Note 478 — Chapter IX · ON CONCRETIONS, SPICULES, AND SPICULAR SKELETONS (continued 2)

The whole phenomenon is described by biologists as a “surprising exhibition of constructive and selective activity,” and is ascribed, in varying phraseology, to intelligence, skill, purpose, psychical activity, or “microscopic mentality”: that is to say, to Galen’s τεχνικὴ φύσις, or “artistic creativeness” (cf. Brock’s Galen, 1916, p. xxix). Cf. Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 1874, p. 41; Norman, Architectural achievements of Little Masons, etc., Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist. (5), I, p. 284, 1878; Heron-Allen, Contributions ... to the Study of the Foraminifera, Phil. Trans. (B), CCVI, pp. 227–279, 1915; Theory and Phenomena of Purpose and Intelligence exhibited by the Protozoa, as illustrated by selection and behaviour in the Foraminifera, Journ. R. Microscop. Soc. pp. 547–557, 1915; ibid., pp. 137–140, 1916. Prof. J. A. Thomson (New Statesman, Oct. 23, 1915) describes a certain little foraminifer, whose protoplasmic body is overlaid by a crust of sponge-spicules, as “a psycho-physical individuality whose experiments in self-expression include a masterly treatment of sponge-spicules, and illustrate that organic skill which came before the dawn of Art.” Sir Ray Lankester finds it “not difficult to conceive of the existence of a mechanism in the protoplasm of the Protozoa which selects and rejects building-material, and determines the shapes of the structures built, comparable to that mechanism which is assumed to exist in the nervous system of insects and other animals which ‘automatically’ go through wonderfully elaborate series of complicated actions.” And he agrees with “Darwin and others [who] have attributed the building up of these inherited mechanisms to the age-long action of Natural Selection, and the survival of those individuals possessing qualities or ‘tricks’ of life-saving value,” J. R. Microsc. Soc. April, 1916, p. 136.