ition; and from the connection in
which it occurs in his writings, it is obvious that religion was not
even present to his mind. He is analyzing with minute care the relations
between Environment and Life. He unfolds the principle according to
which Life is high or low, long or short. He shows why organisms live
and why they die. And finally he defines a condition of things in which
an organism would never die--in which it would enjoy a perpetual and
perfect Life. This to him is, of course, but a speculation. Life Eternal
is a biological conceit. The conditions necessary to an Eternal Life do
not exist in the natural world. So that the definition is altogether
impartial and independent. A Perfect Life, to Science, is simply a thing
which is theoretically possible--like a Perfect Vacuum.

Before giving, in so many words, the definition of Mr. Herbert Spencer,
it will render it fully intelligible if we gradually lead up to it by a
brief rehearsal of the few and simple biological facts on which it is
based. In considering the subject of Death, we have formerly seen that
there are degrees of Life. By this is meant that some lives have more
and fuller correspondence with Environment than others. The amount of
correspondence, again, is determined by the greater or less complexity
of the organism. Thus a simple organism like the Amoeba is possessed of
very few correspondences. It is a mere sac of transparent structureless
jelly for which organization has done almost nothing, and hence it can
only communicate with the smallest possible area of Environment. An
insect, in virtue of its more complex structure, corresponds with a
wider area. Nature has endowed it with special faculties for reaching
out to the Environment on many sides; it has more life than the Amoeba.
In other words, it is a higher animal. Man again, whose body is still
further differentiated, or broken up into different correspondences,
finds himself _en rapport_ with his surroundings to a further extent.
And therefore he is higher still, more living still. And this law, that
the degree of Life varies with the degree of correspondence, holds to
the minutest detail throughout the entire range of living things. Life
becomes fuller and fuller, richer and richer, more and more sensitive
and responsive to an ever-widening Environment as we rise in the chain
of being.

Now it will speedily appear that a distinct relation exists, and must
exist, between complexity and