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C. L. Herrick 
becomes more and more the annex of some cause. ’’ There are 
perennial things which endure and bear fruit year by year while 
death reaps its frequent harvests of brief human life. The indi- 
vidual life becomes of value chiefly as a factor in some such power- 
ful instrument for the betterment of collective humanity. 
Finally, when the forces of life are so far spent that one’s parti- 
cipation in the ‘‘cause” becomes insignificant and the enjoy- 
ments of life cease to lure to linger in paths which no longer please, 
the instinct of self-preservation grows less assertive and the fear 
of the death agony perhaps yields to evidence like that of Dr. 
Hunter who, in his latest moments, ‘ ‘ grieved that he could not 
write how easy and delightful it is to die.” Still the thought 
of individuality, if it no longer affrights us or menaces with the 
loss of good naturally our right, appears a solemn and melancholy 
possibility, repellent to our feelings. Memory supplies what 
hope no longer affords, and it seems incredible that we who have 
formed so large a part in worthy undertakings should perish 
while the impress of our lives, by a spiritual law of conservation 
of energy, continues forever. 
Of the kind of immortality implied in the perpetuity of effort 
when once exerted, there seems to be no doubt. We are intellec- 
tually convinced that our influence is immortal; but, like Kuta- 
danta, the disciple of Buddha, we care little for any other immor- 
tality but that of the individual self. Nor does the statement 
of the Buddha that “he who cleaves to self must pass through 
the endless migrations of death, he is constantly dying; for the 
nature of self is a perpetual death,” nor yet the word of a greater 
than Buddha that “he who would save his life shall lose it” 
cause us to subdue the craving for an immortal life in which 
there may be continued the memories and experiences of our pres- 
ent individual self. 
The attribute of individuality is one which gives, and since the 
time of Aristotle, has given the logicians much uneasiness. In 
the Ingersoll lecture for 1899, Prof. Josiah Boyce, in the course of 
a discussion of “The Conception of Immortality” devoted practi- 
cally^ the sum of his endeavor to the settlement of this vexed 
question, rightly judging it to be a necessary preliminary to the 
broader theme. 
