The foundations of zoölogy

Marine Biological Laboratory Library

Hole, Massachusetts

Gift of F.R. Lillie estate - "'977

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THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

A COURSE OF LECTURES

DELIVERED AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

ON THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE

AS ILLUSTRATED BY ZOOLOGY

Columbia SUnifaersitg Biological Series.

EDITED BY
HENRY F. OSBORN AND EDMUND B. WILSON.

1. FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN.

By Henry Fairfield Osborn, Sc.D. Princeton.

2. AMPH10XUS AND THE ANCESTRY OF THE VERTEBRATES.

By Arthur Willey, B.Sc. Lond. Univ.

3. FISHES, LIVING AND FOSSIL. An Introductory Study.

By Bashford Dean, Ph.D. Columbia.

4. THE CELL IN DEVELOPMENT AND INHERITANCE.

By Edmund B. Wilson, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins.

5. THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY.

By William Keith Brooks, Ph.D. Harvard, LL.D. Williams.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY BIOLOGICAL SERIES. V.

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THE

FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

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BY

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WILLIAM KEITH BROOKS, PH.D., LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF ZOOLOGY IN THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

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PUBLISHED FOR THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS BY

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.
1899

All rights reserved

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COPYRIGHT, 1899,
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

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J. S. Gushing & Co. - Berwick St. Smith
Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

Co pjotot College

WHERE I LEARNED TO STUDY, AND, I HOPE, TO PROFIT BY

BUT NOT TO BLINDLY FOLLOW, THE WRITINGS OF THAT

GREAT THINKER ON THE PRINCIPLES OF SCIENCE

GEORGE BERKELEY

I HAVE, BY PERMISSION, DEDICATED THIS BOOK

CONTENTS

LECTURE I

PAGE

INTRODUCTORY 3

LECTURE II
HUXLEY, AND THE PROBLEM OF THE NATURALIST 33

LECTURE III
NATURE AND NURTURE 49

LECTURE IV
J LAMARCK 83

LECTURE V
MIGRATION IN ITS BEARING ON LAMARCKISM 101

LECTURE VI — PART I
N\ ZOOLOGY, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 123

LECTURE VI — PART II
A NOTE ON THE VIEWS OF GALTON AND WEISMANN ON INHERITANCE . 143

LECTURE VII
\ GALTON, AND THE STATISTICAL STUDY OF INHERITANCE . . . - 153

LECTURE VIII
DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 183

LECTURE IX
NATURAL SELECTION, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF LIFE 215

viii CONTENTS

LECTURE X

PAGE

NATURAL SELECTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY 241

LECTURE XI
PALEY, AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CONTRIVANCE 269

LECTURE XII
THE MECHANISM OF NATURE 287

LECTURE XIII
Louis AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY 317

LECTURE I

INTRODUCTORY

" The doctrine of idols bears the same relation to the interpretation of nature as that of
sophisms does to common logic. It is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human under-
standing to be more moved and excited by affirmations than by negations; whereas it ought
duly and regularly to be impartial ; nay, in establishing any true axiom the negative instance
is the most powerful." — FRANCIS BACON.

LECTURE I

INTRODUCTORY

IN this course of lectures I shall give, on many questions, the
Scotch verdict of "not proven," and experience warns us that
this will be interpreted as an assertion that they are proved or
disproved, although no one can, in justice, interpret an admission
that a thesis may some time be proved or disproved as belief
that either of these things will come about, or as an admission
of anything else except a suspension of judgment, for all must
hold it the height of folly to found a scientific opinion on lack of
evidence.

If I sometimes speak of things that are not commonly held to
fall within the province of zoology, — if I try now and then for
soundings in waters which able pilots tell us are far out of the course
of our ship, — I hope they who follow me to the end of our voyage
will admit that I have not wandered from our true course ; although
it may be well to show now, by way of introduction, how it is that
zoologists find themselves face to face with many problems which
other men of science have agreed to lay aside as insoluble or irrele-
vant.

I shall try to show that life is response to the order of nature —
in fact, this thesis is the text of most of the lectures; but if it be
admitted, it follows that biology is the study of response, and that
the study of that order of nature to which response is made is as
well within its province as the study of the living organism which
responds, for all the knowledge we can get of both these aspects
of nature is needed as a preparation for the study of that relation
between them which constitutes life. Our interest in all branches of
science is vital interest. It is only as living things that we care to

3

4 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

know. Life is that which, when joined to mind, is knowledge, —
knowledge in use ; and we may be sure that all living things with
minds like ours are conscious of some part of the order of nature,
for the response in which life consists is response to this order. The
statement that physical phenomena are natural seems to mean little,
but the phenomena of life are so wonderful that many hesitate, even
at the present day, to believe that nature can be such a wonderful
thing as it must be if the actions of all living things are natural;
and, as I shall try to find out in this course of lectures what we mean
by the assertion that living nature is natural, I shall now attempt, by
a few illustrations, to give a broad outline of some of the most nota-
ble features of the nature of living things.

The outer surface or shell of a crab is an excretion that is formed
once for all ; for while it may stretch a little at the joints, it does not
grow, and as the living body must in time become too large for it,
new shells, one size larger, are formed from time to time under the
old one, which is then thrown off. The frequency of these moultings
conforms to the rate of growth. The little crab sheds its shell either
before or a few minutes after it is hatched from the egg, and a second
moulting takes place within forty-eight hours, but the next interval
lasts four or five days, and each successive shell remains useful for a
longer time, until a mature crab may pass a year or even longer with-
out moulting. The process is natural or mechanical, for nothing the
crab can do for itself retards or hastens its growth or the secretion
of a new shell ; nor can any part of the process be attributed to its
own actions, except so far as these actions are due to its nature,
although it will not grow unless it seeks and finds food, nor will the
old shell take itself off, unless the crab draws its limbs out by bodily
movements which are both complex and violent.

Many enemies, man and the hard crab among them, prize the soft
crab as a palatable delicacy, and as it is helpless and defenceless
while moulting, and until the new shell has grown hard, the crab
hides under the sand or among the grass of the marshes until the
dangerous crisis is past. No one can say whether the crab is or is
not conscious of its danger, or whether it hides voluntarily or involun-
tarily, but as no crab which has not escaped its enemies at the moult-
ing season now survives, all the modern edible crabs hide by nature,
just as they grow and shed their shells by nature. Some crabs pass

INTRODUCTORY 5

most of their lives in places which seem to have been sought, at first,
for shelter during the moulting period. A species of Porcellana
clings to the lower surface of the broad shell of Limulus, and the
Pinnixas live in the burrows which annelids make in the floor of the
ocean. I have found a species of Pinnixa living on the shoals at
Beaufort, N.C., in the parchment-like tubes with which the annelid
Chaetopterus lines its burrow, and as the opening of this tube is too
small for a Pinnixa to pass, it must enter while small and pass
the rest of its life there.

The period of moulting is dangerous, not only because of
enemies, but also because of its critical nature, for many crabs
die in the act, while others lose their limbs and their gills. The
general constitutional disturbance is so great that it is difficult to
carry a full-grown crab safely through it in an aquarium. The
power to replace lost parts which is so well developed in crabs
is an adjustment to meet and compensate for this danger among
others. Most of the direct danger comes from the stony hard-
ness and inflexibility of the old shell, and the shells of crabs
like the Pinnixa, and the female Pinnotheres which lives within
the shell of the oyster, are softer than those of more exposed
crabs.

The hermit-crabs and soldier-crabs live in the spiral shells of
gasteropod mollusks, and, as these houses are strong enough to
furnish ample protection, all the hinder part of the body of these
crabs is covered by a thin flexible shell which may be stripped
off without danger, although the claws and other exposed parts
are covered by very hard strong shell. When born, the little her-
mit-crab is straight and its hind-body carries swimming feet, but
when it is about as large as a mosquito, these become converted
into knobs for clinging to the inside of the house, and the hind-
body becomes twisted into a spiral to fit the inside of the spiral
shell. Crabs outgrow the shells of mollusks just as children out-
grow their clothes ; and hermit-crabs are always on the watch for
new shells, and exhibit what the human observer finds himself
disposed to call a lively interest in shells. If half a dozen of
them are placed in an aquarium, they soon begin to measure and
compare shells, and even to make vacant one that seems eligible,
by pulling out its occupant piece by piece and eating him. One

6 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

that has found or emptied a shell that seems to suit, measures it
carefully inside and out, and then, bringing the openings close
together, quickly pops out of the old into the new. Then the old
shell is compared with the new, and often the body is slipped
into each of them repeatedly, and each is allowed to slip nearly
off and is then pulled on again, somewhat as a man settles him-
self into a new coat. Running is now tried in each shell, a claw
keeping a tight clutch on the empty one and dragging it along;
and the movement of drawing the body far into the shell, so that
it drops on the sand as if it were empty, is tried in both. It is
often many hours before a choice is made, and then the decision
often is that the old one is best.

It is difficult to witness or to describe this performance with-
out attributing to the crab feelings and motives like our own ;
yet, while no one can say whether the crab knows what it is
about or not, nothing is more certain than that its actions are
due to its nature, and not to knowledge of the value of a house,
drawn from experience. When I was working as a student in the
marine laboratory of Alexander Agassiz, he reared from eggs, in
an aquarium, a brood of hermit-crabs which had never seen a
shell. I had in my aquarium young gasteropods which I had
reared from eggs. Some of them had died, and their empty
shells were, at his suggestion, dropped into the water with the
crabs, which seized them, almost as soon as they touched the
water, and beginning to explore their interior as they were carried
to the bottom by the weight of the shells, conducted themselves
as if they had many years of experience in the use of molluscan
shells as houses. I have seen very young hermit-crabs make
houses for themselves out of the cast skins of others, although
these afforded no protection ; and I have found a full-grown one
in the bowl of a clay pipe so badly broken that it exposed the
soft abdomen and was useless ; but the impulse to inhabit shells
is almost universally protective and beneficial, although it is as
strictly a part of the nature of hermit-crabs as is the twisted
abdomen, or the legs and claws, or any other part of the crab's
body.

The external world presents such variety that few natural ad-
justments are so exact and definite that they may not under some

INTRODUCTORY 7

circumstances prove disadvantageous or even destructive instead
of beneficial, although the perfection of many of the adjustments
of Crustacea and insects is marvellous. Some hunting wasps
store living spiders in the cells with their eggs to serve as food
for their young, but each spider, while alive, is paralyzed and
helpless, for when the wasp captures it she stings it through the
nerve-centre which directs the movements of the limbs, severely
enough to produce paralysis without destroying life ; and Mivart
says ("Lessons from Nature," p. 202) that the female wasp does
this by nature or without experience.

It is often said that the natural activities of living things are
innate; but, so far as this word implies that they take place with-
out a stimulus, it is obviously erroneous. The hermit-crab is said
to seek a house by nature, and the egg to grow into a specific
organism in virtue of its inherent potency; but this is not strictly
true, for while some vital changes may be spontaneous, in one of
the many meanings of this word, there is no reason to believe
that any change ever takes place, either in living things or any
where else, without antecedents which stand in that peculiar rela-
tion which we call physical causation.

The new-born child is said to seek the breast instinctively, but
every nurse knows that it does not seek the breast at all without
experience, although it does suck by nature and without instruc-
tion the first time the nerves of its lips and tongue are stimulated
by contact with the nipple. The instinct of the young hermit-crab
cannot be called spontaneous, if, by this word, we mean arbitrary,
although it is so promptly called forth by the first sight of a shell.

The bodily movements of which the purpose is most obvious
are, as a rule, called out in response to changes in the external
world, and they are excited by stimuli which come through the
senses; although many responsive actions are called forth by
stimuli which arise within the body and do not reach it through
any of the organs of special sense, as the stretching of our limbs
while awakening is excited by the vague discomfort of the body;
and this is true not only of many bodily movements but of most
physiological changes.

"To call mind a function of the brain," says Maudsley ("Re-
sponsibility in Mental Disease," p. 17), "may lead to much mis-

8 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

apprehension if it be thereby supposed that the brain is the only
organ which is concerned in the function of mind. There is not
an organ in the body which is not in intimate relation with the
brain by means of its paths of nervous communication, . . . and
which does not, therefore, affect more or less plainly and specifi-
cally its function as an organ of mind. It is not merely that a
palpitating heart may cause anxiety and apprehension, or a dis-
ordered liver gloomy feelings, but there are good reasons for be-
lieving that each organ has a specific influence on the constitution
and function of mind; an influence not yet set forth scientifically,
because it is exerted on that unconscious mental life which is the
basis of all that we consciously feel and think. Were the heart
of one man," says Maudsley, "to be placed in the body of another,
it would probably make no difference in the circulation of the
blood, but it might make a real difference in the temper of his
mind. So close is the physiological sympathy of parts in the
commonwealth of the body, that it is necessary, in the physiologi-
cal study of mind, to regard it as a function of the whole organ-
ism, as comprehending the whole bodily life."

A most notable illustration of the way a complicated adaptive
mechanism may be thrown into beneficial response by a physio-
logical stimulus, is found in the shad, which, when its bodily
structure is excited by the reaction of approaching sexual matu-
rity, leaves its home in the ocean and enters upon a journey
which, before its path was obstructed by dams, carried it across
the broad states of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, to its
spawning ground in central New York.

The excitement of adaptive vital changes in one part of the body
by changes in another part is not restricted to the channels afforded
by the nervous system. Florists make their plants bloom before
their time by confining their roots in small pots. The seeds of an
apple are new beings, but the apple itself is part of the substance of
the mother-tree, yet the blossoms will not set fruit unless they are
fertilized.

