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SEX IX EDÜCATIOX.
to yield that amount of intellectual force. As fast as one cell is destroyed, another is generated. The death of one is followed instantly by the birth of its successor. This continual process of cellular death and birth, the income and outgo of cells, that follow each other like the waves of the sea, each different yet each the same, is metamorphosis of tissue. This is life. It corresponds very nearly to Bichat’s definition that, “ life is organization in action.” The finer sense of Shakspeare dictated a truer definition than the science of the French physiologist, —
“ What’s yet in this
That bears the name of life ? Yet in this life Lie hid more thousand deaths.”
Measure for Measure, Act iii. Scene 1.
No physical or psychical act is possible without this change. It is a process of continual waste and repair. Subject to its inevitable power, the organization is continually wasting away and continually being repaired.
The old notion that our bodies are changed