Essays Upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems / Authorised Translation

by August Weismann

I consider that this view, if not exactly proved, can at any rate be rendered extremely probable.

It is useless to object that man (or any of the higher animals) dies from the physical necessity of his nature, just as the specific gravity of ice results from its physical nature. I am quite ready to admit that this is the case. John Hunter, supported by his experiments on anabiosis, hoped to prolong the life of man indefinitely by alternate freezing and thawing; and the Veronese Colonel Aless. Guaguino made his contemporaries believe that a race of men existed in Russia, of which the individuals died regularly every year on the 27th of November, and returned to life on the 24th of the following April. There cannot however be the least doubt, that the higher organisms, as they are now constructed, contain within themselves the germs of death. The question however arises as to how this has come to pass; and I reply that death is to be looked upon as an occurrence which is advantageous to the species as a concession to the outer conditions of life, and not as an absolute necessity, essentially inherent in life itself.

Death, that is the end of life, is by no means, as is usually assumed, an attribute of all organisms. An immense number of low organisms do not die, although they are easily destroyed, being killed by heat, poisons, &c. As long, however, as those conditions which are necessary for their life are fulfilled, they continue to live, and they thus carry the potentiality of unending life in themselves. I am speaking not only of the Amoebae and the low unicellular Algae, but also of far more highly organized unicellular animals, such as the Infusoria.

The process of fission in the Amoeba has been recently much discussed, and I am well aware that the life of the individual is generally believed to come to an end with the division which gives rise to two new individuals, as if death and reproduction were the same thing. But this process cannot be truly called death. Where is the dead body? what is it that dies? Nothing dies; the body of the animal only divides into two similar parts, possessing the same constitution. Each of these parts is exactly like its parent, lives in the same manner, and finally also divides into two halves. As far as these organisms are concerned, death can only be spoken of in the most figurative sense.

There are no grounds for the assumption that the two halves of an Amoeba are differently constituted internally, so that after a time one of them will die while the other continues to live. Such an idea is disproved by a recently discovered fact. It has been noticed in Euglypha (one of the Foraminifera) and in other low animals of the same group, that when division is almost complete, and the two halves are only connected by a short strand, the protoplasm of both parts begins to circulate, and for some time passes backwards and forwards between the two halves. A complete mingling of the whole substance of the animal and a resulting identity in the constitution of each half is thus brought about before the final separation [See [Note 10]].

The objection might perhaps be raised that, if the parent animal does not exactly die, it nevertheless disappears as an individual. I cannot however let this pass unless it is also maintained that the man of to-day is no longer the same individual as the boy of twenty years ago. In the growth of man, neither structure nor the components of structure remain precisely the same; the material is continually changing. If we can imagine an Amoeba endowed with self-consciousness, it might think before dividing ‘I will give birth to a daughter,’ and I have no doubt that each half would regard the other as the daughter, and would consider itself to be the original parent. We cannot however appeal to this criterion of personality in the Amoeba, but there is nevertheless a criterion which seems to me to decide the matter: I refer to the continuity of life in the same form.

Now if numerous organisms, endowed with the potentiality of never-ending life, have real existence, the question arises as to whether the fact can be understood from the point of view of utility. If death has been shown to be a necessary adaptation for the higher organisms, why should it not be so for the lower also? Are they not decimated by enemies? are they not often imperfect? are they not worn out by contact with the external world? Although they are certainly destroyed by other animals, there is nothing comparable to that deterioration of the body which takes place in the higher organisms. Unicellular animals are too simply constructed for this to be possible. If an infusorian is injured by the loss of some part of its body, it may often recover its former integrity, but if the injury is too great it dies. The alternative is always perfect integrity or complete destruction.

We may now leave this part of the subject, for it is obvious that normal death, that is to say, death which arises from internal causes, is an impossibility among these lower organisms. In those species at any rate in which fission is accompanied by a circulation of the protoplasm of the parent, the two halves must possess the same qualities. Since one of them is endowed with a potentiality for unending life, and must be so endowed if the species is to persist, it is clear that the other exactly similar half must be endowed with equal potentiality.

Let us now consider how it happened that the multicellular animals and plants, which arose from unicellular forms of life, came to lose this power of living for ever.

The answer to this question is closely bound up with the principle of division of labour which appeared among multicellular organisms at a very early stage, and which has gradually led to the production of greater and greater complexity in their structure.