138 WHAT IS LIFE ? 



if science teaches one thing more absolutely 

 than another, it is this fact of the regeneration of mole- 

 cules. The whole science of chemistry is founded on it. 

 If this regeneration ceased, the science of chemistry 

 would cease. The physical condition of all matter 

 would be impossible. 



Life therefore being the sum of the potentialities of 

 atoms, and atoms being indestructible, life must be 

 eternal, and after the disintegration of the mass, which 

 we call death, inasmuch as the functions or potentiali- 

 ties of atoms are eternal the re-combinations of 

 atoms are eternal also. Regeneration is life. We 

 can alter but we cannot die. The physical altera- 

 tion is perpetually continuing, minute by minute, 

 during the life history of the human being. 1 By the 

 aid of photography we can take exact pictures of our- 

 selves, and we do do it. Compare the picture of an infant 

 with the youth, the youth with manhood, manhood 

 with decrepit old age. How little there is in common. 

 The whole is a series of transformations. The man of 

 to-day is not the man of yesterday, and the man of to- 



1 " Even the most solid portions of the animal frame, such as the 

 bones and (to a less extent) the teeth, are undergoing a perpetual 

 although a slower change of this nature ; and throughout the whole 

 body there is a continuous removal of effete or worn-out tissues, and 

 a corresponding deposition of new matter. Every blow we strike. 

 every thought we think, is accompanied by the death and disintegra- 

 tion of a certain amount of muscular or nervous tissue as its necessary 

 condition ; and thus every action of our corporeal life, from its 

 beginning to its close, takes place at the expense of the vitality of a 

 certain amount of organised structure. This is termed molecular 

 death, and, within its proper limits, is obviously essential to the life 

 and well-being of the organism." (" Chambers's Encyclopaedia," 

 1889. article " Death.") 



