3 2 GENESIS OF MAN. 



to the human fancy by all the fictions of the world than the mar- 

 vellous reality of this courtship of cells ! The very fountain-head 

 of love (Urquelle der Licbc)\s reached in the affinities of two cells ! 

 The ruling passion of all ages has its ultimate basis in this new- 

 found physiological fact. When the march of science shall have 

 exposed the false basis upon which the present artificial code of 

 social life rests, and when the fears of those who can imagine 

 nothing better shall have been dispelled, then let the future Homer 

 of science sing, not the illicit loves of Paris and Helen, which 

 whelm great nations in untimely ruin, but the lawful wooings 

 and the heroic sacrifices of the sperm-cell and the germ-cell as 

 they rush into that embrace which annihilates both that a great 

 and advancing race may not perish from the earth ! And here 

 there is no fiction, there is not even speculation. Both the plot 

 and details of this tale belong to the domain of established fact, 

 and rest upon the most thorough scientific investigation. 



The structureless form first assumed by the fecundated ovum is 

 termed a cytod, but from the circumstance of its being the onto- 

 genetic form, which corresponds to the moner, Haeckel has also 

 applied to it the systematic name of Monerida. In his system this 

 is the stage of germ-development which the moner, before its 

 further differentiation, had impressed upon all organic matter, 

 and through which all higher forms must consequently invariably 

 pass. 



This cytod or monerida stage is, however, of short duration. 

 Very soon the homogeneous mass acquires a new nucleus, and 

 thus again assumes the character of a simple cell. This second 

 cell-form is so similar to that of the unfecundated ovum that many 

 observers who had actually witnessed the cytod-form, on looking 

 again, soon after, and seeing only the primary cell-form, had dis- 

 credited their intermediate observations. It was not until the en- 

 tire transformation had been repeatedly witnessed through all the 

 steps of its progress, that the fact of such a strange transition be- 

 came established beyond a doubt. 



The new cell, although indistinguishable from the old, possesses 

 an invisible element derived from the absorbed substance of the 

 sperm-cell which gives it the potential character of the parents. 

 The old cell, as such, was an independent living organism, capa- 

 ble of performing the essential functions of life, including that of 



