THE CELL-SOUL 



plasm, everywhere exhibits the same psychic proper- 

 ties of sensibility or irritability, and motive power or 

 will. The only difference is this, that in the organism 

 of the higher animals and plants the numerous collected 

 cells, to a great extent, give up their individual inde- 

 pendence, and are subject, like good citizens, to the 

 soul-polity which represents the unity of the will and 

 sensations in the cell community. We here also must 

 distinguish clearly between the central soul of the 

 whole many-celled organism or the personal psyche 

 (the person-soul), and the particular individual soul or 

 elementary soul of the individual cells constituting 

 that organism (the cell-soul). Their relations are 

 strikingly illustrated in the instructive group of Sipho- 

 nophora, as I have briefly shown in my article on 

 ' The Cell-soul and Soul-cells " (Deutsche Eundschau, 

 July 1878). Beyond a doubt the whole stock or 

 polity of Siphonophora has a very definite united will 

 and a united sensibility, and yet each of the indivi- 

 dual persons of which this stock (or Cormus) is com- 

 posed has its own personal will and its own particular 

 sensations. Each of these persons indeed was originally 

 a separate Medusa, and the individual Siphonophora 

 stock originated, by association and division of labour, 

 out of these united Medusa communities. 



When I developed this theory of the cell-soul and 

 designated it in my Munich address as the "surest 





