OF L WEST A ND HIGHEST LIFE. x 5 9 



kinds of life. He seems to see the results of motive, work- 

 ing not only in the complex organism of man and other 

 higher animals, but in the living jelly-speck, without per- 

 ceiving that what he terms motive is essentially different in 

 the two cases. Motive can be proved to exist only when 

 expressed through a complex mechanism as in the first case. 

 But of such a mechanism there is neither a vestige nor a 

 germ, nor an analogue to be detected in the jelly-speck, nor 

 in any form of bioplasm. The observable acts performed 

 by the lowest and highest forms of life are essentially 

 different, and are brought about in different ways though life 

 is common to all. Now Mr. Snow tells us that " irritability 

 involves sentience, sentience involves consciousness and 

 self-consciousness, and these involve omniscience," and says 

 he can defend what he is saying. But I venture to think in 

 the supposed sentience and consciousness of the amoeba, we 

 are dealing with something very different from the sentience 

 of the higher animals and the sentience and consciousness 

 of man. For if not I must indeed admit that every one of 

 my white blood corpuscles, nay, every particle of bioplasm 

 of my tissues, which certainly exhibit irritability, therefore 

 possess sentience and consciousness, but this is absurd. 

 Either these things do not possess sentience and conscious- 

 ness, or there are two kinds of sentience and consciousness, 

 one common to all kinds of bioplasm, the other manifested 

 only through the intervention of a highly complex mechanism 

 by a very limited portion of the bioplasm of the highest 

 organisms in nature. 



Because Mr. Snow " cannot draw a line between con- 

 sciousness and unconsciousness, or say, where conscious- 

 ness begins," he seems to expect us to attribute " motives " 



