The Evolution of Man, vol 1, Ernst Haeckel [books to read this summer TXT] 📗

These move away from each other, and become centres of attraction for the enveloping matter, the protoplasm. The same direct cleavage of the nuclei is also witnessed in the reproduction of many other protists, while other unicellular organisms show the indirect division of the cell.

Hence, although the amoeba is nothing but a simple cell, it is evidently able to accomplish all the functions of the multicellular organism. It moves, feels, nourishes itself, and reproduces. Some kinds of these amoebae can be seen with the naked eye, but most of them are microscopically small. It is for the following reasons that we regard the amoebae as the unicellular organisms which have special phylogenetic (or evolutionary) relations to the ovum. In many of the lower animals the ovum retains its original naked form until fertilisation, develops no membranes, and is then often indistinguishable from the ordinary amoeba. Like the amoebae, these naked ova may thrust out processes, and move about as travelling cells. In the sponges these mobile ova move about freely in the maternal body like independent amoebae (Figure 1.17). They had been observed by earlier scientists, but described as foreign bodies—namely, parasitic amoebae, living parasitically on the body of the sponge. Later, however, it was discovered that they were not parasites, but the ova of the sponge. We also find this remarkable phenomenon among other animals, such as the graceful, bell-shaped zoophytes, which we call polyps and medusae. Their ova remain naked cells, which thrust out amoeboid projections, nourish themselves, and move about. When they have been fertilised, the multicellular organism is formed from them by repeated segmentation.

It is, therefore, no audacious hypothesis, but a perfectly sound conclusion, to regard the amoeba as the particular unicellular organism which offers us an approximate illustration of the ancient common unicellular ancestor of all the metazoa, or multicellular animals. The simple naked amoeba has a less definite and more original character than any other cell. Moreover, there is the fact that recent research has discovered such amoeba-like cells everywhere in the mature body of the multicellular animals. They are found, for instance, in the human blood, side by side with the red corpuscles, as colourless blood-cells; and it is the same with all the vertebrates.

They are also found in many of the invertebrates—for instance, in the blood of the snail. I showed, in 1859, that these colourless blood-cells can, like the independent amoebae, take up solid particles, or “eat” (whence they are called phagocytes =

“eating-cells,” Figure 1.19). Lately, it has been discovered that many different cells may, if they have room enough, execute the same movements, creeping about and eating. They behave just like amoebae (Figure 1.12). It has also been shown that these “travelling-cells,”

or planocytes, play an important part in man’s physiology and pathology (as means of transport for food, infectious matter, bacteria, etc.).

The power of the naked cell to execute these characteristic amoeba-like movements comes from the contractility (or automatic mobility) of its protoplasm. This seems to be a universal property of young cells. When they are not enclosed by a firm membrane, or confined in a “cellular prison,” they can always accomplish these amoeboid movements. This is true of the naked ova as well as of any other naked cells, of the “travelling-cells,” of various kinds in connective tissue, lymph-cells, mucus-cells, etc.

We have now, by our study of the ovum and the comparison of it with the amoeba, provided a perfectly sound and most valuable foundation for both the embryology and the evolution of man. We have learned that the human ovum is a simple cell, that this ovum is not materially different from that of other mammals, and that we may infer from it the existence of a primitive unicellular ancestral form, with a substantial resemblance to the amoeba.

The statement that the earliest progenitors of the human race were simple cells of this kind, and led an independent unicellular life like the amoeba, has not only been ridiculed as the dream of a natural philosopher, but also been violently censured in theological journals as “shameful and immoral.” But, as I observed in my essay On the Origin and Ancestral Tree of the Human Race in 1870, this offended piety must equally protest against the “shameful and immoral” fact that each human individual is developed from a simple ovum, and that this human ovum is indistinguishable from those of the other mammals, and in its earliest stage is like a naked amoeba. We can show this to be a fact any day with the microscope, and it is little use to close one’s eyes to “immoral” facts of this kind. It is as indisputable as the momentous conclusions we draw from it and as the vertebrate character of man (see Chapter 1.11).

(FIGURE 1.19. Blood-cells that eat, or phagocytes, from a naked sea-snail (Thetis), greatly magnified. I was the first to observe in the blood-cells of this snail the important fact that “the blood-cells of the invertebrates are unprotected pieces of plasm, and take in food, by means of their peculiar movements, like the amoebae.” I had (in Naples, on May 10th, 1859) injected into the blood-vessels of one of these snails an infusion of water and ground indigo, and was greatly astonished to find the blood-cells themselves more or less filled with the particles of indigo after a few hours. After repeated injections I succeeded in “observing the very entrance of the coloured particles in the blood-cells, which took place just in the same way as with the amoeba.” I have given further particulars about this in my Monograph on the Radiolaria.)

