234 From Matter to Man. 



As in mineral and vegetal intelligence, the chief 

 agent of animal intelligence is again magnetism or 

 electricity. 



A living organic cell or low form of protozoon is, 

 like everything else, composed of magnetic atoms and 

 is a magnet. But as shown, it is more, — it is a living 

 magnet, worked by a natural magnetic battery. But 

 a magnetic battery composed of organic elements in 

 solution must exhibit a different energy from a 

 galvanic battery. Even as an iron magnet shows by 

 its action that it knows of the presence of another 

 iron magnet by attracting or repelling the stranger, 

 so the animal magnet and battery have a similar 

 knowledge of the presence of organisms, composed of 

 like or unlike material to it, which approach it. Thus 

 is it enabled to feed by absorbing like organisms, and 

 save itself by repelling or fleeing from unlike organ- 

 isms. The whole of low animal intelligence is thus 

 animal magnetism, or animal attraction and re- 

 pulsion. 



When cells aggregate and form larger and more 

 complex animals, the battery, as well as the muscular 

 and nervous machinery connected with it, becomes 

 also more complex. We have thus seen that the 

 nervous machinery forms first into ganglia, then 

 larger nerve-centres, and lastly brains, connected with 

 sense-organs and infinite sub-offices and organs. But 

 the stomach or battery remains practically the same 

 in all, an organ which dissolves food or material by 

 chemical action, and so produces an energy identical 



