CONCLUSION. 313 



who are therefore only uncles and aunts of the 

 survivors. I can quite understand its being a good 

 thing for any race that its uncles and aunts should go 

 away, but I do not believe the accumulation of lucky 

 accidents could result in an eye, no matter how many 

 uncles and aunts may have gone away during how 

 many generations. 



I would ask the reader to bear in mind the views 

 concerning life and death expressed in an early chapter. 

 They seem to me not, indeed, to take away any very 

 considerable part of the stiag from death ; this should 

 not be attempted or desired, for with the sting of 

 death the sweets of life are inseparably bound up so 

 that neither can be weakened without damaging the 

 other. Weaken the fear of death, and the love of life 

 would be weakened. Strengthen it, and we should 

 cling to life even more tenaciously than we do. But 

 though death must always remain as a shock and change 

 of habits from which we must naturally shrink — still it 

 is not the utter end of our being, which, until lately, 

 it must have seemed to those who have been unable to 

 accept the grosser view of the resurrection with which 

 we were familiarised in childhood. We too now know 

 that though worms destroy this body, yet in our flesh 

 shall we so far see God as to be still in Him and of 

 Him — biding our time for a resurrection in a new and 

 more glorious body ; and, moreover, that we shall be to 

 the full as conscious of this as we are at present of 

 much that concerns us as closely as anything can 

 concern us. 



The thread of life cannot be shorn between successive 



