366 The Morality of Nature 



the division; an actual continuing portion of the same pro- 

 toplasm which did that act of division ages ago, when that 

 act comprised the whole of its consequence, when it made 

 a creature whose heredity ended in that act. And the reason 

 it does this same thing now is simply because it is now the 

 same substance acting in the same environment. The fact 

 that later many other things are going to be done does not 

 affect this idant any more than a similar fact would have 

 done in the time of its first ancestor. That fact is to be 

 cared for by another idant, of those others which lie as beads 

 upon the string. What this first one does is strictly its own 

 affair. It therefore divides the germ cell so many times, 

 and each time it passes on a due share of the nucleus. (The 

 activity of the division may be ascribed to the centrosome 

 but the distribution is controlled by the chromatin). Then 

 that explosion of energy, operating in all these new cells, 

 having fulfilled the function of the first idant, passes to the 

 second. This is one which was first acquired when the 

 morula of all-germ cells utilized some of them, in disuse of 

 their full purposes, in subordinate service ; and when natural 

 selection and survival preferred them; and preserved germs 

 from the favorably placed cells among them. When that 

 occurred the "variation" or acquired character became fixed 

 and its constancy became recorded in the nucleus. Now 

 just how this recording was done is much in dispute, but it 

 may be surmised that in the body of all organized animals, 

 there is continued simple conjugation of cells, proceeding be- 

 tween some of those related and having a normal likeness. 

 In this way a somatic cell, an offshoot of the germ or of the 

 master cell, might pass through certain generations in its 



