362 The Morality of Nature 



ordinate mortal careers, ministering to the preservation and 

 service of this line of master cells. There is thus in actual 

 physical fact, in the visible history of all mortal creatures, 

 which we may see and know, a direct perpetuation of ma- 

 terial protoplasm; not a spirit or soul, but material sub- 

 stance, which has never died, and which continues to propa- 

 gate itself in this body of subordinate cells until the body is 

 mature, and which then, when the first maturity foretells 

 deterioration, begins to issue from that body by the reducing 

 divisions of the sexual import, and to begin a new cycle of 

 energy, and in reunion, to make for itself new bodies like 

 the old, modelled upon all its previous experiences in many 

 generations, and including its newest acquirements in pro- 

 gressive evolution. Such is the germ-plasm which is im- 

 mortal so long as it is successful, and progressive so long 

 as it is right in action. 



Now this high organization of cells into the construction 

 of large and complex bodies, of cells in association, by which 

 a living cell makes for itself marvellous specialized machin- 

 ery or activity, is made possible by sex ; because, although a 

 simple species of such organized life can theoretically con- 

 tinue without sex, by the primal method of asexual fission; 

 yet it is by sexual distribution that the newly acquired 

 qualities of individuals are extended to others, and made the 

 common property of a species. Sexual reduction and union 

 provide a means of regeneration, in a new grand cycle, 

 specially available for the accumulation of inherited pro- 

 gress. This the germ-cell appropriates to its own sphere, 

 leaving the simpler asexual conjugation and division to the 

 lower structural sphere. 



