Justice in Death 99 



social co-operation comes to be worth more than brute 

 strength of the individual. It is not in reliance upon mere 

 experimental fecundity that humanity properly progresses, 

 but in appreciation of a higher kind of life which shall 

 necessitate less of the correction by death. In the sterility 

 of those not deserving successors or not suited for the sacri- 

 fice of parenthood, there is a more humane eradication of 

 them and their deficiency than in rebirth and premature 

 death: and in the gradual displacement of self-indulgent 

 races and strains and families, by others which have the 

 natural impulses and affections, there is a more inevitable 

 governance, than in the superseding migration and conquest ; 

 by which countries are repeopled in the processes of conscious 

 aggressive survival. 



The efforts of humanity to resist and oppose death, and 

 the instinctive abhorrence of it by man and by the emotional 

 animals seem to be founded in a power to overcome it. Al- 

 though under the natural law of experimental variation, 

 primitive race life takes advantage of the opportunity given 

 by death, for a selection of individuals, promoting the fittest, 

 yet instinctive altruism and reasoning wisdom continually 

 operate to enable higher life to foresee weakness instead of 

 awaiting its development, and to alleviate or prevent its 

 existence instead of exterminating it. This is where the 

 morality of intelligent human nature differs from the 

 morality of unreasoning brute nature. 



In the course of the growth of human love and wisdom 

 there arises an ideal of repugnance to death which is the 

 instinctive outcome of activity against death. Reasoned con- 

 duct is forever cultivating foresight, and avoiding death by 



