Any good chemist can analyze a fertilized ovum and learn, exactly, the chemical elements of which it is composed, and the proportions in which they are combined. He could then make a new combination of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and oxygen in the same proportions, in which these substances were combined in the fertilized ovum; and if life were a property of that combination of atoms, this new chemical compound, ought to become a living creature. But no such thing could ever happen.
As already remarked, neither the spermatozoön nor the ovum can live alone. But when fused together, the combination becomes a living creature. The atoms in the combination are identically the same that were in the spermatozoön and ovum before the fusion occurred. Why should the combination live when the two component parts of it could not?
It is clear that no man can, voluntarily nor involuntarily endow a spermatozoön with the power to develop, alone, into a human being; for every one of them dies in a day, or within a few days, after it matures; unless it be so fortunate as to unite and fuse with an ovum. It is equally clear that no woman can endow an ovum with the power to become a human being. Every ovum soon dies, unless it unite and fuse with a spermatozoön under conditions favorable to growth. Haeckel says: “there are calculated to be 72,000 [ova] in the sexually mature maiden.” (Evolution of Man, p. 347.) The number of spermatozoä, generated in the sexual organs of a man greatly exceeds the number of ova produced by a woman. It follows that countless trillions of spermatozoä and ova die daily, and disintegrate.
Now, if no man can endow a spermatozoön with the power to develop into a new human being; and if no woman can endow an ovum with power to do so; how is it possible for either parent to endow the fertilized ovum with that power, when it is no part of the body of either of them?
But the evolutionist maintains that the child has in fact, many of the qualities, characteristics and traits, both physical and mental, of its parents; that the parents transmit these qualities, characteristics and traits, to their child, by and through the spermatozoön and the ovum; that this is the only means by which the child could acquire the qualities, characteristics and traits of its parents. Hence, the evolutionist infers that heredity is based on the physical qualities and properties of the spermatozoön and ovum.