74 
Life and Us Basis. 
[February, 
germinal cell, — that mystery of mysteries, as the Duke of 
Argyll rightly terms it, the nucleated cell on which the 
future organism is built up ? Or, to put it in another form, 
Is the ' anima ’ identical with the life of that cell and of those 
which are added to it in the process of growth ? and is it, 
therefore, virtually an aggregation of such lives ? The 
notion appears to be inconsistent with the essential unity of 
the animal mind, for the living state of those component cells 
is perpetually ceasing, upon their becoming ‘formed matter,’ 
and they are also for ever leaving the body and being re- 
placed by new cells. I therefore contend that the life of 
the ‘anima’ is not identical with this cellular vitality in 
animal organisms. The ‘ anima ’ is, of course connected 
with those living cells, and this : connection is made de- 
pendent to a great extent upon certain conditions, which 
we call health or disease, of those cells. Yet the ‘ anima’ 
does not depart when a small portion of blood is shed, 
although its corpuscles possessed this cellular life. Nor, on 
the other hand, does the cellular vitality instantly cease with 
the death of the organism as a whole. As their termination 
therefore is not absolutely contemporaneous, so neither 
need their commencement be so : that is, the union of the 
‘ anima ’ with the embryo may take place at any period of 
utero-gestation. Whenever it does occur, at that moment 
it becomes a separate, or rather a distinct, individual. 
But whence this ‘ anima ’ ? Is it really to be considered a 
‘ detached portion ’ of the parental ‘ anima ’ ? or is it an 
aCtual creation ? If the noble author above quoted is justi- 
fied in seeing in the nucleated cell which is the germ of the 
future animal (see Art. in “Contemporary Review”) “the 
great work of creation,” much more may the imparting of 
that ‘ anima ’ which constitutes the living creature itself, be 
properly so designated. 
If we suppose the material organism to be formed from 
the substance of the parent animal, conveyed to its destined 
point by the blood, this would not be creation, but formation 
out of pre-existing matter. But the giving of existence to a 
new ‘ anima ’ maybe rightly so termed ; and it must there- 
fore be conceded, that this is the direCt aCt of the Creator. 
This union then, however and whenever made, is the con- 
ferring of life in the higher sense ; it is the making not 
merely a living atom of protoplasm, but a living being. 
But the Creator of the ‘ soul ’ is at the same time forming 
— building up — its habitation ; at first within special organs 
appropriated to that work in the body of the parent animal ; 
and after its birth into the outer world, the process is con- 
