A NEW VIEW" OF DEATH. 

 The Individual. 



A Study of Life and Death. By Prof. N. S. 

 Shaler, of Harvard University. i2mo. Cloth, 



I1.50. 



Professor Shaler's book is one of deep and permanent interest. 

 In his preface he writes as follows : "In the following chapters 

 I propose to approach the question of death from the point of 

 view of its natural history, noting, in the first place, how the 

 higher organic individuals are related to those of the lower inor- 

 ganic realm of the universe. Then, taking up the organic series, 

 I shall trace the progressive steps in the perfection of death by a 

 determination as to the length of the individual life and its division 

 into its several stages from the time when the body of the indi- 

 vidual is separated from the general body of the ancestral life to 

 that when it returns to the common store of the earth. ... In 

 effect this book is a plea for an education as regards the place of 

 the individual life in the whole of Nature which shall be consistent 

 with what we know of the universe. It is a plea for an under- 

 standing of the relations of the person with the realm which is, in 

 the fullest sense, his own ; with his fellow-beings of all degrees 

 which are his kinsmen ; with the past and the future of which 

 he is an integral part. It is a protest against the idea, bred of 

 many natural misconceptions, that a human being is something 

 apart from its fellows ; that it is born into the world and dies out 

 of it into the loneliness of a supernatural realm. It is this sense 

 of isolation which, more than all else, is the curse of life and the 

 sting of death. ' ' 



"Typical of what we call the new religious literature which L to mark the 

 twentieth century. It is pre-eminently serious, tender, and in the truest sense 

 Christian. " — Springfield Republican. 



" In these profoundly thoughtful pages the organic history of the individual 

 Tcisn is so presented as to give him a vision of himself undreamed of in a less 

 scientific age. . . . Speaking as a naturalist from study of the facts of Nature, 

 Professor Shaler says that these can not be explained * except on the supposition 

 that a mighty kinsman of man is at work behind it all.' " — The Outlook. 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, N E W^ YORK. 



