THE FIRST LIFE ON EARTH
The next day Elsie was so eager for
the hour to come when she should learn the secret
of the animals that she had been waiting in the hammock
quite a little while when her mother came down stairs
and as soon as she appeared in sight Elsie clapped
her hands joyously, crying out:
“Now I shall hear how the animals
get their honey, sha’n’t I, mumsey?
But, mumsey, there isn’t anything like the petals
of a buttercup on an animal, unless it’s his
ears do animals have their honey there where
they join the body like the buttercups?”
Mrs. Edson could not help laughing
at this funny notion.
“No, darling,” she answered,
“animals have no honey anywhere. In the
plants there is honey because they must have something
to attract the insects to them, for they are rooted
in the ground and can’t move around to carry
their pollen to the other plants. And this pollen
must be carried, you remember, for that is the way,
and the only way, in which little ones are made to
be born. So the flower has the honey in order
to pay the insect for marrying it. But animals
can move around. They can go to each other and
carry their own pollen, so they do not need honey
or anything but themselves to attract each other.
In animals there is love instead of honey. They
love each other, in their way, and so come together
and mingle their eggs and pollen. Only it is
not called pollen in animals, as I said before.
It is called zoosperms, pronounced ‘zoo-o-sperms.’
That is another name that you must not forget, for
it is to the animal what pollen is to the plant.
And in order that little animals may be born it is
quite as necessary that the zoosperms cover or fertilize
the eggs, as, with the plants, it is for the pollen
to fertilize the seeds.”
“But, mamma,” said Elsie,
wonderingly, “you said, I think, that every
plant had an ovary
“No, darling, I said that every
female plant had an ovary.”
“Oh, yes, female plant!
That has an ovary, and every male plant has a stamen,
and I think you said that they must have, didn’t
you?”
“Yes, dear, in order to reproduce
their kind they must have why?”
“Well, then, does every male
animal have a stamen and every female an ovary?”
“Certainly darling! And
let me repeat that the products of the two must be
mingled in order to bring forth little animals.
That is just what I am going to tell you about today.”
“And do you mean, mamma, that
honey in the plants grows into love in the animals?”
Elsie asked, her eyes very wide.
“Oh, that is a very beautiful
thought for my little girl to have!” Mrs. Edson
exclaimed, smoothing Elsie’s hair lovingly.
“And, yes, that is the truth, put very poetically.
Love is sweet, like the honey that it replaces at
least it is for us human beings. Probably with
the animals it is not of just the same quality that
it is with us, for they do not act as if it were,
but at least the animals are an improvement on the
plants in this respect, and the love that they feel
for each other finally evolves, in us, to become the
sweet thing that we find it to be.”
“Isn’t that lovely and so strange!”
exclaimed Elsie.
“Yes, darling, it is lovely,
and very strange. There are various kinds of
love, as well as various degrees of the same kind,
but this is a subject a little too deep for us to
take up just yet. What I wish now is to teach
you how the animals marry. And I will begin by
saying that all forms of reproduction, which is the
name given to having children, follow the same principle.
The animals marry in a way that is only a variation
of the plant way, and men and women marry in a way
that is a variation of the plant and animal ways.
But let us begin right, with the first appearance
of life on earth.”
“Yes, mamma,” Elsie cried
eagerly. “But the first life!
That must have been very, very long ago, wasn’t
it?”
“It was so far back in the history
of the world that we can scarcely more than guess
how long ago it must have been. We do not even
know where it first appeared or just how it came to
be. Some scientists believe that it occurred
at the mouth of the Nile River, in Africa, in the
rich soil that the river deposits there when it overflows
its banks. Others think it was in the sea, or
along the shores of some ocean in a tropical country.
But we need not go into that here. What we do
know is that the hot sun, shining on a certain spot
on the earth or sea, which was just in the right condition,
produced the first body containing life that the globe
ever had, and that this body was only a little speck
of jelly-like substance, which we call protoplasm,
pro-to-plas-m. The word means ‘first
growth’, for it was the first thing that ever
appeared that was capable of growing. We also
call it a cell. Now there was only one cell in
the world. It had no companions. And what
do you suppose happened?”
“It must have been very lonesome,”
suggested Elsie, sympathetically.
“Yes, it must have been certainly
it must if it could feel or think. But, 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, 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. Force, or growth, was
the stamen here, and the cell itself was the ovary.”
“Oh, then force or growth was the first stamen,
mamma?”
“No, darling, it was not, unless
we should call growth the stamen of today which
we might do, in a way. But the first stamen was,
in form, a ray of the sun, and the first ovary was
the earth, soil. For don’t you recall that
this cell, which was the first life-form, was produced
by the sun shining on the earth or sea?”
Elsie pondered on this a moment.
Then her face brightened.
“Oh, now I see!” she exclaimed.
“And what a beautiful set of changes, like real
poetry! The stamen in a flower, and growth, and
a ray of sunlight are all one at bottom!”
“Yes, darling, it is beautiful
poetry, when one comes thoroughly to understand it.
And when we find that love is the source of all these
different forms and processes it becomes more beautiful
than ever. Now let us go on a little further
and you will see how that is.”
“Please hurry, mamma!”
said Elsie. “I wish to find out where I
came from, and you are going to tell me that, aren’t
you?”
“Certainly, darling! That
is what I have been leading up to all this time.
Now we will speak of a number of higher growths than
the single cells are, for there are several things
yet to be made plain before you will be able to understand
the highest growth of all, which is that of a human
being like yourself.”