TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANISM. 43 



CHAPTER V. 



THE TELEOLOGICAL EVOLUTION OF ORGANISM TUB 

 PHILOSOPHY OF THE UNCONSCIOUS. 



I HAVE stated the foregoing in what I take to be an 

 extreme logical development, in order that the reader 

 may more easily perceive the consequences of those 

 premises which I am endeavouring to re-establish. But 

 it must not be supposed that an animal or plant has 

 ever conceived the idea of some organ widely different 

 from any it was yet possessed of, and has set itself to 

 design it in detail and grow towards it. 



The small jelly-spee'k, which we call the amoeba, has 

 no organs save what it can extemporize as occasion arises. 

 If it wants to get at anything, it thrusts out part of its 

 jelly, which thus serves it as an arm or hand : when the 

 arm has served its purpose, it is absorbed into the rest 

 of the jelly, and has now to do the duty of a stomach by 

 helping to wrap up what it has just purveyed. The 

 small round jelly-speck spreads itself out and envelops 

 its food, so that the whole creature is now a stomach, and 

 nothing but a stomach. Having digested its food, it 

 again becomes a jelly-speck, and is again ready to turn 

 part of itself into hand or foot as its next convenience 

 may dictate. It is not to be believed that such a creature 

 as this, which is probably just sensitive to light and 



