The Function of Death 8i 



improvement of the structure and for its advance in every 

 successive regeneration, to a higher capacity under the con- 

 tinued stimulus of life responding to environment. This 

 conception of the function of death evokes the theory that 

 perfect fitness in an unchanging environment would, if 

 achieved, end the usefulness of death, at the same time that 

 it ended its probability. 



The death inflicted by the hostility of nature is not in- 

 tended to be just or compensatory to the individual, but it 

 is the original cause of stimulus against which all the func- 

 tions of life are arrayed; and as it cannot be annulled, it is 

 to be met and countered by adaptation, in which justice and 

 compensation are attained or promoted for succeeding 

 generations. The primary death before mentioned applies 

 to higher mortal structures just as it applies to the poten- 

 tially immortal. The adoption of death as a regular avenue 

 to progress does not annul its original function, but adds to 

 it. Death continues, in late as in early evolution, to remove 

 many individuals of apparently high ability and merit, acting 

 as part of the originally hostile environment. In this en- 

 vironment life itself, by the mere exuberance of increase, 

 produces new conditions of hostility, and progress promises, 

 not a cessation of it, but an increasingly effective resistance 

 to it. 



6 



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