The Intimate Causes of Old Age. 225 



live for a century, or two centuries. In short, that mul- 

 ticellular life is a long-established, cooperative method on 

 the part of cell life, to live longer and better, looking to 

 complete salvation under nature. 



At that time we failed to comprehend this larger effort 

 of cell life. Our mental concepts did not then as now 

 embrace the outlines of the Earth's life scheme. Nor did 

 we then perceive that these grand cooperative unions of 

 differentiated and specialized cell life give rise not only to 

 animal organisms, but to a higher, organized, personal life 

 which redacts strongly to preserve and perpetuate the 

 component cell units, and that the more intelligent that 

 personal life becomes, the stronger grows the effort for 

 self salvation. 



To have a human personality, with mind and reason, 

 with memory running back to childhood, binding the 

 entire life experience together and blending it in a co- 

 herent whole, the brain neurons must largely survive 

 throughout the pei'sonal life-time, the cell must live on, 

 its individual life must be preserved. 



This marvelously organized animal body which we in- 

 herit, the origins of which are in the depths of unhistoric 

 time, has come up under nature, self -maintaining, self- 

 repairing, in obedience to an instinct and impulse to live 

 on and not die. It is the embodiment of the cell effort to 



