time and season lifts it above the 
 sod into its spiritual blossoming in his 
 light. The last consummate fruit of this 
 vital method and goodness of the Creator 
 is not the first Adam, who dies, but the 
 second man, who is of heaven. "How- 
 beit," in this order of beneficent evolution, 
 " that was not first which is spiritual, but 
 that which is natural ; and afterward that 
 which is spiritual." Life sown first in 
 corruption is raised in incorruption. 
 " And as we have borne the image of the 
 earthy, we shall also bear the image of the 
 heavenly." In this present time we who 
 belong both to the natural, which is dying, 
 and to the spiritual, which is living, "re- 
 ceive the earnest of the Spirit"; at the 
 sure and luminous centre of our self-con- 
 scious being and love, we receive the ear- 
 nest of the Spirit, witnessing to the spirit 
 which is within man; and, having re- 
 ceived " the spirit of adoption, whereby we 
 cry, Abba, Father," we know ourselves 
 also as children of the resurrection. Al- 
 ready in our inward renewal of faith and
 
 200 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 hope, death is swallowed up of life ; holy 
 baptisms of the eternal love fall upon our 
 closest, dearest friendships in the descent, 
 like the heavenly dove, of a sacred sorrow ; 
 and death, so often returning, imparts to 
 our life in the home, and in the commun- 
 ion of the church, deeper and more inti- 
 mate knowledge of love, and its prayer of 
 faith for immortality. Our human hearts, 
 startled at first it may be by the touch of 
 God's silent servant of death, awake more 
 clearly and surely to an expectation of life 
 which shall be alike worthy of our power 
 of loving, and worthy of God's power 
 to finish the work which He has begun in 
 our human hearts and their happiest com- 
 panionships. For, as the Scripture puts it, 
 as though with a fine scorn of the faithless- 
 ness which could imagine the Lord of life 
 to be frustrated in his work, God " wrought 
 us for this very thing," that " what is mor- 
 tal may be swallowed up of life." We, 
 looking backwards and beneath us, look- 
 ing upwards and above, being ourselves of 
 the same flesh and having the Spirit of 
 him in whom life attained its highest
 
 METHOD OP POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 201 
 
 human form, in whom "the Life was 
 manifested," and of whom also they who 
 had seen the glory of his life declared that 
 it was not "possible" for God's holy one 
 that his soul should be holden of death, 
 
 we, likewise, should know that all 
 things are ours, whether our earthly 
 friends and comrades of the years gone 
 by, "whether Paul, or Apollos, or Ce- 
 phas," whatever their names may be, 
 
 whether "the world, or life, or death, 
 or things present, or things to come ; " 
 all are ours: for we "are Christ's, and 
 Christ is God's": "For God is not the 
 God of the dead, but of the living."* 
 
 We turn in conclusion to Him in whom 
 the life was manifested, for the last word 
 concerning the service and use of death 
 in God's method and purpose of life's sur- 
 vival and perfecting. "It is expedient 
 for you," said the Christ, "that I go 
 away." Our Lord recognized thus a defi- 
 nite usefulness for his disciples in his 
 final departure from their world of sight 
 * 1 Cor. iii. 22-23; Matt. xxii. 32.
 
 202 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 and sense. The Scriptures justify us in 
 thinking of our Lord as representing man 
 in the full idea of his nature, and in all 
 the possibilities of his being. The life 
 which he lived on the earth, and which 
 was exalted in his ascension, is our life: 
 " It behooved him in all things to be made 
 like unto his brethren."* If Jesus, there- 
 fore, could perceive a certain and definite 
 expediency in his leaving this world, we 
 must recognize in his departure from his 
 disciples an instance and illustration of 
 the same general law of moral utility, 
 under which for his disciples in their 
 times, as for the Master in his hour, it shall 
 be expedient for them to go hence. If it 
 were necessary for the Lord to depart that 
 he might continue his ministry for his 
 disciples elsewhere, going to prepare a 
 place for them; if he could become more 
 to his friends henceforth by his ascension 
 than he could have been by walking longer 
 as the Son of man before them; so, like- 
 wise, shall the same divine expediency 
 overtake, and enfold in its beneficent pur- 
 * Heb. ii. 17.
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 203 
 
 pose, each of the disciples in his time; 
 there shall come a day when it shall be 
 useful also for each one of us, his disci- 
 ples, as it was expedient for the Master, 
 to go hence and be seen here no more, 
 although the Father only may know the 
 seasons best for his sons. The God of the 
 living shall take us also up into the same 
 larger and higher expediency of death, 
 from which the Son of his love was not 
 made exempt. He once said, "It is ex- 
 pedient"; and thereby before all human 
 sorrow, and in the midst of our human 
 incompleteness, he declared the superior 
 law and larger wisdom of the Father's 
 beneficence in every necessity of death. 
 There is one law, and one Spirit, and one 
 love. Death ever serves, and never really 
 rules. It only seems to reign for a little 
 while. It shall be no more, when its full 
 measure of service for life the true life, 
 the life eternal shall have been ren- 
 dered. Already it is overcome in the self- 
 conscious immortality of love. Among 
 the disciples of the Lord, in the commun- 
 ion of his Spirit, death can henceforth
 