When a duck's egg is put under a hen, it undergoes a long series
of wonderful changes, which all prove, in the end, to be in respon-
sive adjustment to the normal life of ducks; and as the production
of a duck by the mere heat of a hen, or that of a lamp in an incu-

INTRODUCTORY

9

bator, is incredible, we say the egg is developed by its inherent
potency ; but we must use these words with care, for the assertion
that the changes which make up this long and marvellous series
take place spontaneously is as incredible as the assertion that they
are determined by the heat of the hen ; and there is reason to believe
that each change in the series transmits to the natural or inherent
adaptive mechanism a stimulus which excites in it the performance
of the responsive actions which bring about the next change in
order.

Embryonic development is so delicate and so complicated that
we cannot hope to trace, far less to imitate, the action of these
stimuli in anything like their natural perfection ; yet we can, now
and then, rudely imitate some of them, while, in other cases, we can
demonstrate their presence and influence indirectly by preventing
them from acting. Some eggs which have begun their development
by division into two, four, or eight cells, may be shaken apart with-
out destroying their vitality, and when thus separated, a cell which
would normally have given rise to half or quarter of an embryo, may
give rise to a whole one of one half or one quarter the natural size.
Embryologists are rapidly adding, by experimental methods, to our
knowledge of the mechanics of development, and it has been known,
since the day of Aristotle, that some of the latest stages in the
development of the higher animals and of man do not take place in
the absence of certain normal physiological stimuli.

Male mammals, for example, do not attain bodily perfection until
the approach of sexual maturity. In man the beard begins to grow
at what is accordingly called the age of pubescence ; the larynx
enlarges ; the voice assumes a manly tone ; the shoulders grow
broad ; the chest deepens ; and the trunk and limbs begin to differ
in relative length from those of women and children. At the same
period in the life of a bull his neck and shoulders grow massive and
sturdy ; his forehead broadens and becomes cushioned with hair ; and
he becomes pugnacious and subject to fits of violent rage.

The cock acquires his spurs, his brilliant plumage and other
ornaments, and begins to crow. Aristotle pointed out that when
young male mammals or birds are prevented from becoming sexually
mature, they fail to acquire the distinctive characteristics of their
species, and this shows that the completion of this, the final stage

10 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

in their physical development, is dependent, to a great degree at
least, on some constitutional stimulus which is afforded by the
changes which take place in the reproductive organs.

The existence of rudimentary organs and provisional larval
stages is one of the most suggestive facts in the whole range of
zoology, and the evidence that these things are a record of past
history seems conclusive ; although those who hold that their
existence is accounted for by the discovery that they are a
" recapitulation " add nothing, after all the centuries, to Aristotle's
declaration that they are "for a token."

They who are most convinced that the historical significance
of these structures is an adequate explanation of their presence,
are also most emphatic in their repudiation of teleology, and in the
rejection of the belief of Louis Agassiz, that they are part of the
language in which the Creator tells us the history of creation;
yet the assertion that their history accounts for their existence is
as teleological as anything in Paley.

They who believe that inheritance is not the transmission of re-
sponsive actions, but the transmission of an adaptive mechanism, and
that each change which enters into the history of development is a
response to a stimulus, will have no difficulty in understanding that
organs which were once adjusted to the external world may, after
this adjustment has lost its meaning, be still retained, because they
furnish physiological stimuli, which excite developmental changes
in the organic mechanism.

If a physiological stimulus from the male reproductive organs
excites the growth of weapons of defence, would the preservation
of rudiments of these organs, by natural selection, for this useful
purpose, be anything more than might be expected; even if some
change in the method of reproduction should make their primary
function useless?

Is there any evidence that any change which is due to nature,
from the segmentation of the egg to old age, ever takes place
without a stimulus, or are the actions which are due to nature
beneficial, except so far as the environment is, on the average,
like the ancestral environment ? Since the gentle stimulation of
the lips and tongue has been associated, in the past history of
human infants, with the presence of milk which may be extracted

INTRODUCTORY II

by sucking, the adjustment is beneficial ; although the infant does
not, as a matter of fact, obtain any milk at first, and although a
finger or a rubber nipple on an empty bottle, or any other object
of suitable size and texture, in the mouth of a hungry infant,
excites the nerves and muscles so as to call forth the act of suck-
ing, and, so far, to satisfy the calls of nature.

Preyer says "when I put into the mouth of the screaming
child, whose head alone was as yet born, the ivory pencil or a
finger, the child began to suck, opened its eyes, and seemed, to
judge from its countenance, to be most agreeably affected. In
the case of another child, which cried out immediately after its
head emerged from the womb, I put my finger, three minutes
later, into the child's mouth, and pressed it on the tongue. At
once all crying ceased, a brisk sucking began, and the expression
of the countenance, which had been hitherto discontented, became
suddenly altered. The child, not yet fully born, seemed to expe-
rience something agreeable, and therewith — during the sucking
of the finger — the eyes were widely opened."

Although changes which are directly due to nature do not
take place without a stimulus, they do take place mechanically,
or independently of experience, under the natural stimulus, or
under any other which is applied in the same way. The blow-
fly, which is stimulated by the odor of putrid flesh to lay its eggs
where the larvae will find abundant food, sometimes lays them on
the stinking arum, misled by its odor. In this case the deceptive
stimulus resembles the normal one in certain sensible qualities,
but it is most important, for reasons which will be given later,
to note that the natural responses of living things may be called
forth by any stimulus which is similar in its mode of application
to the normal or natural stimulus, whether it is or is not similar
in any sensible properties except those which act as the stimulus.
The finger, which feels like a nipple, stimulates the infant and
calls out the sucking response, but electrical stimulation of the
lips and tongue, if applied with sufficient skill, might give the
same result, although this does not resemble the nipple in any
sensible qualities except the ones which effect the stimulation.

In the order of nature each stimulus is a sign with a signifi-
cance, and our own reason, which consciously apprehends the

12 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

significance of natural signs, generally approves the responsive
actions of living things, although we find that these living things
are often misled by signs which we know to be illusions, which,
while similar in some respects to those to which the organic
mechanism is adjusted, signify something quite different from the
normal or customary course of events.

As the nature of living things often leads to injurious or de-
structive actions, instinct is said to be blind or mechanical ; for while
no one can say whether the actions of the hermit-crab or those
of the blow-fly, or those of the human infant, are voluntary or not,
they are no more than the nature of these living things would
lead one to expect, and this is as true when they are beneficial
as it is when they mislead.

If the adjustments between living things and the external
world were always beneficial, I do not see how the question
whether or not their actions are voluntary could present itself ;
but the complexity of external nature is inexhaustible, and few
natural adjustments are beneficial under all circumstances, for even
a response to gravitation may mislead.

A growing plant needs the moisture and the soluble food
which it may find under ground, in course of nature, by follow-,
ing the stimulus of gravity, and it also needs the sunlight and
the air which, in the normal or natural order of things, are to be
reached by upward growth. As the seed germinates, the radicle,
stimulated by gravity, grows downwards, while the plumule, which
does not differ essentially from the radicle in specific gravity, is
impelled by its nature to grow upwards under the same stimulus;
but each part grows by means of internal energy, and, while
gravity is the stimulus which throws it into action, it is not the
means by which the vital changes are brought about.

The response is beneficial, and the stimulus seems as trust-
worthy as anything in nature ; yet the seeds often fall into places
where it misleads, and if a germinating seed be placed on the
edge of a horizontal wheel which turns slowly at a rate which
makes the centrifugal force somewhat greater than the weight of
the seed, the plumule grows towards and the radicle away from
the centre, although no seeds which act thus can grow up to
produce seeds in their turn. If plants think, a matter on which

INTRODUCTORY 13

I do not here express an opinion, they must know the order
of nature to which they respond, and in that case the seed on
the wheel would seem to be not only misled but deceived, exactly
as a brood of chicks seems to us to be deceived by an imitation
of the call of the mother hen ; but the essential point is that,
whether they know it or not, the changes in living things which
are directly due to nature are beneficial only so far as the condi-
tions of their life are, on the average, essentially like those in
which the lives of their ancestors were passed.

Now the order of nature presents infinite diversity : the differ-
ent ways in which events may be combined are innumerable ; and
no natural response can be judicious or beneficial under all cir-
cumstances. We accordingly find, in all the living things we
know best, and are most intimately concerned with, a wonderful
provision of their nature, by means of which those of their actions
which are most apt to mislead are improved and perfected and
developed by normal use, so that we are no longer able to tell
what they will do from knowledge of their nature alone, since
their actions are in part dependent on their training and expe-
rience, and on their individual contact with the world.

The question whether capacity for improvement through con-
tact with the world is natural or not is much easier to ask than
to answer. Are the benefits that attend training and education
and experience part of the nature of living things, or do they add
to nature something it did not before contain ? Is knowledge of
the world around us part of our nature, or does it add something
new on to our nature ? If it is natural, do we simply find or dis-
cover our nature, or do we make it or any part of it ourselves ?
Any answer we try to give is attended with difficulties. If living
things make any part of their nature, the word must mean much
more than is recognized in common usage ; and yet the assertion
that knowledge and experience and training add nothing to the
nature of living beings is beset by difficulties which at first sight
seem equally grave.

In some cases we can show that improvement by training is
no more than might have been expected, for we can imitate it
by means of stimuli which have nothing in common with the
natural stimuli except the manner of their application. Normal

14 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

use strengthens muscles and increases their aptitude for doing
their work, but as muscles may also be strengthened by massage,
their improvement by use is no more than their nature might
have led us to look for; nor do we find any more difficulty in
attributing this beneficial response to nature than we find in the
same explanation of the house-hunting actions of crabs.

All who have to do with animals admit that training can do
no more for them than to make the best of their natural capa-
city, for they differ greatly in power to profit by experience; and
the nature of each species sets impassable bounds to the power
of individual animals to improve by practice. No one hesitates
to attribute to deficient structure the inability of idiots to learn,
and all admit that men of genius are born and not made, yet
many hesitate to confess that their own more commonplace
capacity for profiting by practice and growing wiser with experi-
ence is strictly limited by their nature, although this may be
quite obvious to others. All know too well also that a dose of
alcohol may make a man remember what never happened outside
his own disordered brain, and perform responsive actions which, while
criminal, might be prudent and commendable if the remembered
experience were not a delusion ; although the effects of contact with
the world are usually far too complicated and diversified to be artifi-
cially imitated. As we are quite unable to tell with any minute
accuracy what an animal with capacity for training will do under
a stimulus, we must rely upon indirect evidence to show what the
real significance of experience is.

If a chick is stung by the first honey-bee it catches, its future
actions may be adjusted to the natural law that bees are danger-
ous; but if, before it is stung, it has captured and eaten stingless
drones, it may act in accordance with the wider law that while
bees are good for food some are dangerous. A careful observer,
Mr. Oilman Drew, tells me that the chicks that are most destruc-
tive to bees pick out the drones, and he believes that these are
the chicks which, before they were stung, learned to catch and
eat bees, and that they have afterwards learned to let the sting-
ing workers alone.

If slight differences in the mere order of events which are
otherwise so much alike may lead to such differences in the con-

INTRODUCTORY 1 5

duct of individual animals of the same species, it is clear that
even if we believe that sufficient knowledge of their nature would
enable us to predict their conduct, this knowledge is unattainable,
for we cannot possibly know all the complicated personal history
of any one animal. We must also remember that even if we
prove that individual animals acquire, by contact with the ex-
ternal world, nothing but what their nature provides for, this
does not show that they are compelled to make of themselves all
that their nature permits, for the effects of experience are often
injurious or destructive. There is, unfortunately, no incompati-
bility between the system of things and unprofitable experience,
for it is, to say the least, no harder to corrupt or injure nature by
injudicious or pernicious training than it is to make the best of it.

Romanes tells us ("Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 215) of a
hen that had reared three successive broods of ducklings in suc-
cessive years, and then hatched out a brood of nine chickens:
" The first day she was let out she disappeared, and after a long
search my sister," his informant writes, " found her beside a little
stream, which her successive broods of ducklings had been in the
habit of frequenting. She had got four of her chickens into the
water, which, fortunately, was very shallow at the time. The other
five were all standing on its margin, and she was endeavoring by
all sorts of coaxing hen-language, and by pushing each chicken
in turn with her bill, to get them into the water also."

In the normal course of the history of chicks, the response to
the order of nature which experience is said to have called out
in this hen, would be rapidly fatal to her posterity; and it would
be easy to give other illustrations to show that the changes which
are called forth in living things by the influence of the world
around them, are beneficial only so far as this external world is,
on the average, substantially the same as that to which the actions
of their ancestors were adjusted. The snake that swallows hens'
eggs, like its ancestors, profits like them; but the snake that
swallows a china nest-egg dies from indigestion. I shall try to
show that this fact, and others like it, mean that while the changes
would not take place without practice or training, their character
is due to nature, and not to experience.

It is almost impossible to contemplate the actions of animals

16 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

that profit by experience, without attributing them to conscious
intelligence, and it is even harder to speak or write of them, with-
out using words which imply that they are altogether such as
human actions would be under like conditions, for our words are
adapted to human needs ; but, hard as it is, we must, so far as
possible, distinguish what we actually observe from what we infer
from our knowledge of ourselves.

He who considers the relation between mind and matter should
try to determine clearly what he knows and does not know about
the distribution of mind. Is not the view of the matter to which all
should agree, about as follows ? I know my mental state and the
things I see and feel by the best of all evidence. While I have not
this sort of evidence for anything else, doubt that my fellow-men
are rational would be regarded as insane ; for he who acts as if his
fellow-men have no feelings, is justly abhorred by all, unless, indeed,
he is held in honor as a military hero. " A close study of the dog,"
says Agassiz, "might satisfy every one of the similarity of his
impulses with those of man, and those impulses are regulated in a
manner which discloses psychical faculties in every respect of the
same kind as those of man; moreover, he expresses by his voice
his emotions and his feelings, with a precision which may be as
intelligible to man as the articulate speech of his fellow-men. His
memory is so retentive that it frequently baffles that of man. And
though all these faculties do not make a philosopher of him, they
certainly place him, in that respect, upon a level with a consider-
able proportion of poor humanity."

