The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from The Prolongation of Life: Optimistic Studies

In this new volume, The Prolongation of Life, the main thesis is carried further, and a number of criti cisms and objections are met. The latter, so far as they relate to technical details, I need say nothing of here, as Metchnikoff and his staff at the Pasteur Institute are the most skilled existing technical experts on these matters, but I canhot refrain from a word of comment on the bril liant treatment of the objection to the suggested ameliora tion of human life that it considered only the individual ind neglected the just subordination of the individual to society. In the sixth Part of this volume, Metchnikoff dis cusses the relation of the individual to the species, society or colony, from the general point of view of comparative biology, and shows that as organisation progresses, the integrity of the individual becomes increasingly important. Were orthobiosis, the normal cycle of life, attained by human beings, there still would be room for specialisation of individuals and for differentiation of the functions of individuals in society, but instead of the specialisation and differentiation making individuals incomplete throughout their whole lives, they would be distributed over the different periods of the life of each individual.

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