By Schubert Ogden
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There is no such thing as "an instinct for immortality," because biological drives, or "instincts," properly so-called, have limited, not unlilnitedunlimited, scope.
Animals, including human animals, are not trying to live forever, but are simply trying to live out their normal life-spans. Their will to live is not a will never to die, but only a will not to die here and now, or in the near future.
Mortality is intrinsically appropriate to being a mere part, or fragment, of the whole of reality, as every animal, including any of us human animals, necessarily is.
There is a good – -- specifically, esthetic – -- reason for "the law of mortality," or the that of dying. Infinite variations on a finite theme could only result in intolerable monotony, which is one of the extremes of ugliness, the opposite extreme being intolerable conflict.
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