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 perfect the animal the greater the subordination of the parts. The cells of the human body are incessantly dying, being borne off and replaced. The epidermis or scarf skin is made of millions of insensible scales, consisting of former cells which have died in order with their dead bodies to build this guardian wall around the tender inner parts. Thus, death, operating within the individual, seen in the light of natural science, is a necessity, is purely a form of self surrendering beneficence, is, indeed, but a hidden and indirect process and completion of life.14