Heredity : with preludes on current events / by Joseph Cook.

  • Cook, Joseph, 1838-1901.
Date:
1890
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Heredity : with preludes on current events / by Joseph Cook. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    157/208 (page 149)
    we know beyond doubt is that in a self-divided organism one life becomes two lives. How one in- dividual becomes two individuals, science does not know. We know that one does become two, but not how it does. When we examine facts, however, we can trace the action of this double identity, physical and immaterial. This undeniable circum- stance explains much. Every organism breeds true to its kind, and it does so because a double identity exists between parent and child. Self-multiplication by the division of organisms involves a production not only of two lives, but of twenty, sometimes, out of one. You may take the water-polyp [illustrating on the blackboard], and chop it through the middle, and each part will develop into a perfect animal. Chop each of these through the middle, and each half will develop into a perfect animal; and so you may produce from one individual, it is said, forty. Many biologists affirm that in some lower organisms which are homogeneous throughout, as many as forty lives can thus be pro- duced from one. Of course, if you take a bird from a bush or a twig from a tree, you cannot produce a whole organism from any one part; although, by the way, a twig from a tree as a scion may develop into a growth like its parent. You must have one of the lower organisms homogeneous throughout in order to give to each segment the power of repro- ducing itself. How all that occurs, nobody under- stands. If you wish me to speculate, I will say that the co-ordinating power goes over, and that physical identity exists here. The co-ordinating power in the homogeneous animal is found in every part; and when you divide and subdivide the or- ganism, the co-ordinating power draws to itself from the outer world clothing in each of the fragments, as it drew to itself clothing in the whole animal originally. There are two kinds of ghosts, tangible and intangible. Every organism is a tangible ghost.