The Drama of Love and Death: A Study of Human Evolution and TransfigurationCarpenter, Edward
Philosophy
The Drama of Love and Death: A Study of Human Evolution and Transfiguration
Carpenter, Edward
Death; Love; Personality
Meanwhile the chromosomes in each new division group themselves (not
round but) near their respective poles or centrosomes, and a new nucleus
membrane forming, encloses each group, so that finally we have two cells
of exactly the same constitution as the original one, and with exactly
the same number and quality of chromosomes as the original.[7]
The whole process seems very strange and wonderful. No military
evolutions and formations, no complex and mystic dance of initiates in a
temple, with advances and retreats, and combinations and separations,
and exchanges of partners, could seem more fraught with intelligence.[8]
Yet this is what takes place among some of the very lowest forms of
life, on the division of a single cell into two. And it is exactly the
same, apparently, which takes place in the higher forms of life when the
single cell which is the result of the fusion together of the sperm-cell
and the germ-cell, divides and subdivides to form the ‘body’ of the
creature. As is well known, the joint cell divides first into two; then
each of the cells so formed divides into two, making four in all; then
each of these divides into two, making eight; then each into two again,
making 16, 32, 64, and so on—till they number the thousands, hundreds
of thousands, millions, which in effect build up and constitute the
body. And at each division the process is carried out with this amazing
care and exactness of partition described—so that every cell is verily
continuous and of the same nature with the original cell, and contains
the same nuclear elements, derived half from the father and half from
the mother. Yet in the process a differentiation has set in, so that in
the end each cell becomes so far modified as to be adapted for its
special position and function in the body—for the skin, mucous
membrane, blood corpuscles, brain, muscular tissue, and so forth.[9] It
is worth while looking carefully at the body of an animal, or one’s own
body, in order to realize what this means—to realize that the entire
creature, in all its form and feature, its coloring, marking, swiftness
of limb, complexity of brain, and so on, has provably been exhaled from
a single cell, _is_ indeed that original cell with its latent powers and
virtue made manifest; and to remember that that original cell was itself
the fusion of two parent cells, the male and the female.
A word, then, upon this matter of the fusion of the two parent cells in
one. Here, again, two very remarkable things appear. One refers to the
equality of the sexes; the other refers to the onesidedness (or
deficiency or imperfection) which seems to be the characteristic _and_
the motive power of the phenomenon of sex.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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