The Message of Science. 25 



malformation, two or more cells began to live united 

 together, and to act in unison — the earliest metazoon ! 

 Or, as some biologists conjecture, an unusually tough cell 

 wall, or membrane, may have restricted the ordinary 

 course of multiplication by fission. The offspring or 

 increase of a certain protozoon may have been unable to 

 separate from the parent cell, to lead an individual life 

 apart, as formerly, and thus two or more protozoa may 

 have come to live together, in sentient, protoplasmic 

 contact as one life, and to act for a common interest. 



It is not essential to our argument to show how meta- 

 zoons began. The point made is, that they came into exist- 

 ence and, beyond doubt, originated from the unicellular 

 life which antedated them. In some way two or more 

 cell^ contrived to merge their hitherto separate lives in 

 one. Their separate sentiences were pooled, so to speak, in 

 one consentient life. 



This was accomplished by means of close protoplasmic 

 contact, when the two hitherto separate cell lives coalesced, 

 like two drops of 'water on a window-pane. For it is 

 possible for two cells to live as one and form a single life 

 or self-conscious existence, if there is close protoplasmic 

 connection between the two, that is to say, if they touch 

 each other, or are joined together by one or more threads 

 of the sentient living matter. When this occurs, the two 

 cells may have one common life, or soul, in place of the 

 two lives previous to the union. One common life may 



