ew, no conceivable
reason why he should not be subject to physical death as they are.
They have always been subject to death, which, therefore, is an
aboriginal constituent of the Creative plan. It has been
estimated, upon data furnished by scientific observation, that
since the appearance of organic life on earth, millions of years
ago, animals enough have died to cover all the lands of the globe
with their bones to the height of three miles. Consequently, the
historic commencement of death is not to be found in the sin of
man. We shall discover it as a necessity in the first organic cell
that was ever formed.

The spherule of force which is the primitive basis of a cell
spends itself in the discharge of its work. In other words, "the
amount of vital action which can be performed by each living cell
has a definite limit." When that limit is reached, the exhausted
cell is dead. To state the fact differently: no function can be
performed without "the disintegration of a certain amount of
tissue, whose components are then removed as effete by the
excretory processes." This final expenditure on the part of a cell
of its modification of force is the act of molecular death, the
germinal essence of all decay. That this organic law should rule
in every living structure is a necessity inherent in the actual
conditions of the creation. And wherever we look in the realm of
physical man, even "from the red outline of beginning Adam" to the
amorphous adipocere of the last corpse when fate's black curtain
falls on our race, we shall discern death. For death is the other
side of life. Life and death are the two hands with which the
organic power works.

The threescore simple elements known to chemists die, that is,
surrender their peculiar powers and properties, and enter into new
combinations to produce and support higher forms of life.
Otherwise these inorganic elemental wastes would be all that the
material universe could show.

13 The Diversity of Origin of the Human Races, by Louis Agassiz,
Christian Examiner, July, 1850.

The simple plant consists of single cells, which, in its
development, give up their independent life for the production
of a more exalted vegetable form. The formation of a perfectly
organized plant is made possible only through the continuous dying
and replacement of its cells. Similarly, in the development of an
animal, the constituent cells die for the good of the whole
creature; and the more perf