INTELLIGENCE OF THE CELL 217 



sense-organs and their nerves and centers must be com- 

 bined in the association-centers and elaborated in the con- 

 scious thought-centers. The conducting path which 

 unites a sense-organ with the cerebral cortex, or the lat- 

 ter with a muscle, appears as a chain of living individuals 

 of which every member, although always dependent upon 

 its neighbors, still leads a separate life, the specific char- 

 acter of which is generally different in the different parts 

 of the nervous system." 



This description goes on further and shows how the 

 brain is simply groups of cells, each group having charge 

 of their particular department of the work; and that dis- 

 ease or destruction of a particular place or part of the 

 brain, destroys a particular faculty. It states : 



"Thus disease of the speech-centre, in the third frontal 

 convolution, destroys the power of speech ; the destruc- 

 tion of the visual region (in the occipital convolutions) 

 does away with the power of sight; the lesion of the tem- 

 poral convolutions destroys hearing. When cells in 

 charge of the work are destroyed the business stops." 



Mr. Haeckel makes the following statement in refer- 

 ence to the basis of morality. He goes on to show how 

 the idea of morality was first conceived by the cells, when 

 they began to work together for the common good of all, 

 that is, when they began to associate themselves into com- 

 munities, and with their united efforts produced those 

 structures we call plants and animals. He says : 



"We find, even among these unicellulars (first pro- 

 tophyta, then protozoa), the important principle which 

 lies at the base of morality, association, or the formation 

 of communities. The adaptation of the united cell-in- 

 dividuals to each other and to the common environment 

 is the physiological foundation of the first traces of moral- 

 ity among the protists. All the unicellulars that abandon 



