"INTELLIGENCE" IN THE PROTOZOA 95 



life. I am anxious not to appear to parody the view 

 and I shall quote a typical presentment of it from 

 a Huxley IMemorial Lecture, recently delivered by 

 Professor Bergson in the University of Birmingham. 

 It is almost a joke, a bad joke, that the following 

 passages form part of a Huxley IMemorial Lect;are. 

 Speaking of the Amoeba, which is one of the uni- 

 cellular animals with least visible structure, con- 

 sisting of a nucleated mass of protoplasm, Bergson 

 said : 



" This mass can change its shape at will ... it 

 is therefore vaguely conscious. Now, in order to 

 develop and evolve, two courses are open to it. 

 Either it may follow the path towards movement, 

 action . . . action growing more and more complex, 

 more and more deliberate and free, as time goes on ; 

 this means adventure and risk, but means also a 

 consciousness more and more wide-awake and 

 luminous." 



Again : — 



" With the coming of life we see the appearance of 

 indetermination. A living being, no matter how 

 simple, is a reservoir of indetermination and unfore- 

 seeability, a reservoir of possible actions or, in a 

 word, of choice." 



This device of carrying consciousness and choice 

 backwards is not limited to philosophers ; it has 

 invaded some exact investigators on the strictly 

 technical side of zoology. My friend, Mr. E. Heron- 

 Allen, for instance, who has been engaged for some 

 years on a patient study of the Foraminifera, a 

 group of Protozoa characterized by the possession 

 of shells of beautiful and varied structure, ascribes 



