172 Life and Love. 



The same mortality is remotely apparent in the 

 higher ranks. 



The biologist proves beyond question that repro- 

 duction is a process of destruction, that where this 

 power announces itself, it is a sign of coming dis- 

 solution. Death is the price the many-celled 

 creature pays for its more complex form, its higher 

 powers. 



As the insect lives the higher life for a brief 

 period, and then dies as the result of this beautiful 

 development, so does the higher animal live its 

 life of conscious joy and sorrow, and then die as a 

 a result of this power of consciousness. 



Only the single-celled organisms, which have no 

 conscious life, no great ecstasies or aspirations, 

 live on with no necessity for death. 



Yet none would choose the immortality of the 

 amoeba, with its simple unseeing life, as a condition 

 of this immortality. 



" Better fifty years of Europe 

 Than a cycle of Cathay " 



is applicable all along the line. 



Death would be beautiful and welcome, were it 

 the necessary condition of even but one moment 

 of conscious life and knowledge. 



A single moment of intelligence followed by 

 earthly oblivion, were worth countless ages of 

 unconscious protoplasmic life. 



Although licproduction is incipient death, yet 

 does it also express the fullest life. Its advent 