 204 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 
 
 enter only as something expedient, often 
 far more spiritually expedient than we 
 may now know, as was the Lord's ab- 
 sence for a little while from his chosen 
 friends. He that believeth "hath eternal 
 life " ; and forgetting the pains, the suf- 
 ferings, the sorrows, which are in their 
 nature temporal, he may possess within 
 himself the love, the life, the dear friend- 
 ships and the joys of companionship, 
 which are eternal. In memory and in 
 hope, faith has the eternal, and is passed 
 from death unto life. The last prayer of 
 the Lord of life is that we may be made 
 perfect in one. His promise fulfils the 
 law and the gospel of life from the begin- 
 ning. Life has, and can have, no other 
 end and destiny, for it can have no other 
 fulfilment. Personal fellowship, made 
 perfect in love, is Life's only conceivable 
 consummation. Anything less divine 
 were no completion. The Scriptures of 
 Life all its prophets and psalms are 
 a holy word of nature, which cannot pass 
 away until all shall be fulfilled. The 
 fulfilment of all is in the risen and as-
 
 METHOD OF POSITIVE BENEVOLENCE 205 
 
 cended Life with the Father. From this 
 divine fellowship is declared to us also 
 the sure word of immortality: "Because 
 I live, ye shall live also." "Whether we 
 live, we live unto the Lord: or whether 
 we die, we die unto the Lord: whether 
 we live therefore, or die, we are the 
 Lord's." "Whether we wake or sleep, 
 we should live together with him." 
 
 Life, therefore, to the children of the 
 Highest, can have no broken lines. Meas- 
 ured in time's brief sections, it may seem 
 incomplete; drawn on larger scale, all 
 life's ways are seen to meet; in God's own 
 plan and creation of it, our life can have 
 no brokenness. Eternity frames a finished 
 picture. There is nothing really sad, for 
 there is no eternal sorrow in the heart of 
 God. In His blessedness over all forever, 
 our life shall keep its perfect troth, and 
 have its completed love.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 NOTE I, p. 19 
 
 Weisraann's view may be stated in his own words 
 in the following abstract of it which he gave at the 
 close of his essay on Life and Death : 
 
 " I. Natural death occurs only among multicellu- 
 lar beings; it is not found among unicellular or- 
 ganisms. The process of encystment in the latter 
 is in no way comparable with death. 
 
 "II. Natural death first appears among the 
 lowest Heteroplastid Metazoa, in the limitation 
 of all the cells collectively to one generation, and 
 of the somatic or body-cells proper to a restricted 
 period : the somatic cells afterwards in the higher 
 Metazoa came to last several and even many gen- 
 erations, and life was lengthened to a corresponding 
 degree. 
 
 "III. This limitation went hand in hand with 
 a differentiation of the cells of the organism into 
 reproductive and somatic cells, in accordance with 
 the principle of division of labor. This differ- 
 entiation took place by the operation of natural 
 selection. 
 
 "IV. The fundamental biogenetic law applies 
 only to multicellular beings ; it does not apply to 
 
 207
 
 208 APPENDIX 
 
 unicellular forms of life. This depends, on the one 
 hand, upon the mode of reproduction by fission 
 which obtains among theMonoplastides (unicellular 
 organisms), and on the other, upon the necessity, 
 induced by sexual reproduction, for the mainte- 
 nance of a unicellular stage in the development of 
 the Polyplastides (multicellular organisms) . 
 
 " V. Death itself, and the longer or shorter dura- 
 tion of life, both depend entirely on adaptation. 
 Death is not an essential attribute of living matter; 
 it is neither necessarily associated with reproduc- 
 tion, nor a necessary consequence of it." (Essays 
 upon Heredity, vol. i. pp. 160-161.) 
 
 The similar view of Biitschli, to which reference 
 was made above, may be given in this extract: 
 " When we observe the history of the continual pro- 
 duction of certain Protozoa, ... we meet the most 
 singular fact that in the life of these organisms 
 death, in the sense of the annihilation of organized 
 matter, and from causes which are inherent in the 
 organism, does not properly occur." He regarded 
 the cause of death in the organisms to be the failure 
 of a "certain fermentative element," which is nec- 
 essary in order that the chemical transformation 
 may renew itself. In the Protozoa this necessary 
 element is renewed by conjugation and division. 
 He located this element of continuous life in the 
 nucleus. " The gradually sinking life-energy of 
 the Infusoria is again reinforced through conjuga- 
 tion." (Zoologischer Anzeiger, 5. 1882, pp. 65-66.) 
 
