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Finally, a physico-chemical explanation of the motions of the amoeba, and a fortiori of the behavior of the Infusoria, seems impossible to many of those who have closely observed these rudimentary organisms. Even in these humblest manifestations of life they discover traces of an effective psychological activity.
What constitutes animality, we said, is the faculty of utilizing a releasing mechanism for the conversion of as much stored-up potential energy as possible into "explosive" actions. In the beginning the explosion is haphazard, and does not choose its direction. Thus the amoeba thrusts out its pseudopodic prolongations in all directions at once.
We might hesitate to use the word "altruistic" in describing the self-destructive reproductive act of an Amoeba, because this word connotes some degree of consciousness of the existence of other than personal interests, and of the welfare of different individuals. There is no reason to believe that such conscious recognition of any natural duties is possible in the case of so low an organism.
These differences are due to the fact that the stuff is alive, and within it are constantly going on those changes accompanying metabolism, or the building up and tearing down processes that always accompany life. All separate masses of protoplasm, such as the one-celled amoeba or the individual cells of our own bodies, are constantly taking in food and as constantly throwing off wastes.
That bulge, which was the cordon itself moving back, moved outward and became a half-circle some miles across. It continued to move outward, and on the map it appeared like a pseudopod extruded by an enormous amoeba. It was the area of effectiveness of a weapon previously unknown on earth the area where humans could not stay.
Here the assemblage is made up of one-celled individuals essentially similar to one another in structure and in physiological activities; in the latter respect each one of them is like Amoeba as well. They may remain together for a longer or shorter period, or during their whole existence until the time of reproduction.
Talk of ego and non ego meeting, and of the hopelessness of avoiding contradiction in terms talk of this, and look, in passing, at the amoeba. It is itself qua maker of the stomach and being fed; it is not itself qua stomach and qua its using itself as a mere tool or implement to feed itself with.
What powers may we not develop before the Sun dies! We once thought we lived on God's footstool: it may be a throne. This is no world for pessimists. An amoeba on the beach, blind and helpless, a mere bit of pulp, that amoeba has grandsons today who read Kant and play symphonies.
And often they exist in one kind of animal without doing any harm, and are only poisonous when introduced by insects into the blood of other kinds of animals! There is, further, another set of disease-causing protozoan parasites which are similar to the amoeba or proteus-animalcule, and a third, which belong to the group of "ciliated infusoria."
That man is complex and Amoeba simple is merely a delusion; the truth according to Mendelism is that man is merely a fragment of the complexity of the original Amoeba. Mendelism studies especially the heredity of characters, and only incidentally deals with recorded instances of the appearance of new forms, such as the origin of a salmon-coloured variety of Primula from a crimson variety.
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