Monolith

“ Some of the monoliths tremble and sway, or seem to sway; for they are balanced edgewise, as if the gods had amused themselves in some infantile game, and, growing weary of this little planet, had fled and left their toys in confusion. ”

“ A few minutes later, after the inevitable commercial, I heard my own voice passionately defending the Monolithians as men of principle and high conscience whose only purpose was to uplift their brethren on Earth to a realization of their manifest destiny as worthy members of the community of the Interstellar Realm.
12 (AUG. 2, SAT.) Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
—Thoreau
I had put myself to sleep by playing the name game. ”

“ On landing, therefore, one naturally gives to them one's first attention. It is difficult to realize that these granite monoliths have been standing here for more than seven hundred years, but such is the fact, as they were erected in the year 1187. ”

“ Then he would either confess everything or—if the Monolithians were actually a race with a common, interlocking intelligence, as some people suspected—he would make a decision in Earth's favor which would be binding on all the other aliens. ”

“ I had no idea what they were but slipped several into my jacket pockets before following the others into the corridor.
It was still empty after we'd slunk quite a distance from our plush prison. We went down the spiral ramp, trying to head back to the press room, on the theory that we'd be safer among our own kind—though it was obvious now that every Earthman aboard was at the mercy of the Monolithians. Rod had our story and his chief interest at the moment was finding a way to file it to Earth uncensored. ”

“ The erectors of the most numerous monoliths are the tribes practising terraced cultivation, though Kacha Nagas (Lyengmei) and Kabuis put up little dolmens and occasional monoliths, while the Lhotas and Rengmas proper, also having no terraced cultivation, yet erect monoliths and alignments of monoliths in all their villages. ”

“ When Joy had taken it all down and we'd gone over it with the old editorial pencil, it read like this:
by Sam Kent and Rod Harris as told to Joy Linx
ULTRA, Aug. 11 (Special to the Free Press of the World) —The most fantastic plot in Earth's history unfolded today in the Monolithian super-satellite Ultra.
A conspiracy involving substitution of Earth's leading statesmen by Monolithians impersonating them down to the last birthmark threatened to reduce the world to the status of a colony in an alien empire. ”

“ They are said to be the silent depositories of the secret of the intermolecular or interetheric forces, by the aid of which the races of beings who preceded man upon this earth used to transport to enormous distances monoliths of more than five hundred tons’ weight, which have no relation to the stones that surround them and whose arrangement and astronomical orientation manifestly reveal the intervention of an [272] intelligent and even a highly scientific mind. ”

“ As every pawnbroker will remember, the Clayton monocle was a jewel absolutely unique and practically priceless. In the first place, it was a monocle so large that it could never have been intended for any human eye, which gave rise to the tradition that it had been designed originally for one of the now extinct race of giants living in the foothills of the Himalayas not far from the Afghan border. ”

“ No, reply the polygenists; for the differences are greater than those which characterize certain species. In order to meet this objection, the monogenists have had recourse to what is called the middle theory, and to that of the cross-breeds. The whole of the external circumstances under which the representatives of a species exist, constitute what is called the middle or medium, to which monogenists, supporting themselves on undoubted facts, attribute the power of gradually changing the medium type of a species. ”

“ Thus you see that there is a great difference between "mongrels," which are crosses between distinct races, and "hybrids," which are crosses between distinct species. The mongrels are, so far as we know, fertile with one another. But between species, in many cases, you cannot succeed in obtaining even the first cross: at any rate it is quite certain that the hybrids are often absolutely infertile one with another. ”

“ Tho' lost to Mononia and cold in the grave, [2]
He returns to Kinkora no more. [3]
That star of the field, which so often hath poured
Its beam on the battle, is set;
But enough of its glory remains on each sword,
To light us to victory yet.
Mononia! when Nature embellished the tint
Of thy fields, and thy mountains so fair,
Did she ever intend that a tyrant should print
The footstep of slavery there?
No! Freedom, whose smile we shall never resign,
Go, tell our invaders, the Danes,
That 'tis sweeter to bleed for an age at thy shrine,
Than to sleep but a moment in chains. ”

“ No one, I suppose, seriously doubts that this is in the main the true theory of life, though there may still be some uncertainty as to the causes and mode of operation, and of the different steps and stages of this evolution. Monogeny therefore in this general sense of evolution from some primitive mammalian type, may be accepted as the present conclusion of science for man as it has come to be for the horse, dog, and so many other animals which are his constant companions. ”

“ Monocentridae.—The single genus Monocentris, with two species, one from the seas of Japan, China, and India, and one from the South Pacific, is very nearly related to the Berycidae, but differs in the absence of ribs on the anterior six vertebrae, in the very large bony scales, forming together a coat of mail, and in the structure of the ventral fin, which is reduced to a strong spine and two or three very short soft rays. The spines of the dorsal fin are very strong and isolated. ”

“ We will say that he has taken some primitive form of life for a pattern, a moneron, perhaps, the moat simple type of animal, consisting of a single cell of protoplasm. There still exists a difference between the moneron and the synthetically created cell. Chemically and physically they are the same, but the moneron is alive.
"What, is life? Broadly defined as we recognize it on this earth, it is a temporary union of mind and matter. ”

“ Of course the feminine monocle is not adapted to all costumes, but there is about it a rakishness, a coquetry particularly suited to a riding-habit. The suggestion is quite at the service of any harassed novelist. It may be quite as much a help to sight as spectacles, but, O, the difference! A woman buries her youth behind spectacles, but she can coquet to the very end behind a monocle.
A charming creature used to pass my window every day on horseback. I had a distant vision of a rounded figure in the perfection of a habit, a silk hat at just the right angle and a monocle. ”

