120 LIFE AND DEATH, [III. 



influenced by theoretical considerations, when he imagined 

 that death intervened where unprejudiced observers have only 

 recognised a condition of rest. He apparently entirely over- 

 looked the fact that it is possible to test his views ; for all 

 unicellular beings are in reality capable of dying : we can 

 kill them, for example, by boiling, and they are then really 

 dead and cannot be revived. But this state of the organism 

 differs chemically and physically from the encysted condition, 

 although we do not know all the details of the difference. The 

 encysted animal, when placed in fresh water, presently 

 originates a living individual, but the one killed by boiling 

 only results in decomposition of the dead organic matter. 

 Hence we see that the same external conditions give rise to 

 different results in two different states of the organism. It 

 cannot be right to apply the same term to two totally different 

 states. There is only one phenomenon which can be called 

 death, although it may be produced by widely difterent causes. 

 But if the encysted condition is not identical with the death 

 which we can produce at will, then natural death, viz. that 

 arising from internal causes, does not exist at all among uni- 

 cellular organisms. 



These facts refute Gotte's peculiar view, which depends on 

 the existence of natural death among the Monoplastid organisms ; 

 upon proof of the contradictory, his whole theory collapses. 

 But there is nevertheless a certain interest in following it 

 further, for we shall thus reach many ideas worthy of con- 

 sideration. 



First, the question arises as to how death could have been 

 transmitted from the Monoplastides^ to the Polyplastides, a 

 process which must have taken place according to Gotte. I 

 will for the present omit the fact that I cannot accept the sup- 

 position that the process of encystment represents death. We 

 may then inquire whether death has taken the place of encyst- 

 ment among the Polyplastides, or, if this is not the case, 

 whether any process comparable to encystment exists among 

 the Polyplastides. 



Gotte believes that death is always connected with repro- 



^ The conception of Protozoa and Metazoa does not correspond ex- 

 actly with that of unicellular and multicellular beings, for which Gotte 

 has proposed the names Mono- and Polyplastides. 



