Organisms and Their Origin 103 



cessantly works toward the maintenance of the 

 whole and efficient performance of the part it has 

 to play in the economy of nature. But no sooner 

 has the edifice, reared with such exact elaboration, 

 attained completeness, than it begins to crumble. 

 By degrees, the plant withers and disappears from 

 view, leaving behind more or few apparently inert 

 and simple bodies, just like the bean from which 

 it sprang; and like it endowed with the potentiality 

 of giving rise to a similar cycle of manifestations." * 

 It is a "Sisyphsean process, in the course of which 

 the living and growing plant passes from the rela- 

 tive simplicity and latent potentiality of the seed 

 to the full epiphany of a highly differentiated type, 

 thence to fall back to simplicity and potentiality/' 3 

 So it is among animals. The microscopic germ- 

 cell divides and redivides, differentiates and inte- 

 grates into an embryo, the embryo may become 

 a larva, which undergoes metamorphosis and be- 

 comes adolescent, or the embryo may steadily grow 

 into a miniature of the mature organism. Sooner 

 or later, in any case, the adolescent becomes the 

 adult. But when this ascent from a vita minima 

 at the beginning has reached the vita maxima of 

 the full-grown organism, there begins to be a re- 

 versal of the process. A limit of growth is reached, 

 reproduction occurs, and reproduction is often the 



1 Huxley, "Evolution and Ethics," 1893. 

 * Huxley, loc. tit. 



