1864.] Canrrunter on Correlation of Physical and Vital Forces. 81 
out members, swallowing it without a mouth, digesting it without a 
stomach, appropriating its nutritious material without absorbent vessels 
or a circulating system, moving from place to place without muscles, 
feeling (if it has any power to do so) without nerves, propagating itself 
without genital apparatus, and not only this, but in many instances 
forming shelly coverings of a symmetry and complexity not surpassed 
by those of any testaceous animals,’* whilst the mere separation 
of a fragment of this jelly is sufficient to originate a new and indepen- 
dent organism, so that any number of these beings may be produced 
by the successive detachment of such particles from a single Rhizopod, 
each of them retaining (so far as we have at present the means of 
knowing) the characteristic endowments of the stock from which it 
was an offset. 
When, on the other hand, we watch the evolution of any of the higher 
types of Organization, whether Vegetable or Animal, we observe that 
although in the first instance the primordial cell multiplies itself by 
duplicative subdivision into an aggregation of cells which are appa- 
rently but repetitions of itself and of each other, this homogeneous 
extension has in each case a definite limit, speedily giving place to a 
structural differentiation which becomes more and more decided with 
the progress of development; until, in that most heterogeneous of all 
types—the Human Organism—no two parts are precisely identical, 
except those which correspond to each other on the opposite sides of 
the body. With this structural differentiation is associated a corres- 
ponding differentiation of function ; for whilst in the Life of the most 
highly developed and complex organism we witness no act which is not 
foreshadowed, however vaguely, in that of the lowest and simplest, yet 
we observe in it that same “division of labour” which constitutes the 
essential characteristic of the highest grade of Civilization. For in 
what may be termed the elementary form of Human Society, in which 
every individual relies upon himself alone for the supply of all his 
wants, no greater result can be obtained by the aggregate action of the 
entire community than its mere maintenance ; but as each individual 
selects a special mode of activity for himself, and aims at improvement 
in that speciality, he finds himself attaining a higher and yet higher 
degree of aptitude for it; and this specialization tends to increase as 
opportunities arise for new modes of activity, until that complex fabric 
is evolved which constitutes the most developed form of the Social 
State, wherein every individual finds the work—mental or bodily—for 
which he is best fitted, and in which he may reach the highest attain- 
able perfection ; while the mutual dependence of the whole (which is 
the necessary result of this specialization of parts) is such that every 
individual works for the benefit of all his fellows, as well as for his 
own. Asitis only in such a state of society that the greatest triumphs 
of human ability become possible, so it is only in the most differen- 
tiated types of Organization that Vital Activity can present its highest 
manifestations. In the one case as in the other does the result 
depend upon a process of gradual development, in which, under the 
* See the Author's ‘Introduction to the Study of the Foraminifera,’ published 
by the Ray Society, 1862: Preface, p. vii. 
VOL. I. G 
