4 ASSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



leads on to the extremely interesting question of 

 the meaning and nature of death. Science has in 

 past days discussed the origin of life, and for the 

 present has put the question aside as an insoluble 

 problem. On this matter, then, Professor Weis- 

 mann has nothing to say beyond recording his 

 belief that "spontaneous generation, in spite of all 

 vain efforts to demonstrate it, remains a logical 

 necessity." But on the phenomenon of death he 

 has much to tell us. And his conclusions are as 

 striking as they are suggestive. 



It sounds at first like a paradox to say that "it 

 is only from the point of view of utility that we 

 can understand the necessity of death/' or to talk 

 about death as " a beneficial occurrence," an " adap- 

 tation," which has arisen by the operation of 

 natural selection, because a life of unlimited 

 duration would be "a luxury without a purpose." 

 Still more startling is it to be told that, though the 

 higher organisms " contain within themselves the 

 germs of death," there are inferior organisms which 

 are "endowed with the potentiality of never-ending 

 life." But it is only the language which is para- 

 doxical. When the amceba increases by division, 

 neither half is younger or older than the other. 

 The process may go on for centuries ; thousands 

 of amoebae may be destroyed, yet the amoebae 

 who survive are as old as, for they are identical 

 with, the first amceba. The same is true of the 



