ii Natural Salvation. 



united of their own accord, as sentient creatures, to 

 form the metazoa, and that the human organism, the 

 human brain, has resulted from a plan- or design on their 

 part to better themselves and rise in the scale of exis- 

 tence, looking to cell imrhortality ? " 



The answer is, no; nor has any such position been 

 taken in Natural Salvation. We do not know how 

 or why cells combined, whether by accidental cohering, or 

 because they derived some immediate advantage of safety 

 or food by keeping together. We have no more sup- 

 posed that the combining unicells had a far-reaching de- 

 sign, or foresaw the results of their unions, than that the 

 individual locusts of a swarm foresee the famine that may 

 follow its flight; or that the individual hoplite under 

 Xenophon, who marched with Cyrus the Younger, foresaw 

 that this immortal expedition would open the way to the 

 victories of Alexander and the third great empire of 

 antiquity. 



We do not suppose that the unicell of the Silurian 

 beach foresaw its apotheosis in the brain neuron of a 

 Webster, a Washington, or a Lincoln. The cell but 

 chose to do what felt best for itself ; or it may even have 

 been coerced to what it did by the merest accident of its 

 environment. 



It would neither add nor detract from our present esti- 

 mate of the impersonality of cosmos, were we to learn 

 that all the metazoons, including mankind, started from 



