372 THE WONDER OF LIFE 



may be for centuries, but finally becomes old, decays and 

 dies, falling to the ground, ' dry, bald and sere '. 



Speaking of the beanstalk developing from the bean, 

 Huxley wrote : 



' By insensible steps, the plant builds itself up into a 

 large and various fabric of root, stem, leaves, flowers, 

 and fruit, every one moulded within and without in accord- 

 ance with an extremely complex, but, at the same time, 

 minutely defined pattern. In each of these complicated 

 structures, as in their smallest constituents, there is an 

 immanent energy, which, in harmony with that resident 

 in all the others, incessantly works toward the maintenance 

 of the whole and the 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 mani- 

 festations '. . . . It is a ' Sisyphsean process, in the course 

 of which the living and growing plant passes from the 

 relative simplicity and latent potentiality of the seed to 

 the full epiphany of a highly differentiated type, thence 

 to fall back to simplicity and potentiality ' (Evolution 

 and Ethics, 1893). 



The life-cycle is even more striking among animals. 

 The fertilized egg-cell divides and redivides ; the segmen- 

 tation-cells are arranged and differentiated ; an embryo 

 is formed, which goes on developing, directly or circuitously, 

 until the result is a reproduction of the parent organism. 

 But when the ascent from a vita minima at the start has 

 reached the vita maxima of maturity, there begins to be a 