 M. Nussbaum, also, advanced somewhat similar 
 observations with regard to the continuance of life 
 among the Protozoa. (Arch, fur Mik. Anat., 41,
 
 APPENDIX 209 
 
 p. 119.) Weismann, however, took these sugges- 
 tions up into a working-theory of heredity. 
 
 NOTE U, p. 19 
 
 Maupas published 'the results of his investiga- 
 tions in a series of notes in the Comptes Rendus in 
 the years 1886-88. He also published a long mono- 
 graph upon the Multiplication of Ciliated Infusoria 
 in the Archives de Zoologie, 2d Series, Vol. 6, pp. 
 165 sq. In this article he gives a complete account 
 of his prolonged investigations, sums up the facts 
 observed, and shows that Weismann's supposition 
 that death occurs first among the Metazoa is re- 
 moved by the results of his investigations. 
 
 NOTE IK, p. 23 
 
 In a reply to criticisms, which was published in 
 Nature (Feb., 1890, Vol. 41, pp. 317-323), Weis- 
 manu maintains his original positions with regard 
 to the potential immortality of the Protozoa, while 
 he defines some of his views more clearly. He 
 holds that the first differentiation of cells pro- 
 duced two sets of cells, the somatic, consisting 
 of the mortal cells of the body proper, and the 
 germinal cells, which are immortal. He defines 
 this immortality as one not of the organic sub- 
 stance, but of " a definite form of activity." He con- 
 ceives the protoplasm of the unicellular organisms 
 to be such that the cycle of life returns to the same 
 starting-point, like the circulation of water in the 
 inorganic world. " As in the physical and chemical 
 properties of water there is no inherent cause for
 
 210 APPENDIX 
 
 the cessation of this cycle, so there is no clear rea- 
 son in the physical condition of unicellular organ- 
 isms why the cycle of life, i.e. of division, growth 
 by assimilation, and repeated division, should ever 
 end; and this characteristic it is which I have 
 termed immortality." He considers that it is pos- 
 sible under some circumstances, and to some extent, 
 for the protoplasm to be so modified that "the 
 metabolic activity no longer exactly follows its own 
 orbit, but after more or fewer revolutions comes to 
 a standstill, and results in death." All living mat- 
 ter is variable; why should not variations in the 
 protoplasm have also occurred which, while they 
 fulfilled certain functions of the individual economy 
 better, caused a metabolism which did not exactly 
 repeat itself, i.e. sooner or later came to a condition 
 of rest ? " Immortality, in the scientific sense in- 
 tended, he defines as "a cyclical acting of organic 
 material devoid of any intrinsic momentum which 
 would lead to its cessation"; and he says, "I main- 
 tain, therefore, in its entirety my original statement 
 that monoplastids and the germ-cells of higher 
 forms have no natural death." Of Maupas' ex- 
 periments and criticisms, Weismann has this to 
 say : " Even were his observations correct, they 
 would still fall short of proving his conclusions; 
 they would prove nothing against the immortality 
 of the Protozoa, or for a rejuvenescence in the sense 
 here intended; they would rather state the plati- 
 tude that ovum and spermatozoon must die, if the 
 condition of their continued existence, namely, 
 fusion, inevitable in most species of plants and 
 animals, be prohibited; but this is an accidental,
 
 APPENDIX 211 
 
 not a natural death. Richard Hertwig (Ueber die 
 Conjugation der Infusorien, Munchen, Ib89) has 
 also briefly shown that the facts, on which Maupas 
 bases his inferences, are not universally true ; that 
 Infusoria, hindered from conjugation, do not die, 
 but increase by division, and may produce whole 
 colonies of animals, nay, that they are generally 
 rendered thus abnormally prolific." 
 
 By rejuvenescence, in the sense intended above, 
 Weismann means the theory which supposes that 
 conjugation is necessary to the continuance of re- 
 production, a rejuvenescence without which the 
 reproductive power itself would fail. To this view 
 he opposes his theory, which may be stated in his 
 own summary of it as follows : " The first result 
 and meaning of conjugation may be provisionally 
 expressed in the following formula: Conjugation 
 originally signified a strengthening of the organism 
 in relation to reproduction, which happened when, 
 from some external cause, such as want of oxygen, 
 warmth, or food, the growth of the individual to 
 the extent necessary for reproduction could not 
 take place." ... " According to my theory, con- 
 jugation at first only occurred under unfavorable 
 conditions, and assisted the species to overcome such 
 difficulties." (Essays upon Heredity, vol. i. p. 294.) 
 
