154 WHAT MAY BE LEARNED FROM EOZOON 



tubuli and canals is in principle similar to that involved in the 

 canals, cells, and canalicules of bone. The Amoeba, of course, 

 knows neither more nor less of this than the average English- 

 man. It is altogether a matter of unconscious growth. The 

 process in the Protozoa strikes some minds, however, as the 

 more wonderful of the two. It is, says an eminent modern 

 physiologist, a matter of "profound significance" that this 

 "particle of jelly [the sarcode of a Foraminifer] is capable of 

 guiding physical ' forces in such a manner as to give rise to 

 these exquisite and almost mathematically arranged structures." 

 Respecting the structures themselves there is no exaggeration 

 in this. No arch or dome framed by human skill is more 

 perfect in beauty or in the realization of mechanical ideas than 

 the tests of some Foraminifera, and none is so complete and 

 wonderful in its internal structure. The particle of jelly, how- 

 ever, is a figure of speech. The body of the humblest Foram- 

 inifer is much more than this. It is an organism with divers 

 parts, and it is endowed with the mysterious forces of life which 

 in it guide the physical forces, just as they do in building up 

 phosphate of lime in our bones, or indeed, just as the will of 

 the architect does in building a palace. The profound signi- 

 ficance which this has, reaches beyond the domain of the 

 physical and vital, even to the spiritual. It clings to all our 

 conceptions of living things : " quite as much, for example, to 

 the evolution of an animal with all its parts from a one-celled 

 germ, as to the connection of brain cells with the manifesta- 

 tions of intelligence." Viewed in this way, we may share with 

 the author of the sentence I have quoted his feeling of venera- 

 tion in the presence of this great wonder of animal life, " burn- 

 ing, and not consumed," nay, building up, and that in many 

 and beautiful forms. We may realize it most of all in the 

 presence of the organism which was perhaps the first to mani- 

 fest on our planet these marvellous powers. We must, how- 

 ever, here also, beware of that credulity which makes too many 