" When animals fight with one another, when they associate for
a common purpose, when they warn one another in danger, when
they come to the rescue of one another, when they display pain
or joy, they manifest impulses of the same kind as those which are
considered among the moral attributes of man. The range of their
passions is even as extensive as that of the human mind, and
I am at a loss to distinguish a difference in kind between them,
however much they may differ in degree and in the manner in
which they are expressed."

" I confess," says Agassiz, " I could not say in what the
mental faculties of a child differ from those of a young chim-
panzee."

INTRODUCTORY 17

While the evidence does not have that highest degree of value
which I find in my own feelings, good common sense seems to
demand that the burden of proof fall on those who hold that
apes and dogs and elephants are not rational.

"Who," asks Agassiz, "is the investigator, who having once
recognized such a similarity between certain faculties of man and
those of the higher animals, can feel prepared, in the present
stage of our knowledge, to trace the limit where this community
of nature ceases ? "

As for myself, I try to treat all living things, plants as well
as animals, as if they may have some small part of a sensitive
life like my own, although I know nothing about the presence or
absence of sense in most living things ; and am no more prepared
to make a negative than a positive statement. While it is non-
sense to regard trees and rocks and lakes as endowed with mind,
it is nonsense because we know nothing about it, and not because
it is untrue ; for it is no less nonsense to assert that stones are
unconscious than to assert that they are conscious.

Morgan says ("Habit and Intelligence," p. 41), "To some
chicks I threw cinnabar larvae, distasteful caterpillars conspicuous
by alternating rings of black and golden yellow. They were seized
at once, but dropped uninjured; the chicks wiped their bills — a
sign of distaste — and seldom touched the caterpillars a second
time. The cinnabar larvae were then removed, and thrown in
again towards the close of the day. Some of the chicks tried
them once, but they were soon left. The next day the young
birds were given brown loopers and green cabbage-moth cater-
pillars. These were approached with some suspicion, but pres-
ently one chick ran off with a looper, and was followed by others,
one of which stole and ate it. In a few minutes all the cater-
pillars were cleared off. Later in the day they were given some
more of these edible caterpillars, which they ate freely; and then
some cinnabar larvae. One chick ran, but checked himself, and,
without touching the caterpillar, wiped his bill — a memory of the
nasty taste being apparently suggested at the sight of the yellow
and black caterpillar; another seized one and dropped it at once.
A third subsequently approached a cinnabar as it crawled along,
gave the danger note, and ran off. Then I threw in more edible
c

1 8 THE FOUNDATION'S OF ZOOLOGY

caterpillars, which again were eaten freely. The chicks had thus
learnt to distinguish by sight between the nice and nasty cater-
pillars."

"The cinnabar caterpillars are, as I have said, conspicuously
marked with alternating yellow and black rings. It would seem
that the end of this conspicuousness is to render association in
the individual experience of young birds more rapid and more
certain ; there does not appear to be any congenital and instinc-
tive avoidance of such caterpillars with warning colors. The net
result of these observations is that, in the absence of parental
guidance, the young birds have to learn for themselves what is
good to eat, and what is distasteful, and have no instinctive
aversions."

In his discussion of these most instructive observations, the
author says, p. 150: "A chick sees for the first time in its life
a cinnabar larva, instinctively pecks at it under the influence of
the visual stimulus ; seizes it, and under the influence of the taste-
stimulus instinctively shrinks. So far we have instinct and
automatism. Presently we throw to it another similar caterpillar.
Instinct and automatism alone would lead to a repetition of the
previous series of events ; seeing, seizing, tasting, and shrinking.
The oftener the experiment was performed, the more smoothly
would the organic mechanism work, the more definitely would the
same sequence be repeated — seeing, seizing, tasting, shrinking.
Is this what we actually observe ? Not at all. On the second
occasion the chick, under the influence of the previous experience,
acts differently. Though he sees, he does not seize, but shrinks
without seizing. We believe that there is a revival in memory of
the nasty taste. And in this we seem justified, since we may
observe that sometimes the chick on such occasions wipes the
bill on the ground as he does on experiencing an unpleasant
taste, though he has not touched the larvae. The chick, then,
does not continue to act merely from instinct and like an automa-
ton. His behavior is modified in the light of previous experi-
ence."

So far as our senses tell us, actions of this sort are, in all
respects, like many we observe in our fellow-men, and attribute to
consciousness and memory and reason; and as a mistaken belief

INTRODUCTORY 19

that the brutes are conscious can do no harm, while belief that
they are unconscious might, if mistaken, bring untold misery upon
dumb brutes from brutal men, it seems well that we should con-
tinue to describe their actions in subjective language; although
nothing is more obvious than that, while we know their actions,
we only infer the existence of mental accompaniments. For all
any one knows to the contrary young chicks may learn what is
good to eat and what is unpleasant, and may readily associate the
appearance with the taste, and those who hold that they are un-
conscious may justly be called upon by Morgan to prove their
opinion; but I cannot agree with him that his studies show that
they are conscious, for in sober and scientific truth all they show
is that the chicks rapidly acquire power to respond to certain
optical stimuli by actions which are adjusted to those flavors
which in course of nature are associated with certain optical
properties.

They who live in the hope that the actions which the chick
performs only after what we call experience, will sometime be
proved as mechanical as the response of the growing seedling
to gravitation, may appeal to the rapid progress which physiol-
ogists are making in the localization of the functions of the
brain, as evidence that their hope is well founded. They may
say that there is good reason to believe that, if the localized and
specialized brain-cells which are stimulated through the eyes and
the optic nerves by the yellow and black rings of the cinnabar
caterpillar, could be stimulated by electricity or in any other way
with sufficient delicacy and skill, all the other changes which
make up the response would follow mechanically ; that the nervous
discharge from these cells would be accompanied, as it has been
before, by the stimulation of those localized cells which were origi-
nally stimulated by the pernicious flavor, and that the nervous
discharge from them would inhibit the seizing movements, and
that whether the chick is conscious or not, the establishment of
the response by experience is no more than might have been
expected from our knowledge of the functions of the nervous
system.

If we answer that this is as yet unproved, inasmuch as no one
is able now, or is at all likely to soon be able, to even demon-

20 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

strata, far less to imitate, in the brain of the chick, any struct-
ural equivalent to its experience, we may be told that no one
expects complete inductive proof of any scientific generalization;
that he who refuses to admit that all water consists of H2O until
chemists have decomposed every drop of water in the ocean is
lacking in good sense ; and that it is equally unreasonable to de-
mand the artificial imitation of all the responses of living things
before we admit that all response is mechanical.

To this we must answer that no great harm can be done if
the chemist interprets the admission that we have not the slight-
est reason to doubt that every drop of water is decomposable into
hydrogen and oxygen as an assertion that all water is so decom-
posable, since, for all the ordinary purposes of chemistry, the
negative admission and the positive assertion may be treated as
if they were synonymous. The case is very different when the
subject under consideration is not chemistry, but the nature of
knowledge, for we are about to enter a field where we may easily
lose our way unless we distinguish inference from perception, to
the best of our ability. The utmost the physiologist is warranted
in asserting is that, for all one knows to the contrary, every
response may be mechanical; and I think all thoughtful students
must so far agree with him as to admit that belief that any of the
responsive actions of living beings are not mechanical is highly
unwise and precarious, in view of the condition and prospects of
modern physiology; although we must, in my opinion, also admit
that not one single vital response has as yet been completely ana-
lyzed, or resolved, from beginning to end, into phenomena of matter
and motion ; for I am myself unable to discover, in the present
status of biology, any demonstration of error in the assertion that
life is different from matter and motion.

However this may be, we know, by evidence which no one can
question, that many actions are attended by memory, and by con-
scious experience, and by volition and reason and a sense of moral
responsibility. Many beneficial responses are known to be judicious
and reasonable, and many voluntary acts are known to be right
or wrong.

As these convictions seem, at first sight, to be contradictory to
the opinion that, for all we know to the contrary, all response may

INTRODUCTORY 21

be mechanical, we must ask whether this contradiction is real or
only apparent. As this question has, in one form or another, vexed
the mind of man for untold ages, no one would be so bold as to
attempt a final answer in few words; but I hope all who follow
me to the end may find reason to ask themselves whether the con-
tradiction may not, after all, be a matter of words rather than a real
difficulty, for I shall try to review, at one time and another, some
of the evidence which has convinced many thoughtful men that this
apparently insoluble puzzle has arisen from an erroneous and un-
scientific conception of the meaning of the mechanism of nature.
This evidence seems so clear and conclusive that I cannot see how
any one who has mastered it can find any contradiction between
anything we find in our nature and the ultimate reduction of all
nature, including all the phenomena of life and of mind, to mechani-
cal principles; for most students of the principles of science agree
that natural knowledge is no more than the discovery of the order
of nature; although a moment's thought is enough to show that the
fact that events do take place in order is no reason why they should,
or even why they should take place at all. Order is no explanation,
but a thing to be explained.

The proof that there is no necessary antagonism between me-
chanical explanations of human life and belief in volition and duty
and moral responsibility seems to me to be very simple and easy
to understand. If the subject takes us into deep waters, this is
because we are compelled to examine the reason why the impres-
sion that these things are antagonistic' has so widely prevailed; for
the view of the matter to which I hope to call your attention is, in
itself, by no means difficult or obscure.

Science is still in its infancy, and we know so little that I have
no sympathy with those who discount the possibilities of future dis-
covery and assert that life is merely a question of matter and
motion, although I know no reason why this should not, some day,
be proved, nor am I able to see why any should find this admis-
sion alarming.

However this may be, I am convinced that they stand on
treacherous ground, who base positive opinions on negative evi-
dence, and believe that anything in our nature is inconsistent with
mechanics.

22 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

" Conscience, the last acquired faculty," says Maudsley, " is the
first to suffer when disease invades the mental organization. One
of the first symptoms of insanity — one which declares itself before
there is any intellectual derangement, before the person's friends
suspect even that he is becoming insane — is a deadening or com-
plete perversion of the moral sense. In extreme cases it is observed
that the modest man becomes presumptuous and exacting, the chaste
man lewd and obscene, the honest man a thief, and the truthful man
an unblushing liar. Short of this, however, there is an observable
impairment of the finer moral feelings — a something different,
which the nearest friends do not fail to feel, although they cannot
always describe it. Now these signs of moral perversion are really
the first symptoms of a mental derangement which may, in its
further course, go through all the degrees of intellectual disorder,
and end in destruction of mind, with visible destruction of the nerve-
cells which minister to mind. Is the end, then, dependent upon
organization, and is the beginning not ? "

" Note, again, the effect which a severe attack of insanity some-
times produces upon the moral nature of the individual. The per-
son entirely recovers his reason ; his intellectual faculties are as acute
as ever, but his moral character is changed ; he is no longer the
moral man that he was ; the shock has destroyed the finest part of
his organization. Henceforth his life may be as different from his
former life as, in an opposite direction, was the life of Saul of Tarsus
from the life of Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles. An attack of
epilepsy has produced the same effects, effacing the moral sense as
it effaces the memory sometimes, and one of the most striking phe-
nomena observed in asylums is the extreme change in the moral
character in the epileptic which precedes and heralds the approach
of his fits. A fever or an injury to the head has, in like manner,
transformed the moral character."

Passing this subject by for the present, it is clear that, consciously
or unconsciously, arbitrarily or naturally, freely or of necessity, every
living thing responds to some part of the order of nature, and that
the study of this order is part of biology ; for there are many
reasons, besides those we have considered, why the biologist should
have peculiar interest in the principles of science. His studies bring
him into intimate contact with certain conceptions which play such a

INTRODUCTORY 2$

subordinate part in the other sciences that it falls to him to assert
their importance, since they are so little regarded outside his circle
that students in other lines often fail to catch what he has in mind.
Among these are the principle of genetic continuity and the prin-
ciple of fitness, with all that they imply. For all I know to the
contrary, the principle of fitness may be universal, and the order
of nature may be the order of fitness ; and again, for all I know to
the contrary, all significant resemblances between the phenomena of
nature may be due to genetic continuity ; but, at the present day,
these principles hold no prominent place in the minds of those who
deal with the not-living, and their introduction among the principles
of science is due to the biologists. Now only a moment's thought
is needed to discover how great are the difficulties that attend the
application of these principles. What do we mean by the genetic
continuity of life ? How are we to interpret the facts of embryology ?
How many perplexing intricacies face us if we undertake, with
William Harvey, " to seek the truth regarding the following difficult
questions : Which and what principle is it whence motion and
generation proceed? Whether is that which in the egg is cause,
artificer, and principle of generation, and of all the vital and
vegetative operations, — conservation, nutrition, growth, — innate or
superadded ? and whether does it inhere primarily, of itself, and as
a kind of nature, or intervene by accident, as a physician in curing
disease ? Whether is that which transfers an egg into a pullet
inherent or acquired ? "

" In truth," says Harvey, " there is no proposition more mag-
nificent to investigate or more useful to ascertain than this : How
are all things formed by an univocal agent ? How does the like
ever generate its like ? Why may not the thoughts, opinions, and
manners now prevalent, many years hence return again, after an
intermediate period of neglect ? " l

As we find embryologists, two hundred and fifty years after these
words were written, still vexing themselves over the question, —
Whether is that which transfers an egg into a pullet inherent or
acquired? — it is clear that we cannot hope for much progress in the
investigation of this magnificent proposition unless we can deter-
mine what we mean by that metaphysical notion, inherent potency.

