244 UNIVEKSAL EVOLUTION 



possible, would be in perfect correspondence with all the 

 requirements of natural law; and death to him, which 

 is a cessation of correspondence, would then be postponed 

 to the latest moment compatible with the welfare of the 

 race, and then would be regarded, as it really is, only a 

 change of form. The survival after death of all bodily 

 elements, and the perpetuation of the race, constitute an 

 immortality which is natural, and does not require a 

 miracle to make it possible. 



The body, and its qualities, being the products of in- 

 destructible matter, and the persistence of energy, death 

 simply changes the form of it back to these original ele- 

 ments, and probably, they come together again, under 

 favorable conditions, and form a new body similar in 

 kind, but not conscious of the former body. This im- 

 mortality is entirely confined to the earth. 



Death is now r regarded as a calamity, although an in- 

 evitable natural law. But in the ultimate analysis of it, 

 there will be found this essential definition ; it is the clos- 

 ing of the correspondence between the organism, and its 

 environment, by reason of that organism's violation of 

 some of the essential laws of that correspondence, or from 

 the necessity of race maintenance, under the law of the 

 survival of the fittest. If men everywhere viewed death 

 in this light, there would be more attention paid to 

 physiology and hygiene, and the death-rate would be 

 largely reduced. This is another instance of the moral 

 bearing of man's attitude toward nature at large. 



In death the elements of the organism are dissipated 

 and transformed; but not lost. But the objective en- 

 vironment remains the same. Nature is not affected by 

 the death of organisms. The inorganic remains uncon- 

 scious of that event, which is so dreaded, but certain, to 

 the organic. There is a seeming eternal round in the 



