10 REPRODUCTION 



doing it. Jimmie Jones can take beef and pork, potatoes 

 and pop corn, molasses, butter, and milk, and they soon 

 cease to be these particular things, being changed into 

 Jimmie Jones-stuff, Strangely enough beans will become 

 Jimmie just as much as pork will. He puts his stamp on 

 both, and it isn't quite like the stuff in any other living 

 thing. Indeed, if we were cannibals, as frogs are, and 

 were to eat the flesh of Jimmie Jones, we would have to 

 change it just as much as he does pork and beans before 

 it would be like our own bodies. We could do this. All 

 living things have this power. We call it assimilation. 



2. The Selfishness of This Process. It is quite clear 

 that this ability to get and use and change other things 

 into one's own substance is a very selfish power. It looks 

 purely to upbuilding the individual. It seeks income 

 rather than outgo. The appetites and longings, which 

 we know as hunger and thirst, exist in order that the 

 individual may be driven to do the work necessary to 

 grow and build up the self. This is the reason that a boy 

 is always hungry. The instincts for taking food are the 

 first and most basal that animals have, because the 

 building up of the self is the very first work they must do. 

 If they do not do this they will never be able to do 

 anything else. We may say that individual selfishness 

 then is the first step in life. While this is true, we have 

 seen that the individual, in spite of this self-care, finally 

 declines and dies. 



3. The Outcome of Income. The natural result of 

 assimilation therefore is growth, and then more growth. 

 But naturally organisms cannot very well go on forever 

 growing. There must be some sort of an outgo if any 

 kind of balance is to be kept, such as you actually see in 

 organisms. If Jimmie Jones eats all the time and never 

 gives up anything, Jimmie would, become unwieldly; but 

 this is not all. We know from observation that this 

 continued self-building would defeat its own ends. Jimmie 