 In an elaborate essay upon Amphimixis or the 
 Essential Meaning of Conjugation and Sexual Re- 
 production, which was published in 1891 (Essays 
 upon Heredity, vol. ii. p. 98), Weismann again 
 maintains vigorously his original position as to the 
 immortality of the Protozoa against Maupas' criti- 
 cisms. He regards the death of the unconjugated
 
 212 APPENDIX 
 
 Infusoria as abnormal. Natural, or physiological 
 death of an organism occurs when its destruction 
 "is dependent on some adaptation especially di- 
 rected to this end " (p. 205). Such adaptation for 
 the destruction of the body-cells is found first 
 among the Metazoa. Weismann ridicules the idea 
 that there is any natural necessity for death as an 
 idea which has " its origin in the old mystic con- 
 ception of life." He regards " the power of living 
 on indefinitely when the vital processes have once 
 begun, as the fundamental peculiarity of living 
 matter "(p. 209). 
 
 NOTE IV, p. 24 
 
 Mr. Darwin regarded sexual selection as a true 
 cause in nature, co-working with natural selection ; 
 but he did not throw any light upon the question 
 of the origin and function of sexuality itself. This 
 question has more recently become a prominent 
 one in the biological world. Mr. Wallace came to 
 conclusions differing from Mr. Darwin concerning 
 the effect of sexual selection in the coloration of 
 animals; but in one respect he goes beyond Dar- 
 win, when he holds that, " Diversity of sex becomes, 
 therefore, of primary importance as the cause of 
 variation." {Darwinism, p. 439.) Weismann has 
 gone far beyond the earlier Darwinism in his 
 strenuous insistence upon the prime importance of 
 sexuality in evolution. He has expressed his final 
 conclusion in the following words : " I am con- 
 vinced that the two forms of amphimixis namely, 
 the conjugation of unicellular, and the sexual repro-
 
 APPENDIX 213 
 
 duction of multicellular organisms are means of 
 producing variation. The process furnishes an in- 
 exhaustible supply of fresh combinations of indi- 
 vidual variations which are indispensable to the 
 process of selection." (The Germ-Plasm, p. 413.) 
 
 Weismann's views have been vigorously combated 
 by an American biologist, the late Professor J. A. 
 Ryder, in an article printed in the Proceedings of the 
 American Philosophical Society, 1890 (pp. 109 sq.), 
 and also in a lecture which was published in the 
 Wood's Holl Biological Lectures for the year 1894. 
 Professor Ryder holds that " sexuality has arisen 
 very gradually, and only through an extensive 
 series of very gentle progressive, and successive 
 steps." He believes that it not only includes 
 variability, but also provides "greatly increased 
 chances for the survival of the thus protected 
 germs, or viviparously produced young." But in 
 utter rejection of Weismann's theories of the deter- 
 mination of life from the germ, Professor Ryder 
 sought to bring all the phenomena of heredity 
 under a purely physical, dynamical conception. 
 He found in nutrition the impelling force for the 
 differentiation of sex, and this, as well as all other 
 differentiations, he would work out mathematically 
 as a problem of the continuation of energy under 
 given mechanical conditions. Sexuality, he be- 
 lieves, is the effect of continuous growth caused by 
 cumulative integrations. The "setting-aside the 
 germ-plasm " is no " device " for any ulterior pur- 
 pose. He affirms, however, that " sexuality has 
 arisen, in the main, under conditions determined 
 by natural selection " ; and he even says of it that
 
 214 APPENDIX 
 
 "sexuality is altruistic in nature." (Biol. Lect- 
 ures, Wood's Holl, 1894, p. 35.) Professor Ryder 
 objects to Weismann's theory that "its extreme 
 elaboration is its greatest weakness " ; the opposite 
 objection would lie against his dynamical hypothe- 
 sis of inheritance; its extreme simplicity is its 
 greatest weakness. The manifold diversity of facts 
 and processes in the development of life refuses to 
 be reduced to a single physical equation. 
 
 A more cautious view of the problem of the 
 origin of sex is that expressed by Professor Wilson 
 in his recent volume on " The Cell in Development 
 and Inheritance." He says : "According to the older 
 and more familiar dynamic hypothesis . . . the 
 essential end of sexuality is rejuvenescence, i.e. the 
 restoration of the growth energy and the inaugura- 
 tion of a new cycle of cell-division. . . . That con- 
 jugation or fertilization actually has such a dynamic 
 effect is disputed by no one. What is not deter- 
 mined is whether this is the primary motive of the 
 process i.e. whether the need of fertilization is 
 a primary attribute of living matter, or whether it 
 has been secondarily acquired in order to insure a 
 mixture of germ-plasms derived from different 
 sources." In his opinion the problem is not yet 
 solved as to the function of fertilization, whether 
 it is, as Weismann held, to multiply variation, or 
 whether, as Hatschek maintained, it has the "con- 
 verse function of checking variation, and holding the 
 species true to the specific type." He says : " The 
 present state of knowledge does not, I believe, allow 
 of a decision between these diverse views." (Op. 
 cit., p. 130.) But why may not both be true? It
 
 APPENDIX 215 
 
 is not impossible to conceive that the same principle 
 of fertilization may work in both directions, and 
 for the securing of both vital results ; it may serve 
 to neutralize slight, conflicting, and useless indi- 
 vidual variations, and at the same time to accumu- 
 late concurrent variations along lines of useful 
 adaptation ; as opposite waves may lay each other 
 level, and concurrent waves may become cumula- 
 tive in their force. This double working of sexuality 
 both for the maintenance and the variability of the 
 species would thus furnish only another and beau- 
 tiful illustration of the law of economy of energy 
 in nature. 
 
