THE PURPOSE OF LIFE 189 



according to the theories of heredity and selection, 

 doomed to destruction. Moreover, there is the legend 

 of the dead soldier who could not sleep in peace, not 

 knowing and all impotent to ask, which way the fight 

 had gone. Can we be truly participators in a success of 

 which we are unaware ? 



There is no answer to questions like these, except 

 that we are dimly conscious of surer ways of attaining 

 personal destruction than that of owning our weakness, 

 and, having made a good fight, to be anxious at least 

 not to cumber our fellow-soldiers, who are better 

 equipped than we are. If the object of all existence be 

 the gradual development by the use of the natural 

 resources of the Universe of some spiritual prototype, 

 then nothing which has had life can have lived in vain. 

 Having once existed, may we not think that, however 

 lowly, in some form, conscious or unconscious, it con- 

 tinues to exist having been created, it forms part of 

 the great life-giving impulse, and continues to create, 

 contributing a small share to the spiritual equipment 

 of the higher types, in some way analogous to the 

 methods by which the animal and vegetable worlds 

 contribute to their bodily sustenance. 



If any such theory were acceptable, it would follow 

 that in another state where soul values are judged by 

 the standard we have permitted ourselves to imagine 

 there would be far less lamentation over those human 

 beings who fall apparently prematurely and wantonly 

 by the way, than over the hundreds of thousands of 

 unborn babes with sound parental inheritance, from 

 whom our human volition, denying expression to its 

 highest attribute the power of creation deliberately 



