158 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



it out, to my Right Hand to spread it, to my Eyes to search it, and to my Surveyor 

 to measure the distances. Alas, the map was not made by the German War Office, 

 and therefore the cross-road is not entered upon it. What is poor Ego to do ? 

 All the Side-Cells seem to advise this or that, and he listens to all of them. But 

 another and lower Side-Cell points out that the dinner hour is approaching and 

 that a decision must be come to soon. Then it is the Ego-Cell which decides. 

 He has obtained all the advice possible ; but he does not take a vote amongst the 

 Side-Cells ; he makes the decision himself— just as the amoeba or infusorian does. 

 The only difference is that the latter have no Librarians and Secretaries to assist 

 them, and their judgment is therefore not likely to be so good. Then the order is 

 given : the Engineer-Cells clutch their levers ; the batteries come into play ; the 

 great motors begin to act ; and away goes the whole huge mechanism down one 

 of the roads. The work now being in the hands of competent subordinates, the 

 Ego-Cell himself has nothing more to do but to admire the scenery. 



Seriously, the question appears to be whether Decisions are made by a single 

 entity or by a majority-vote. As Decisions seem to be possible for unicellular 

 organisms, the former appears to be the more probable hypothesis ; and we infer 

 (for a speculation) that as organisms become more and more complex as they rise 

 in the animal scale, their nervous mechanism acquires more and more numerous 

 Side-Cells to do the subordinate work, but that the Prime- or Ego-Cell required 

 for ultimate Decisions remains unique in all. Prof. Pearson in his paragraph on 

 "the brain as a central telephone exchange," in The Gramma,}- of Science (1900, 

 P- 44), suggests interesting points in the mechanism of thought ; but I do not find 

 in this book or in works on psychology or physiological psychology any reference 

 to the possibility that that mechanism may be developed round a single unit 

 which still retains the ultimate autocratic power. 



If the speculation be by any possibility sound, we shall be confronted by some 

 startling corollaries ; for we men ourselves—we who walk and talk so proudly 

 under the stars and think ourselves to bulk so big in the world — must shrink, so 

 far as our actual self is concerned, to something like one five-hundtedth of an inch 

 in diameter — to microscopical objects buried amongst a mass of similar objects in 

 the brain and possibly quite undistinguishable from them in shape or size. The 

 rest of us shall only be our appanages, the servants, property, and house-machinery 

 of the insignificant molecule which is ourself ! Just as the emperor is no bigger in 

 body than his subjects, so perhaps the Ego-Cell may be nothing finer than the 

 millions of other little masses of protoplasm which wander in our blood or live unpro- 

 liferating and undying in that small box of the cranium which can yet hold infinity. 

 The only way in which research might be able to throw light upon the subject 

 seems to me to be by way of studying the nervous system of the very low organisms 

 in comparison with their habits. For example, gnat-larvae would be very suitable, 

 and I have often thought of commencing such work upon them. They show a 

 very considerable degree of intelligence. Thus, when the surface tension of the 

 water in which they live is destroyed by oil, they think that something has gone 

 wrong with their air-tube, and spend a long time in trying to clean it up — which 

 shows a degree of intelligence superior to that of many of our municipalities. 

 Would carefully stained preparations of their nervous-system disclose the existence 

 of any very exceptional cell such as is suggested by the above hypothesis ? But, of 

 course, the Ego-Cell may not be morphologically different from any of its congeners. 1 



R. R. 



1 Compare Masefield's Sonnets and Poems, No. 13 (Letchworth Garden City Press). 



