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Were the statement iterated and reiterated on every page and in every paragraph, there would be no undue emphasis put upon the astounding fact that the apparently impassable gap between a one-celled animal like Amoeba and a mammal like a cat is actually compassed during the development of the last-named organisms from single cells.
Reinke and Hamann both revive some of the arguments and opinions set forth in the early days of Darwinism by Wigand, an author whose works are gradually gaining increased appreciation. It is Reinke’s “unalterable conviction” that organisms have evolved, and that they have done so after the manner of fan-shaped genealogical trees.
If this room is not ventilated and the air freshened, respiration will cease after a length of time. If no rain falls, all life organisms will perish. If new light does not come, the darkness of death will envelop the earth. If a new springtime does not arrive, life upon this globe will be obliterated.
The small quantity of air introduced during the impregnation was insignificant and it might even be shown that it injured rather than assisted the growth of the organisms, inasmuch as these consisted of adult individuals which had lived without air and might be liable to be damaged or even destroyed by it.
The cheapness of wind-carriage may be set against the overproduction of pollen. Similar considerations may apply to the mould-fungi and other very low organisms, with spores dispersed through the air in countless myriads, but of which only an infinitesimal portion find opportunity for development. The myriads perish.
Even in the case of those minute microscopic organisms that baffle our attempts to classify them either as animals or vegetables, we are still compelled to admire an instinctive, purposive behaviour, which goes far beyond a mere reflex responsive to a stimulus from without; all doubt, therefore, concerning the actual existence of an instinct must be at an end, and the attempt to deduce it as a consequence of conscious deliberation be given up as hopeless.
He thus makes natural objects responsible for our logical limitations. With regard to organisms the Descent-school confounded the purely logical signification of the word "related" with that of blood or family affinity. But surely when they speak of the relation of forms in the crystal systems, they do not refer to genetic connection.
He took a resolve after this not to misinterpret her words even when Miss Stackpole appeared to strike the personal note most strongly. He bethought himself that persons, in her view, were simple and homogeneous organisms, and that he, for his own part, was too perverted a representative of the nature of man to have a right to deal with her in strict reciprocity.
He went farther, and said to himself, "If these really are the things that give rise to the appearance of spontaneous generation, I ought to be able to take a ball of this 'dusted' gun-cotton and put it into one of my vessels, containing that boiled infusion which has been kept away from the air, and in which no infusoria are at present developed, and then, if I am right, the introduction of this gun-cotton will give rise to organisms."
Just so, though in a somewhat idealistic sense, is it with what we may term vital energy. Cells, organisms, even whole races, are subject to degeneration and decay. They cannot acquire higher powers, though they may gradually lose what they already have; as Bateson has recently told us that whatever evolution there is must be by loss and not by gain.
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