The Message of Science. 47 



The answer would seem to be no, as regards the in- 

 dividual cell, and yes, as regards the consentient union of 

 cells as displayed in the brain and mind of animals and 

 man. And if yes, what has already been accomplished in 

 this larger corporate capacity? Union and organization 

 are manifestly the order and method of all life on the 

 earth. Since the cell banded in the metazoons and made 

 a grand gain for itself in so doing, we might naturally 

 look for unions of metazoons for mutual benefit and prog- 

 ress. But here, as against such actual unions by contact, 

 the physical laws of the globe of matter on which we live 

 interpose obstacles. We cannot have sixty millions of 

 men, or monkeys, or elephants living in a ball, like volvox. 

 Contact-union for mutual aid, defense, protection, com- 

 fort, and improved food is limited. If we attempted to 

 unite or blend a nation of people as a metazoon, or even 

 make it resemble one in the matter of consentience, as, for 

 example, the eighty or more millions in the United States, 

 or the forty millions of Great Britain, every person, or 

 citizen, would need to be represented as almost wholly de- 

 prived of locomotion, and seated, as if at a desk or table, 

 in one place, where food and the material for his work 

 were brought to him in ducts and tubes. Still further, it 

 would be necessary to conceive of them all as built in and 

 encased by the substances which they manufacture. 

 Further still, and most essential of all to the truth and 

 pertinence of the simile, we should need to depict every 



