PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



tiated elements, a male and a female. If one clips off 

 bits of a sponge, a hydra, one obtains as many new 

 individuals, which when they have grown one may again 

 divide, and so on repeatedly, but not indefinitely. At 

 a variable instant, after a certain number of generations 

 by fragmentation, senescence appears among the so pro- 

 duced individuals; the clipped morsels remain inert. 

 Thus this sort of artificial virgin birth has a limit, as has 

 normal parthenogenesis, and in order that the individuals 

 may regain their parthenogenetic force one must give 

 them time to regenerate their cellules by the coupling 

 which fecundates them. 



Fecundation is in all cases, doubtless, merely a re- 

 juvenation, thus considered it is uniform not only 

 throughout the animal series, but throughout the vege- 

 table. One ought to experiment in slip-cutting, and 

 discover at what point the slip cut from a slip begins to 

 diminish in vitality. Coupling and fecundation have the 

 same result: it is necessary that cellules A unite with 

 cellules B (macro-nucleus and micro-nucleus among 

 protozoaires; ovule and spermatozoid among meta- 

 zoaires), in order that the organism may usefully 

 exteriorize a part of its substance. When the too com- 

 plex organism has lost the primitive faculty of segmenta- 

 tion, it makes use, directly, to reproduce itself, of certain 

 cellules differentiated for that purpose: it is these cellules 

 united into a whole, which reintegrate and give birth 

 to a double of the generating individual or individuals. 

 From the top to the bottom of the sexual scale the new 

 being springs invariably from a duality. The multi- 

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