262 HAS SCIENCE DISCOVERED GOD? 



nity goes on. Moreover, it is instructive to realise 

 that their specific activities depend not only on them- 

 selves but on their surroundings. They carry on 

 whatever work is necessary in the particular place they 

 find themselves. If wax is needed, they proceed to 

 make it: if wax is provided, they proceed to shape it: 

 if they find it already shaped, they fill it with honey. 

 Any one bee does what is wanted at that particular 

 place, adding to the labours of his predecessors the 

 quota demanded. The guiding influence seems repre- 

 sented by a communal instinct which does not belong 

 to the individual but to the whole community. 



It appears to be much the same with the cells of 

 the body. Where a hair is required, there it is built 

 up by the cells which find themselves in that position : 

 where a nerve needs renewal it is renewed. And so 

 the parts of the body are constructed and maintained; 

 and the waste products are cleared away automatically 

 and instinctively, without any attention from conscious- 

 ness, so long as the body is in a state of health. The 

 cells can be diverted from their proper work by ab- 

 normal secretions and poisons, and then abnormal 

 structures are produced, with resulting pain and per- 

 haps death to the organism as a whole. The organism 

 may have an individual identity, but the cells compos- 

 ing it apparently have not. The ingredients in food 

 are sorted out and planted automatically in the place 

 required by the whole organism, the identity of which 

 does not depend on the identity of the particles, for 

 they are in a constant state of flux. 



At a lower grade we find something of the same 



