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On the other hand, an amoeba is a far simpler animal than a man, and yet it is just as truly living. To refer life to complexity does not help us; we want to know what lies back of the complexity what makes it a new species of complexity. We cannot explain the origin of living matter by the properties which living matter possesses.
The amoeba has no eyes, no nose, no mouth, no tongue, no nerves of taste, no special means of discrimination of any kind; and yet, so long as it meets only grains of sand or bits of shell, it makes no effort in any way to swallow them; but, the moment it comes across a bit of material fit for its food, it begins at once to spread its clammy fingers around the nutritious morsel.
If, in a froth of the same kind, the air is extracted from an alveolus, a cone of attraction is seen to form, like those about the centrosomes which result in the division of the nucleus. Even the external motions of a unicellular organism of an amoeba, at any rate are sometimes explained mechanically.
One of the merits of the general analysis of mind which we shall be concerned with in the following lectures is that it removes the atmosphere of mystery from the phenomena brought to light by the psycho-analysts. Mystery is delightful, but unscientific, since it depends upon ignorance. Man has developed out of the animals, and there is no serious gap between him and the amoeba.
This must be a necessary condition of survival. In the long journey from amoeba to man, any circumstance causing a complete halt for even a brief period meant extinction, while even a persistent interference produced a weakened organism, if not an arrest of development. This then is the origin of the "Master Instinct," hunger.
The fully-formed body is a gelatinous ball, with its wall composed of thirty-two to sixty-four ciliated cells; it swims about freely in the sea. After reaching maturity the community is dissolved. Each cell then lives independently for some time, grows, and changes into a creeping amoeba. This afterwards contracts, and clothes itself with a structureless membrane.
Hence, we may argue that every amoeba outside this room, instead of being dead, as you have erroneously stated, has really survived the catastrophe." "Well, even now I don't feel inclined to hip-hurrah about it," said Lord John. "What does it matter?" "It just matters this, that the world is a living instead of a dead one.
It will be remembered that the amoeba did not die, but that it was rejuvenated in its offspring. In the next and every succeeding generation there is no death, but a rejuvenation.
Pushkin suffered terrible agonies before his death, poor Heine lay paralyzed for several years; why, then, should not some Andrey Yefimitch or Matryona Savishna be ill, since their lives had nothing of importance in them, and would have been entirely empty and like the life of an amoeba except for suffering?
Against faith, then, and desire, all the "natural selection" in the world will not stop an amoeba from becoming an elephant, if a reasonable time be granted; without the faith and the desire, neither "natural selection" nor artificial breeding will be able to do much in the way of modifying any structure.
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