 In the Evolution of Sex Geddes and Thomson 
 seek to find a deeper physiological necessity for the 
 origin of sex (pp. 306 sq.). Their view, however, 
 does not exclude the conception that as a secondary 
 adaptation sex is a source of variation. 
 
 NOTE V, p. 26 
 
 Mr. Arthur M. Marshall thinks that Weismann's 
 original explanation of the occurrence of death on 
 account of its utility, although ingenious, was in- 
 sufficient because it did "not attempt to explain 
 the real nature of death, nor how it came about in 
 the first instance." (Biological Lectures, p. 278.) 
 He thinks, however, that in this respect, Maupas' 
 researches furnish the very evidence, which Weis- 
 mann lacked, of his theory that death occurs as a 
 consequence of the separation of the germ-plasm 
 from the somatic cells, and that " length of life is 
 dependent upon the number of generations of
 
 216 APPENDIX 
 
 somatic cells which can succeed one another in the 
 course of a single life ; and furthermore that this 
 number, as well as the duration of each single cell- 
 generation, is predestined in the germ itself." 
 While showing that natural death occurs among 
 the Protozoa, and that the tendency to it may be in- 
 herited by the Metazoa, Maupas' results, says Mr. 
 Marshall, "confirm in the fullest manner Weis- 
 mann's bold suggestions (i.) that the original oc- 
 currence of death is intimately connected with 
 sexual reproduction, if not indeed an actual conse- 
 quence of it; (ii.) that the number of generations 
 of somatic cells which can succeed one another in 
 the course of a single life may be strictly limited. 
 Maupas' experiments seem to me to afford the very 
 evidence of which Weismann was in search." 
 (Ibid., p. 285.) After applying these results to the 
 Metazoa, Mr. Marshall draws these conclusions 
 among others : " (i.) Death is not an intrinsic 
 necessity, either of life or of organization, (ii.) 
 Natural death first appeared, so far as we know at 
 present, among the higher Protozoa, (iii.) Death 
 is closely associated with the occurrence of conju- 
 gation, and the consequent alternation of sexual 
 and asexual modes of reproduction, (iv.) The 
 asexual mode of reproduction, by fission, is the 
 more primitive one. Conjugation, or sexual repro- 
 duction, gives an advantage in the struggle for 
 existence, and at first a luxury, has through the 
 action of natural selection become a necessity." 
 (Ibid., pp. 287-8.) 
 
 Maupas, in his review of his results in the arti- 
 cles already cited, holds that the senescence, which
 
 APPENDIX 217 
 
 was shown after a succession of generations in his 
 cultures, and the death in which it at last resulted, 
 were the natural result of the prolonged exercise 
 of the functions of the organism which used itself 
 up. He is careful, however, to limit his assertion 
 to the species actually experimented upon, and re- 
 marks that the cause of natural death is an obscure 
 subject in biology. His results do not prove that 
 indefinite cell-division might not be continued in 
 still lower organisms, not sufficiently developed to 
 avail themselves of the improved method of reju- 
 venescence by occasional or cyclic conjugations. 
 His facts, so far as they go, indicate a natural limi- 
 tation of cell-division, unless it be reinforced by 
 conjugation, or rudimentary sexual reproduction. 
 A recent writer in the Lancet seems to me there- 
 fore to go beyond the known facts when he still 
 asserts that " it has been shown that all proto- 
 plasm, all living matter, is not of necessity mortal." 
 We may admit, however, the statement of the same 
 writer, that so far as yet proved, " Death as an 
 incident in the evolutionary cycle is not inevitable 
 to all living beings." It is also seen to be true, as 
 this writer observes further of the multicellular 
 organism, that "the price it pays for its greater 
 elaboration of living is its inevitable death." The 
 cause of death in these more specialized organisms 
 this writer would find either (1) in imperfection of 
 nutrition, or (2) in some toxic product of waste, 
 or (3) in some lack of stimulus. (Lancet, Article 
 on The Breaking Strain, May 23, 1896, p. 1413.) 
 See also Geddes and Thomson, Evolution of Sex, 
 pp. 258-262.
 
