577 
The only way in which such fission could offer an oppor 
tunity for the action of Natural Selection, in the strict sense 
of that term, would be by the production of those variations 
which are inevitably associated with reproduction. But 
it may be very much doubted whether such variation can 
occur in connection with fission. Professor Haeckel, after 
describing how a protamceba or a protogenes, having 
attained a certain size, contracts in the middle of the 
globule and finally falls in two pieces, says that this— 
“ process of propagation is nothing but a growth of the organism 
beyond its own individual limit of size.”—(The History of Creation. 
4th ed., vol. i., p. IQ2.) 
“ Now, when we examine this simplest form of propagation, this 
self-division, it surely cannot be considered wonderful that the products 
of the division of the original organism should possess the same 
qualities as the parental individual. For they are parts or halves of 
the parental organism, and the matter or substance in both halves is 
the same, and as both the young individuals have received an equal 
amount and the same quality of matter from the parent individual, 
one can but consider it natural that the vital phenomena, the physio 
logical qualities, should be the same in both children. In fact, in 
regard to their form and substance, as well as to their vital phe 
nomena, the two produced cells can in no respect be distinguished 
from one another or from the mother cell. They have inherited from 
her the same nature.”—(Ibid. pp. 193-6.) 
“ An amoeba simply divides into two amoebae, each exactly like 
itself.”—(Parker. Elementary Biology, p. 19.) 
Now, if this fission is the universal mode of propagation 
among a certain kind of organisms which were all alike, 
inasmuch as they are the products of the same conditions 
of being, it is difficult to see how such a phenomenon 
could have “furthered the spread of those which were most 
favourably differentiated by the medium.” What evidence 
is there of such variety of differentiation ? If it could be 
shown that certain individuals grew faster and underwent 
fission more rapidly by virtue of some differentiation, then 
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