CHAPTER III 



The Mind of the Simplest Animals 

 § 8. The Structure and Behavior of Amoeha 



We have seen in the last chapter that no one can prove 

 the absence of consciousness in even the simplest forms of 

 living beings. It is therefore perfectly allowable to spec- 

 ulate as to what may be the nature of such consciousness, 

 provided that the primitive organisms concerned possess it. 

 Perfectly allowable, yet also perfectly useless, many authori- 

 ties would argue ; the remoteness of the creatures from our- 

 selves in structure and behavior renders theorizing about 

 their conscious experience, which is probably non-existent 

 and certainly unimaginable in any definite terms by us, the 

 idlest form of mental exercise. 



Undeniably the formation of a positive notion regarding 

 the character and content of psychic states in the mind, say 

 of an Amoeba, is next door to an impossibility. Yet it may 

 not be wholly a waste of time if we spend a few pages in the 



Sttempt to discover wherein the simplest type of mind, sup- 

 osing it to he that belonging to the simplest type of animal, 

 ..ecessarily differs from our own. Some light, perhaps, may 

 be cast upon the growth of mental life in complexity if we 

 try to make clear to ourselves what primitive consciousness 

 is not, though we may not be able to find in our own experi- 

 ence any elements that shall properly represent what it is. 

 The first need is evidently information about the structure 

 and the behavior of a primitive animal. For this purpose 



38 



