ZO OLOGY, 



ON THE RELATION OF CELLS TO CONSCIOUSNESS AND MUSCULAB 



MOVEMENTS. 



AT the meeting of the British Association, Dr. Laycock communicated some 

 of the views he entertained as to the relations of cells to consciousness, and 

 to the adaptation in the movements and functions of organisms to a definite 

 object. These phenomena are variously interpreted in relation to conscious- 

 ness. While, on the one hand, it was a firmly established opinion that vege- 

 table organisms had no sensation, although they adapted themselves, often 

 with exquisite skill to external circumstances, of which Dr. Laycock adduced 

 several examples on the other, it was an equally fixed doctrine that the 

 lower animal organisms (e. g., insects) were as susceptible of pain as man him- 

 self. Now all these adaptive phenomena were manifested in the highest 

 degree in that ultimate constituent of animated beings, namely, the micro- 

 scopic cell ; and that whether the organism was unicellular, or composed of 

 groups of individual cells, or evolved from a primordial cell, there did not ap- 

 pear the slightest ground for concluding that these were endowed with 

 consciousness ; it followed, therefore, that the whole of their adaptive phe- 

 nomena were the result of a force inherent in them, but distinct from mind. 

 The entire structure of the higher organisms, whether vegetable or animal, 

 being evolved out of cells, and the aim of their whole vital activity being 

 directed to the fittainment of the same object as that aimed at in cell action, 

 viz., the well-being and happiness of the individual, it follows that in these that 

 object may be aimed at wholly independently of the will or the consciousness. 

 Such appears to be the case with vegetable organisms ; but to determine the 

 presence or absence of these in plants, and even the lower animals, is necessar- 

 ily beyond the reach of observation. It may be argued, indeed, from analogy, 

 that they may possess a sense of pleasurable existence, inasmuch as such an 

 endowment would be entirely compatible with that grand scheme of beneficent 

 adaptation upon which all organisms and the entire creation are arranged. 

 As to insects, experiments show that it is at least very doubtful whether they 

 feel pain ; while the infinite variety of instruments supplied to them to ad- 

 minister to their own happiness, and the inherent skill which they display in 

 the use of those instruments (illustrated by the mathematical accuracy with 

 which the domestic boo constructs its hexagonal cell), might serve as some 



