8o The Morality of Nature 



there could not be room for the establishment of improve- 

 ment. In other words there could be no progress in fitness. 

 Therefore when one among the living races of primitive 

 creatures develops or acquires the power to discard its 

 inferior structures by death, it acquires a stupendous ad- 

 vantage over those still clinging to the original immortality 

 which denied them that advantage; and it will be seen in 

 later studies of evolution that this power to reject structure 

 made inferior by age and obsolescence, is a fundamental 

 superiority of the multicellular creature over the primitive 

 unicellular. 



Death appears in two distinct forms. Primarily death 

 appears not as the necessary end of life but only as an 

 accident, or as an ending of some of the separate lives when 

 a limited environment becomes inhospitable. And even this 

 kind of death rarely occurs in primitive conditions without 

 a production of spores or seeds or other means of succession, 

 which can await more favorable circumstances. 



The great function of death is an adaptation by which 

 life of small organization achieves the possibility of great 

 and elaborate organization, promoting the death principle 

 to a higher sphere and using it for the liberation of life 

 from the structure which is doomed to age and decay beyond 

 repair, so that it, the life, may be endowed anew; and for 

 the removal of structures even before age and decay, when 

 they are of insufficient excellence, as compared with others, 

 in the face of difficult environment. This great function of 

 death further enlarges under the operation of the natural 

 law of survival for fitness, and makes possible more than the 

 renewal of the structure. It opens the way for a continued 



