In reality, human life is subject from its very beginning to the pernicious disharmonies in the constitution of man. This evil influence increases with the passing of the years and leads to an old age ruined by abnormalities. It is not surprising that under such circumstances men wish neither to grow old nor to die. Old men, in spite of their attachment to life, do not attain the capacity to know all that is good in it, and die, in the fear of death, without having known the instinct of death. They may be compared with unhappy women who have married before their sexual instincts have awakened and who have died in childbirth, without ever having known the real joy of loving. Formerly, the number of women in such a case was large. In some parts of Abyssinia, girls married when they were still very young and before their physical development was mature. According to Hassenstein,[338] nearly one third of these young women died in childbirth. They quitted life before they had known the true sexual instinct. The advancement of civilisation and of medical knowledge has greatly reduced the number of such unhappy women. We must hope that the progress of knowledge will bring about a similar advance in relation to the instinct of death. With that progress, the number of men who will live until the instinct has been attained will become greater and greater. CHAPTER XII SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS Disharmonies in the human constitution as the chief source of our sorrows—Scientific data as to the origin and destiny of man—The goal of human existence—Difficulties in the way of scientific investigation of the problem—What is progress?—Difficulty of including the whole human race in a scheme of progress and morality—The instincts of life and of natural death—Application to real life of the doctrines set forth in this book Man, who is a descendant of some anthropoid ape, has inherited a constitution adapted to an environment very different from that which now surrounds him. Man is possessed of a brain very much more highly developed than that of his ancestors, and has entered on a new path in the evolution of the higher organisms. The sudden change in his natural conditions has brought about a large series of organic disharmonies which become more and more acutely felt as he becomes more intelligent and more sensitive. And thus there has arisen a number of sorrows which poor humanity has tried to relieve by all the means in its power. The disharmonies in the sexual functions have brought into existence attempted remedies of the strangest kind. The greatest disharmony of the constitution is that of the morbid nature of old age and the impossibility of reaching the instinct of natural death; this has produced childish and erroneous conceptions of the immortality of the soul and of the resurrection of the body, and many other strange doctrines that have been imposed upon us as revealed truth.