The Message of Science. 43 



century in man, and in the whale, the carp and the 

 elephant for two centuries. 



In plant life as we now view it, banding together has 

 not been as advantageous for the saprophytic cell. We 

 have trees two thousand years old ; but so far as we at 

 present understand the arboreal economy, the vegetable 

 cellules are not long-lived. This would follow, a priori, 

 from the far less perfect organization of plants, the more 

 crude food supplied to the cells, imperfect protection and 

 the apparently inferior sentience of the cells themselves. 

 The contrast but emphasizes the deduction made for the 

 physiological cell, namely, that it has attained its pre- 

 eminence by perfecting the organic union of which it is a 

 unit. And the inference has sometimes been drawn that 

 could the metazoon as seen in the animal organism be 

 given a more perfect development, the component cells 

 would reach that acme of natural salvation for which they 

 have striven for two millions of centuries and would 

 become, in very truth, deathless cells-of-life. 



There is no more wonderful and grandly instructive 

 spectacle in nature than this widespread and long-extended 

 effort of the globe's unicellular life to save and preserve 

 itself from hardship, accident, " disease," and death. 

 Nor has the effort been "instinctive " in any other sense 

 than all sentience is instinctive. From the subjective 

 side of life, the primitive unicells of the ancient earth 

 began to live together for mutual comfort, aid, and pro- 



