70 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



is of undoubted interest and importance, for the further it is 

 prosecuted and the greater the success in the synthetic 

 formation of organic substances, the easier it will become 

 to differentiate clearly and unmistakably between the 

 organic and the mechanical laboratory processes. 



The origin of the cell is the origin of life, and we know 

 nothing definite about it. But the question arises whether 

 sufficient is not known about the cell and organic develop- 

 ment to justify us in trying to form some general idea as to 

 its possible origin. And here we find one set of phenomena 

 which throw a special light on the nature and development 

 of organisms and perhaps also on their origins. The 

 phenomena of reproduction seem to hold the very secret of 

 life, and moreover, bring us close to the secret of matter. 

 And this secret common to both, jealously guarded and 

 preserved throughout the whole range of terrestrial evolution, 

 shows a continuity unique in science, which brings together 

 some of the apparently most diverse facts which confront us 

 in the world of life. How well the secret has been guarded 

 and kept and shielded from all outside influences is evi- 

 denced by the extraordinary fact that though plant and 

 animal life must have diverged near the beginning of things, 

 and must through many millions of years have been 

 moving further apart in the history of this globe, yet the 

 methods of reproduction in plants and animals are still very 

 much alike. The romance of the reproduction of a flowering 

 plant, which is one of the most wonderful in the world, is 

 practically the same, down to many details, as that of the 

 reproduction of one of the higher animals. It is very much 

 the same in the simplest, most primitive alga as in the other 

 members of the rising plant series — the ferns, the cycads, the 

 conifers and the flowering plants. When we go a step 

 further back into the past and come to the case of unicellular 

 organisms, which reproduce themselves not by cell-fusions 

 but by cell-division, we come to the situation, or something 

 very close to the situation, which must have arisen when 

 matter first organised itself into life. For what do we see? 

 The cell when it proceeds to divide into two, assumes the 



