CHAPTER VI 



THE CCENOCYTIC INDIVIDUAL 



We naturally expect that the next step in the evolution of 

 living Continuity will be the Lateral Continuity of filaments 

 or single-cell series, and this we find to be the case. But 

 Nature presents us with this intensification of Continuity in 

 two distinct forms. One of these is what might be termed 

 irregular, and occupies a place of its own, and it is to the 

 Individuals exhibiting it that the term " ccenocytic " has 

 been here applied. 



It cannot be denied that Ccenocytic manifest a higher form 

 of Continuity than Filamentous Individuals, but at the 

 same time there is every reason to believe that the evolution 

 of the former has proceeded on a side-path, and that none 

 of the higher forms of Continuity have evolved from the 

 CcBnocytic. No existing organism or Individual in Nature 

 is, as it were, a milepost on the main road of evolution except 

 in the matter of the Continuity it may exhibit, for fundamentally 

 the evolution of the human species has been through primitive 

 types which existed long ago and whose Continuity alone is 

 still with us in certain present-day types. But a ccenocytic 

 was probably never one of these primitive types. Ccanocytic 

 Continuity evolved on a side-path, and though possibly 

 through the intensification of some form of primitive Fila- 

 mentous Continuity, from it evolved no higher form. The 

 truth of this will be more evident when later pages make it 

 clear that Continuity has evolved by a process of steady 

 multiplication, Serial alternating with Lateral Continuity. 



Ccenocytic Individuals are as a whole represented by those 

 organisms called Fungi, though a few Algae are also ccenocytic ; 

 and as examples we may briefly refer to the common moulds, 

 of which Mucor is typical. 



