THE ORIGIN OF SEX
That part of human life and living that is associated with the functions of sex and reproduction is at once the cause of the world's greatest misery and the world's greatest happiness. It is the subject of the greatest popular ignorance and superstition, and at the same time the field of the most wonderful of all scientific knowledge.
For the origin of sex we must look back into the remote ages of creation in the early stages of organic evolution.
Fundamental function of the cell
The first essential property of matter that makes life possible is the power of nutrition, which means the ability of the living cell to transform other chemical substances into its own protoplasm or living substances.
But this world would have remained a barren mass of igneous rock if nutrition had been the only function with which the earlier forms of life were endowed. Not only must the living cell be enabled to grow by absorbing other substances, but it must reproduce itself, or multiply the number of living individuals.
First form of reproduction
The first method by which this was accomplished was undoubtedly one of simple division; that is, the living cell grew by absorbing other substances and when sufficient size had been attained, divided, forming two daughter-cells. This division process of reproduction is the form by which all bacteria (so-called dis-ease germs) and many other lower forms of life increase their numbers.