Its Composite and Dissoluble Nature. 169 



esoteric property, or primal ingredient, of living matter 

 by virtue of which the sentient ions combine in the 

 "atom," the atoms in the self-mobile molecule of proto- 

 plasm. For that great mystery, matter, is not a dead 

 fabric, but an ever-living, sentient, self- moving substance. 

 Out of this ever-living substance the physiological cell, as 

 we find it in the human organism, has developed by a 

 complexity of evolution which, if we could see it micro- 

 scopically unfolded, would rival even that congeries of 

 interlacing neurons in the human cerebrum. Yet we now 

 make this neuron the unit of brain architecture. The 

 infinitesimally minute fibrils by which ion established 

 sentient relationship with ion, to form protoplasmic mole- 

 cules and set up the personality of a cell, are invisible, as 

 yet, mei'ely a matter of conjecture. But the wonderful 

 mechanism of filaments by means of which the brain cells 

 establish sentient coutact to form the human personality, 

 is now visible. 



By means of this elate, retractile mechanism, this vast 

 network of feelers, each cell of the brain is able to pool 

 its self-life in the grand merger of brain life, but resumes 

 that self-life again when, by shrinkage or retraction of the 

 network of filaments, sentient contact with other cells is 

 broken. From such sentient contact, thus induced and 

 brought about, the larger personality ensues. Yet we 

 merely see here on a large scale with millions of cells, 

 what occurs when two, or three, or a hundred unicells 



