78 THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE AND MIND 



point of view is the most important advance made in that 

 science since the days of its founder" (Geschichte der 

 Philosophic seit Kant, p. 497). This is a sensible estimate. 

 As long as you take the fully developed consciousness of a 

 modern man and set it crudely over against inorganic 

 nature, it is easy to see a vast gulf between the two. But 

 the procedure is about as scientific as that of the savage 

 who pronounced a watch to have a soul because it was so 

 different from any inanimate thing he had seen. When, on 

 the other hand, we trace the mind of the European back 

 through the series of prehistoric skulls to the ape-man of 

 Java and the extinct ape-forms of the Tertiary period ; 

 when we see the mind of the ape sinking gradually into 

 that of the opossum, the duck-bill, the lizard, the salamander, 

 the mud-fish, the shark, and the ostracod, until it ends 

 in the feeblest glimmering of psychic force, we have taken 

 a most important step towards the explanation of the mind. 

 Let us proceed the inverse way, and trace the upward 

 evolution of mind, and see whether at any point there is 

 so new and striking a departure that we must draw on an 

 " immaterial world " to explain it. 



There is a distinct psychic life in the unicellular amoebae 

 and radiolaria and infusoria. The amoeba shrinks from an 

 acid or from the point of a needle. The radiolarian will 

 build up a most beautiful flinty structure to dwell in, that 

 only a consummate sculptor could reproduce. The 

 infusorian is very sensitive to an electric current, and 

 differently sensitive to different currents. Is the sensitive- 

 ness of the amoeba to acid or of the Paramxdum to 



