178 WHAT IS LIFE? 



that it is the innate powers of the cell, the com- 

 mander-in-chief of the organic entities the cells, 

 which keep the army of which the organism consists 

 together to form the whole being we call an organism 

 a man or gorilla. This cell has its nucleus and its 

 nucleolus. It is a group of molecules, formed of atoms 

 commanded by a molecule in which there is the 

 fundamental atom. This fundamental species of atom 

 collects the groups of molecules which are called the 

 ape. Let the ape be the parent stock. It is through 

 this parent stock that the fundamental atom, which 

 is in time to form an organism of the highest order- 

 civilized man, gets its footing. It is as a parasite in the 

 ovary of the lower organism the ape, it immediately 

 asserts its specific inherent powers, and thus we have 

 the creation of the higher order through a lower order, 

 and the human being is, as it is called, created. A crea- 

 ture at first so low in organization that he was doubt- 

 less hairy, like the ape, just capable of breaking stones 

 for weapons, living in caves, unkempt, degraded. In 

 process of time, perhaps millions of years, this species 

 of organism, by very slow and minute alteration in 

 structure, by natural selection, by the survival of the 

 fittest, has become the present highly-cultured, civilized 

 human being. A being chiefly remarkable for his 

 enormous number of thinking cells. How wonderful 

 and complex is Nature ! 



And so in the order of things has progressive creation 

 taken place, always the simple merging into the com- 

 plex, the complex into the more complex. Always the 

 departure of the new species from the old species from 

 which it has obtained its initial footing. The charac- 

 teristics of species may be compared to the movement of 



