192 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



pregnation is sufficient for a new human being to become 

 viable. That delivery usually takes place at nine is due 

 no doubt to the average size of the pelvic ring. Yet the 

 maternal organism took many millions of years to become 

 what it is now if some anthropologists are right in thinking 

 man, as man, dates back at least 1,500,000 years. If the 

 evolution of such a high metazoan from a unicellular 

 organism took only ten million years, which seems an im- 

 possibly short time, similar changes are actually repeated 



in about six months, say of the time of 



20000000 



evolution. On what grounds then can we assert that 



some undifferentiated protoplasmic units cannot become 



developed oocytes during the time from birth to puberty ? 



The simpler spermatozoa, also developing from un- 



specialized epithelioid tissue, come even earlier to 



maturity, as they may be found active in infants. Time 



does not seem the essence of the contract, for the whole 



physiological theory of living matter is practically based 



on what is known and measurable, the activating and 



accelerating qualities of catalysts. Without going to 



the philosophers or metaphysicians, to Kant or Einstein, 



for instruction as to the relativity or physical nature 



of the time concept, we can recognize that it is at least 



purely relative in physiology and biology. The whole 



of evolution, as of education, is the discovery of short 



cuts, and in this the Principle of Least Action is at work. 



Free energy perpetually adopts the shortest path to become 



bound. Common sense itself is that principle in social 



work. Little by little the organism as it evolved picked 



up and transmitted by successive experiment, by trial 



and error, activators which hastened processes. Time, 



therefore, in the sense that Starling used it, does not seem 



