“Yes, it must have been—certainly it must if it could feel or think. But, 50 at all events, whether or not it did feel lonely, it began right away to make companions. Of course you can’t think how it did that, can you, dear?”
“I—I am afraid not,” Elsie hesitated.
“Yet it was the very simplest way imaginable. It merely divided itself into two parts, each of which was just like the other.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Elsie. “But, then, mamma, who could tell which was the father or mother, and which was the child? Or were they just brother and sister, or two brothers?”
“There was not then what we now call ‘sex’, for that was only the beginning of families, so to say, and it was very crude, as all things are when they are first started. But perhaps we might call one cell the mother of the other, 51 since it is always the female, and not the male, that brings forth children, though nobody could tell which was the mother and which was the child.”
“Well,” said Elsie, “that is the strangest thing yet!”
“It seems so to us, because it is so different from our way of reproducing, but it was the natural way, and the same process is going on to this day. Even little girls are born in a manner which, though it appears very different, is the same in principle, as we shall see.”
“But, mamma, I thought that all living beings were obliged to have a stamen or an ovary!”
“So they are obliged, dear! This cell grew until it was too large and heavy to be supported by its structure, or lack of structure, and then it fell apart. 52 Force, or growth, was the stamen here, and the cell itself was the ovary.”
“Oh, then force or growth was the first stamen, mamma?”