We now see very clearly how extremely important the cell theory has been for our whole conception of organic nature. “Man’s place in nature” is settled beyond question by it. Apart from the cell theory, man is an insoluble enigma to us. Hence philosophers, and especially physiologists, should be thoroughly conversant with it. The soul of man can only be really understood in the light of the cell-soul, and we have the simplest form of this in the amoeba. Only those who are acquainted with the simple psychic functions of the unicellular organisms and their gradual evolution in the series of lower animals can understand how the elaborate mind of the higher vertebrates, and especially of man, was gradually evolved from them. The academic psychologists who lack this zoological equipment are unable to do so.

This naturalistic and realistic conception is a stumbling-block to our modern idealistic metaphysicians and their theological colleagues.

Fenced about with their transcendental and dualistic prejudices, they attack not only the monistic system we establish on our scientific knowledge, but even the plainest facts which go to form its foundation. An instructive instance of this was seen a few years ago, in the academic discourse delivered by a distinguished theologian, Willibald Beyschlag, at Halle, January 12th, 1900, on the occasion of the centenary festival. The theologian protested violently against the “materialistic dustmen of the scientific world who offer our people the diploma of a descent from the ape, and would prove to them that the genius of a Shakespeare or a Goethe is merely a distillation from a drop of primitive mucus.” Another well-known theologian protested against “the horrible idea that the greatest of men, Luther and Christ, were descended from a mere globule of protoplasm.”

Nevertheless, not a single informed and impartial scientist doubts the fact that these greatest men were, like all other men—and all other vertebrates—developed from an impregnated ovum, and that this simple nucleated globule of protoplasm has the same chemical constitution in all the mammals.

CHAPTER 1.7. CONCEPTION.

The recognition of the fact that every man begins his individual existence as a simple cell is the solid foundation of all research into the genesis of man. From this fact we are forced, in virtue of our biogenetic law, to draw the weighty phylogenetic conclusion that the earliest ancestors of the human race were also unicellular organisms; and among these protozoa we may single out the vague form of the amoeba as particularly important (cf. Chapter 1.6). That these unicellular ancestral forms did once exist follows directly from the phenomena which we perceive every day in the fertilised ovum. The development of the multicellular organism from the ovum, and the formation of the germinal layers and the tissues, follow the same laws in man and all the higher animals. It will, therefore, be our next task to consider more closely the impregnated ovum and the process of conception which produces it.

The process of impregnation or sexual conception is one of those phenomena that people love to conceal behind the mystic veil of supernatural power. We shall soon see, however, that it is a purely mechanical process, and can be reduced to familiar physiological functions. Moreover, this process of conception is of the same type, and is effected by the same organs, in man as in all the other mammals. The pairing of the male and female has in both cases for its main purpose the introduction of the ripe matter of the male seed or sperm into the female body, in the sexual canals of which it encounters the ovum. Conception then ensues by the blending of the two.

We must observe, first, that this important process is by no means so widely distributed in the animal and plant world as is commonly supposed. There is a very large number of lower organisms which propagate unsexually, or by monogamy; these are especially the sexless monera (chromacea, bacteria, etc.) but also many other protists, such as the amoebae, foraminifera, radiolaria, myxomycetae, etc. In these the multiplication of individuals takes place by unsexual reproduction, which takes the form of cleavage, budding, or spore-formation. The copulation of two coalescing cells, which in these cases often precedes the reproduction, cannot be regarded as a sexual act unless the two copulating plastids differ in size or structure. On the other hand, sexual reproduction is the general rule with all the higher organisms, both animal and plant; very rarely do we find asexual reproduction among them. There are, in particular, no cases of parthenogenesis (virginal conception) among the vertebrates.

Sexual reproduction offers an infinite variety of interesting forms in the different classes of animals and plants, especially as regards the mode of conception, and the conveyance of the spermatozoon to the ovum. These features are of great importance not only as regards conception itself, but for the development of the organic form, and especially for the differentiation of the sexes. There is a particularly curious correlation of plants and animals in this respect. The splendid studies of Charles Darwin and Hermann Muller on the fertilisation of flowers by insects have given us very interesting particulars of this. ( See Darwin’s work, On the Various Contrivances by which Orchids are Fertilised (1862).) This reciprocal service has given rise to a most intricate sexual apparatus. Equally elaborate structures have been developed in man and the higher animals, serving partly for the isolation of the sexual products on each side, partly for bringing them together in conception. But, however interesting these phenomena are in themselves, we cannot go into them here, as they have only a minor importance—if any at all—in the real process of conception. We must, however, try to get a very clear idea of this process and the meaning of sexual reproduction.

In every act of conception we have, as I said, to consider two different kinds of cells—a female and a male cell. The female cell of the animal organism is always called the ovum (or ovulum, egg, or egg-cell); the male cells are known as the sperm or seed-cells, or the spermatozoa (also spermium and zoospermium). The ripe ovum is, on the whole, one of the largest cells we know. It attains colossal dimensions when it absorbs great quantities of nutritive yelk, as is the case with birds