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Thus, in biology, we used to have interminable discussion as to whether certain single-celled organisms were animals or vegetables, until Haeckel introduced the new apperceptive name of Protista, which ended the disputes. In law courts no tertium quid is recognized between insanity and sanity.
Each cell manifests the functions of life, whether it be a single-celled creature, or a cell which with billions of others, goes to make up a higher form. It feels, feeds, grows, and reproduces itself. In the single-celled creature, the one cell performs all of the functions, of course.
Passing by the simple vital processes of the monera, or single-celled "things," we notice the higher forms of cell life, with growing sensibility or sensation. Then we come to the cell-groups, in which the individual cells manifest sensation of a kind, coupled with a community-sensation. Food is distinguished, selected and captured, and movements exercised in pursuit of the same.
The last-named science teaches us also that a primitive form of soul-activity is already present even in the lowest animals, the single-celled primitive animals, Infusoria and Rhizopoda.
"If the eggs of a mammal now differ very essentially from those of a reptile and of an amphibian because in their organization they represent the beginnings only of mammals, even as these represent only the beginnings of reptiles and amphibians, by how much more must they differ from those hypothetical single-celled amoebas which could as yet show no other characteristics than to reproduce amoebas of their own kind."
Now, that individual is the consequence of his father and mother and his environment, and his father and mother of theirs, and so backwards to the single-celled protoplasm. That individual is a result of the cosmic order, the inevitable product of cause and effect. We know that. We must admit that he is just as much a fact of the universe as a shower of rain or a storm at sea that swallows a ship.
Between these two extremes we have all degrees, from the innumerable cells that build up the body of the highest Vertebrate to the single-celled Worm, and from the myriad cells of the Oak to the single-celled Alga.
Since the development of every organism begins with it, the primitive condition is in no way recapitulated from the time when perhaps only single-celled amoebas existed on our planet.
Every scientific man who has long observed the life-activity of these single-celled Protista, is positively convinced that they also possess a soul; that this "cell-soul" also consists of a sum of sensations, perceptions, and volitions; the feeling, thinking, and willing of our human soul differ from these only in degree.
In the homogeneous plasma of the monera, a firmer central nucleus is separated from a softer outer mass; through this differentiation of nucleus and protoplasm arises the first organic cell. For a long time our planet was inhabited solely by such Protista or single-celled primitive creatures.
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