144 Life and Love. 



of reproduction, if this be true, is hunger. The 

 desire for nutrition, that is to say starvation, causes 

 the creature to resolve into small portions which 

 can be more easily nourished than the larger lump. 



Likewise, the attraction of one single-celled 

 creature to another is explained as a desire for 

 added nutrition; two starved individuals coming in 

 contact absorb each other, in other words, unite 

 their waning vitalities, and thereby gain new vigor. 



One thing in favor of this theory is the fact that 

 reproduction takes place in the low forms of life, 

 as a rule, when the parent nears the end of its 

 vitality. It springs into existence, waxes, wanes, 

 reproduces, dies, — reproduction being in this case, 

 perhaps, a memory of those past ages when all life 

 was that of the single cell, and when it preserved 

 its existence by division, or by union and division. 

 So now it preserves its race by this resolving again 

 into single cells, — though these cells themselves 

 are all that continue. 



" My vitality is decreasing,'' it seems to say, — 

 " my life is going out; I will produce again my 

 primal form of a tiny protoplasmic cell, and thus 

 save myself" 



But it is no longer able to divide its whole sub- 

 stance into these cells ; only one tissue in its body 

 responds ; and foreseeing the lessening vitality, 

 it buds off portions able to live and develop once 

 more into the complex adult form. The form 

 itself, all but these fortunate cells, perishes. 



