nally possessed in their free and untrammeled
am[oe]boid stage, just as in the industrial community of the world about
us. And, although their industry in behalf of and devotion to the
welfare of the entire organism is ever to be relied upon, and almost
pathetic in its intensity, yet it has its limits, and when these have
been transgressed they are as ready to "fight for their own hand,"
regardless of previous conventional allegiance, as ever were any of
their ancestors on seashore or rivulet-marge. And such rebellions are
our most terrible disease-processes, cancer and sarcoma. More than this:
while, perhaps, in the majority of cases the cell does yeoman service
for the benefit of the body, in consideration of the rations and fuel
issued to it by the latter, yet in many cases we have the curious, and
at first sight almost humiliating, position of the cell absorbing and
digesting whatever is brought to it, and only turning over the surplus
or waste to the body. It would almost seem as if our lordly _Ego_ was
living upon the waste-products, or leavings, of the cells lining its
food-tube.

Let us take a brief glance at the various specializations and trade
developments, which have taken place in the different groups of cells,
and see to what extent the profound modifications which many of them
have undergone are consistent with their individuality and independence,
and also whether such specialization can be paralleled by actually
separate and independent organisms existing in animal communities
outside of the body. First of all, because furthest from the type and
degraded to the lowest level, we find the great masses of tissue welded
together by lime-salts, which form the foundation masses, leverage-bars,
and protection plates for the higher tissues of the body. Here the
cells, in consideration of food, warmth, and protection guaranteed to
themselves and their heirs for ever by the body-state, have, as it were,
deliberately surrendered their rights of volition, of movement, and
higher liberties generally, and transformed themselves into masses of
inorganic material by soaking every thread of their tissues in
lime-salts and burying themselves in a marble tomb. Like Esau, they have
sold their birthright for a mess of "potash," or rather lime; and if
such a class or caste could be invented in the external industrial
community, the labor problem and the ever-occurring puzzle of the
unemployed would be much simplified. And ye