six: Theories of Morals
Chapter One: Education as a Necessity of Life
1. Renewal of Life by Transmission. The most notable distinction between
living and inanimate things is that the former maintain themselves by
renewal. A stone when struck resists. If its resistance is greater than
the force of the blow struck, it remains outwardly unchanged. Otherwise,
it is shattered into smaller bits. Never does the stone attempt to react
in such a way that it may maintain itself against the blow, much less so
as to render the blow a contributing factor to its own continued action.
While the living thing may easily be crushed by superior force, it none
the less tries to turn the energies which act upon it into means of its
own further existence. If it cannot do so, it does not just split into
smaller pieces (at least in the higher forms of life), but loses its
identity as a living thing.
As long as it endures, it struggles to use surrounding energies in its
own behalf. It uses light, air, moisture, and the material of soil. To
say that it uses them is to say that it turns them into means of its own
conservation. As long as it is growing, the energy it expends in thus
turning the environment to account is more than compensated for by
the return it gets: it grows. Understanding the word "control" in this
sense, it may be said that a living being is one that subjugates
and controls for its own continued activity the energies that would
otherwise use it up. Life is a self-renewing process through action upon
the environment.
In all the higher forms this process cannot be kept up indefinitely.
After a while they succumb; they die. The creature is not equal to the
task of indefinite self-renewal. But continuity of the life process
is not dependent upon the prolongation of the existence of any one
individual. Reproduction of other forms of life goes on in continuous
sequence. And though, as the geological record shows, not merely
individuals but also species die out, the life process continues in
increasingly complex forms. As some species die out, forms better
adapted to utilize the obstacles against which they struggled in vain
come into being. Continuity of life means continual readaptation of the
environment to the needs of living organisms.
We have been speaking of life in its lowest terms--as a physical thing.
But we use the word "Life" to denote the whole range of experience,
individual and racial. When we see a boo
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