1 Harvey, " De Generatione," pp. 274-582.

24 THE FOUNDATION'S OF ZOOLOGY

" By way of escape from the metaphysical Will-o'-the- Wisps
generated in the marshes of literature and theology, the serious
student is sometimes bidden," says Huxley, "to betake himself to
the solid ground of physical science. But the fish of immortal
memory, who threw himself out of the frying-pan into the fire,
was not more ill advised than the man who seeks sanctuary from
philosophical persecution within the walls of the observatory or
the laboratory ; for metaphysical speculation follows as closely
upon physical theory as black care upon the horseman." 1

If, as modest biologists, we were to assert that the biological
aspects of the physical sciences are the only basis for rational
interest in these sciences, our good friends in physical and chemical
laboratories would, no doubt, charge us with arrogance, although
I think they must admit that the principles of science, as dis-
tinguished from the concrete sciences, are part of biology.

We cannot investigate response to the order of nature without
asking what the order of nature is. What are the properties of
things and of thought that convince us of its existence ? What is
this conviction worth ? What are the methods by which knowledge
of this order is acquired and perfected and extended ? How far
are these methods and instruments trustworthy ? Are any limits
to their application known, and, if so, how known ?

To all these questions the zoologist has a peculiar right to ask
answers, in addition to the right which he shares with other stu-
dents of science.

"The Mind, her acts and faculties," says Berkeley, "furnish a
new and distinct class of objects, from the contemplation whereof
arise other notions, principles, and verities. It may therefore be
pardoned if this rude essay doth, by insensible transitions, draw
the reader into remote inquiries and speculations, that were not,
perhaps, thought of either by him or by the author at first setting
out."

Some, who believe they at least are rigorously scientific, may
here feel impelled to cry out that these inquiries are not scientific,
but metaphysical, and that modern men of science have nothing
to do with them. For my own part, I might be disposed to agree
with them if the average human mind were, on these difficult

1 Huxley, VI., p. 200.

INTRODUCTORY 2$

matters, a tabula rasa; but ignorance and prejudice and education
all conspire to predispose us to some form of a priori philosophy,
and most men who have not given hard thought to the subject
hold fast, consciously or unconsciously, to belief in the universal
and necessary conservation of energy, to belief in a necessary law
of universal progress or evolution, to belief in the arbitrary and
absolute freedom of the will, or to belief in some other a priori
notion which they hold necessary and ultimate, or arbitrary and
absolute.

"The maxim that metaphysical inquiries are barren of result,"
says Huxley, "and that the serious occupation of the mind with
them is a mere waste of time and labor, finds much favor in the
eyes of many persons who pride themselves on the possession of
sound common sense; and we sometimes hear it enunciated by
weighty authorities, as if its natural consequence, the suppression
of such studies, had the force of a moral obligation."

" In this case, however, as in so many others, those who lay
down the law seem to forget that a wise legislator will consider,
not merely whether his proposed enactment is desirable, but whether
obedience to it is possible. For if the latter question be answered
negatively, the former is surely hardly worth debate."

"Here, in fact, lies the pith of the reply to those who would
make metaphysics contraband of intellect. Whether it is desirable to
place a prohibitory duty upon philosophical speculations or not, it is
utterly impossible to prevent the importation of them into the mind.
And it is not a little curious to observe that those who most loudly
profess to abstain from such commodities are, all the while, uncon-
scious consumers, on a great scale, of one or another of their mul-
titudinous disguises or adulterations. With mouths full of the
particular kind of heavily buttered toast which they affect, they
inveigh against the eating of plain bread. In truth, the attempt to
nourish the human intellect upon a diet which contains no meta-
physics is about as hopeful as that of certain Eastern sages to
nourish their bodies without destroying life."

" Everybody has heard the story of the pitiless microscopist, who
ruined the peace of mind of one of these mild enthusiasts by show-
ing him the animals moving in a drop of the water with which, in
the innocency of his heart, he slaked his thirst ; and the unsuspect-

26 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

ing devotee of plain common sense may look for as unexpected a
shock when the magnifier of severe logic reveals the germs, if not
the full-grown shapes, of lively metaphysical postulates rampant
amidst his most positive and matter of fact notions." 1

Kant has shown, as Berkeley showed before him, that, instead of
discovering truth, philosophy has only the modest merit of preventing
error, and if men never made mistakes, but always reasoned wisely
and acted rightly, we should little need to study the nature of know-
ledge ; but while few men think, all have opinions ; and there are
certain perennial errors, idols, as Bacon calls them, which find in the
mind of man a dwelling-place so congenial that the doctrine of idols
bears the same relation to the interpretation of nature as that of
sophisms does to common logic.

As we are forced, by the imperfection of our nature, to study the
principles of knowledge in order to guard ourselves from error, it
makes little difference whether we call the principles of science
metaphysical or not.

We speak of physical science, but it would surely be more repug-
nant to the usage of common speech to call the principles of science
physical than to call them metaphysical ; for, while the data of
science are things known to sense, we must ask, with Berkeley,
whether it is not certain that the principles of science are neither
objects of sense nor of the imagination ; whether they do not arise
in the mind itself ; whether the sensible world is anything more than
the stimulus which calls forth the innate or latent powers of the
mind. We assuredly have no sense-organ by which a principle may
be perceived, except so far as we have by nature an organ of com-
mon sense. If the principles of science are perceived at all, rather
than apprehended, they must be perceived by some inner sense, for
which we know no sense-organ.

" As understanding perceiveth not, that is, doth not hear, or see,
or feel, so sense knoweth not; and although the mind may use
both sense and fancy, as means whereby to arrive at knowledge,
yet sense or soul, so far forth as sensitive, knoweth nothing. For,
as it is rightly observed in the ' Theaetetus ' of Plato, science con-
sisteth not in the passive perceptions, but in the reasoning about
them."

1 Huxley, " Collected Essays," VI., pp. 288, 289.

INTRODUCTORY 27

Some, who so far agree with Plato, may be led to remind Berke-
ley that objects of sense are not only first considered by all men, but
most considered by most men ; and that the possession of opinions
may be no evidence of reason.

Truth, he tells us, is the cry of all, but the game of few ; and
while there may be wisdom in a multitude of counsellors, Huxley
reminds us that it is in but one or two of them.

Some may assert that, admitting that we have no sense-organ
by which we perceive the relation between a pattering sound on
the roof and a shower, the connection between the sound of rain
and the falling drops is nevertheless physical and not mental ;
and that response to the order of nature is no evidence of reason,
since we do not attribute judgment to the mimosa, which, stimu-
lated by the falling drops, folds its leaves that the rain may reach
its roots.

They may also assert that, if the structure and history of all
parts of our own organic mechanism were fully known, we should
be able to show that the principles of science are physical ; that
we apprehend them because our minds are the ones which have
survived the struggle for existence ; and that these principles are
no more than natural selection would lead one to expect ; although
we must ask whether we find in nature any reason why what
we expect must happen ; whether natural selection is an efficient
cause, or only a generalization from experience; and whether
experience is not itself a state of mind. We may point out that
hope is not science, and that no one has, as yet, deduced the
principles of science from brain anatomy ; and we may ask whether,
if this were accomplished, the anatomical structure of the brain,
and of the other organs which we study by our senses, is not a
thing perceived; whether perception is not mental; and whether
a thing perceived by sense is not a phenomenon of mind. We
may also ask whether proof that our organ of common sense has
come about, like our eyes and ears, by the survival of the fittest,
would tell us any more about the relation between mind and
matter than our eyes and ears tell us now.

I am not able to answer the question whether, in ultimate
analysis, the principles of science are physical or metaphysical.
I know nothing about things ultimate. I do not know what the

28 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

relation between mind and matter is. I do not know whether
the distinction between "things perceived by sense" and "rela-
tions apprehended by the mind" is founded in nature or not;
but I am sure that natural knowledge is useful to me, that it is
pleasant, and profitable, and instructive ; and I must ask whether
all this does not show that nature is intended.

This introductory summary of some of the topics I shall try
to handle in the following lectures shows that these topics are
neither few nor simple, nor am I so bold as to think that I can
set any one of them on a firm foundation; for, like William
Harvey, I do not wish what I say "to be taken as if I thought
it a voice from an oracle " ; although I hope it may " stir up the
intellects of the studious to search more deeply into so obscure
a subject."

I shall make no attempt at originality, but shall try to give
you some of the results of my own study of the thoughts of
others. Bacon tells us indeed that it is seldom in our power to
both admire and surpass our author; since, like water, we rise
not higher than the springhead whence we have descended; but
I cannot agree with him that the attempt to put the thoughts of
others in a new dress necessarily leads to the great injury of
learning, for we often fail to master the wise thoughts of one
who is not of our own times because his turn of words does not
fit our point of view.

All I have to say is anticipated in invention and is varied only
by the method of treating it. " For," like Montaigne, " I make
others to relate (not after my own fantastic, but as it best falleth out)
what I cannot so well express, either through unskill of language
or want of judgement. I number not my borrowings, but I weigh
them. And if I would have made their number to prevail, I
would have had twice as many." But I trust that, Bacon notwith-
standing, I have neither corrupted the labors of my predecessors
nor contributed to the slavery of the sciences.

The lectures which follow have been prepared at different
times, and for various reasons ; but I hope that, as I have arranged
them, they will exhibit unity of purpose, and the logical develop-
ment of that purpose, which, in a word, is this : To show to them
who think with Berkeley, that " it is a hard thing to suppose

INTRODUCTORY 29

that right deductions from true principles should ever end in
consequences which cannot be maintained or made consistent,"
that, in my opinion, there is nothing in the prevalence of mechani-
cal conceptions of life, and of mind, or in the unlimited exten-
sion of these conceptions, to show that this hard thing to suppose
is true.

LECTURE II

HUXLEY, AND THE PROBLEM OF
THE NATURALIST

LECTURE II1

HUXLEY, AND THE PROBLEM OF THE NATURALIST

ALL thoughtful students will prize the essays and addresses on
Education which make up the third volume of Huxley's " Collected
Essays." When written, these were regarded by most readers as
special pleas for scientific education ; but nothing could be farther
from the truth, although the prominence of " science " in their titles
gives some ground for this impression. They who read them now,
after scientific education has become an assured fact, will find that
Huxley shows, here as elsewhere, that he is no radical, seeking to
sweep away the ancient landmarks, but an enthusiastic admirer of
all that is good in the old, as well as a zealous advocate for the new
in education.

While he improves every opportunity to set forth the need for
scientific education, he tells the student that he is a man and a citizen
as well as a student ; and the delights and the discipline of literature
and art and history are emphasized again and again, and each essay
is a plea for liberal culture ; although he never fails to demand the
removal of the accumulated ashes, and the rekindling of the pure
flame, until the very air the student breathes shall become " charged
with that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of veracity, which
is a greater possession than much learning ; a nobler gift than the
power of increasing knowledge."

No one — Huxley least of all — would dream of attributing the
" New Reformation " to any one man, and he speaks of himself
as "a full private who has seen a good deal of service in the ranks "
of the army ranged around the banner of physical science ; but the
object to which he tells us he has devoted his life — the diffusion
among men of the scientific spirit of " organized common sense " —

1 This lecture is part of a Review of Huxley's Essays, which was printed in the Forum,
November, 1895.

D 33

34 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

has made notable progress during his lifetime, and in this assurance he
tells us at its end that he " shall be content to be remembered, or even
not remembered," as one among the many who have brought it about.

Of all Huxley's essays, those which deal with the development
rather than the application of the method of using one's reason
rightly in the search for truth are of most value to the student.
Among them are the whole of Volume VI., " Hume ; with Helps
to the Study of Berkeley" ; as well as the one "On Descartes' Dis-
course Touching the Method of Using our Reason Rightly ; and
of Seeking Scientific Truth " (I. iv.), and many others, such as
"Possibilities and Impossibilities" (V. vi. 1891), and "Scientific
and Pseudo-Scientific Realism " (V. ii. 1887).

The opening paragraph of the book on Hume's Philosophy (VI. 57)
may be taken as a statement of the purpose of all these essays :
"Kant has said that the business of philosophy is to answer
three questions : What can I know? — What ought I to do ? — and,
For what may I hope ? But it is pretty plain that these three
resolve themselves in the long run into the first. For rational
expectation and moral action are alike based upon belief, and a
belief is void of justification unless its subject-matter lies within the
boundaries of possible knowledge, and unless its evidence satisfies
the conditions of credibility. . . . Fundamentally, then, philosophy
is the answer to the question, What can I know ? "

Huxley is not drawn into this province by the fierce joy of con-
troversy, nor by any desire to join those who flit forever over dusky
meadows, green with asphodel, in vain search for some reality which
is not within the reach of all. His motive is the most practical and
serious one we know, — " to learn what is true in order to do what
is right." This, he tells us, "is the summing up of the whole duty
of man, for all who are not able to satisfy their mental hunger with
the east wind of authority." The conclusion of the whole matter
is that "there is but one kind of knowledge and but one method
of acquiring it." This is the melody which runs through all the
nine volumes ; now loud and clear, now hidden by the minor inter-
est of a scientific topic, or by the heat of controversy or by the
charm of literary genius ; but always present, and easy — for one
who listens — to detect. It is because scientific education helps
us to acquire the method of using our reason rightly in the search

HUXLEY, AND THE PROBLEM OF THE NATURALIST 35

for truth, and not because science is the one thing worth knowing,
that he pleads for it so eloquently. It is because the improvement
of natural knowledge is conclusive testimony to the value of this
method that he devoted his life to the popularization of science.
It is because his right to use this method — the right which is also
the highest and first of duties — was disputed, that he entered the
stormy waters of controversy.

" If I may speak of the objects I have had more or less definitely
in view, . . . they are briefly these : To promote the increase of
natural knowledge, and to forward the application of scientific
methods to all the problems of life, to the best of my ability, in
the conviction, which has grown with my growth and strengthened
with my strength, that there is no alleviation for the sufferings of
mankind except veracity of thought and action, and the resolute
facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe with
which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off."

