EVOLUTION AND HUMAN DESTINY 



plex structures. These more complex structures are 

 equivalent to a higher level of extropy. The process, as 

 will be shown, appears to have been one of increasing 

 complexity of individual packages of matter; the in- 

 tegration of these packages to form a new entity, then 

 again a gradually increasing complexity of the new en- 

 tity leading to a new integration on a higher level and 

 continuing the process further in the same fashion. 



The presently existing viruses, to which the most 

 primitive, first "living" molecules may have been sim- 

 ilar, do not possess the ability to synthesize their struc- 

 ture from a mixture of amino acids. This, however, is 

 n not surprising, as there are practically no such mixtures 

 left in "native" form on the earth. Amino acids, unless 

 synthesized by plants, are now only available in nature 

 through the breakdown of living material. Conse- 

 quently present day viruses are necessarily parasitic to 

 such material. 



It is interesting in this connection to note that the 

 bifurcation of living matter into what were to become 

 the animal and plant branches of life appears to have 

 taken place early in evolutionary history. Initially of 

 course living matter must have had the ability to syn- 

 thesize its own structure from substances not derived 

 from other life, since there was, by definition of "ini- 

 tially", not enough living matter available to provide 

 raw materials for living forms. Only after some reason- 

 able concentration of organisms had been established, 



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