We have already noted that unicellular organisms multiply by division, and originally, as well as in the great majority of cases to-day, by division into two. It follows, therefore, that there is no natural death among them, for, if there were, the species would die out as the individuals grew old; but this does not happen. The two daughter organisms which arise from the binary fission of an Infusorian are in no way different in regard to their power of life; each of them possesses an equal power of doubling itself again by division, and so it goes on, as far as we can see, for an unlimited time. Thus the unicellular organisms are not subject to natural death; their body is indeed used up in the course of ordinary life so that the formation of new cilia and so on is necessary, but it is not worn away in the same sense in which our body is and that of all Metazoa and Metaphytes, where, through functioning, the organs are gradually worn away until they become incapable of function. Our body grows old, and can at last no longer continue to live; but among unicellular organisms there is no growing old, and no death in the normal course of the development of the individual. The unicellulars are, as we may say, immortal; that is, while individuals may be annihilated, by external agencies, boiling heat, poisons, being crushed, or eaten, and so on, at every period some individuals escape such a fate, and perpetuate themselves through succeeding ages. For, strictly speaking, the daughter-individual is only a continuation of the mother-individual; it contains not only half of the substance, but also the organization, and life is continued directly from mother to daughter. The daughter is simply half of the mother, which is subsequently regenerated; and the other half of the mother lives on in the other daughter, so that nothing dies in this multiplication. It may be said that the daughter has to develop the other half of its body anew, and that therefore it is a new individuality, and not merely a continuation of the old, and that therefore the unicellular animals are not immortal. The 'immortality' of the Protozoa may be scoffed at; the idea may seem absurd that the 'immortal' Protozoa are still the same individuals which lived upon the earth millions of years ago, but all such objections mean no more than doctrinaire quibbling with the concepts of 'individual' and 'immortality,' which do not exist in nature at all, but are mere human abstractions, and therefore only of relative value. My thesis as to the potential immortality of the Unicellulars aims at nothing more than impressing on Science the fact that the occurrence of physiological, that is, natural, death is causally associated with the transition from single-celled to many-celled organisms; and this is a truth which will not be overthrown by any sophisms. It is the Volvocineæ which show us, so to speak, the exact point at which natural death set in, at which it was introduced into the world of life. In Pandorina the state of things is still the same as in single-celled organisms, for each cell is still all in all, each can bring forth the whole, none dies from physiological causes involved in the course of development, and they are therefore 'immortal' in the sense stated. But in Volvox the 'individual' dies when it has given off its reproductive cells, because here the contrast between germ-cells and body has developed. Only the body is mortal in the sense of being subject to natural death; the germ-cells possess the potential immortality of the single-celled animals, and it is necessary that they should possess it if the species is to continue to exist.
From this alone it does not seem quite clear why the body or soma should be subject to death, and when I first endeavoured to arrive at clearness in regard to these matters I tried to find out why a natural death of the body was necessitated by the course of evolution. I did not at once discover the true explanation, but without delaying to discuss my mistakes I shall proceed to expound what I believe to be the true reason. It lies simply in the fact, which we shall inquire into later on in more detail, that every function and every organ disappears as soon as it becomes superfluous for the maintenance of the particular form of life in question. The power of being able to live on without limit is useless for the somatic cells, and thus also for the body, since these cannot produce new reproductive cells after those that had been present are liberated; and with this the individual ceases to be of any value for the preservation of the species. What advantage would it be to the species if the Volvox balls were to continue living for an unlimited time after the reproductive cells were developed and had been liberated? Obviously their further fate can have no influence whatever in determining or preserving the characters of the species, and it is quite indifferent to the continuance of the species whether and how long they go on living. Therefore the soma has lost the capacity which conditions endless continuance of life and continued renewal of body-cells.
In regard to these views it has been asked jeeringly, how 'immortality,' if it were really a property of the Unicellulars and of undifferentiated cell-colonies, could be lost, as if the world, which we believe to be everlasting, should give up its everlastingness. But the jeer recoils on the superficial outlook which is unable to distinguish between the immortality dreamed of by the poets, religious and secular, and the real power that certain forms of life have to resist being permanently exhausted by their own metabolism. That we should call this 'immortality' does not seem to me to require any apology, for the right has always been conceded to science to transfer popular words and ideas in a restricted and somewhat altered sense to scientific conceptions when it seems necessary. That the word 'immortality' in this case expresses the state of matters more precisely and better than any other cannot be doubted, any more than we can doubt that there exists in regard to natural death a real difference, which we must take account of, between the Unicellulars and the higher organisms. What enables the species in the case of the higher organisms, like ourselves for instance, to last through ages is not the immortality of the individual, of the person, but only that of the germ-cells; these alone, among the cells of the whole body, have retained the primæval power. A small piece of the individual is still immortal, but only a minute part, which cannot be considered as equivalent to the whole, either morphologically or from the point of view of the conception of individuality. Can anyone consider himself identical with his children? If any one should imagine this, it would still not be the case, for he himself would in the course of time suffer natural death, and his children would continue to live on until they too had brought forth children, and in their turn also came to die. It is quite different with an Infusorian, which never lies down to die, but simply splits itself afresh into two halves which continue to live.