To what nobler end could life be devoted than the attempt to
show us how we may " learn to distinguish truth from falsehood, in
order to be clear about our actions, and to walk surefootedly in this
life " ? If he has succeeded, and every zoologist who is free to fol-
low Nature wherever she may lead is a witness that he has suc-
ceeded, — if, as the end of his lifelong labor, intellectual freedom
is established on a firmer basis, — this is his best monument, even
if the man should quickly be forgotten in the accomplishment of his
end. No memorial could be more appropriate than the speedy
establishment of that intellectual liberty which is not intellectual
license on a basis so firm that the history of the struggle to obtain
it shall become a forgotten antiquity.

Huxley's lifelong devotion to the task of teaching the right
method of using our reason in the search for truth has been so
fruitful that the success or failure of his attempts to teach the
application of this method to specific problems is a matter of very
subordinate importance.

As he was not only a man and a citizen, but, above all, a natu-
ralist, peculiar interest attaches to his utterances on the problems
of biology, although his various essays on this subject differ so
much in perspective that their effect upon many thoughtful readers
has proved to be practically equivalent to inconsistency. It is easy

36 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

to show that, in this case, as in others, the responsibility rests
with the reader and not with the author ; but, however this may
be, the opinion that his utterances are inconsistent is real and
therefore a proper subject for examination. Huxley's frame of
mind in 1854 is embodied in the essay "On the Educational Value
of the. Natural History Sciences " (III. ii.), from which I copy the
following passage (p. 43): —

"What is the cause of this wonderful difference between the
dead particles and the living particles of matter appearing in other
respects identical? — that difference to which we give the name of
life ? I, for one, cannot tell you. It may be that by and by
philosophers will discover some higher laws of which the facts of
life are particular cases, — very possibly they will find out some
bond between physico-chemical phenomena on the one hand and
vital phenomena on the other. At present, however, we assuredly
know of none ; and I think we shall exercise a wise humility in
confessing that for us, at least, . . . this spontaneity of action . . .
which constitutes so vast and plain a distinction between living
bodies and those which do not live is an ultimate fact : indicating,
as such, the existence of a broad line of demarcation between the
subject-matter of biological and that of all other sciences."

Between 1854 and the publication of the essay "On the Physical
Basis of Life" in 1868, natural science advanced with strides which
have no parallel, and the "Origin of Species" brought about a
revolution in our conceptions of the history of living nature. It
is not surprising that Huxley's point of view undergoes significant
change, and that a new aspect of nature now excites his interest
and absorbs his attention. The establishment of the doctrine of
the continuity of life on a firm basis, and the acceptance of the
generalization that all living things are related by birth, had given
new meaning to the familiar truth that they are all fundamentally
identical in structure; and the essay of 1868 deals with this aspect
of living organisms. The essay is regarded by many readers —
both those who look upon it with horror and those who make it
the basis of a biological creed — as contradictory to the essay of
1854; but I, for one, am unable to find in it any basis for this
opinion. Its motive — the truth that "protoplasm is the basis of
life"; that "it is the clay of the potter, which, bake it and paint

HUXLEY, AND THE PROBLEM OF THE NATURALIST 37

it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice and not by nature
from the commonest brick or sundried clod," is no novelty. In
fact, the essay is nothing more than a statement in modern
terms of the new evidence which modern science furnishes in con-
firmation of the familiar conviction that, so far as his physical
basis is concerned, man hath no preeminence above the beasts ;
that they all have one breath ; that is, the rain on the earth which
causes the bud of the tender herb to spring forth ; that as for the
earth, it giveth us bread ; that the vital spark is soon quenched
unless it is kept alive by fuel from without ; that the living machine
must soon break down and wear out ; and that then shall return
the dust to the earth as it was. Huxley says : " Past experience
leads me to be tolerably certain that when the propositions I have
just placed before you are accessible to public comment and criti-
cism they will be condemned by many zealous persons, and perhaps
by some few of the wise and thoughtful." They who remember
the reception of the essay are aware that this expectation was not
disappointed, but it is hard to understand why ; for its substance,
if not its modern language, has been the common property of
some of the wise and thoughtful for ages.

I do not see why any one should challenge Huxley's statement
that "it seems to me that we are logically bound to apply to
protoplasm or the physical basis of life the same conceptions
which are held to be legitimate elsewhere. If the phenomena
exhibited by water are its properties, so are those presented by
protoplasm its properties." We may have practical objections,
based on expediency and not on logic, to the further statement
that "we live in the hope and in the faith that by the advance of
molecular physics we shall, by and by, be able to see our way as
clearly from the constituents of water to the properties of water as
we are now able to deduce the operation of a watch from the form of
its parts and the way they are put together." Faith and hope are
good things no doubt, and " expectation is permissible when belief is
not "(VIII. 1870); but experience teaches that the expectation or
faith of the master is very apt to become belief in the mind of the
student, and " science warns us that the assertion which outstrips
evidence is not only a blunder, but a crime." (III., IV., 150, 1880).
In order to avoid all danger of adding to the criminal classes it

38 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

is perhaps as well for those who are teachers to keep their faith
outside the laboratory as much as possible.

With this qualification I have nothing but approval for the pas-
sage quoted, as well as for the rest of the essay. Like Huxley, I
hold that we are logically bound to apply to protoplasm the same
conceptions as those which are held to be legitimate elsewhere.
Without believing, I certainly see no reason for doubting that all
the properties of organisms may possibly be some day deduced from
the nature and disposition of their constituent molecules. If I
should live to see this proved, I should believe it without remodel-
ling any beliefs I now hold; for most assuredly I do not believe
that these activities are the result of anything else than physical
structure. I simply do not know, and have no belief whatever on
the subject, although I welcome every addition to our knowledge
of the properties of the physical basis of life, in the conviction that
this knowledge is a necessary condition for progress. I must also
insist, however, that nothing seems more obvious to me than that
we might study the form of the parts of a watch, and the way they
are put together, till the crack of doom, without understanding it
in any sense worthy the name. To understand it we must study
not only its mechanism and the movements to be deduced from it,
but the movements of the earth as well ; and then we must study
a third thing, — that relation between the two which fits a watch for
man's service. I hold that, in this sense of the word, we can
" understand " watches, and that good common sense forces us to
admit not only that the fitness of a watch is real, but that it is the
only basis for rational interest in watches. Analogies are dangerous
weapons, because of our fondness for pushing them farther than
the facts warrant, and for assuming that resemblance in one feature
involves resemblance in other features. The fact that living things
are like watches in their fitness, in their adjustment to the phe-
nomena of the external world, at once suggests many interesting
questions with which I have no intention to deal at present. This
particular resemblance is obvious, and I hold that whatever may
be possible to the zoologist of future ages, the only method of study-
ing this fitness which is available at the present day is like that
which we apply to watches.

Huxley says : " If the properties of water may be properly said

HUXLEY, AND THE PROBLEM OF THE NATURALIST 39

to result from the nature and disposition of its component molecules,
I can find no intelligible ground for refusing to say that the prop-
erties of protoplasm result from the nature and disposition of its
molecules."

I know no reason why any one should "refuse to say" this,
except that "the assertion which outstrips evidence is a crime."
When it has been proved, I, for one, shall say it cheerfully ; but I
cannot forget that we have been taught for two thousand years and
more that life is not a property of the physical basis like the prop-
erties of water, but a relation, an adjustment between the properties
of the organism and of those of the environment, between the
changes which take place in the body and those which go on in the
world around it ; that this adjustment serves to promote the welfare
of the species, and that we know nothing comparable to it in water
or in anything else except living beings, and their products, such
as watches, and spiders' webs, and birds' nests.

The author of our oldest book on zoology opens it with the
following statement of its purpose : —

" To say what are the ultimate substances out of which an animal
is formed ... is no more sufficient than would be a similar account
in the case of a couch. For we should not be content with saying
that the couch was made of bronze or of wood, or whatever it might
be, but should try to describe its design or mode of composition in
preference to the material. ... It is plain that the teaching of
the old physiologists is inadequate, and that the true method is to
state what the definite characters are that distinguish the animal
as a whole. ... In fact, to proceed in exactly the same way as we
should do if we were giving a complete description of a couch." 1

If this is true, if life is not a property like those of water, but
an adjustment between properties, it must be clear that no amount
of knowledge of any properties of the physical basis except the
property of fitness can ever give us a science of life, although it
must be equally clear that knowledge of all its properties is a
necessary condition for progress. My comment on the essay " On
the Physical Basis of Life " is that, while I fully agree with it,
I hold with Aristotle that it is "inadequate," although I am quite
prepared to admit the possibility that this inadequacy may be due

1 Aristotle, " Parts of Animals," I. i.

40 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

to my own limitations, and not to the nature of the subject. While
I find nothing in the essay which need give any one a moment's
" nightmare," I am equally unable to find in it any warrant except
"faith "for the dogma that biology — the science of life — now is,
or is at all likely soon to be, the study of the physical and chemi-
cal properties, or any other property except fitness, of the physical
basis.

The partial failure of training in biological laboratories to make
naturalists of the students, or to excite in them that interest in the
homes of living things which has so often proved a greater delight
than art or literature ; its failure to stimulate the investigation of
those relations between animals and plants and the world around
them which constitute life, — has begun to attract attention and to
excite comment. Among the many reasons assigned for this failure
"microtomes " have occupied a prominent place and have been held
to be the seat of the mischief, although no one can treat seriously the
assertion that we can have too many or too refined means for research
into structure. From long acquaintance with many students and from
much discussion with them I have satisfied myself that the belief
that our biology (the biology of the present day, and not that of the
unknown future) ends with the study of the structure and functions
of the physical basis — the belief that biology is "nothing but"
the discovery of its physical and chemical properties — has much
to do with it. My experience also tells me that the essay " On
the Physical Basis of Life " is appealed to as a scientific warrant
for this belief, although we have seen that it affirms nothing more
than a " hope " for this consummation.

This ground was all worked over before Aristotle's day, and
perhaps it may not be too much of a flight of the imagination to
inquire what he might have thought of this essay. Do not his
reflections in the "Parts of Animals" warrant the assertion that
his comment would be something like this ? —

"Your natural science interests me more than anything else
in your modern world ; and your century is distinguished beyond
all others for progress in the history of life. I am delighted with
this essay, and no other pleasure could compare with that which I
should find in a course of study in the properties of living things
with the aid of your appliances for research ; but are you quite sure

HUXLEY, AND THE PROBLEM OF THE NATURALIST 41

that the whole case is stated in the essay ? While clay is the
physical basis of the potter's art, its essence is fitness for the use
of man : and what concerns us is not that he uses clay, but that
he makes from it now a foundation-brick and now an ornamental
coping ; now a homely kitchen pot, and now a graceful urn. I
have studied your wonderful chronometers until I am 'able to
deduce the operations of a watch from the form of its parts and
the way they are put together ' ; but I failed to understand them
until I perceived that relation between their movements and those
of the earth which constitutes their fitness for man's service. I
tried, long ago, to show that something very similar is true of living
things. We may sometime be able to foresee or deduce all their
actions from their structure, but at present, as in my own day, the
only available way to understand them is to study their relations
to the world around them.

"My teaching that the essence of a living being is not what it
is made of, or what it does, but why it does it, has been rendered
by one of your contemporaries into the statement that life is the
continuous adjustment between internal and external relations.
If this is true, is not the biology which restricts itself to the physical
basis, and forgets the external world, like your play of ' Hamlet '
without the Hamlet ? Is not the biological laboratory which leaves
out the ocean and the mountains and meadows a monstrous ab-
surdity ? Was not the greatest scientific generalization of your
times reached independently by two men who were eminent in their
familiarity with living things in their homes ?

"You ask, 'What better philosophical status has vitality than
aquosity ? ' — and I ask you in turn what better status has voli-
tion than vitality? — yet you find the employment of this word
'both useful and justifiable.' You can separate water into its
elements and then, by recombining them, you can get water again ;
and this you may repeat as often as you choose; but can you, as
yet, do anything of the sort with living things? When by the
methods of the laboratory you have made a living being; when
you have made not merely protoplasm, — nor even protoplasm capa-
ble of nutrition, growth, reproduction, and contraction, — but proto-
plasm able to maintain persistent adjustment to the shifting world
around it, — then, and not till then, will I admit that my word

42 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

'vitality' (^f^e) has reached the end of its long career of useful-
ness.

" I admitted long ago that it is as truly a property of a bird to
build a nest as it is a property of water to freeze ; but our interest
in the nest lies in its fitness for maintaining the species. I hear
it said among you that science has nothing to do with the Why,
but only with the How ; but we can surely give answers to the
questions ' Why do men make and buy watches ? ' — ' Why do
birds pursue their prey ? ' — ' Why do they flee their enemies ? '

— and ' Why do they make nests ? ' — answers which are good and
sensible, although they are incomplete.

"The naturalists of your day are adding continually to the
overwhelming evidence for a truth which was unsuspected in mine

— the mutability of species and the continuity of life. If I could
now publish a new edition of the ' Parts of Animals,' I should
treat with more consideration than they seemed to merit two
thousand years ago the views of my contemporaries who held that
extermination and survival have a good deal to do with fitness,
but I should still contend that the study of fitness is the true
aim of biology."

This comment on the current interpretation of the essay on
"The Physical Basis of Life" seems to me to be good common
sense and therefore good science ; and it also seems to me to be
a legitimate application of the teachings of the "Parts of Animals."

