The Intimate Causes of Old Age. 223 



go farther and theorize that molecules, atoms, and even 

 ions and corpuscles are depleted, and have to meet, 

 sexuall}^ for renewal. There have been various fanciful 

 theories as to sex in the most minute particles of which 

 matter is composed. 



These were years of doubt for the natural salvation 

 idea. The deduction then made, was that the hard con- 

 ditions of life on the earth, cause the cell to wane, dete- 

 riorate, or "run down," to the extent that it inevitably 

 dies unless reincarnated by sexual interblending with 

 other cells, that being nature's only method of getting 

 over the inherent obstacles to terrestrial life : obstacles 

 incident to gravitation, avid chemical activities, and the 

 heterogeneous mixture of matter on the earth's surface. 

 And this deduction touching unicellular life is a true one. 

 The unicells have found life too hard to live endlessly as 

 individuals. Under the ordinary conditions of shore and 

 pool) they die out unless renewed by sexual regeneration ; — 

 and this is the death of the individual life. 



It is race life, not individual life, which is perpetuated 

 by sexual renovation ; the child may be like the parent, 

 but is not that parent, personally. Those who have 

 observed the profound changes, the commingling and re- 

 grouping of the cell contents, that precede the fission and 

 division of a unicell into two "daughter cells" — even 

 when not immediately antedated by sexual congress — 

 must needs conclude that the parent does not live on in 



