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I know one thing, though, that I'll do next." "One thing is reasonable," said Frank. "What is it?" "Take her to York with us, this summer. Row out on the river with her. Sit on the rocks, and read and sew, and play with the children. Show her the ocean. She never saw it in all her life." "How wonderful is 'one thing' in the mind of a woman! It is a germ-cell, that holds all things."
We stand upon our own grave, with our death fire, the sun, on our right hand, and our death-damp, the moon, on our left. The earth's center is no accident. It is the great individual pole of us who die. It is the center of the first dead body. It is the first germ-cell of death, which germ-cell threw out the great nuclei of the sun and the moon.
The molecules of germ-plasm are grouped in units, and these in an ascending series of units of continually increasing complexity, until at last we find the highest unit represented in the nucleus of the germ-cell. This grouping of molecules in units of increasing complexity is like the grouping of the men of an army in companies, regiments, brigades, divisions, etc.
According to this, the cells resulting from the subdivision of the germ-cell preserve their developmental force, unless employed in building up definite organic structures. In certain creatures, and in certain parts of other creatures, germ-cells unused are stored up, and by their agency lost limbs and other mutilations are repaired.
Such unused products of the germ-cell are also supposed to become located in the generative products. According to Mr. Herbert Spencer, in his "Principles of Biology," each living organism consists of certain so-called "physiological units."
And so the home, the very spot designed by God to become the chief school of human virtue, the seminary of social affections, the keystone of the whole fabric of society, the germ-cell of civilization, becomes a hotbed of corruption, and almost as often on account of a husband's neglect and sins, as on account of a wife's ignorance or frailties or failings.
As of course only the germ-cells of an adult organism pass on to form later generations, and as their content of chromatin is derived not from the sister organs of the body, but from the original fertilized egg, there is a direct stream of the germ plasm which flows continuously from the germ-cell to germ-cell through succeeding generations.
But any given final germ-cell, such as will combine with another from an individual of the opposite sex to form a new being, is already determined, once for all, to be of one sex or the other.
The mystery of organic life defeats analysis; whether the subject of our inquiry be a germ-cell, or a phenomenon so complex as the commencement of a new religion, or the origination of a new disease, or a new phase in civilization, it is alike impossible to do more than to state the conditions under which the fresh growth begins, and to point out what are its manifestations.
The only point, however, necessary to make in this connection, is, that when we go back to the first living organism of a species its primordially developed form we necessarily reach environing conditions within which there is no such thing as a germ-cell with an exterior environment corresponding to the testa of seeds, or to any conceivable notion we may have of seeds themselves.
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