Huxley makes many references to the problems of biology in
later essays, but space will permit us to examine none except the
last. In 1894 I find certain Prolegomena (IX. i, 1894) in which it
is easy to read between the lines clear indications that, notwith-
standing the period represented by the essay on "The Physical
Basis of Life," Huxley ended as he began, — almost, if not alto-
gether, in the old-fashioned conviction that living things do, in
some way and in some degree, control or condition inorganic nature ;
that they hold their own by setting the mechanical properties of
matter in opposition to each other, and that this is their most
notable and distinctive characteristic. He says the flora of the
region where he writes was in a " state of nature " until three or
four years before, when the " state of nature was brought to an
end, so far as a small patch of soil is concerned, by the interven-

HUXLEY, AND THE PROBLEM OF THE NATURALIST 43

tion of man. The patch was cut off from the rest by a wall. . . .
In short, it was made into a garden. ... It will be admitted that
the garden is as much a work of art or artifice as anything that
can be mentioned. The energy localized in certain human bodies,
directed by similarly localized intellects, has produced a collocation
of other material bodies which could not be brought about in a
state of nature. The same proposition is true of all the works of
man's hands, from a flint implement to a cathedral or a chronom-
eter : and it is because it is true that we call these things arti-
ficial, term them works of art or artifice, by way of distinguishing
them from the products of the cosmic process, working outside
man, which we call nature, or works of nature. The distinction
thus drawn between the works of nature and those of man is
universally recognized, and it is, as I conceive, both useful and
justifiable."

I trust that the thoughtful reader will perceive that the legiti-
mate pursuit of this line of reflection leads straight back to the
Aristotelian statement, in the essay of 1854 (III. ii. 40), that "to
the student of life [as contrasted with the student of physics] the
aspect of nature is reversed. Here incessant and, so far as we
know, spontaneous change is the rule ; rest the exception — the
anomaly to be accounted for. Living things have no inertia and
tend to no equilibrium."

Many biologists find their greatest triumph in the doctrine that
the living body is a "mere machine"; but a machine is a colloca-
tion of matter and energy working for an end, not a spinning toy ;
and when the living machine is compared to the products of human
art, the legitimate deduction is that it is not merely a spinning
eddy in a stream of dead matter and mechanical energy, but a
little garden in the physical wilderness ; that the energy localized
in living bodies, directed by similarly localized vitality, has pro-
duced a collocation of other material bodies which could not be
brought about in a state of physical nature, and that the distinc-
tion thus drawn between the works of non-vital nature and those
of life is both useful and justifiable.

What this distinction may mean in ultimate analysis I know
no more than Aristotle or Huxley ; nor do I believe that any one
ever will know until we find out. One thing we may be sure it

44 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

does not mean — that the living world is anything but natural ; for
all men of science must agree with Aristotle (" Parts of Animals,"
III. ii. 16) that "in all our speculations, therefore, concerning
nature, what we have to consider is the general rule" (not forces,
or causes, or necessary laws). " For that is natural which holds
good either universally or generally." If we are to understand
this fitness which is so distinctive of living things, this must be
brought about, not by keeping it locked out of sight as a chamber
of horrors, but by bringing it into the bright light of day; by
"intending the mind" upon it; by attacking it with Descartes'
method of using one's reason rightly for the discovery of truth.
Whether this method is or is not adequate, we shall know when
we find out ; but we have no other, and the discoveries of Wallace
and Darwin give a basis, not for a belief, but for a hope that it
may some day prove adequate.

Times are changed since Huxley warned his hearer in 1868
that, in accepting protoplasm as the physical basis of life, he was
"placing his foot on the first rung of a ladder which, in most
people's estimation, is the reverse of Jacob's and leads to the an-
tipodes of heaven." Nowadays "Scientific Rip Van Winkle" and
" Aristotelian " are the mildest phrases applied to him who holds
that life is more than a basis, — to him who doubts whether the
essay states the whole or even the most essential part of the
case ; and he is lucky if he is not told that he is a " Spiritualist,"
"false to the spirit of Science"; or at the very least that he is
"illogical."' In this case he can only say with Huxley (IX. 10,
1894) that "if it is urged that the . . . cosmic process cannot be
in antagonism with that . . . which is part of itself, I can only
reply that if the conclusion that the two are antagonistic is logi-
cally absurd, I am sorry for the logic, because, as we have seen,
the fact is so " ; or, as Aristotle expresses it, it holds good.

My own interest in this distinction is entirely practical and not
philosophical. Whatever philosophical basis it may have or may
not have, it seems to me that no one can question its practical
bearing on the study of biology at the present day and for many
ages to come. If it is urged that our knowledge of the external
world is destined to be resolved, in the long run, into our con-
sciousness of changes in the physical basis of our minds, and

HUXLEY, AND THE PROBLEM OF THE NATURALIST 45

that the " external world " to which plants and animals respond is
also to be resolved into changes in their physical basis, I am
quite willing to admit this possibility ; as I am ready to admit
that, for anything I know to the contrary, the reality of both the
external world and the physical basis itself may consist in being
perceived or known, but I hold it unwise to forget that the same
daily experience which justifies our confidence in the orderly se-
quence of external nature also warrants the assumption that their
external world is the same as ours. The question whether its
reality is ideal or material or both has no more to do with this
purely practical confidence than has the presence or absence in a
dog or an oak tree of conscious belief in it.

They who hold the faith that science will some day be able to
demonstrate, in the structure of the brain, the origin of such actions
as writing a review of Huxley's Essays, are quite welcome to their
faith ; but I hold, as a purely practical matter, that they may find
out in a much shorter way why I have written this article ; and
I also hold that this is likely to be the case for some considerable
time. I also believe with Aristotle that the most practical way
within our reach of studying that adjustment between the organism
and the external world — that fitness — which constitutes life, is to
learn all we can about the physical basis and all we can about its
fitness ; and I hold fast to this purely practical confidence without
any faith in the unknown biology of the distant future, and most
assuredly without any desire to discount it.

I must ask, however, what reason there is for thinking that
belief that my volition is both real and part of the cosmic process
is logically absurd.

The greatest of all my many great debts to Huxley is the
clear perception that there is no antagonism between belief that
all the phenomena of nature, including those of life and mind, are
mechanical, and my confidence in the value of my reason. If
Huxley is right in the assertion that mechanical principles are
nothing more than generalized statements of our experience, — as
I am convinced that he is, — and if the widest of all generaliza-
tions from my experience is that my volition counts ; how can
belief in the value of my reason be logically absurd ? May not
the logical absurdity lie with them who hold that proof that my

46 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

rational actions are no more than might have been expected from
the working of the mechanism of my body, would also prove
that my reason is "as completely without any power to modify
that working, as the steam-whistle which accompanies the work of
a locomotive engine is without influence upon its machinery"?

LECTURE III

NATURE AND NURTURE

THIS chapter, which all who have attended my lectures during
the last ten years will find familiar, does not deal with the inter-
minable question whether "acquired characters" are inherited, but,
granting that this may be the case, it is an attempt to weigh the
value of this "factor" in natural history.

Herbert Spencer tells us that the segmentation of the backbone
is the inherited effect of fractures, caused by bending, but Aristotle
has shown ("Parts of Animals," I. i.)that Empedocles and the ancient
writers err in teaching that the bendings to which the backbone
has been subjected are the cause of its joints, since the thing to
be accounted for is not the presence of joints, but the fitness of
the joints for the needs of their possessor.

It is an odd freak of history that we of the end of the nine-
teenth century are called upon to reconsider a dogma which was
not only repudiated two thousand years ago, but was even then
called antiquated. " Is there anything whereof it may be said :
See ! this is new ? It hath been already of the old time which
was before us."

In this day of laboratories, are we not in danger of forgetting
the first principle, so clearly put by Aristotle, that the thing to
be explained is not the structure of organisms, but the fitness of
this structure for the needs of living things in the world in which
they pass their lives ? We must be on our guard lest the great
discovery that protoplasm is the physical basis of life obscure the
truth that what Huxley has called the physical basis is one thing,
while what Aristotle has called the essence of life is quite another
thing. The physical basis of a locomotive engine is the expan-
sion of steam, but its essence is fitness for the service of man.

E 49

50 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

Since we accept the utility of steam-engines as a fact that
does not call for explanation, we say we understand them when
we have discovered that they do neither less nor more than their
mechanical structure would lead us to expect. It is also clear
that we might understand them, in this sense of the word, even
if they grew, like animals, ready made ; although it is equally
clear that we should ask, in this case, how they became fitted for
human needs; and that we should not admit that we understand
them so long as this question is unanswered. So it is, not only
with the works of man and other living things, but with the liv-
ing things themselves. All they do may sometime prove no more
than might be expected from their physical basis ; but this proof
would not show why the things they do are useful to the beings
that do them, or to their species.

While there is nothing novel in Herbert Spencer's well-known
dictum, that life is adjustment, it should help the modern reader
to grasp the significance of Aristotle's teaching, to the effect that the
essence of a living being is not protoplasm, but purpose. A living
being is a being with properties which are useful to the possessor
or to his species.

If, like Paley, I kick a stone, I may change its position, raise
its temperature, and bring about other changes that might all be
computed from a few simple data. What happens if, instead of
a stone, I kick a dog?

In addition to certain changes which are obviously mechanical,
like those in the stone, I start a new set of changes which could
never be computed from the study of the kick alone. But note
this remarkable fact : Show me the dog, and I may be able to
tell you what he will do. If he have short hair, a pink skin, a
big occipital crest, great cheek muscles, a long mandibular bone,
a short nose with little pigment, small red eyes and crooked legs,
he will not act like a dog with silky ears, curly hair, large dark
eyes, a long, black pointed nose, a bushy tail, and long legs with
big feet.

What has the color of a dog's nose or the size of his feet to
do with the effect of the kick ? Obviously, nothing at all ; but
the changes in the dog which follow the kick are not its effect,
for they might follow an unsuccessful attempt to kick precisely as

NATURE AND NURTURE 51

they follow an actual blow. The color of his eyes and the other
marks are racial characteristics which show what his ancestry
has been ; how his parents and more remote progenitors have
behaved under similar assaults. With this scientific knowledge of
dogs we may conjecture, with some confidence, how this one will
behave ; but in order to compute his conduct with anything like
accuracy, we must have still more information. If his master
habitually beat or bully him, he will not act like a dog brought
up with more discretion. If he be young, and have not learned in-
dependence and self-reliance and distrust of strangers, he will not
act like an older and wiser dog ; and if eyes and teeth and limbs
be failing from old age, his conduct will be still different. If the
kick wake him from sleep, he will not act like a dog disturbed
while eating ; nor will a lost dog, oppressed by a sense of his
own friendlessness, act like one whose master is near; nor one
assaulted at home like one on strange ground, where he has no
rights; nor one attacked in the discharge of his duty like one
detected in forbidden pleasure or in theft. The attitude of the
assailant, or even such little things as the size of the pupil of his
eye, or the contraction of one or another facial muscle, will tell
the dog what emotions accompany the kick; and, if I myself be
accompanied by a dog, this third party may modify the result
without any share in the assault.

What a difference between a kick against a dog and one
against a stone ! In one case the simple conditions may be stated
in few words, and the result may be computed ; while in the
other, a book would not suffice for the statement of all the facts,
and the best science of our day is powerless to compute the
result.

I am fully prepared to believe, whenever it is proved, that all
the conditions which modify the result are embodied, in one way
or another, in the structure of the dog ; for I know no reason
why we should seek them anywhere else. While there will be
plenty of time for a positive opinion when it is proved, I see no
reason to doubt that, if the dog's body could be preserved without
change, it might, some day in the ages to come, be studied by a
naturalist who would be able to tell what conduct would have
followed the kick, just as we foresee the effect of an opened valve

52 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

in a steam-engine. If absence of disproof were proof, they who
assert that, so far as complexity is in question, the difference be-
tween the actions of a stone and those of a dog is merely a differ-
ence of degree, not of kind, may have some ground for their
belief, inasmuch as no one can say it may not some day be
demonstrated. I, for one, see no other reason, than that no
one knows, for doubt whether sufficient knowledge might not
enable us to foresee or deduce the actions of the dog from the
structure of his body ; but we have not yet noted the most essen-
tial characteristic of his actions. They are significant. They
have a meaning. They stand in judicious adjustment to the
canine world ; and their meaning can never, so far as I can see,
be learned by studying his body; for if the meaning which our
minds apprehend is embodied in any structure, it must be in our
own, rather than in that of the dog. It may be that all that
makes up the dog's external world- is imprinted in his organiza-
tion, and that the naturalist of some distant age may be able to
there exhibit it, just as the photographer brings out the picture
on his negative ; but even if this were done, the picture would
still remain only an image of an external world which, while more
limited, is otherwise practically the same as our own. However
this may be, the only way to study the meaning of the dog's
actions, at the present day, is to seek it in his environment; in
the conditions under which he and his ancestors have lived ; nor,
in order to study this meaning, need one know whether the dog
is aware of it.

While there seems to be good ground for reasonable confi-
dence that the dog is conscious and rational, we know nothing
whatever concerning the presence or absence of consciousness in
most living things, although we do know that their actions are
beneficial to them and such as our reason approves ; and that this
is the real difference between them and a stone ; for while the
actions of the stone may, for all I know to the contrary, be useful
to the stone, my reason does not approve the statement that this
is the case, for it is a matter about which I know nothing.

Science may some day enable us to predict the actions of the
dog from the study of his body ; but I do not see how we are to
understand them without studying the conditions under which he

NATURE AND NURTURE 53

and his ancestors have passed their lives. Whether he shut his eyes,
throw back his ears, and, straightening his tail, plant his teeth in
my leg, or crouch at my feet, with his muscles relaxed, his ears
pendent, and his tail trailing on the ground, or, putting his tail
between his legs, run away howling, the reason for his conduct is
not the pain of the blow, but the importance of escape from the
further injury which may follow. The means he adopts are those
which have been favorable to this result in the past history of dogs.

The dog, no doubt, knows, just as we do, that, in the ordinary
course of events, the attack is a sign of a disposition to do him
farther harm ; and he also knows he may arrest or avert this by
doing something, on his own part, to meet it ; but, in case of most
organisms, we know only the response and not the consciousness
of it.

