556 Transactions of the Society. 



body of man has been evolved from the body of animals, so the 

 intellectual, emotional, and moral faculties of man have been 

 evolved from the qualities of animals."* I ask again, with great 

 respect, at what point in the Zoological record does that new depar- 

 ture in Evolution commence ? 



Whilst naturally shrinking from the introduction into this 

 thesis of the most highly controversial question in modern 

 Biology, namely, the phenomenon of the Human Soul, one can- 

 not but recognize that the two postulates have much in common, 

 and I do not think that I am forcing comparisons when I say that 

 the evolution of what we are agreed to describe as the Soul is in- 

 separably bound up with that which we are agreed to describe as 

 Intelligence — in fact, " The Intelligent Soul " has assumed the 

 purple as a text-phrase. Haynes, in criticizing Father Michael 

 Maher's " Psychology " in a recent and scholarly opusculum,f 

 observes : — " It is clear that Father Maher cannot demonstrate the 

 immortality of the human soul without an act of special creation 

 taking place at a particular moment unknown to us, when our last 

 simian ancestor became our first human ancestor." And, in my 

 opinion, he puts the case with great lucidity in a later passage : — 

 " The evolution of mind not only shows a complete continuity be- 

 tween man and the animals, but it also shows that man only rises 

 above the animals by reason of his cerebral development. "% 



We hark back to the celebrated aphorism of Descartes, " Cogito, 

 ergo sum" ("I think, therefore I am "); to which we may add that 

 we are therefore, as Huxley has said, " the only consciously intelli- 

 gent denizens of this world." § It was a year after this was written, 

 that P. H. Gosse, than whom no keener observer of marine 

 organisms ever lived, said || : " The more I study the lower animals, 

 the more firmly am I persuaded of the existence in them of psychical 

 faculties, such as consciousness, intelligence, and choice, and that 

 even in those forms in which as yet no nervous centres have been 

 detected." 



To sum up the matter in a few words, a study of the Keticu- 

 larian Ehizopods extending over some thirty years has brought me 

 to the conclusion that there appears to be no organism in the 

 Animal Kingdom, however simple be its structure, which lives a 

 life of its own independently of any other organism, which is not 

 capable of developing functions and behaviour (including the adapta- 

 tion of extraneous matters to its use and protection), which in 

 the Metazoa might be called, and would properly be so called, 

 Phenomena of Purpose and Intelligence. 



* Op. cit., p. 99. 



t E. S. P. Haynes, " The Belief in Immortality." London, 1913, p. 70. 



X Op. cit., p. 88. 



§ T. H. Huxley, Essays, vii. (1910) p. 153. 



|| P. H. Gosse," " A Year at the Shore." London, 1865, p. 247. 