“ This amphigony (or generatio digenea) is the sole form of reproduction in man and most of the higher animals. But in many of the lower animals and most of the plants we find also asexual multiplication, or monogony, by cleavage or budding. In the lowest organisms, the monera and many of the protists, fungi, etc., the latter is the only form of propagation.
Strictly speaking, monogony is a universal life-process; even the ordinary cell-cleavage, on which depends the growth of the histona, is a cellular monogony. ”

“ On the other hand, I consider it to be very probable that certain exceedingly imperfect organisms of the simplest structure, forms of species of an exceedingly indifferent nature, as, for example, many single-celled Protista, but especially the Monera, the simplest of them all, should have several times or simultaneously arisen in their specific form in several parts of the earth. For the few and very simple conditions by which their specific form was changed in the struggle for life may surely have often been repeated, in the course of time, independently in different parts of the earth. ”

“ MONOGENISM.—Zoölogists, from the point of view of their own science, now more generally favor the monogenist doctrine, which traces mankind to a single pair, than the polygenist, which assumed different centers of origin. The present tendencies of natural science, especially since Darwin, are favorable to the monogenist view. ”

“ The number of various forms, developed from these simple original structural elements of the skeleton, is astonishing, and there are described more than three hundred genera and nearly two thousand species of this legion in the following pages. This large number may be easily increased by subsequent observers. Since in all these Monopylea the characteristic structure of the central capsule is identical, and also the structural elements of the siliceous skeleton are similar, it is very probable that they may have arisen from a single common stock. ”

“ The Polygenists regard the differences of height, features, and colour, which distinguish the inhabitants of different countries of the globe, as fundamental; the Monogenists consider these differences merely as the result of accidental conditions, which have modified, in various degrees, a primitive type. The former hold that there are several human species perfectly independent of each other; the latter that there is but one species of man which is divided into several races, all of which are derived from a common stock. ”

“ Gulick calls "monotypic evolution," and the case in which different parts of the species, leading different lives, will, if they are by any means prevented from inter-breeding with other parts, form divergent varieties: thus illustrating "polytypic evolution."
§ 174f. Beyond geographical and topographical isolation, there is an isolation of another kind regarded by some as having had an important share in organic evolution. ”

“ Adjacent counterfolds may appear to be coalesced in many instances. Coalescence is more likely to be seen in species where a wider variation in the number of the counterfolds is involved and it appears as a gradient in the reduction of the number of counterfolds. ”

“ Just as simple as the process of nutrition is the propagation of these primitive creatures, which in reality we can neither call animals nor plants. All Monera propagate themselves only in an asexual manner by monogony; and in the simplest case, by that kind of monogony which we place at the head of the different forms of propagation, that is, by self-division. ”

“ For the parents of mongrels are varieties, and mostly domestic varieties (very few experiments having been tried on natural varieties) , and this implies in most cases that there has been recent variability; and therefore we might expect that such variability would often continue and be super-added to that arising from the mere act of crossing. The slight degree of variability in hybrids from the first cross or in the first generation, in contrast with their extreme variability in the succeeding generations, is a curious fact and deserves attention. ”

“ For example, let us again take the geographical form of isolation. Where a single small intergenerant group of individuals is separated from the rest of its species—say, on an oceanic island—monotypic evolution may take place through a continuous and cumulative course of independent variation in a single line of change: all the individuals composing any one given generation will closely resemble one another, although the type may be progressively altering through a long series of generations. ”

“ Let us observe at the outset, how far the phenomena of eugenesic or non-eugenesic hybridity may affect the solution of the great question pending between the Monogenists and the Polygenists.
What in animals in general, characterises the eugenesic hybridity, is the unlimited fecundity of mongrels of the first degree between themselves. It is by no means necessary that the parent species should be as prolific in their crossings as in their direct unions, nor that the mongrels should be as productive as their parents, as large, as strong, and as long-lived, etc. ”

“ Five-sixths of the public are taught this Adamitic Monogenism, as if it were an established truth, and believe it. I do not; and I am not acquainted with any man of science, or duly instructed person, who does.
A second school of monogenists, not worthy of much attention, attempts to hold a place midway between the Adamites and a third division, who take up a purely scientific position, and require to be dealt with accordingly. This third division, in fact, numbers in its ranks Linnaeus, Buffon, Blumenbach, Cuvier, Prichard, and many distinguished living ethnologists. ”

“ Monopyknons are the quiescent, unawakened, though potential and archetypal principles peculiar to the monopyknotic period of space-genesis which are ultimately to become, on the physical plane, singularities of life of whatsoever kind. ”

“ With hybrids and mongrels it frequently or even generally happens that one part of the body resembles more or less closely one parent and another part the other parent; and here again some resistance to fusion, or, what comes to the same thing, some mutual affinity between the organic atoms of the same nature, apparently comes into play, for otherwise all parts of the body would be equally intermediate in character. ”

“ After so long a period of ignorance regarding this most important question concerning the monotremes, it is certainly very extraordinary that at points so distant from each other there should have been made, simultaneously, observations upon different genera, either of which practically solved the question for all time. ”

“ Since that inconceivably278 remote period in which life on our planet began with the spontaneous generation of Monera, organisms of all groups, both collectively as well as individually, have continually become more perfectly and highly developed. The steadily increasing variety of living forms has always been accompanied by progress in organization. The lower the strata of the earth in which the remains of extinct animals and plants lie buried, that is, the older the strata are, the more simple and imperfect are the forms which they contain. ”