 218 APPENDIX 
 
 Weismann, in a later essay, returned to the ques- 
 tion concerning the cause of death. (Op. cit. 
 vol. ii. pp. 72 sq.) He finds his original view con- 
 firmed by Dr. Klein's recent observations with re- 
 gard to the natural death of the body-cells of the 
 Volvox, one of the earliest multicellular organisms. 
 " As soon as the germ-cells are matured, and have 
 left the body of the Alga, the flagellate somatic 
 cells begin to shrink, and in one or two days are all 
 dead " (p. 77). This, according to Weismann, is one 
 of the instances of the first introduction of natural 
 death. Here we see death in its beginnings. It 
 occurs because the body-cells have acquired some 
 special nutritive function for the benefit of the 
 germ-cells ; and when the latter have matured, and 
 that functional activity of the body-cells is no 
 longer useful, the special protoplasmic modification 
 which has fitted them to discharge such function, 
 hastens the introduction of their death. 
 
 There is room for much further investigation of 
 the nature of vital continuity among the lower 
 Infusoria. As Professor E. B. Wilson remarks, 
 "The cyclical character of cell-division still remains 
 sub judice." (The Cell in Development and Inheri- 
 tance, p. 163.) In Sedgwick's and Wilson's General 
 Biology, the present state of knowledge with refer- 
 ence to the Amoeba is thus stated : " However abun- 
 dant the food-supply, Amoeba never grows beyond a 
 certain maximum limit. After this limit has been 
 attained the animal sooner or later divides by 'fis- 
 sion ' into two smaller Amoebae. Thus the existence 
 of an individual Amoeba is normally terminated, 
 not by death, but by resolution into two new indi-
 
 APPENDIX 219 
 
 viduals. This process is the simplest possible form 
 of agamogenesis, and Amoeba is not known to mul- 
 tiply in any other way." (p. 163.) "It is not 
 known whether or not the Amoeba ever dies of old 
 age." (p. 166.) 
 
 NOTE VI, p. 28 
 
 Whatever may be the ultimate causes of death, 
 Weismann's conclusion as to the utility of death, 
 or, as it may be called, its functional use in its con- 
 nection with organic life, would not be set aside if 
 some inherent necessity of death could be proved. 
 At present such necessity is an assumption. So 
 far as our knowledge goes, Weismann can still 
 hold that any natural necessity of " death by se- 
 nescence," as Maupas calls it, is an unproved assump- 
 tion, not contained in any knowledge which we 
 have of the molecular relations of living and multi- 
 plying matter in its simplest terms. 
 
 In our discussion above, however, we have not 
 made the supposed immortality of even the sim- 
 plest protoplasmic organization, or any inherent 
 possibility of an endless succession of its genera- 
 tions, the basis of the assertion of the original utility 
 of death. These facts are sufficient to justify this 
 conclusion: (1) The occurrence of death and of an 
 improved sexual method of preserving and upbuild- 
 ing life, appear in close connection, although the 
 one may not be said to be the direct consequence 
 of the other. (2) Both these occurrences are 
 useful; they are joined together in a concurrent 
 service for the advance of life. The one without
 
 220 APPENDIX 
 
 the other could not do its perfect work for the 
 maintenance and the benefit of life. If the one, 
 whatever its primitive cause, may be regarded as 
 an adaptation, which natural selection may seize 
 upon for the advantage of the species, so also must 
 the other be so regarded. (3) Death upon its first 
 occurrence, like sex, must be regarded as a useful 
 adaptation, because all the facts and considerations 
 which Weismaim adduces (irrespective of his theo- 
 ries) indicate that it follows and illustrates a prin- 
 ciple of utility. (4) To these considerations should 
 be added as confirmatory of its initial usefulness 
 such evidences of its utility as we may find farther 
 down in the history of the development of life. 
 
 Several indications, moreover, of a law of utility 
 in the initial working of death may be derived 
 from some of Maupas' own observations. Thus 
 he noticed that the new method of conjugation 
 between two cells does not increase, but diminishes 
 the number of descendant cells ; it also exposes 
 the conjugated cells to peril during a period of 
 dormant activity; but it secures the preservation 
 of the species. This Maupas supposed to be its 
 unique end. Here then nature is seen very early 
 sacrificing the individual for the species. Death, 
 in putting out of the way feebler unconjugated cells, 
 works as an adaptive advantage for the success of 
 the species. Maupas noticed also that the degen- 
 erate forms in his cultures were enabled to con- 
 tinue and multiply only by great care. In a free 
 state individual cells, which might become degen- 
 erate, would succumb soon after their appearance. 
 (Arch, de Zool. 2d Series, vi. p. 211.)
 
