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But we hesitate to say how many of these powers or characteristics of free and independent personality can be assigned to the unicellular organisms, such as the amoeba or the corpuscles of our blood. These one-celled creatures are also alive, are just as truly alive as are those composed of many cells.

It will then contract or expand its shape by alternate protrusions and retractions of parts of its substance. These movements are termed amoebiform, because they quite resemble the movements of a small animalcule which is named amoeba.

The little spindle-shaped things in the centre are diatoms and may be disregarded since they are probably vegetable rather than animal. But the right-hand side you will see an undoubted amoeba, moving sluggishly across the field. The upper screw is the fine adjustment. Look at it for yourselves." Summerlee did so and acquiesced.

Childhood is a stage in the process of that continual remanufacture of the Life Stuff by which the human race is perpetuated. The Life Force either will not or cannot achieve immortality except in very low organisms: indeed it is by no means ascertained that even the amoeba is immortal. Human beings visibly wear out, though they last longer than their friends the dogs.

As these two young amoebae lie side by side under the microscope the thoughtful student will inquire what has become of the parent organism? Whereas at first there was one mature amoeba, now we have before us two young amoebae of the next succeeding generation. The parent organism has sacrificed its substance and its individuality absolutely and completely for the next generation.

Restricting attention to the three primary examples, and remembering that the criterion of completeness is the ability to discharge satisfactorily all of the eight biological tasks, it is clear that the entire Hydra and the whole ant-community correspond physiologically with Amoeba, although the first-named is structurally a cell-community equivalent to many protozoa, and the insect colony is composed of many such cell-communities as elements.

It was applicable not merely to human conduct, but also to the acting of the lower animals, and even to the growth of plants. Now, apart from a craze of generalization we should hardly think of the "stern daughter of the voice of God" in connection with an amoeba corresponding successfully to stimulus, yet the creature in its inchoate way is exhibiting a dim analogy to duty.

We can frame hypotheses; we know nothing about it. What of the mind of the amoeba? A host of questions throng upon us and we can answer no one of them. All the great questions concerning life confront us here in the lowest term of the animal series, and appear as insoluble as in the highest. Our second ancestral form is also a fresh-water animal, the hydra.

Its upper portion is slowly twisted through the opening in the apex of the parent wall, the granular contents of the lower end flowing into the extruded portion in a manner reminding one of the flow of protoplasm in a living amoeba.

It may be said in general that reproduction always involves a division of the parent organism. In the case of the amoeba the division is into two equal portions. In the case of some of the lower plants and animals the substance of the parent organism is divided into many equal minute spores or eggs, each of which develops a new organism.