132 The Morality of Nature 



potentially immortal, which passes from one structure to 

 others, and involves all in the same interests, responsibilities 

 and consequences ; and v^hich ends only in those lines penal- 

 ized in comparative inefficiency. And death also stands re- 

 vealed in dual form, the first being merely the final subsidence 

 of a w^orn-out machine already abandoned by the life plasm, 

 and the other being annihilation of the race life itself. 



The facts thus discovered in lowest life are found (when 

 once comprehended) to be the same in all life even to the 

 highest forms. The discussion of them is the discussion of 

 a universal law of potential immortality. The value of this 

 potential immortality of the Greater Life can be understood 

 only if it be thus traced backward through its history. The 

 view forward of its future is only a possibility, a thing 

 which may or may not be, a speculation, but backward is 

 the fact accomplished, unalterable and undoubtable. This 

 life in the man who stands deciding what he will do with 

 it, came to him through a series of ancestors, no one of 

 whom failed in all the ages from the beginning. It is a 

 commonplace honor, for every creature alive has the same 

 antiquity of origin, but it is nevertheless stupendous. Not 

 one forbear failed. Some succeeded better than others, and 

 some doubtless nearly lost the hold on life. Through them 

 one by one, each in turn responsible, the stream has 

 descended, at times flowing strong in prosperity, at others 

 running low in the shadow of destruction, through ages and 

 ages flowing forward, budding, breaking into new lines, 

 into new forms, arising from, and surrounded by extinct 

 types and wrecked structures ; with error and failure to this 

 side and that, this line has come down to this age carrying 



