Picture - Cosmic Polymath

198 DESIGN IN NATURE
processes of inorganic nature with the mental hfe of the highest animals. For all these phenomena—indeed, for
all phenomena both in nature and in the mind—Lamarck takes exclusively mechanical, physical, and chemical
activities to be the true efficient causes. Darwin refers them to natural selection. . . . All the phenomena of
the psychic life are, without exception, bound up with certain material changes in the living substance of the body,
the frotoflasm. We have given to that part of the protoplasm which seems to be the indispensable substratum
of psychic life the name of fsychoflasm (the soul-substance in the monistic sense) ; in other words, we do not
attribute any peculiar ' essence ' to it, but we consider the psyche to be merely a collective idea of all the psychic
functions of protoplasm. In this sense the ' soul ' is merely a physiological abstraction like ' assimilation ' or
' generation.' . . In the unicellular protista, the psychoplasm is identified either with the whole of the living
protoplasm of the simple cell or with a portion of it. In all cases, in the lowest as well as the highest stages of
the psychological hierarchy, a certain chemical composition and a certain physical activity of the psychoplasm
are indispensable before the ' soul ' can function or act. That is equally true of the elementary psychic function
of the plasmatic sensation and movement of the protozoa, and of the complex functions of the sense-organs and
the brain in the higher animals and man. The activity of the psychoplasm, which we call the ' soul,' is always
connected with metabohsm. ... All living organisms without exception have the faculty of spontaneous movement,
in contradistinction to the rigidity and inertia of imorganised substances (for example, crystals) ; in other words,
certain changes of place of the particles occur in the hving psychoplasm from internal causes, which have their
source in its own chemical composition. ... At the lowest stage of organisation, in the lowest protists, the
stimuli of the outer world (heat, hght, electricity, &c.), cause in the indifferent protoplasm only those indispensable
movements of growth and nutrition which are common to all organisms and are absolutely necessary for their
preservation. That is also the case in most of the plants. .
. . The
automatic and the reflex movements which
we observe everywhere, even in the unicellular protists, seem to be the outcome of inchnations which are insepar-
ably connected with the very idea of Hfe. Even in the plants and lowest animals these inchnations, or tropisms,
seem to be the joint outcome of the inchnations of all the combined individual cells. When two cells meet as
a result of copulation, or when they are brought into contact through artificial fertilisation] (in the fishes, for
instance), they attract each other and become firmly attached. The main cause of this cellular attraction is a
chemical sensitive action of the protoplasm, allied to smell or taste, which we call ' erotic chemicotropism ;
' it may
also be correctly (both in the chemical and the romantic sense) termed cellular afiinity or ' sexual cell-love.' On
a critical study of these different embryonic formations, the evolution of which from each other we can directly
observe under the microscope, we arrive, by means of the great law of biogeny, at a series of most important con-
clusions as to the chief stages in the development of our psychic Hfe. We may distinguish (1) UniceUular protozoa
with a simple cell-soul : the infusoria. (2) Multicellular protozoa with a communal soul : the catallacta. (3) The
earliest metazoa with an epitheUal soul : the platodes. . . . The
earliest ancestors of man and all other animals
were unicellular protozoa. This fundamental hypothesis of rational phylogeny is based, in virtue of the phylo-
genetic law, on the familiar embryological fact that every man, Hke every other metazoon (that is, every multi-
cellular organism with tissues), begins his personal existence as a simple cell, the stem-cell (cytula), or the
impregnated egg-cell. As this cell has a ' soul ' from the commencement, so had also the corresponding unicellular,
ancestral forms, which were represented in the oldest series of man's ancestors by a number of different protozoa.
. . . Every
living cell has psychic properties, and the psychic Hfe of the multicellular animals and plants is merely
the sum-total of the psychic functions of the cells which build up their structure. In the lower groups (in algse
and sponges for instance) all the cells of the body have an equal share in it (or with very slight differences) ; in
the higher groups, in harmony with the law of the ' division of labour,' only a select
— ' the soul-cells.' . . . We
portion of them are involved
find the highest development of the animal cell-soul in the class of ciliata, or ciHated
infusoria. The unicellular protozoa give proof of the possession of a highly-developed ' cell-soul,' which is of great
interest for a correct decision as to the psyche of our earHest unicellular ancestors. . . . The
tissue-soul (histo-
psyche) : in all multicellular, tissue-forming plants (metaphyta) and in the lowest, nerveless classes of tissue-forming
animals (metazoa) we have to distinguish two different forms of psychic activity—namely (1) the psyche of the
individual ceHs which compose the tissue, and (2) the psyche of the tissue itself, or of the '
cell-state ' which is
made up of the tissues. This ' tissue-soul ' is the higher psychological function which gives physiological indi-
viduaHty to the compound multicellular organism as a true ' cell-commonwealth.' It controls all the separate
' cell-souls ' of the social cells—the mutually dependent ' citizens ' which constitute the community. .
. . The
plant-soul [phytopsyche) is, in our view, the summary of the entire psychic activity of the tissue-forming multi-
cellular plant (the metaphyton, as distinct from the unicellular protophyton). .
. The
soul of the nerveless metazoa.
Of very special interest for comparative psychology in general, and for the phylogeny of the animal soul in
particular, is the psychic activity of those lower metazoa which have tissues, and sometimes differentiated organs.