40 THE EVOLUTION OF CONTINUITY 



that the long series of cell-division acts which ocour before 

 reproduction mark so many stages on the road to this goal. 

 In its sum total, all the intermediate cell-growth of the 

 Individual is the inconceivably immense number of atoms 

 which must be supplied and incorporated from without to 

 keep the process of restoration of the originally combining 

 elements on the move. 



A very crude illustration might be used to make 

 clear our interpretation of the multicellular Individual 

 Cycle. 



Let us picture one sexual element, or " gamete," as a 

 house built of bricks and on a definite plan, and the other 

 as another house similarly constructed but on a different 

 plan. The houses fuse together, breaking up into a large 

 heap of bricks, with the loss of the original plans. The 

 whole mass is then to be pictured as dividing into two 

 masses, each of which obtains new bricks from outside, 

 whose presence sets going a restoration of lost house 

 structure. In time each mass doubles its size and divides, 

 so that there are four masses, and each of these incorporates 

 new bricks and the process repeats itself. But all the time, 

 accompanying mass-enlargement there is a steady pro- 

 gressive restoration of lost house plan of the one kind or the 

 other, until a time is reached when instead of the original 

 two houses there is a great multiple of them. 



In the living growth-cycle restoration proceeds by 

 geometrical progression ; one becoming two, two becoming 

 four, four becoming eight, and so on ; and we conclude 

 that as two different sexual-element plans or identities have 

 been lost and are striving for restoration, a stage in the 

 process will occur when divergence must take place ; in 

 other words, when cells will be produced whose further 

 product will be all " male " or all " female." 



The propositions, then, which we put forward are : — 



I. All Growth, in every aspect, exhibits the action of 

 One everywhere obtaining Power which manifests itself as 

 the opposing forces of Attraction and Repulsioi . 



II. All living Individuals are the product of a conjuga- 

 tion act, or its equivalent. In other words, Conjugation 

 Implies Multicellularity, or vice versa. 



