Life has
nothing to do with everlastingness. That is part of the conception. And
it is this aspect of the question that first arrests us in the field of
Science. But even Science has more in its definition than longevity. It
has a correspondence and an Environment; and although it cannot fill up
these terms for Religion, it can indicate at least the nature of the
relation, the kind of thing that is meant by Life. Science speaks to us
indeed of much more than numbers of years. It defines degrees of Life.
It explains a widening Environment. It unfolds the relation between a
widening Environment and increasing complexity in organisms. And if it
has no absolute contribution to the content of Religion, its analogies
are not limited to a point. It yields to Immortality, and this is the
most that Science can do in any case, the board framework for a
doctrine.

The further definition, moreover, of this correspondence as _knowing_ is
in the highest degree significant. Is not this the precise quality in an
Eternal correspondence which the analogies of Science would prepare us
to look for? Longevity is associated with complexity. And complexity in
organisms is manifested by the successive addition of correspondences,
each richer and larger than those which have gone before. The
differentiation, therefore, of the spiritual organism ought to be
signalized by the addition of the highest possible correspondence. It is
not essential to the idea that the correspondence should be altogether
novel; it is necessary rather that it should not. An altogether new
correspondence appearing suddenly without shadow or prophecy would be a
violation of continuity. What we should expect would be something new,
and yet something that we were already prepared for. We should look for
a further development in harmony with current developments; the
extension of the last and highest correspondence in a new and higher
direction. And this is exactly what we have. In the world with which
biology deals, Evolution culminates in Knowledge.

At whatever point in the zoological scale this correspondence, or set of
correspondences, begins, it is certain there is nothing higher. In its
stunted infancy merely, when we meet with its rudest beginnings in
animal intelligence, it is a thing so wonderful, as to strike every
thoughtful and reverent observer with awe. Even among the invertebrates
so marvelously are these or kindred powers displayed, that naturalists
do no