CHAPTER I 

 THE CONTINUITY OF LIFE 



"Ich sage immer und wiederhole es, die Welt konnte 

 nicht bestehen, wenn sie nicht so einfach ware." 



JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE, in Eckermann, 

 Gesprdche mit Goethe, n Apr., 1827. 



ONE of the grandest generalizations formulated by modern 

 biological science is that of the continuity of life; that the 

 protoplasmic activity within the body of each living being 

 now on earth has continued without cessation from the remote 

 beginnings of life upon our planet, and that from that period 

 until the present no single organism has ever arisen save in 

 the form of a bit of living protoplasm detached from a pre- 

 existing portion ; that the eternal flame of life, once kindled 

 upon this earth, has passed from organism to organism, and 

 is still going on, existing and propagating, incarnated within 

 the myriad animal and plant forms of the present day. Built 

 up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, together with 

 traces of a few other elements, yet of a complexity of struc- 

 ture that has hitherto resisted all attempts at complete 

 analysis, protoplasm is at once the most enduring and the 

 most easily destroyed of substances; its molecules are con- 

 stantly breaking down to furnish the power for the manifesta- 

 tions of vital phenomena, and yet, through its remarkable 

 property of assimilation, a power possessed by nothing else 

 upon earth, it as constantly builds up its substance anew from 

 the surrounding medium, usually in excess of that lost by dis- 

 integration, and possessed of qualities identical with those of 

 the parent mass. The continuity, then, is not one of ma- 

 terial, but of qualities, and it is this that makes an organism 

 the same from birth till death. An acorn, a sapling, an oak 



