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denken lässt –, sondern das Leben: und ‘tot’ wird durch Erfahrung ihm das, was sichals lebendig nicht bewährt. 10The psychophysical decline of an organism ensues at the moment when the reproductivedrive (Fortpflanzung) loses the combat against the antagonistic drives (i.e., the drives forpower and food). 11 The reduction in the reproductive ability (the cell regeneration) is thecause of old age and death. Physical and psychical death have the same cause -- the lifefactor (with all its functions) withdraws from one set of energy and matter and redirectsits activity to another set. A change in attentiveness, switching from issues of vitality tothose of a spiritual kind -- which was the goal of phenomenological reduction -- accompaniesthis process of decline.The following are some of the consequences of changing in attentiveness:- b.1. Time: The future dominates the temporal horizons of a child; the productionof images predominates here. In old age the sphere of expectation diminishes,the past determines the horizons; the images are reproduced ones.- b.2. Worth: The vital axiological consciousness of a child intensifies such attitudesas surprise, rapture and curiosity. The aged (or senile) consciousness compensatesfor the loss of vital attentiveness with an intensified capacity forcorporeal impressions, but the turn to spiritual values prevails here.- b.3. Reality: A child experiences the world as a natura naturans, an old man orwoman as a natura naturata, and thus reality becomes static in old age.Scheler states:Mit allem Altern ist eine Umbildung der Ichkonstitution verbunden, und zwar des Verhältnissesdes geistigen Person-Ich zum ‘Leben’ und den vitalpsychischen Vorgängen...Diese Umbildung hat zur Folge einen Wechsel des erlebten Verhältnisses zu allenSphären: Gott, Natur, Leib, Mitwelt. 12Old age and death make, of a human being, an unwitting participant of the developmentof life in general. An individual death is a sacrifice for the continuous developmentand diversification of the species; it is not a sacrifice intended for species preservation.This development is a condition for comprehending (and getting a sense of) death: “Nurwenn es ein Alleben gibt, erhält er [der Tod] Sinn.” 13The goal of this development is sublimation, that is, the directing of the vital driveswith the help of the spirit. The openness of life to the divine spirit means, on the onehand, that the vital force diminishes, and on the other hand it is the personal individualizationwhich goes with the experience of continuous, personal existence, with God beingthe center of acts and action. The immortality of a spiritual person, like the immortalityof God (who is a person), is not a given: it is a task to be accomplished.10Max Scheler, Gesammelte Werke 12: Schriften aus dem Nachlass, vol. 3, PhilosophischeAnthropologie, 2d. ed., Manfred S. Frings, ed., (Bonn: Bouvier, 1987), 269-270.11This criterion of ageing seems to hold for the rich Western civilization.12Ibid., 311.13Ibid., 339.206