78 Natural Salvation. 



When we ask the question broadly — Why does the hu- 

 man body grow old and at length cease from function ? — 

 putting the inquiry in the bio-physical sense, the answer 

 seems to be that the personal life embodied in the organism 

 is at length overcome and overmatched by the totality of the 

 resistance to life which it encounters, from the embryonic 

 stage onward ; more specifically, to the general telluric 

 resistance, physical, chemical, molar, molecular, which the 

 protoplasmic molecules of the organism meet with, as long 

 as they maintain the personal life. After adult age is 

 reached, they lose ground in the struggle and at last suc- 

 cumb. The downward curve of the somatic cell has 

 begun. But thei'C is a period, during adolescence, when 

 the cells gain ground, when they make head against the 

 terrestrial resistance to life and prevail joyously, with a 

 sense of victory ; when the inherent energy of the personal 

 life is more than sufficient to breast the opposition. 



We have, therefore, to picture this personal life of the 

 cell as an impulse which for a time rises superior to 

 the resistance, then slackens and falls away to cessation. 



Yet its source in matter is apparently a constant in 

 nature, inseparable from the material ion, and persistent 

 in matter at a uniform tension. Why then, in the human 

 organism, is it exhibited thus intermittently, as " wave 

 motion " ; in adolescence and senescence ; in youth and 

 old age? 



The answer is that human life, even as waves on the 



