450 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [ft. a 



amoeba and its kindred, which are neither animal nor vegetal 

 in character, we encounter two diverging lines of develop- 

 ment represented respectively — according to Haeckel'a sur- 

 mise — by those protists with harder envelopes which are the 

 predecessors of the vegetable kingdom, and those protists 

 with softer envelopes which are the forerunners of the more 

 mobile animal type of organization. 1 Confining our attention 

 to animals, we meet first with the ccelenterata, including 

 sponges, corals, and medusa?, characterized by the union of 

 masses of amoeba-like units, with but little specialization of 

 structure or of function. Beside these lowly forms, but not 

 immediately above any one of them, we find echinoderms 

 starting off in one direction, worms or annuloida in a second, 

 and molluscoida in a third. Following the first road, we 

 stop short with echinoderms. But on the second, we find 

 annuloid worms succeeded by articulata, or true annulosa, 

 which re-diverge in sundry directions, reaching the greatest 

 divergence from the primitive forms in the crabs, spiders, 

 find ants. On the third road, we find the molluscoid worms 

 diverging into mollusks and vertebrates. On the one hand, 

 through the bryozoa we are gradually led to the true mollusks, 

 while on the other hand the tunicata, of which the ascidian 

 or " pitcher " (the primitive " tadpole " of unscientific ridi- 

 culers of Darwinism) is the most familiar form, lead us 

 directly to the vertebrates. 2 At first the vertebrata are all 



1 Though I leave this sentence as it was written three years ago, it must 

 not be understood as an unqualified endorsement of Prof. Haeckel's attempt 

 to erect a third kingdom — of Protists —comprising such organisms as are 

 neither distinctively animal nor vegetable. There is something to be said in 

 behalf of such an arrangement, provided no attempt be made to draw a hard 

 and fast line between the protistic and the two higher kingdoms ; and I sup- 

 pose that no follower of Haeckel is likely to make such an attempt. Since 

 a bacterium or a vibrio is clearly not an animal, and clearly not a vegetable, 

 while it is clearly a living thing, there would seem to be some convenience in 

 having a region to which to assign it. I should, however, regard this 

 "region" of protists, or lowest organisms, as not strictly a "kingdom," but 

 rather as the indefinite border-land between the animal and vegetal worlds on 

 the one hand and the realm of inorganic existence on the other. 



a Kowalewsky has discovered some wonderful likenesses between the em- 

 bryonic devel >pment of the ascidian and that of the aniphioxus or lov»eri 



