and grass, they are utterly unsuitable to be planted in a garden.  Now, then, what is the use of our life, if it stand still?  As the water of a running stream is always fresh and wholesome because it does not stop for a moment, so life is ever fresh and new because it does not stand still, but rapidly moves on from parents to children, from children to grandchildren, from grandchildren to great-grandchildren, and flows on through generation after generation, renewing itself ceaselessly.

We can never deny the existence of old age and death—­nay, death is of capital importance for a continuation of life, because death carries away all the decaying organism in the way of life.  But for it life would be choked up with organic rubbish.  The only way of life’s pushing itself onward or its renewing itself is its producing of the young and getting rid of the old.  If there be no old age nor death, life is not life, but death.

9.  Life and Change.

Transformation and change are the essential features of life; life is not transformation nor change itself, as Bergson seems to assume.  It is something which comes under our observation through transformation and change.  There are, among Buddhists as well as Christians, not a few who covet constancy and fixity of life, being allured by such smooth names as eternal life, everlasting joy, permanent peace, and what not.  They have forgotten that their souls can never rest content with things monotonous.  If there be everlasting joy for their souls, it must be presented to them through incessant change.  So also if there be eternal life granted for their souls, it must be given through ceaseless alteration.  What is the difference between eternal life, fixed and constant, and eternal death?  What is the difference between everlasting bliss, changeless and monotonous, and everlasting suffering?  If constancy, instead of change, govern life, then hope or pleasure is absolutely impossible.  Fortunately, however, life is not constant.  It changes and becomes.  Pleasure arises through change itself.  Mere change of food or clothes is often pleasing to us, while the appearance of the same thing twice or thrice, however pleasing it may be, causes us little pleasure.  It will become disgusting and tire us down, if it be presented repeatedly from time to time.

An important element in the pleasure we derive from social meetings, from travels, from sight-seeings, etc., is nothing but change.  Even intellectual pleasure consists mainly of change.  A dead, unchanging abstract truth, 2 and 2 make 4, excites no interest; while a changeable, concrete truth, such as the Darwinian theory of evolution, excites a keen interest.

10.  Life, Change, and Hope.