 APPENDIX 221 
 
 His investigations bring out further the interest- 
 ing fact that one of the first and most important 
 degradations of senescence consists in atrophy at 
 first partial, then more complete, of the sexual 
 organs. (Ibid., p. 261.) This observation in organ- 
 isms where these functions of sex are rudimentary, 
 shows again how closely death follows the intro- 
 duction of a more advantageous method of repro- 
 duction ; and it would seem to confirm Weismann's 
 view of the immortality of the germ-plasm under 
 favorable conditions. For by conjugation the degen- 
 eracy of the nucleus is avoided. There is, at least 
 in these Infusoria, a process of its cyclical renewal. 
 Maupas further observes that the individuals af- 
 flicted with this first degree of degeneration can 
 still continue to live and multiply ; but such life has 
 something abnormal about it, until it becomes 
 completely useless. " They and all their descend- 
 ants, in short, are doomed to an inevitable death. 
 They live still an individual life ; but they are dead 
 to the life of the species." (Ibid., pp. 261-2.) Thus 
 death strikes first at forms which have become 
 useless to the species. When nature's method of 
 keeping up the germ-plasm of the nucleus is 
 interfered with, senescence and death result. All 
 this illustrates Weismann's original conception of 
 the utility of natural death. 
 
 NOTE VII, p. 29 
 
 In the article in Nature, already referred to, 
 which was afterwards enlarged in Remarks on 
 Certain Problems of the Day (printed in Essays
 
 222 APPENDIX 
 
 upon Heredity, vol. ii.), Weismann elucidated still 
 further his original thought as to the method 
 by which natural selection operates in regard to 
 death. His latest view may be briefly summarized 
 as follows : the unicellular organisms are potentially 
 immortal, because there is as yet no separation 
 between the germ-plasm and the somatic elements 
 in them, or not such a differentiation as would 
 leave these two parts sufficiently separated to pur- 
 sue independent courses. But such a differentiation 
 erelong occurs. It appears distinctly marked in 
 the Metazoa, and is characteristic of all multicellu- 
 lar organisms. Thus a division of labor is intro- 
 duced between the constituent elements of the 
 organism. The germ-plasm bears the continuous, 
 hereditary substance, which cannot naturally perish. 
 But the somatic cells, which are subordinate to the 
 germ-cells, may become mortal. By what changes 
 in their molecular constitution they may acquire this 
 possibility of mortality, Weismann does not profess 
 to be able to state. But a limited number of their 
 possible divisions and multiplications may be deter- 
 mined in the nature of these cells. Better adapta- 
 tion of them to the nutrition of the reproductive 
 cells, or restriction of their function, might have 
 accelerated the introduction of a natural death of 
 the somatic cells. " The more specialized a cell 
 becomes, or in other words, the more it is entrusted 
 with only one distinct function, the more likely is 
 this to be the case." Also, if we adopt the principle 
 of. panmixia (the tendency of organs no longer useful 
 to become neutralized in the course of the contin- 
 uous mixing of genital variations, and consequently
 
 APPENDIX 223 
 
 to drop out, the law of averages, as it might be 
 named, by which all possible degrees of perfection 
 are mixed, and the whole average reduced to a 
 lower level than would have been secured by 
 natural selection of advantageous variations), it 
 would be easy to conceive how the immortality 
 of somatic cells, as soon as it became useless, 
 would begin to disappear and eventually be lost. 
 Natural selection was "trained to bear on the 
 immortality of the germ-cells, but on quite other 
 qualities in the somatic cells, on motility, irri- 
 tability, capacity for assimilation, etc." Death, 
 having thus been introduced, it would become 
 further advantageous to the species among higher 
 organisms, that mutilated, accidentally crippled, 
 and inferior forms should be dropped; so that 
 natural selection would operate to determine the 
 duration of life, to lengthen it in instances 
 where the reproductive processes require a longer 
 period for their success, and to shorten it where a 
 quicker reproduction would be advantageous to the 
 species. Among the lowest Metazoa it is advanta- 
 geous that the body should consist of a relatively 
 small number of cells, and that the reproductive 
 cells should ripen and escape all together. "If 
 this conclusion be accepted, the uselessness of a 
 prolonged life to the somatic cells is obvious, and 
 the occurrence of death at the time of the extru- 
 sion of the reproductive cells is explained. In this 
 manner death (of the soma) and reproduction are 
 here made to coincide." (<?/>. cit., vol. i. p. 156.) 
 
 We are not obliged, however, to assume that 
 natural selection is the chief factor, to the extent
 
 224 APPENDIX 
 
 which Weismann supposes, in the introduction of 
 death, in order to make good the assertion that death 
 works along the lines of natural utility, and has 
 become universally prevalent because on the whole 
 it is serviceable to life. If for any cause, either 
 from the limitations of possible molecular change 
 in the matter of life, or from some unavoidable 
 loss of energy in the replacement of cells, or from 
 any supposed necessities of growth, a liability to 
 death, and in time its actuality, is assumed; then 
 natural selection, operating as a secondary factor, 
 would seize upon it, emphasize, and disseminate 
 it ; and thus death would become prevalent as an 
 adaptation of the species to its total conditions of 
 existence ; death would reign because its law is on 
 the whole of advantage to life. It is not improb- 
 able that in the further development of our evolu- 
 tionary philosophy natural selection may be given 
 a more subordinate role than the part which is 
 assigned to it by the Darwinian school. 
 
