178 BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN PROBLEMS 



It would be a singular thing, indeed, if human 

 beings, endowed with the deep-rooted instinct to 

 live, should be able to think of death without aver- 

 sion, and without a strong impulse to circumvent it. 

 When it has once become obvious to a man or woman 

 or child that death is inevitable, the mind invents a 

 substitute for life, and this substitute is the hope 

 or conviction that there is a personal hereafter. 



In minds accustomed to weighing evidence with 

 scientific impartiality, this belief tends to be neutral- 

 ized by various considerations which render a future 

 personal existence improbable. In the entire range 

 of biological phenomena there is nothing to suggest 

 that a continuation of life for any species is probable 

 or necessary or desirable. The successive stages of 

 development of pupa, chrysalis, and insect are some- 

 times cited as analogous to a stage of life hi the 

 world followed by a future life, but this suggestion 

 is so remote that no thinking person can be influ- 

 enced by it, except perhaps during a period of 

 emotional disturbance in which the analytical facul- 

 ties are benumbed. The science of life, as we know 

 it to-day, points to an evolutionary process in man 

 by which there is a slow change in human type to- 

 wards one less brutal, less selfish, and more thought- 

 ful of the interests of others. It is difficult to see 

 why inferior types of life, including inferior human 

 types, should be preserved indefinitely in any form. 

 When they have lived, they have served their purpose, 

 provided that they have left successors. An elab- 