The kick is a sign of something which may follow, and the
actions which do follow are not the effect of the kick, for they are
directed or adjusted, either consciously or unconsciously, to an event
of which it is only the forerunner. This is what we mean, or, at
least, an essential part of our meaning, when we say the dog is
alive, while the stone is not. It is possible that the properties
of the stone may be useful to the stone, but these words are mean-
ingless to us ; although we do know that the properties of the
dog are useful to the dog or to his species. The changes in the
stone are the effect of the blow; while those in the dog are, in
some way, the result of the past history of the dog and of his an-
cestors ; for, all through this history, violent assaults have been asso-
ciated with danger of further violence. This difference is as wide
as the difference between life and its absence ; and the inde-
pendence of biology as a science is due to its existence. It is what
Herbert Spencer means by the statement that life is adjustment,
and it is what Aristotle means by teaching that the essence of a
living being is not what it is made of nor what it does, but why it
does it.

A living thing is a being which responds to the changes which
go on in the world around it ; for life consists in the maintenance
of adjustment between the changes which occur in the external
order of nature and those which go on in the living body. Life
is response to the established order of external nature; and, so

54 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

far as it is joined to consciousness and volition and reason, it is
identical with the practical application of scientific knowledge. If
we were sure that all living things are conscious and endowed
with memory and volition, as they may be for all I know to the
contrary, we might define life as knowledge in use ; for the re-
sponsive actions of living things are such that our reason approves
them as judicious and beneficial. This truth has often found ex-
pression in the statement that living things use the properties of
the world around them for their own good or the good of their
species.

The same thought may be expressed by the statement that
life is the use of the natural language of signs; for each stimulus
to a vital act is a sign with a significance ; and the act is itself
a response to the significance of which, in course of nature, the
stimulus is a sign.

To study life we must consider three things : first, the orderly
sequence of external nature; second, the living organism and the
changes which take place in it ; and, third, that continuous adjust-
ment between the two sets of phenomena which constitutes life.

The physical sciences deal with the external world, and in the
laboratory we study the structure and activities of organisms by
very similar methods ; but if we stop here, neglecting the rela-
tion of the living being to its environment, our study is not biology
or the science of life. Now, whatever its equivalent in the struct-
ure of organisms may be, the reality in our own minds behind
such words as use, fitness, and response, is not a phenomenon,
which can, in this century at least, be weighed or measured or
made manifest to sense, but a relation, apprehended by our think-
ing minds ; for beneficial response is one thing, and conscious
apprehension of the benefit of response quite another thing. Men
who know nothing of the sciences of optics and acoustics profit,
like philosophers, by seeing and hearing ; as do also the snail and
the jelly-fish, whether they know they have eyes and ears or not.

While biology presents endless opportunities for the profita-
ble application of the methods of research which are employed
in physical science, it also brings before us a new problem, the
problem of fitness, which demands new methods of inquiry, and
is different from the physics and chemistry of the living body.

NATURE AND NURTURE 55

The origin of those useful properties in the employment of
which life consists is one of the most fascinating and instructive
subjects in the whole range of human inquiry, for to it knowledge
itself owes its significance.

While there is so much that we do not know, we' do know
that the qualities which fit the dog for his place in nature, and
enable him to respond to the changes which go on in the world
around him, are, in part, transmitted from his ancestors, while they
are, in part, the result of his individual training and experience
and education and contact with the world.

The opinion that the effects of his individual history may be
transmitted to his descendants, the belief that he may inherit the
effects of the experience and education and training of his an-
cestors, has come to be formulated as " the inheritance of ac-
quired characters"; although I, for my own part, never use this
form of words without protest. If any assert that the dog in-
herits anything which his ancestors did not acquire, their words
seem meaningless ; for, as we use words, everything which has
not existed from the beginning must have been acquired ; although
one may admit this without admitting that the nature of a dog
is, wholly or to any practical degree, the inherited effect of the
environment of his ancestors.

Francis Galton, borrowing, I suppose, from "The Tempest,"
many years ago contrasted the nature and the nurture of living
things ; and I propose to examine the question whether the nature
of a dog or of any other living being is inherited nurture.

This is very different from the question whether the effects of
nurture are ever inherited, and I have no desire or intention to
discuss this interminable subject; for I find as little value in the
a priori arguments of those who hold that " acquired characters "
cannot be inherited as I find in Haeckel's assertion that "belief
in the inheritance of acquired characters is a necessary axiom of
the Monistic creed."

So far as the question is whether the nature of organisms is
wholly or to any practical degree inherited nurture, I think it no
more than right to say that my own view of the matter was
formed many years ago, before the recent revival of discussion,
and that, while I have followed this, I have found no reason for

56 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

making any essential change. One morning, some time ago, I
found in my mail two papers by naturalists whose well-earned
reputation in their own fields would seem to entitle them to
speak with authority. In one I read that American indifference
to the destruction of our valuable timber is the inherited effect
of the long war with the primeval forest which our ancestors
were forced to carry on in order to make a home in the new
world. The author of the second paper accounts for the great size
of the eyes of certain deep-sea fishes by attributing their enlarge-
ment to the efforts of many generations to see in " total " darkness.

Conrad Gesner tells us, in his " Book of Animals," that no book
is so bad the thoughtful reader may not learn something from
it; and if these speculations can be made to point a moral, they
are not quite in vain, as they may help us to fix attention on
certain first principles which seem so obvious that one would
think all must admit them.

Familiar experience teaches that living things are often greatly
modified by the conditions to which they are exposed during
their individual life, and that the modifications which are thus
produced are often useful; for if this were not the case, no bene-
ficial effect could come from training or education. We all know
that the congenital or natural powers and faculties of children and
of those who grow up in ignorance are very limited, and that it
is practice which makes perfect. That judicious use often devel-
ops and strengthens the parts which are used is unquestionable
and the efficiency of neglected organs often becomes impaired. We
are born with a nature that makes the normal use of our powers
a pleasure, and while aceticism may despise mere bodily delights,
more generous wisdom sees, in the keen enjoyment of normal or-
ganic life, and in the discomfort or pain which attends repression,
especially in the young, some of those wonderful adjustments
which are the very essence of natural science.

While hard work is exhausting, and while the organic machine
is easily damaged by abuse, and is, at last, worn out by use, normal
use is a condition of its perfect development, and the amount of
normal work it may do without deterioration is astonishing. In
the highly civilized and self-indulgent, it is much more likely to
wear out than to rust out; and nothing could be more short-

NATURE AND NURTURE 57

sighted than impatience with the restlessness of children, although
no effeminacy can wholly repress the joyous exuberancy of child-
hood ; nor can any thoughtful person fail to see that the impulse
which leads young animals to train and develop their bodies by
sports and gambols is adaptive.

All this, and more, is implied by the admission that there is
such a thing as nurture ; and one of the first questions to present
itself, when we consider the matter, is why living things are not
like the imaginary Caliban ; how they come by a nature on which
nurture will stick; for it is plain that, far from being an explana-
tion of nature, nurture is a fact which itself calls for explanation.

The most stable organs may be modified by novel or excep-
tional use, and the most profound structural changes may be
brought about by nurture. After Hunter had fed a sea-gull on
grain for a year, he found that the inner coat of its stomach had
grown hard, and its muscles had thickened, thus forming a true
gizzard, although the sea-gull normally has a soft stomach, as it
lives upon the soft flesh of fishes. It is well known that living
things are often changed by mechanical influences. The skull
of a hornless ram has been found to weigh only one-fourth as
much as the skull of a ram with horns ; and the whole configu-
ration of the skull of lop-eared rabbits is altered by the mechanical
pressure of the drooping ears. Hemp seed causes bulfinches and
some other birds to become black ; and we know, from the obser-
vations of many naturalists, that change of food sometimes changes
the colors of caterpillars, or even those of the moths which they
produce. Many curious cases of this sort have been recorded, in
birds and insects, and it seems reasonable to believe that, if un-
natural food may change the normal colors of a species, the normal
colors may themselves, in some cases, be due to the direct action
of the natural food.

Sometimes the effect of the conditions of life is injurious, some-
times neutral, but often it is useful to a notable degree ; and it is
this usefulness — the power to respond to changed conditions by
adaptive modification — which is most worthy of consideration.
Cold weather promotes the growth of hair on mammals, and thus
protects them from the cold. The muscle which is used grows
stronger, and the hand becomes skilful by training.

58 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

Look at a young pine tree and examine its mode of growth.
No one can doubt that the long, straight, tapering trunk, and the
successive circles of branches, uniformly decreasing in length from
the spreading base to the pointed crown, serve a useful end; that
the arrangement offers great resistance to storms, exposes a great
area of foliage to sun and air, and has other advantages. Now
examine the arrangement of the buds. At the tip of the central
axis is a terminal bud, pushing straight upwards and building the
crown of the tree, and giving off lateral buds which build the
branches, and, becoming their terminal buds, leave behind them
their own series of lateral buds to repeat the same process. The
shape of the tree, so characteristic that it may be identified miles
away, is the result of this simple law of growth ; and this itself is,
in a certain sense, a result of the mechanical conditions of life.
The bud at the top of the crown is the only one which is sym-
metrically placed with reference to the sources of light and air and
food, and its symmetry is the result; while the unequal distribu-
tion of these conditions of growth results in the one-sided develop-
ment of the other buds. If the crown of the young pine tree be
destroyed by lightning or storm, or by an enemy, a bud that would
otherwise have played a subordinate part, may fall heir to its
advantages and build up a new crown. If the tree be prostrated
by an accident, a new trunk, with its tapering crown, may spring,
in time, from a bud far down the trunk.

From one point of view the shape of the pine tree seems to be
the effect of the mechanical conditions under which it grows, for
unnatural or exceptional changes in these conditions may be
followed by abnormal deviations from the type ; but from another
point of view the type of the pine tree is fixed by the constitution
or inherent tendency of the tree itself, and is independent of
external conditions ; for when a pine, a spruce, and a larch grow
side by side under the same conditions, each conforms to its own
type. The so-called conditions of individual life are stimuli, without
which normal growth does not take place, but they are not deter-
mining factors, for the change that follows is due to something
prior to and independent of the stimulus.

While it is a matter of familiar experience, in every moment of
our lives, that the stimulus under which a vital action takes place

NATURE AND NURTURE 59

is one thing, while the character of the action itself is quite another
thing, this fact tends from its very familiarity, to slip out of the
minds of students ; and two views of the nature of the process of
development of the living thing out of the germ, which have been
argued for centuries, illustrate this tendency. One school of embry-
ologists has long held that the egg or germ produces the living thing
in virtue of its inherent potency, or specific constitution, which is,
in some way, an embodiment of all that is to be unfolded out of it ;
while the other school finds, in the stimulus which is given by
nurture, in the influence of the external world, and in that which the
parts of the segmenting egg and those of the growing organism
exert on each other, the explanation of each successive step in the
process of development.

Advocates of these two views have regarded themselves as
opponents, but except that latent potency is hard to lay hold of,
while mechanical conditions readily lend themselves to experiment,
I cannot see why there should be any real antagonism; for the evi-
dence that each may be true seems ample. Every change that
takes place in the living being, from the beginning to the end of
individual life, may be called forth by some mechanical stimulus,
either within the body or without ; and yet the outcome of the whole
process may be no more than exhaustive knowledge of the nature of
the germ would lead one to expect.

The gun does not go off until the cap is exploded, but it hits the
mark because it is aimed. While the distinction between the stim-
ulus to a vital change and the nature of the change itself is obvious
enough in simple cases, we may easily become confused and lose
sight of it in handling complicated problems.

A hen's egg will not develop without heat and fresh air, and
when these are properly supplied it becomes a chick, although
belief that the heat causes the chick is too grotesque for the sane
mind ; for the production of a duckling from a duck's egg in the
same nest proves, if any proof be needed, that while the egg will
not develop without incubation, the outcome of the process of
incubation is the result of the inherent capacity of the egg itself.

The most notable peculiarity of this inherent tendency or
specific constitution of living things is its fitness. The egg not only
gives rise to a specific organism, but to one that is beautifully and

60 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

wonderfully fitted for the normal life of its species. What interests
us is not that the hen's egg becomes a chick while the duck's egg
becomes a duckling ; but that one grows into exquisite adjustment
to the life of fowls, while the other becomes as admirably fitted for
the life of ducks.

In truth, the assertion that the future chick is latent in the egg
seems to be no more than a generalized statement of observed
facts, and of our confidence that they may be repeated ; although it
by no means follows that the words, inherent potency, are useless ;
for they serve a useful purpose if they fix attention on the fact that,
while that which was an egg may under certain conditions become a
chick adapted for the life of fowls, knowledge of these conditions
fails to show us why it should.

Here the stimulus comes from the external world, but the case
is just the same when it is internal. The well-known results of
castration prove that the normal development of many male mam-
mals and birds depends upon some constitutional stimulus which
comes from the reproductive organs to the parts of the growing
body; but who can believe this an adequate explanation of the
short, sharp horns, the thick neck, and the ferocity of the bull, or of
the bright colors, the sharp spurs, and the high courage of the cock ?

Have we any reason for a different opinion when the result
varies with the stimulus ? Under one internal stimulus a bud
becomes a jelly-fish, while, under others, it may become a hydranth
or a machopolyp or a blastostyle, but the real problem, in this
case as in the others, is the production of a beautifully coordinated
organism, with the distinctive characteristics of its species, and
with exquisite fitness for a life like that of its ancestors.

I showed, some years ago, that a small crustacean, Alpheus
heterochelis, develops according to one plan at Beaufort in North
Carolina, according to a second at Key West in Florida, while
it has still a third life history at Nassau in the Bahama Islands ;
but no one can believe that the influences which cause this diver-
sity in the metamorphosis of Alpheus have anything to do with
the final outcome, which is the same in all three places. The
case is exactly the same when a cell which would normally give
rise to a half or a quarter of the body gives rise to the whole
under a different stimulus.

NATURE AND NURTURE 6 1

All the machinery in a great industrial exposition may be
started by a single electrical contact, but, however much the dis-
covery of the button may interest us, it helps us but little ' to
understand the result. So it is with living organisms. External
conditions press the button, but it takes all the inherent potency
of living matter to do the rest.

