144 LIFE AND DEATH. 



Gotte combats the statement that the idea of death necessarily 

 implies the existence of a corpse. Hence he maintains that the 

 cellular sac which is left after the extrusion of the reproductive 

 cells among the Orthonectides, and which ultimately dies, is not 

 a corpse ; ' for it does not represent the whole organism, any 

 more than the isolated ectoderm of any other Heteroplastid ' 

 (I.e., p. 48). But it is only a popular notion that a corpse must re- 

 present the entire organism. In cases of violent death this idea 

 is correct, because then the reproductive cells are also killed. But 

 as soon as we recognise that the reproductive cells on the one side, 

 and the somatic cells on the other, form respectively the immortal 

 and mortal parts of the Metazoan organism, then we must acknow- 

 ledge that only the latter, that is, the soma without the re- 

 productive cells, suffers natural death. The fact that all the 

 reproductive cells have not left the body (as sometimes happens) 

 before natural death takes place, does not affect this conception. 

 Among insects, for instance, it may happen that natural death 

 occurs before all the reproductive cells have matured, and these 

 latter then die with the soma. But this does not make any differ- 

 ence to their potential immortality, any more than it modifies the 

 scientific conception of a corpse. The idea of natural death in- 

 volves that of a corpse, which consists Df the soma., and when the 

 hitter happens to contain reproductive cells, these do not succumb 

 to a natural death, which can never apply to them, but to an acci- 

 dental death. They are killed by the death of the soma just as 

 they might be killed by any other accidental cause of death. 



The scientific conception of a corpse is not affected, whether the 

 dead soma remains whole for some time, or falls to pieces at once. 

 I cannot therefore agree with Gotte when he denies that an Ortho- 

 nectid possesses ' the possibility of becoming a corpse ' (in his sense 

 of the word) because ' its death consists in the dissolution of the 

 structure of the organism.' When the young of the Rhabdites 

 form of Ascaris nigrovenosa bore through the body-walls of their 

 parent, cause it to disintegrate and finally devour it, the whole 

 organism disappears, and it would be difficult to say whether a 

 corpse exists in the popular sense of the word. But, scientifically 

 speaking, there is certainly a corpse; the real soma of the animal 

 dies, and this, however subdivided, must be considered as a corpse. 

 The fact that natural death is so difficult to define without anv 



