55 1 Transctions of the Society. 



bility (not that I shrink on occasion from responsibility) thrust 

 upon me of saying that the Purpose and Intelligence — perhaps 

 "Purposive Intelligence" would be a better phrase — displayed 

 by a Protozoon is in any way comparable to that displayed by a 

 man, or by animals vertebrate or invertebrate, or even by the 

 Crustacea, Ccelenterates, and Annelids. St. Paul was not expressing 

 himself in terms of Zoological Science, but he was undoubtedly 

 stating an incontrovertible fact when he said l: there is one kind of 

 flesh of man, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes and another 

 of birds " — for " flesh " substitute " intelligence," and the purpose 

 for which that intelligence is used, adapted especially (limited, if 

 you will) to the peculiar needs and limitations of the organism 

 which it endows and illuminates. What Biologist can say at what 

 point reflex action and instinct stop and intelligence begins ? 

 What Physiologist will say that intelligence cannot be postulated 

 in the absence of specialized nerve fibre ? * 



An argument propounded by one of my most esteemed and 

 distinguished critics f was that the action of a Foraminifer in the 

 selection of rare foreign bodies from among a vast mass of hetero- 

 geneous available material, and its manipulation of that specialized 

 material for purposes of self-protection is not different from that 

 of any cell of the human body in selecting from its environment 

 the matter requisite to its functions and life-processes as part of 

 the communal whole which makes up the body. With great 

 respect I entirely disagree. I should deeply regret if any words 

 of mine should be taken to convey an expression of opinion that 

 the adaptive processes of a human body-cell display individual 

 purpose or intelligence. Nor, a fortiori, would I suggest that a 

 calcareous Foraminifer displays purpose and intelligence in secreting 

 the carbonate of lime of which it constructs its shell,! or that an 

 arenaceous Foraminifer displays purpose or intelligence in collecting 

 sand grains or other fortuitous but inevitable particles for the con- 

 struction of its test. But it was in no flippant spirit that I replied 

 that if an individual body-cell were to select from its environment 

 some foreign material to act as an umbrella to protect it c rom a 

 rain which threatened its neighbours that would be to my mind 

 evidence of purposive intelligence peculiar to that cell, and would 



* A recent writer has thus stated the case entirely in agreement with rny 

 views: — "Though the activities of unicellular organisms reveal no irrefragable 

 proof of the presence of mind, a study of their conduct suffices to exhibit at least 

 a fundamental resemblance to so-called ' intelligent ' behaviour." (E. M. Smith, 

 " The Evolution of Mind in Animals." Cambridge, 1915, p. 23.) Cf. the statement 

 of Leibnitz : — " The mental life of animals shows itself to be parallel in its de- 

 velopment to the differentiation of the nervous system ; the faculties of human 

 individuals appear to correspond to a full development of the brain." (H. Munster- 

 berg, " Psychology and Physiology," p. 41.) 



t Sir E. Ray Laukester, Roy. Soc. (Loud.) March 11, 2915. 



% I have gone into this matter recently elsewhere (Bibliography 8, p. 261 et 

 passim.) 



