imperfect because it is not possible to determine accurately 

 the moment of its appearance in each separate individual. 

 Hence the origin and development of organic bodies seems 

 particularly obscure and strange. However, Baer noted, the 

 beginning of individual life is not more obscure than any 

 other life phenomenon, but what is directly apprehended 

 seems to be much more understandable than that unavailable 

 for perception. Every year the tree gives rise to buds, 

 and sprouts grow from them. This fact, for people who do 

 not study nature, does not arouse curiosity, while the quick 

 growth of the tree from the seeds creates an unsolved enigma. 

 In a similar way they do not see anything strange in that 

 each man, each animal and plant feeds and grows over time. 

 However, the nourishment is nothing other than a constant 

 change; man today is not man of yesterday. It is possible 

 to say that growth is nourishment with the formation of a 

 new mass, that it is a continuation of conception, and that 

 conception in its turn is nothing other than the origin of 

 individual growth. 



In the spiritual constitution of man, it is common to 

 search for an entirely defined origin of all things, a 

 defined border between being and not being, when it is 

 actually possible that in nature there is nowhere an absolute 

 beginning. Nature is characterized only by eternal change. 

 With living beings it is natural to assume that the beginning 

 of a new organism corresponds with the moment of fertiliza- 

 tion. In order to pursue this beginning moment, writers 

 had resorted to wit and imagination. They had assumed that 

 at the time of fertilization the new creature appears as a 

 result of an electric shock, or through the union of two 

 heterogenous substances, or by means of some magic power. 

 However, since the microscope had not been improved or vision 

 extended, after fertilization it was possible to see only 

 what was seen before fertilization. Only after some time 

 was a new plant or new animal recognized, but already in a 

 condition of later growth. Undoubtedly, however, before 

 fertilization nothing had existed that represented the primary 

 form of the emerging animal or plant; so an independent 

 organic body resulted from its conversion. Consequently, the 

 beginning of the individual does not correspond with fertil- 

 ization, and the rudiment of the fetus already preexists in 

 the parents. At fertilization the conditions allow it to 

 grow quicker. In other words, the initial existence of the 



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