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that—at least at this basic biological level—prove false: The first one is the female’s passivity; the living spark is not enclosed within either of the two gametes. It springs forth from their meeting; the nucleus of the ovum is a vital principle perfectly symmetrical to the sperm’s. The second bias contradicts the first, which does not exclude the fact that they often coexist: the permanence of the species is guaranteed by the female since the male principle has an explosive and fleeting existence. In reality, the embryo equally perpetuates the germ cells of the father and the mother and retransmits them together to its descendants, sometimes in a male and sometimes in a female form. One might say that an androgynous germ cell survives the individual metamorphoses of the soma from generation to generation.
    That being said, there are highly interesting secondary differences to be observed between the ovum and the sperm; the essential singularity of the ovum is that it is supplied with material destined to nourish and protect the embryo; it stocks up on reserves from which the fetus will build its tissues, reserves that are not a living substance but an inert material; the result is a massive, relatively voluminous, spherical or ellipsoidal form. The bird’s egg’s dimensions are well-known. The woman’s egg measures 0.13 mm, while the human sperm contains sixty thousand sperm per cubic millimeter: their mass is extremely small. The sperm has a threadlike tail, a little elongated head; no foreign substance weighs it down. It is entirely life; this structure destines it for mobility; the ovum, on the contrary, where the future of the fetus is stored, is a fixed element:enclosed in the female organism or suspended in an exterior environment, it waits passively for fertilization. The male gamete seeks it out; the sperm is always a naked cell, while the ovum is, according to the species, protected or not by a membrane; but in any case, the sperm bumps into the ovum when it comes into contact with it, makes it waver, and infiltrates it; the male gamete loses its tail; its head swells, and, twisting, it reaches the nucleus. Meanwhile, the egg immediately forms a membrane that keeps other sperm from entering. For echinoderms where fertilization is external, it is easy to observe the rush of the sperm that surround the floating and inert egg like a halo. This competition is also another important phenomenon found in most species; much smaller than the ovum, the sperm are generally produced in considerable quantities, and each ovum has many suitors.
    Thus, the ovum, active in the nucleus, its essential principle, is superficially passive; its mass, closed upon itself, compact in itself, evokes the nocturnal heaviness and repose of the in-itself: the ancients visualized the closed world in the form of a sphere or opaque atom; immobile, the ovum waits; by contrast, the open sperm, tiny and agile, embodies the impatience and worry of existence. One should not get carried away with the pleasure of allegories: the ovum has sometimes been likened to immanence and the sperm to transcendence. By giving up its transcendence and mobility, the sperm penetrates the female element: it is grabbed and castrated by the inert mass that absorbs it after cutting off its tail; like all passive actions, this one is magical and disturbing; the male gamete activity is rational, a measurable movement in terms of time and space. In truth, these are merely ramblings. Male and female gametes merge together in the egg; together they cancel each other out in their totality. It is false to claim that the egg voraciously absorbs the male gamete and just as false to say that the latter victoriously appropriates the female cell’s reserves because in the act that merges them, their individuality disappears. And to a mechanistic philosophy, the movement undoubtedly looks like a rational phenomenon par excellence; but for modern physics the idea is no