216 AGE, GROWTH, AND DEATH 



debted for all the conveniences of existence, by which 

 we are able to carry on our physiological processes 

 in a far better and more comfortable manner than 

 can the lower forms of life. To it we are indebted 

 for the possibility of those human relations which 

 are among the most precious parts of our experience. 

 And we are indebted to it also for the possibility of 

 the higher spiritual emotions. All this is what we 

 have bought at the price of death, and it does not 

 seem to me too much for us to pay. We would not, 

 I think, any of us, wish to go back to the condition of 

 the lowly organism, which might perpetuate its own 

 kind and suffer death only as a result of accident, in 

 order that we might live on this earth perpetually; 

 we would not think of it for a moment. We accept 

 the price. Death of the whole comes, as we now 

 know, whenever some essential part of the body 

 gives way sometimes one, sometimes another ; per- 

 haps the brain, perhaps the heart, perhaps one of 

 the other internal organs may be the first in which 

 the change of cytomorphosis goes so far that it can 

 no longer perform its share of work and, failing, 

 brings about the failure of the whole. This is the 

 scientific view of death. It leaves death with all its 

 mystery, with all its sacredness ; we are not in the 

 least able at the present time to say what life is, still 

 less, perhaps, what death is. We say of certain 

 things they are alive ; of certain others they are 

 dead ; but what the difference may be, what is essen- 

 tial to those two states, science is utterly unable to 