It is hardly credible that such a simple and clear truth should have remained so long undiscovered, and it is even more incredible that since it was enunciated it should have been until quite recently laughed at as false, as a piece of pseudo-science, and as valueless. But it is the fate of all knowledge which rests on an intelligent and comprehensive working up of facts to be attacked, until it gradually bears down antagonism by the weight of its truth, and compels at least a silent recognition.
The fact that natural death made its appearance with the appearance of a 'body,' a soma, as distinguished from the germ-cells, will sooner or later compel recognition. When I pointed out above that the explanation of natural death lay in the fact that it would be superfluous for the soma to continue to live on unlimitedly, after it had discharged its germ-cells, and so fulfilled its duty to the species, I only intended to say that this was the general reason for the introduction of natural death. I have no doubt that the actual beginning of this phenomenon could have, and probably did come about in other ways. Many kinds of cells in higher animals perish as a result of their function; it is, so to speak, their business to perish, to break up; this is the case with many glandular and epithelial cells. It may very well be that, in many of the highly differentiated tissue-cells, such as nerve, muscle, and glandular cells, the high differentiation in itself excludes the possibility of unlimited length of life and multiplication. Through this alone, therefore, the exhaustion of the body and an ultimate death may be explicable from internal causes. But the deeper cause remains what I have already indicated, for it is obvious that if the continued life, that is, the immortality of the soma, were necessary to the preservation of the species it would have survived through natural selection; that is to say, had it been so, then histological differentiations incompatible with immortality would not have made their appearance; they would always have been eliminated on their way to development, since only that which is adapted to its end survives. Only if the immortality of the soma were indifferent for the species could the soma have become so highly organized that it became subject to death.
Thus the old song of the transitoriness of life does not apply to all the forms of life: natural death is a phenomenon which made its appearance comparatively late in the development of the organic world, a phenomenon which, up to a certain point, we can quite well understand from the standpoint of purposefulness.
It would take me too far from the goal towards which we are at present making if I were now to attempt to show, in connexion with natural death, that the durability of the soma, or what we usually call the normal duration of life, is also exactly regulated by natural selection, so that each species possesses exactly that duration of life which is most favourable to it, according to its physical constitution, its physiological capacity, and the conditions of life to which it has to adapt itself[11]. But, interesting as this subject is, I must not digress further, but return to our proper subject of study, namely, reproduction in its relation to inheritance.
[11] See Weismann, Ueber die Dauer des Lebens, Jena, 1882. Translated in Essays on Heredity.
We digressed from this study after having seen that all, even the most complex, multicellular plants and animals, in which the differentiation of the cells into a number of cell-groups with the most diverse functions has attained the highest degree of complexity, are able to produce special cells, the germ-cells, which have the power of reproducing from themselves another organism of the same species, and with the same complex structure. It might be thought that such cells must necessarily be very complex in their own structure, but in most cases nothing of the kind is to be seen, and the germ-cells often appear simpler in organization than many of the tissue-cells, such as the glandular-cells; and where there is an unusual size or complexity of structure in the germ-cell it usually bears no relation to the grade of organization of the young creature that is to arise from it, but is due solely to the special conditions imposed on the particular germ-cell, if a young organism is to be evolved from it. We shall soon see what is meant by this.
I must note here that plants and animals do not multiply by means of germ-cells alone, but that many species—the majority of plants and the simpler forms of animals—also exhibit multiplication by budding or division. All animals and plants which do not stop short at the stage of the individual, the 'person,' but rise to the higher stage of the 'stock' (or corm), illustrate this. The first person from which the formation of the stock proceeds gives rise by budding or division to new persons which remain attached to it, and in turn by repeated production of buds give rise to a third, fourth, or nth generation of persons, all remaining in connexion with the first, and together forming the composite individuality of the animal-colony or plant-stock. Such colonies or stocks are seen in polyps and corals, Siphonophoræ and Bryozoa, and among plants, according to Alexander Braun, in all phanerogams which do not consist only of a single shoot. In these cases we find that definite, or perhaps indefinite groups of cells in the stock may give rise to a new person, and we have to inquire how this power may be theoretically interpreted.