3o8 Natural Salvation. 



arrange itself about it, quite as readily as if no former de- 

 velopment had taken place. The problem of such pro- 

 longed brain life would lie in giving the brain cells a 

 pure, normal food, through an uninjured blood circulatory, 

 and preserving them from the ills that come from associa- 

 tion with other impaired cell groups of the organism. 



The brain appears to be a colony of cells destined to 

 live forever and capable of doing so, but for the weakness, 

 diseases, and frailities of the organism in which it hias 

 developed. On the one hand, it is the organism, by 

 means of which, it has come forward and arisen to its 

 present high estate of intellectual puissance ; and, on the 

 other hand, it is this same organism which now drags it 

 down to death. 



The " cometh up like a flower " theory of old age has 

 long been a popular one. 



When we regard the growth, blooming, and death of a 

 summer flower, the shooting upward of the flower stalk of 

 a poppy, for example, with its blossom, its seeding, and its 

 suddenly ensuing juicelessness and dead rigidity, we con- 

 template phenomena not wholly unlike what takes place 

 in the human organism, when regarded in the large, pass- 

 ing from infancy to maturity and old age. 



What has taken place in the poppy stalk ? 



One class of plant cells has developed, multiplied, and 



