The Function of Death 73 



that its continuance is pledged or guaranteed to good con- 

 duct and to sufficient vigilance. The weakness of this 

 theory is shown in its utter failure in face of catastrophe. 

 Death by accident always, and death by disease often, seems 

 to be injustice of the most tyrannical kind. And yet they 

 occur. A system of ethics in which the function of death 

 is regarded as individual punishment, breaks down when its 

 support is most needed. But when we study the problem in 

 simpler form, we see that death is a means of modification 

 and development of the race life so that it may change 

 as environment changes. 



Punishment may cause an earlier instead of a later, con- 

 clusion of an already limited activity; that is to say a modi- 

 fication of the time element of the pre-determined life factor. 

 But even premature death is not fundamentally a punish- 

 ment in the natural system of law. Often it is mere 

 fortuitous happening, a thing belonging to the chaos 

 preceding life. It appears rather that the removal of death 

 from this category of chance and its establishment as an 

 avoidable punishment, is to be the effect of reason and 

 civilization coming into operation when consciousness 

 makes life intelligent. The tendency of humanity is to 

 reduce more and more the liability to premature death. 

 Thus one of the primitive incentives to good conduct 

 acquires greater capacity, and the reduction to a minimum of 

 this liability is an ideal of intelligent civilization. As such 

 the process is the erection of reason's conception of justice 

 to the individual, in opposition to the unreasoning force of 

 the environment. 



But evidently the element of uncertainty in the enjoyment 