 NOTE VIII, p. 117 
 
 The extent to which some modern scientific 
 thought has gone in dispensing with the conception 
 of matter, is shown in an article by the German 
 chemist, Prof. Wilhelm Ostwald, of Leipsic, en- 
 titled, The Failure of Scientific Materialism, which 
 was published in the Popular Science Monthly, vol. 
 48, pp. 589-601. Reasoning from strictly scientific 
 premises, without ulterior moral object, although 
 not unaware of the further inferences which moral 
 philosophy might draw from his conclusions, this
 
 APPENDIX 225 
 
 chemist would abandon altogether the thought of 
 matter, and substitute for it the conception of 
 energy. He says, "The predicate of reality can 
 be applied only to energy." " The supposition that 
 all natural phenomena can be traced back pri- 
 marily to mechanical factors cannot even be desig- 
 nated as an available working hypothesis." He 
 regards the mechanical theory as having failed to 
 explain the facts. He says, " The most hopeful 
 scientific gift which the departing century can 
 offer the dawning one is the replacement of the 
 mechanical theory by the energistic." 
 
 NOTE IX, p. 150 
 
 In the Contemporary Review for December, 1879, 
 there is an interesting article in which it is shown 
 that the principles of utility and beauty are far 
 from being coextensive among the flowers. For 
 instance, the writer, Edward Fry, refers to the 
 cleistogamous flowers of the violet which are found 
 to exist in the summer and autumn after all the 
 more brilliant flowers have gone. He adds : " The 
 one flower has everything in its favor honey and 
 a beauty of color and of smell that has passed into a 
 proverb and it opens its blue wings to the visits of 
 the insect tribe in the season of their utmost jol- 
 lity and life. The other has everything against it : it 
 is inconspicuous, scentless, ugly, and closed. Ainl 
 yet, which succeeds the better ? Which produces 
 the more seed? The cleistogamous, and not the 
 brilliant flowers ; the victory is with ugliness, and 
 not with beauty." He gives other instances of the
 
 226 APPENDIX 
 
 same character, "where ugliness has borne away 
 the palm of utility from beauty." 
 
 NOTE X, p. 170 
 
 A hint of the working of life in other worlds 
 than ours may possibly have come to us through 
 the spectroscope if the statement made in Nature 
 (1882, p. 400) be true, that absorption due to 
 hydrocarbons has been observed to take place 
 somewhere between the solar and terrestrial atmo- 
 spheres ; but hydrocarbons are produced under the 
 direction of life. This is important if true. (See 
 Cope, Origin of the Fittest, p. 432.) 
 
 NOTE XI, p. 177 
 
 In the line of reasoning which we have followed, 
 no account has been taken of accidental death. 
 The consideration of this part of the subject would 
 lead along a distinct line of inquiry, and we have 
 deemed it better to keep the two apart. We will 
 briefly indicate the separate line of inquiry which 
 a thorough discussion of accidental death should 
 follow. First, it would require a study of the re- 
 lation among the lowest organisms between that 
 which Weismann designates as natural or physio- 
 logical death, and abnormal or accidental death. 
 Our biology is hardly as yet in a position to give us 
 the facts which we must have as a scientific foun- 
 dation for this reasoning. Secondly, when suf- 
 ficient data of biological facts are given, we must 
 determine the relation between normal and abnor- 
 mal death, and find what, if any, law of adaptation
 
 .APPENDIX 227 
 
 or use obtains in the relation between the two. In 
 other words, the inquiry is to be made whether the 
 abnormal deaths also do not fall under some com- 
 prehensive law of utility. Thirdly, the inquiry 
 would remain whether or not there is any observ- 
 able tendency in evolution to reduce the abnormal 
 destruction of life to the lowest terms consistent 
 with the preservation of species. Fourthly, these 
 observed facts and tendencies would then need to 
 be taken up into our general philosophy, and 
 viewed in their relations to other and higher ends 
 of spiritual well-being. We might thus win a 
 firmer position for our faith that the providential 
 order of the world includes the abnormal as well as 
 the normal, the tragic accident as well as the nat- 
 ural and happy issue of life. The author hopes to 
 take up this line of inquiry at some future time.
 
 BOOKS BY REV. NEWMAN SMYTH, D.D. 
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
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 Smyth's work is a most valuable contribution to the science of 
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 Or, How to form a Working-Theory 
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 Moral Beginnings,' in which the Bible itself is in a measure 
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 There are here some of the clearest and most important distinc- 
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