88 The Universe and Life 



many people it does — then it is good while it lasts. If 

 the promotion of life is worth while ; if the promotion 

 of life for others is worth while — as immediate ex- 

 perience of many finds it to be — this verdict does not 

 take away such values and satisfactions. Life in a 

 series of successive individuals may be as full, as ade- 

 quate, as life in single continuing individuals. 



The striving for life and for its promotion that is 

 characteristic of living things must therefore — how- 

 ever reluctantly — ^transfer its interest, so far as the 

 distant future is concerned, to the later individuals 

 that are to succeed those that disappear. The situa- 

 tion is somewhat Kke that portrayed in some of the 

 religions of the East : the present individual is but the 

 transitory representative of continuing life. In that 

 continuing Hfe, in the promotion of its fulness and 

 adequacy, he may find an object for his interest. 

 Opportunity for this is given through the fact of 

 continued evolutionary development. The individuals 

 of later generations differ from the individuals before 

 existing, not only, as we have before remarked, in 

 their personal identity, but in their characteristics 

 and in their characters. They may be higher, or they 

 may be lower, in the scale of life. 



These relations result from the way in which the 

 replacement of one generation by the next occurs. 

 Before disappearing, the individual cooperates with 

 another individual to produce new combinations of 

 the materials of life. From these new combinations 

 arise the new individuals that are to replace those 

 that disappear. The new individuals, being indeed 



