228 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



to and after birth, come to contain in themselves the 

 promise and potency of reason, of genius, of greatness 

 of a Shakespeare or a Darwin. A little speck of matter, 

 indistinguishable to human study from one of the 

 lowest forms of life, and essentially nothing but one 

 of these lowest forms, redistributed or regrouped, con- 

 tains in itself what will necessarily ("bar" the accident 

 of death) give the difference of a man from a beast, of 

 a genius from a fool, of a saint from a scoundrel, or vice 

 versa. So runs the doctrine. 



We have not yet stated Weismann's ingenious 

 theory that the germ plasm, and unicellular organisms 

 in general, are potentially immortal. Unicellular or- 

 ganisms grow by fission ; the child is a part of the 

 parent; it is impossible to say, after the split has 

 been accomplished, which is child and which is parent. 

 Both are both ; or neither is neither ! The category 

 or conception of parentage belongs to a higher sphere 

 of life, and is inapplicable here. If either survives 

 and we are assuming the continuance of the species 

 both may survive. Each member of the race is potenti- 

 ally immortal. Never a natural death, but a violent 

 death always, must weed its ranks. If germ plasm 

 exists at all in continuity, it is hardly necessary to 

 argue that the same thing must be true of it. Part of 

 the germ plasm builds up a body, and undergoes in 

 somatic form the doom of death ; part of the germ 

 plasm survives as germ plasm, multiplying and re- 

 plenishing itself (if only during embryonic growth), 

 and ultimately in some fortunate fragments passing 

 into new lives. This thing need never die. Most of 

 it will die; what is transformed into body, and what 

 fails of attaining to fertilisation. But it need not die ; 

 it is potentially immortal. So to say, the old original 



