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Pere Teilhard de Chardin – Phenomenon of Man

We still seem to be able to see all the stages of this still unfinished march of nature towards unification or synthesis of the ever increasing products of living reproduction.  At the bottom we find the simple aggregation, as in bacteria and the lower fungi.  One stage higher comes the colony of attached cells , not yet centralised, though distinct specialisation has begun, as with the higher vegetable forms and the bryozoa.  Higher still is the metazoan cell of cells, in which by a prodigious critical transformation an autonomous centre is established ….. over the organised group of living particles.  And still farther on, to round off the list, at the present limit of our experience and of life's experiments, comes society  - that mysterious association of free metazoans in which (with varying success) the formation of hyper-complex units by 'mega-synthesis' seems to be attempted.