34 Natural Salvation. 



must be respite and recuperation for the constituent cells. 

 Accordingly we find that after ten or fifteen hours the 

 consentient strain is relieved ; the union is disrupted. 

 Sleep ensues. Suddenly, as suddenly as it began, the 

 brain cells let go hands. The filaments are retracted. 

 Contact is broken. Each cell resumes its individual life, 

 becomes itself again, self-conscious, and attends to its own 

 personal affairs nutrition, elimination of waste products, 

 rest, growth. 



But the instant the cells resume self -life, the human 

 intellect has ceased, as when electric contact is broken, 

 unconsciousness supervenes. 



Why, it may be asked, why and how did the first two 

 or more protozoons come to unite their self-lives in one 

 larger self ? From what seems accident of the environ- 

 ment, on the objective side ; and for greater comfort, ease, 

 and safety, on the subjective side ; or rather when accident, 

 or " the law of chance," had initiated the innovation, the 

 subjective comfort which resulted from it led to a volun- 

 tary and wilful continuance of the new mode of living. 



For by thus uniting, a division of the hard labor of 

 living was possible; the single cell was no longer com- 

 pelled to face the world alone and perform all the various 

 kinds of labor which the act of living necessitated. After 

 combining, one cell could do one kind of work and con- 

 fine itself to that, and another, another kind. One cell, 

 or group of cells, could attend to locomotion, as in volvox. 



