92 ANIMAL INDIVIDUALITY [OH. 



bodies of cells, of a third kind large and contractile, 

 each of which stretches drainpipe-wise from the 

 outer world to the central cavity. Embedded in the 

 jelly itself are other supporting structures three- 

 rayed spicules of carbonate of lime, and through it 

 wander at will a number of amoeboid cells, having 

 much the same appearance and functions as our own 

 white blood-corpuscles, except that from their ranks 

 are recruited the germ-cells, male and female ; here, 

 therefore, we have the unusual 1 spectacle of the 

 germ-cells being pressed into the service of the 

 individual. 



Here is obviously a unity, an individual of a 

 higher order than the cell. Its forms and its functions 

 both depend as much upon the way the component 

 cells are arranged as upon their structure ; from an 

 examination of a single one of its cells, or even one 

 of every kind of cell, you could deduce very little 

 about the properties of the ordered whole. That 

 whole is greater than the sum of its parts ; for the 

 problem is one of combination, not of mere addition. 

 In spite of this the cells have preserved a very large 

 amount of independence, and indeed do most forcibly 

 present themselves to the mind as bands of beings 

 like ourselves that have voluntarily enlisted under 

 some beneficent tyrant of a general. That analogy, 



1 But not unique e.g. in some colonial Ascidians, the germ-cells 

 of the bud are formed from blood-corpuscles of the parent. 



