Eimei^ on Gi^owth and Inheritance 4 1 9 



jqual halves, whereof each moiety had an equal right to 

 declare itself to be the continuation of the original undivided 

 whole. As countless myriads of such unicellular organisms 

 still exist, we still dwell amidst immortals. Thus, according 

 to Weismann, the life of the whole human race has no 

 appreciable duration compared with that of the simplest 

 animalcule of the nearest pond. Such an animalcule had 

 already lived for a practical eternity at a time when Laby- 

 rinthodonts first began to wallow in the swamps of those 

 primeval forests which now constitute our coal-beds. The 

 animalcule is the Wandering Jew of biology, and even more ; 

 for he almost saAv the dawn of life on this planet, and will 

 continue his course in restless activity through the twihght 

 of its close. 



The Professor then speculates as to how death first arose 

 by the spontaneous joining together of many such unicellular 

 organisms to form a complex whole, followed by the volun- 

 tary starvation of some such constituents, resulting in the 

 death of such whole. Natural death having thus once ap- 

 peared, he teaches us that it was hailed with enthusiasm by 

 nature as a cause of life. That organisms should live long 

 enough to breed is, of course, absolutely essential for the 

 race ; but Weismann tells us that nature has been too good 

 to allow them to live any longer, save when they could 

 redeem themselves by some extraordinary service; Death, 

 he tell us, has become as universal and inevitable as it now 

 is, simply on account of the advantage accruing to those 

 races which werejrelieved by it from the bane of 'useless 

 mouths ' — that is, of parents which continued to exist after 

 their progeny had begun to breed. 



Species which still continued to have many immortal in- 

 dividuals of such a [useless kind — like the Struldbrugs ^ of 

 Swift — had to give way, in the struggle for existence, to races 



1 In his Voyage to Laputa, c. x. 



