APPLICATION OF FOREGOING PRINCIPLES. 71 



for great intelligence and skill." Now if an amceba can 

 do that, for which a workman would receive credit as 

 for a highly skilful and intelligent performance, the 

 amceba should receive no less credit than the work- 

 man ; he should also be no less credited with skill and 

 intelligence, which words unquestionably involve a 

 distinct consciousness of needs and an action directed 

 by an intention of its own. So that Dr. Carpenter 

 seems rather to blow hot and cold with one breath. 

 Nevertheless there can be no doubt to which side the 

 minds of the great majority of mankind will incline 

 upon the evidence before them; they will say that 

 the creature is highly reasonable and intelligent, 

 though they would readily admit that long practice 

 and familiarity may have exhausted its powers of 

 attention to all the stages of its own performance, just 

 as a practised workman in building a wall certainly 

 does not consciously follow all the processes which he 

 goes through. 



As an example, however, of the extreme dislike which 

 philosophers of a certain school have for making the 

 admissions which seem somewhat grudgingly conceded 

 by Dr. Carpenter, we may take the paragraph which 

 immediately follows the ones which we have just quoted. 

 Dr. Carpenter there writes : — 



" The writer has often amused himself and others, 

 when by the seaside, with getting a terebella (a marine 

 worm that cases its body in a sandy tube) out of its 

 house, and then, putting it into a saucer of water with 

 a supply of sand and comminuted shell, watching its 

 appropriation of these materials in constructing a new 



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