120 LIFE AND DEATH. 



existence of natural death among 1 the Monoplastid organisms; 

 upon proof of the contradictory, his whole theory collapses. But 

 there is nevertheless a certain interest in following it further, for 

 we shall thus reach many ideas worthy of consideration. 



First, the question arises as to how death could have been 

 transmitted from the Monoplastides 1 to the Polyplastides, a process 

 which must have taken place according to Gotte. I will for the 

 present omit the fact that I cannot accept the supposition that the 

 process of encystment represents death. We may then inquire 

 whether death has taken the place of encystment among the 

 Polyplastides, or, if this is not the case, whether any process com- 

 parable to encystment exists among the Polyplastides. 



Gotte believes that death is always connected with reproduction, 

 and is a consequence of the latter in both Protozoa and Metazoa. 

 Reproduction has, in his opinion, a directly 'fatal effect,' and the 

 reproducing individual must die. Thus the may- fly and the 

 butterfly die directly after laying their eggs, and the male bee dies 

 immediately after pairing ; the Orthonectides expire after expelling 

 their germ-cells, while Magospkaera resolves itself into germ-cells, 

 and nothing persists except these elements. It is but a step from 

 this latter organism to the unicellular animals which transform 

 themselves as a whole into germ-cells ; but in order to achieve 

 this they must undergo the process of rejuvenescence, which Gotte 

 assumes to be the same as death. 



These views contain many fallacies quite apart from the sound- 

 ness or unsoundness of their foundation. The process of encystment, 

 as Gotte thinks, represents, in the Monoplastides, true reproduction 

 to which multiplication by means of division has been secondarily 

 added. This encystment cannot be dispensed with, for internal 

 causes determine that it must occasionally interrupt the process of 

 multiplication by simple division. But, on the other hand, Gotte 

 also considers the division of the contents of the cyst to be a 

 secondary process. The essential characteristic of encystment is a 

 simple process of rejuvenescence without multiplication. Hence 

 we are forced to accept a primitive . condition in which simple 

 division as well as the division of the encysted individual were 



1 The conception of Protozoa and Metazoa does not correspond exactly with that 

 of unicellular and multicellular beings, for which Gotte has proposed the names 

 Mono- and Polyplastides. 



