WHAT MAY BE LEARNED FROM EOZOON 155 



thinkers limit their conceptions altogether to physical force in 

 matters of this kind. The merely materialistic physiologist is 

 really in no better position than the savage who quails before 

 the thunderstorm, or rejoices in the solar warmth, and seeing 

 no force or power beyond, fancies himself in the immediate 

 presence of his God. In Eozoon we must discern not only a 

 mass of jelly but a being endowed with that higher vital force 

 which surpasses vegetable life, and also physical and chemical 

 forces ; and in this animal energy we must see an emanation 

 from a Will higher than our own, ruling vitality itself ; and 

 this not merely to the end of constructing the skeleton of a 

 Protozoon, but of elaborating all the wonderful developments 

 of life that were to follow in succeeding ages, and with re- 

 ference to which the production and growth of this creature 

 were initial steps. It is this mystery of design which really 

 constitutes the " profound significance " of the foraminiferal 

 skeleton. 



Another phenomenon of animality forced upon our notice 

 by the Protozoa is that of the conditions of life in animals not 

 individual, as we are, but aggregative and cumulative in in- 

 definite masses. What, for instance, the relations to each 

 other of the Polyps, growing together in a coral mass, or the 

 separate parts of a Sponge, or the separate lobes of a Foram- 

 inifer. In the case of the Polyps we may believe that there 

 is special sensation in the tentacles and oral opening of each 

 individual, and that each may experience hunger when in 

 want, or satisfaction when it is filled with food, and that in- 

 juries to one part of the mass may indirectly affect other parts, 

 but that the nutrition of the whole mass may be as much 

 unfelt by the individual Polyps as the processes going on in 

 our own liver are by us. So in the case of a large Sponge, or 

 Foraminifer, there may be some special sensation in individual 

 cells, pseudopods, or segments, and the general sensation may 

 be very limited, while unconscious living powers pervade the 



