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In explaining this union of the two protoplasms, the child's mind can be turned upon the wonderful mystery one of the great mysteries of the universe of how this tiny atom can influence the whole future plant. There is ample opportunity here to elevate his mind and spirit to a high plane, and, by talking of the wonders of inheritance, to give many a hint for future reflection.
Analogous processes occur regularly in living cells. Again, when the chemist wishes to finish his filtration quickly, he uses filters which have a large surface. "In living protoplasms, this condition is very well fulfilled by the foam-like structure which affords an immense surface in a very small space." In the laboratory the chemist mixes his substances by stirring.
So, if a man is going to build a boat, you might show him a collection of fossils, and discourse to him of the gneiss system, the mica-schist system, or talk of the atomic theory and protoplasms. Such knowledge would help to enlarge his views, extend his range of vision, and strengthen his memory, but would not help the man to build his boat.
And she, lifting her glasses to her eyes from time to time to relish the doctor's beauty, talked with a pedantic slowness about protoplasms, and the reproduction of the cells, the cannibalisms of the phagocytes, catarine, anthropoid and pithecoid apes, discoplacentary mammals and the Pithecanthropos, treating the mysteries of life with friendly confidence, repeating strange scientific words, as if they were the names of society folks, who had dined with her the evening before.
Such a supramundane observer would find himself entering into a new era, in which all his previous knowledge would sink into oblivion. Something of this same sort of revolution was inaugurated in the study of living things by the discovery of cells and protoplasms. Animals and plants had been studied for centuries and many accurate and painstaking observations had been made upon them.
We continually take food, use it for energy and growth, and return the simpler waste compounds. We are all of us, as Professor Huxley has said, "whirlpools on the surface of Nature;" when the whirl of exchange of particles ceases we die. We have seen that the fusion of two amoebæ results in a new rejuvenated individual. Why is a mixture of two protoplasms better than one?
In this way we may seem to have a chemical foundation for life phenomena. But clearly this is far from satisfactory. In the first place, it utterly fails to explain why the living cell has these properties, while no other body possesses them, nor why they are possessed by living protoplasms alone, ceasing instantly with death. Indeed it does not tell us what death can be.
Consider the theories of Darwin, for instance. What are they but an elaborate application of the higher calculus? He differentiates men into protoplasms, and integrates protoplasms into monkeys, and shows the caudal appendage to be the independent variable, a small factor in man, a large factor in monkey.
Pica would absorb herself in languages and antiquities, and maintain the rights of women by insisting on having full time to study her protoplasms, snubbing and deriding all the officers who did not talk like Oxford dons. Probably the E. E. would be the only people she would think fit to speak to. Avice is the one to whom I feel the most drawn.
Perhaps extreme pressure may be one of these conditions; and, for aught any man knows to the contrary, the "spontaneous generation" of living protoplasms may be taking place incessantly at the bottom of every ocean of the globe. This of course is a mere bald statement of possibilities.
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