THE ORIGIN OF LIFE ^47 



more pleasure in the act than the Amoeba which 

 swallows a Diatom ; and for all that the man knows 

 of the subsequent processes to which the food is 

 subjected, his interior might be a mass of jelly, with 

 extemporised vacuoles, like that of his humble fellow- 

 animal. The workman or the athlete has bones and 

 muscles of vastly complicated structure, but to him 

 the muscular act is as simple and unconscious a 

 process as the sending out of a pseudopod to a Pro- 

 tozoon. The clay is after all the same, and there 

 may be as much credit to the artist in making a 

 simple organism with varied powers, as a more 

 complex frame for doing nicer work. It is a weak- 

 ness of humanity to plume itself on advantages not of 

 its own making, and to treat its superior gifts as if 

 they were the result of its own endeavours. The 

 truculent traveller who illustrated his boast of superi- 

 ority over the Indian by comparing his rifle with the 

 bow and arrows of the savage, was well answered by 

 the question, " Can you make a rifle ? " and when he 

 had to answer, " No," by the rejoinder, " Then I am 

 at least better than you, for I can make my bow and 

 arrows." The Amoeba or the Eozoon is probably no 

 more than we its own creator ; but if it could produce 

 itself out of vegetable matter, or out of inorganic 



