THE EVOLUTION OF MAN 



But if this was true in the beginning of animal 

 evolution in primitive days, it applies at the same 

 time to man's evolution. It was also his first 

 step: from a uni-cellular protozoon to the first 

 multi-cellular skin-and-stomach animal, which 

 stood still far below a sea-anemone, a jelly-fish, 

 an earth-worm, or star-fish, but which contained 

 the possibility of developing into anything, so to 

 say, into an Amphioxus, a shark, a newt, a duck- 

 bill, a primitive monkey, and, finally, into man. 



Now, if man is contained in a uni-cellular 

 protozoon, he stands at the same time at the very 

 dawn of all known life. For not only animals, 

 but also plants, may be derived from such living 

 protozoa. To this day there exist such uni-cellu- 

 lar creatures which live by devouring other living 

 creatures. We find others which feed directly 

 on inorganic material, which eat, so to say, stones 

 instead of meat and bread like the others. The 

 one type contains the germ of the animal, the 

 other that of the plant. The next logical thought 

 will naturally be, that the representatives of the 

 plant type were first in existence, and that the 

 animal method developed as a secondary type, as 

 a sort of parasitism at the expense of the other 

 type. The vegetable organism consumed pure 

 earth, and baked out of it, by the help of sun- 



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