2i8 The Study of A^iimal Life part in 



ments, they cannot be the expression of any individual consciousness, 

 for the individuality has been cut in pieces." 



The dilemma is obvious ; either there are no psychical processes 

 in the Protists, or they are inseparable from the molecular changes 

 which occur in tlie parts of the material substance. 



If no psychical processes occur in the Protists, where do they 

 begin ? There is no distinct point in the animal series at which a 

 nervous system may be said to make its first appearance. If there 

 are none, even rudimentarily, in the Protists, then these simple 

 organisms do not potentially include the life of higher organisms. 

 If there are none in the Protists, are there any in the germs from 

 which men develop? 



Verworn seizes the other horn of the dilemma, maintaining that 

 the superficial observers are wrong in crediting the Protozoa with 

 their own intelligence or with some of it, but right in concluding 

 that psychical processes of some sort are there. But since he 

 cannot in any way locate these processes, since he finds that even 

 small fragments retain their life for a time and behave much as the 

 entire cells did, he maintains that all life is psychical. 



7. History of the Protozoa. — We know that the Protozoa 

 have lived on the earth for untold ages, for the shells of Fora- 

 minifera and others may be disentombed from almost the oldest 

 rocks. The word Protozoa, a translation of the German Urthiere or 

 primitive animals, suggests that the Protozoa are not only the 

 simplest, but the first animals, or the unprogressive descendants of 

 these. Nowadays we can hardly feign to consider this proposition 

 startling, for we know that all the higher animals, including our- 

 selves, begin life at the beginning again as single cells. From the 

 division and redivision of an apparently simple fertilised egg-cell an 

 embryo is built up which grows from stage to stage till it is 

 hatched, let us say, as a chick. It is only necessary to extend this 

 to the wider history of the race. What the egg is to the chick the 

 original Protozoa were to the animal series ; the present Protozoa 

 are like eggs which have lived on as such without making much 

 progress. 



We do not know how the Protozoa began to be upon the earth, 

 whether they originated from not living matter or in some yet more 

 mysterious w^ay. The German naturalist Oken, a prominent type 

 of the school of " Natural Philosophers" who flourished about the 

 beginning of this century, dreamed of a primitive living slime 

 {Urschleim) \\\i\Q)[\. arose in the sea from inorganic material. His 

 dream was prophetic of the modern discoveiy of very simple forms 

 of life, in connection with one of which there is an interesting and 

 instructive story. That one, perhaps I should say that supposed 

 one, was called Bathybius, and since those who are eager to make 



