THE UNIQUENESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL 



These particular carp died, though latter-day experimenters 

 have been more lucky.^ 



Raymond Pearl agreed with Weismann that in some manner 

 or other natural death had evolved, but that it evolved under 

 the auspices of natural selection he irritably denied. (''Probably 

 no more perverse extension of the theory than this was ever 

 made."*) Yet for so brilliant a man, PearPs own theory of the 

 mechanism of ageing in the individual is curiously inadequate. 

 ""Specialization of structure and function necessarily makes the 

 several parts of the body mutually dependent for their life upon 

 each other. If one organ or group, for any accidental reason, 

 begins to function abnormally and finally breaks down, the 

 balance of the whole is upset and death eventually follows. '' 

 But is not this a description of the ""proximate cause** of almost 

 any form of death? Something gives way, no doubt: one man 

 will be as old as his arteries, another as his liver. But gross 

 abnormality apart, why should any organ break down? Appar- 

 ently because of the wear and tear of merely working, and 

 Pearl tells us that ""those organ systems that have evolved 

 farthest away from the original primitive conditions . . . wear 

 longest under the strain of functioning\ It is only towards the 

 end of his book that Pearl puts forward his theory in this 

 relatively specific form. Earlier — and see how much more easily 

 he breathes the air of amorphous generalization — he tells us 

 that the somatic death of higher organisms ""is simply the price 

 they pay for the privilege of enjoying those higher specializa- 

 tions of structure and function which have been added on as a 

 sideline to the main business of living things, which is to pass 

 on in unbroken continuity the never-dimmed fire of life itself \ 



^ E.g. N. A. Borodin, Zoologische Jahrbuch, 53, p. 318, 1934. [To-day, 

 thanks to the work of R. Andjus of the University of Belgrade, even 

 mammals can survive being frozen: the subject of 'hypothermia' and of 

 tissue storage by freezing has been admirably reviewed by R. E. Billing- 

 ham in New Biology, 18, p. 72 (London: Penguin Books, 1955). See also 

 A. U. Smith, J. E, Lovelock and A. S. Parkes, Nature, 173, p. 1136, 1954.] 



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