onate
of lime, assumes an immense diversity of characters, though no one doubts
that, under all these protean changes, it is one and the same thing.

And now, what is the ultimate fate, and what the origin, of the matter of
life?

Is it, as some of the older naturalists supposed, diffused throughout the
universe in molecules, which are indestructible and unchangeable in
themselves, but, in endless transmigration, unite in innumerable
permutations, into the diversified forms of life we know? Or, is the
matter of life composed of ordinary matter, differing from it only in the
manner in which its atoms are aggregated? Is it built up of ordinary
matter, and again resolved into ordinary matter when its work is done?

Modern science does not hesitate a moment between these alternatives.
Physiology writes over the portals of life:--

Debemur morti nos nostraque,--

with a profounder meaning than the Roman poet attached to that melancholy
line. Under whatever disguise it takes refuge, whether fungus or oak, worm
or man, the living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved
into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always dying, and,
strange as the paradox may sound, could not live unless it died.

In the wonderful story of the "Peau de Chagrin," the hero becomes
possessed of a magical wild ass's skin, which yields him the means of
gratifying all his wishes. But its surface represents the duration of the
proprietor's life; and for every satisfied desire the skin shrinks in
proportion to the intensity of fruition, until at length life and the last
handbreadth of the _peau de chagrin_ disappear with the gratification of a
last wish.

Balzac's studies had led him over a wide range of thought and speculation,
and his shadowing forth of physiological truth in this strange story may
have been intentional. At any rate, the matter of life is a veritable
_peau de chagrin_, and for every trivial act it is somewhat the smaller.
All work implies waste, and the work of life results, directly or
indirectly, in the waste of protoplasm.

Every word uttered by a speaker costs him some physical loss; and, in the
strictest sense, he burns that others may have light--so much eloquence,
so much of his body resolved into carbonic acid, water, and urea. It is
clear that this process of expenditure cannot go on forever. But, happily,
the protoplasmic _peau de chagrin_ differs from Balzac's in its capacity
of being repaired,