Potential Immortality 



i.^i 



is always the same ego of the same substance with the par- 

 ents. And when the parent in the normal course of nature 

 emits and establishes several offspring, they are each actual 

 severed portions of the same life plasm, a part of which 

 remains in the older creature ; and when this older structure 

 is killed, or, being worn out, dies, the part of that life lost 

 in it is insignificant ; the greater part, the strength of it, has 

 gone out, and, in anticipation of the coming failure, it has 

 established itself in the present organism of new generation, 

 in other numerous structures new and young, so that when 

 death may eventually come, it shall be too late to destroy. 



Thus human life is potentially immortal. It continues in- 

 definitely so long as the individuals to whom it descends 

 manifest sufficient ability and knowledge to withstand the 

 difficulties of the outside world, and to transmit the trust 

 to natural successors. The failure to thus transmit it is not 

 only the end of an individual life, it is the end of a line of 

 continuous life which began in the remote past where history 

 and legend, and even knowledge had not begun. Normal 

 death in old age, or even death in adversity or accident, of 

 a life leaving issue, is but a process of nature for beneficial 

 ends; but death without issue is the extinction of that line; 

 and is usually a consequence of failure or error, extermi- 

 nating at once that particular error, and the creature who 

 committed it. 



Here are in material natural history the two diflferent 

 lives, and the two different deaths, which the study of con- 

 duct showed as the subjects and objects of motives and con- 

 sequences : the life of the individual which is merely a ten- 

 ancy of destructible material, and the lineal life which is 



