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 nonetheless 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.

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. This is the process of natural selection. 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, other species better equipped to thrive in the particular environment begin to flourish and take hold. Continuity of life means continual re-adaptation 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 experiences of the individual. When we see a book called the Life of Lincoln, we do not expect to find within its covers a treatise on physiology. We look for an account of social antecedents; a description of early surroundings, of the conditions and occupation of the family; of the chief episodes in the development of character; of his struggles and triumphs; of the individual’s hopes, tastes, joys, and struggles.

When we look to such a book, we are looking to what another has thought and felt and in what ways he has had his own attitude modified by life’s experiences. Experiences have to be formulated in order to be communicated, and to formulate them requires getting outside of the specific experiences of the individual and understanding them in the context of humanity. Such a process is a renewal of the social life that offers the potential for societal growth and improvement, similar to that of the renewal of the physical life discussed earlier. In the formalization of the individual’s experience and the lessons learned in the context of society, society if it so desires, may integrate the information and use it to its advantage. This reproduction of life’s experiences and the ways in which they continue to echo generation after generation is the essence of social immortality, and while such immortality is indistinct and collective, unlike physical immortality where the individual is the one who persists, it is our collective actions we take and the meaning we make that endures. Such a thing is a call to action in that what we do actually matters; it matters in our own time here and now, but also in the future when the reverberations of our actions are still being felt.

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