Impossibility of life without evolution—Law of increase and division—Immortality of the protozoa—Death, a phenomenon of adaptation which has appeared in the course of the ages—The infusoria—The death of the infusoria—Two kinds of reproduction—The caryogamic rejuvenescence of Maupas—Calkins on rejuvenescence—Causes of senescence—Impossibility of life without evolution. We take into account, _a priori_, the conditions that must be fulfilled by the monocellular being in order to escape the inevitability of evolution, of the succession of ages, of old age, and of death. It must be able indefinitely to maintain itself in a normal régime, without changing, without increasing, maintaining its constant morphological and chemical composition, in an environment vast enough for it to be unaltered by the borrowings or the spendings resulting from its nutrition—_i.e._, it must remain constant in the presence of the constant being. We might conceive of a nutrition perfect enough, of exchanges exact enough, and regular enough, for the state of things to be indefinitely maintained. This would be absolute permanence realized in the vital mobility. _The Law of Growth and Division._—This model of a perfect and invariable machine does not exist in nature. Life is incompatible with the absolute permanence of the dimensions and the forms of the living organism. In a word, it is a rigorous law of living nature that the cell can neither live indefinitely without growth, nor grow indefinitely without division. Why is this so? Why is there this impossibility of a regular régime in which the cell would be maintained in magnitude without diminution or increase? Why has nutrition as a necessary consequence the growth of the element? This is what we do not positively know. Things are so. It is an irreducible fact, peculiar to the protoplasm, a characteristic of the living matter of the cell. It is the fundamental basis of the property of generation. That is all we can say about it. Real living beings have therefore inevitably an evolution. They are not unchangeable. In its simple form this evolution consists in the fact that the cell grows, divides, and diminishes by this division, begins the upward march which ends in a new division. And so on. _Immortality of the Protozoa._—It may happen, and it does happen in fact, that this series of acts is repeated indefinitely at any rate unless an accidental cause should interrupt it. The animal thus describes an indefinite curve, constituted by a series of indentations, the highest point of which corresponds to the maximum of size, and the lowest point to the diminution which succeeds the division. This state of things has no inevitable end if the medium does not change. The being is immortal.