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Updated: May 20, 2025
And from there, as the proper point of departure, let us return and chart love, its phases and occurrences, from its first beginnings to its last manifestations. Things sexless and loveless! Yes, and as such may be classed the drops of life known as unicellular organisms. Such a creature is a tiny cell, capable of performing in itself all the functions of life.
There is no variation during geologic time of these primordial living organisms. All conceivable changes of environment have passed over them, but they change not. Bacteria struggle together, one form devouring another form. Unicellular life long precedes multicellular.
At one time it was thought to be the result of the growth of a bacterium, and a distinct bacillus was described as producing it. It has finally been shown, however, to be caused by a microscopic organism belonging to the group of unicellular animals, and somewhat closely related to the well-known amoeba. The whole history of the malarial organism is not yet known.
But we hesitate to say how many of these powers or characteristics of free and independent personality can be assigned to the unicellular organisms, such as the amoeba or the corpuscles of our blood. These one-celled creatures are also alive, are just as truly alive as are those composed of many cells.
And although perhaps I ought to apologize to the reader for seeming to anticipate here a part of the discussion of the problem of "species," yet it seems necessary to say a few words here regarding the "persistence" of these unicellular forms.
These "discoveries" have ranged the whole realm of unicellular life, bacilli, bacteria, spirilla, yeasts, moulds, protozoa, yet the overwhelming judgment of broad-minded and reputable experts the world over is the Scotch verdict of "not proven"; and we are more and more coming to turn our attention to the other aspect of the problem, the factors which cause or condition this isolation and assumption of autonomy on the part of the cells.
The opponents of evolution, who declare that this gradual development of the human form from lower animal forms, and ultimately from a unicellular organism, is an incredible miracle, forget that the same miracle takes place within the space of mine months in the embryonic development of every human being.
It is obvious, and it is also thoroughly justifiable, that all attempts along these lines of interpretation should be undertaken in the first place in connection with the simplest and lowest forms of life. It is in the investigation of the “Protists,” the study of the vital phenomena of the microscopically minute unicellular organisms, that attempts of this kind have been most frequently made.
In the multicellular organisms the organs of the body are made up of cells, and the different organs are produced by a differentiation of cells, but in the unicellular organisms the organs are the results of the differentiation of the parts of a single cell. In the one case there is a differentiation of cells, and in the other of the parts of a cell. A muscle fibre. A complex cell.
Much less can one picture to one's self what his ancestor was like in the age of the invertebrates, amid the trilobites, etc., of the earlier Palaeozoic seas. But we must go back even earlier than that, back to unicellular life and to original protoplasm, and finally back to fiery nebulous matter.
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