2o8 THEORETICAL BIOLOGY 



THE ACTUAL COURSE OF THE GENESIS OF NEW PROPERTIES 



Unicellular organisms offer the clearest example of the 

 genesis of new properties. They represent subjects clothed 

 with only the most essential properties. But even the 

 simplest amoeba, despite its poverty, has a sufficient number 

 to form the function-circles. What is striking here is that 

 certain of these properties appear only from time to time, 

 and then vanish again. 



But the strikingness of this phenomenon must not mislead 

 us to overestimate the processes, and so imagine that all the 

 properties of the amoeba are thus perpetually coming into 

 existence and then disappearing again. Even in the amoeba 

 the basal element of the properties subserving function is 

 there all the time. The power of receiving stimuli and trans- 

 forming them into excitation is always present, and suffers no 

 change at all ; but the effect-organs are formed anew as 

 occasion requires. Before the amoeba encounters a stimulus, 

 its entire mark-apparatus is there complete, and so is its 

 general power of movement. The only thing lacking is the 

 development of special effectors to carry out regulated move- 

 ments. The properties of shape, consistency and adhesive- 

 ness, which the body-plasm makes into a pseudopodium, 

 must be aroused before the action of the animal can 

 begin. 



If we turn to the genesis of multicellular organisms for an 

 explanation, we may assume that, from the chromosomes of 

 the amoeba nucleus, certain ferments are furnished, which, 

 when they are released, caU forth by means of chemical 

 changes the necessary properties in the plasma-foam. It is 

 possible that the nucleus is continually giving off to the 

 plasma a limited number of such ferments, which lie latent 

 within it. This would explain the restricted length of life 

 of portions of the amoeba that are deprived of the nucleus. 