It is an error to suppose great knowledge is needful for a
clear grasp of first principles. " The largest views are not always
the clearest, for he who is short-sighted will be obliged to draw
the object nearer, and may, perhaps, by a closer and nearer sur-
vey, discover that which had escaped far better eyes."

The riches of a great store of information "cannot be spared
or left behind, but it hindereth the march ; yea, and the care of
it sometimes loseth or disturbeth the victory."

Students who are drifting on the sea of facts, with which the
modern laboratory has flooded us, sometimes declare that the
doctrine of adaptation is antiquated and unscientific and perni-
cious. They tell us that organisms have many properties which
are not adaptive, and that we are often unable to tell whether a
property is adaptive or not. Of course this is true. No one
supposes that susceptibility to poisons, for example, is adaptive as
such, and our knowledge of nature is incomplete beyond measure.

They tell us, too, that' many attempts to explain the uses of
parts are fanciful and worthless. Unfortunately this is true also,
but the logic which makes it a reason for denying the reality
of fitness is enough to raise Paley from his grave.

While protoplasm is, no doubt, the physical basis of life, the
intellectual basis of biology is adjustment. I should like to see
hung on the walls of every laboratory Herbert Spencer's defini-
tion, to the effect that life is not protoplasm, but adjustment; or
the older teaching of the father of zoology, that the essence of
a living thing is not what it is made of nor what it does, but why
it does it.

It may seem to some that, since capacity for nurture is part
of the nature of living things, the difference between nature and
nurture is, after all, apparent rather than real. Since what is
transmitted from parent to child is not actual or manifest nature,
but only its latent potency, or, in other words, a capacity for

62 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

nurture, the question whether nature is inherited nurture or not
may seem a matter of words and definitions, rather than a real
problem of things; although no one can lose sight of the truth
that aptitude for nurture is not, unfortunately, the same as apti-
tude for beneficial nurture. It is, at most, no harder to acquire
pernicious habits than to acquire good ones ; no harder to culti-
vate bodily infirmity, or logical inconsequence, or mental imbe-
cility, or moral obliquity, than to develop and make the best of
our faculties and opportunities. He who has passed the plastic
age without adding to his nature much nurture he would gladly
be quit of, is either more fortunate or less particular than the bulk
of mankind. While it may be true that we acquire no nurture
but that which our nature permits, it is no less true that this
nature permits a wide range of good and bad; and that it by
no means binds us to make of our nature all that it permits. All
this seems true of other living things as well, and the view that
nature is inherited nurture throws no light on the problem of
fitness.

Belief that something is added to our nature by experience,
and training, and education, rests on deliberate or unconscious
acceptance of some such definition of nature as that which Alci-
phron gives ; and, as the modern zoologist, who regards nature as
the inherited effect of past nurture, seems to lose sight of Euphra-
nor's analysis of this definition, I beg leave to refresh his memory
by a short quotation from the old dialogue.

Euphranor. You seem very much taken with the beauty of nature.
Be pleased to tell me, Alciphron, what those things are which you esteem
natural, or by what mark I may know them.

Alciphron. For a thing to be natural, for instance, to the mind of man,
it must appear originally therein : it must be universal in all men : it must
be invariably the same in all nations and ages. These limitations of origi-
nal, universal, and invariable exclude all those notions of the human mind
which are the effect of custom and education. The case is the same with
respect to all other species of beings. A cat, for example, hath a natural
inclination to pursue a mouse, because it agrees with the forementioned
marks. But if a cat be taught to play tricks, you will not say these tricks
are natural. For the same reason, if upon a plum tree peaches and apricots
are engrafted, nobody will say they are the natural growth of the plum tree.

Euph. But to return to man : it seems you allow those things alone

NATURE AND NURTURE 63

to be natural to him which show themselves upon his first entrance into
the world ; to wit, the senses, and such passions and appetites as are dis-
covered upon the first application of their respective objects.

Ale. That is my opinion.

Euph. Tell me, Alciphron, if from a young apple tree, after a certain
period of time, there should shoot forth leaves, blossoms, and apples, would
you deny these things to be natural, because they did not discover and
display themselves in the tender bud?

Ale. I would not.

Euph. And suppose that in a man, after a certain season, the appe-
tite of lust, or the faculty of reason, shall shoot forth, open, and display
themselves, as leaves and blossoms do in a tree ; would you, therefore,
deny them to be natural to him, because they did not appear in his original
infancy ?

Ale. I acknowledge I would not.

Euph. It seems, therefore, that the first mark of a thing's being natural
to the mind was not warily laid down by you ; to wit, that it should ap-
pear originally in it.

Ale. It seems so.

Euph. Again, inform me, Alciphron, whether you do not think it natural
for an orange-plant tree to produce oranges?

Ale. I do.

Euph. But plant it in the north end of Great Britain, and it shall
with great care produce, perhaps, a good salad ; in the southern parts of
the same island, it may, with much pains and culture, thrive and produce
indifferent fruit; but in Portugal or Naples it will produce much better
fruit with little or no pains. Is this true or not?

Ale. It is true.

Euph. The plant being the same in all places, doth not produce the
same fruit — sun, soil, and cultivation making a difference.

Ale. I grant it.

Euph. And since the case is, you say, the same with respect to all
species, why may we not conclude, by a parity of a reason, that things may
be natural to humankind, and yet neither found in all men, nor invariably the
same when they are found? And, as those fruits which grow from the most
generous and mature stock, in the choicest soil, and with the best culture, are
most esteemed ; even so ought we not to think those sublime truths, which are
the fruits of mature thought, and have been rationally deduced by men of the
best and most improved understandings, to be the choicest productions of
the rational nature of man ? And, if so, being in fact reasonable, natural, and
true, they ought not to be esteemed unnatural whims, errors of education, and
groundless prejudices, because they are raised and forwarded by manuring
and cultivating our tender minds, because they take early root, and sprout forth
betimes by the care and diligence of our instructors.

64 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

The belief that nature is inherited nurture so obviously fails to
throw light on the problem of fitness that most of the modern advo-
cates of this opinion claim no more than that nurture supplies the
raw material from which natural selection picks out and preserves
the good, the useful, the fit; while the bad, the injurious, the unfit,
is neglected ; but I hope my readers may find reason to ask whether
we can be sure that nurture has even this amount of influence.

Living things are preeminently distinguished by what is best
expressed by the word fitness; they are adjusted to the world
around them in such a way as to force us to believe that the use
to which their organization is put has, in some way, been the con-
trolling factor in the production of the organization itself. There
is no escape from the belief that the adjustment of the eye to the
principles of optics, its fitness for vision, has, in some way, guided
and controlled its history; that it has come into existence for seeing,
or by seeing, or because it sees. Darwin and Wallace have shown
how the use of a part determines its structure through the extermi-
nation of the relatively unfit, and the survival of the relatively fit;
and I shall try, in another place, to show that this explanation is
adequate and satisfactory; but at present we are concerned only
with the opinion that the eye has been made, wholly or in part,
by seeing.

Since the conditions of life often tend, as we have seen, to
modify organisms in such a way as to fit them for these very con-
ditions; since, for example, the trained eye sees more than the
untrained eye; since, within certain limits, extra demands upon a
muscle make it more able to do the extra work, — may not the spe-
cific constitution of each organism have been produced in somewhat
the same way? May it not be the inherited result of the influence
of the conditions under which its ancestors lived; preserved, it may
be, by natural selection? Since the pine tree does not grow up
without the mechanical influence of its environment, may not the
inherited tendency to which its shape is due have been caused
by the direct mechanical action of the environment of past
generations ?

This is a fair question, and if it were asked by a boy, or by one
unfamiliar with the subject, I should welcome it as a sign of intelli-
gent interest; but when it is asked by a naturalist, I can look at it

NATURE AND NURTURE 65

only as an indication of culpable ignorance of history; for the
hypothesis has been tried and found wanting, and it was rejected
as inadequate more than two thousand years ago. To come down
to modern times, Wallace, Darwin, Huxley, and Gray, men who
were, assuredly, unprejudiced by opposition to the doctrine of the
mutability of species, have all told us that they studied Lamarck
with all diligence, and found, in his works on this subject, nothing
of value.

The views of the Neo-Lamarckians, as I understand them, are
somewhat broader than those of Lamarck, but fundamentally the
same, and, briefly stated, are as follows: The useful changes
which are produced in the structure, habits, instincts, and other
faculties of living things, through contact with the world around
them, are inherited by their children; and this inheritance, aided,
it may be, by natural selection, is an efficient factor in the origin of
species, and has gradually adjusted, or given material aid in adjust-
ing, the characteristics of each organism to its needs. Stated still
more briefly, it is the doctrine that organic evolution has been
brought about, or at least greatly aided, by the inheritance of
nurture.

We must now dwell upon a point which seems worthy of atten-
tion. Lamarck believed that the useful effects of the conditions of
life are the ones which are inherited, and this is the only point
worth notice; for if these effects may be indifferently useful, use-
less, or injurious, they can have no bearing upon the origin of
adjustment. In inorganic nature it may be an even chance whether
an external change be destructive or preservative, but, when we
remember how narrow the range of adjustment of each living being
is, the probability that haphazard effects will be injurious or neutral
rather than beneficial is prodigious. Even if they are inherited, the
effects of nurture cannot cumulate in adaptation except as an acci-
dent so improbable that only the most conclusive evidence can
prove such an event; unless indeed it can be shown that nurture
is beneficial independently of selection.

While the chances seem all against adaptive modification
by the direct action of the conditions of life, I think we may
challenge the Lamarckian to show a single species which has
been modified to its own disadvantage. There are species which

66 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

have been thrown out of harmony with their environment by some
external change to which they failed to respond, and individuals
are often put at the greatest disadvantage, or even destroyed, for
the good of the species as a whole, but there is not a single
example of the disadvantageous modification of a species in a
state of nature; although man is able to produce, for his own
purposes, such monsters as double flowers, oranges and grapes
without seeds, and laying hens which never sit, and thus to
demonstrate that species present no inherent obstacle to injurious
modification.

The Lamarckians have brought together a long list of examples
of the useful modification of individuals by external influences,
but no one has tabulated the neutral or hurtful modifications.
Still we find reason to believe that organisms do tend to respond,
in a favorable way, to certain external changes, and we may fairly
call upon the Lamarckian to explain how this useful property was
acquired. How, for example, did our muscles acquire the ten-
dency to become strengthened by exercise ?

Certain zealous Lamarckians tell us, as if it were a sufficient
explanation, that the benefit which comes with the normal use of
our muscles is due to the properties of living matter ; although I
am not aware that any modern naturalist attributes it to anything
else. I shall try to show, Lectures VIII. and IX., that the only
path in which we can have any well-grounded hope for progress in
the explanation of adaptive types takes its departure from that con-
ception of nature which leads us to seek for the origin of the
properties which exhibit adaptation in the physical basis of living
beings. If any interpret the opinion that the origin of these
properties must there be sought as an assertion that it has there
been found, I do not see that their impetuosity has any bearing on
the point at issue, which here, as in other cases, is the question
how the living being comes to exhibit these properties under
normal stimuli in such a way as to be adaptive. The increased
power to use our muscles, which comes with practice, is, no doubt,
due, in the main, to improvement in the nervous system, although
normal use is essential to the healthful development of the muscle
itself, for its nutrition is promoted by normal exercise, and this
result may be imitated by massage or by electrical stimulation.

NATURE AND NURTURE 67

It has seemed to some that the pathological hypertrophy of
certain muscles under abnormal conditions is evidence of an
inherent or innate capacity for adaptive response. For example,
pathological conditions which throw extra work upon the heart
are often followed by the hypertrophy of the heart itself ; and, as
these conditions are abnormal or exceptional, it is said that the
capacity of the heart for responding to them cannot be due to the
survival, in past generations, of those ancestors whose hearts thus
responded ; but a moment's thought will show that the survival of
every mammal does depend upon the power of its heart to re-
spond to increasing demands by increasing efficiency. If the work-
ing capacity of the heart did not keep pace with the growth of the
body, no mammal could grow up, but growth is a normal process,
common to all. No mammal could survive the great changes which
take place in the circulation before and at the time of birth, if the
capacity of its heart for doing work did not keep pace with the
normal changes in the amount of work which is required. As we
have already seen, page n, that the responsive activities of liv-
ing things may be called out by either the normal stimulus or any
other which acts in the same way, the pathological hypertrophy
of the heart is no more than the past history of mammals would
lead us to expect.

Improvement of our muscles under exercise is the outcome of
structural adjustments for bringing this useful end about — it is
an adaptation ; and the heart is as obviously fitted for improve-
ment by use as it is for propelling blood. Exercise fits a muscle
for its normal work only so far as structural adjustments for
bringing this about already exist, in the brain, and in the nervous
system, and in the muscle itself ; and the real problem, the origin
of the adaptation, is in no way different from that presented by
any other structural adjustment.

This is still further illustrated by the fact that while many
organs are improved by normal or natural use, abnormal or un-
natural use is well called abuse. When our bodies are used in
what is popularly called the way they were intended to be used,
use is beneficial ; but injudicious or excessive training may be as
pernicious as neglect.

If we acquire no nurture except that which our nature pro-

68 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

vides for, what are we to say of the acquisition of knowledge ?
Does this come by nature and not by nurture ?

The use of language is an acquired art, and not an innate
faculty. Whitney reminds us (" Life and Growth of Language,"
p. 279) that "though possessing the endowments of a Homer
or a Demosthenes, no man can speak any language until he has
learned it, as truly learned it as he learns the multiplication table,
or the demonstrations of Euclid."

I have tried to show, page 53, that since each vital act is a
response to a sign with a significance, life is the use of the
language of nature ; and it follows, if this phrase is to be taken
literally, that life is an acquired art, and not a natural inheritance.
I have tried to show, page 9, that this may be the case, since it may
be the adaptive mechanism, and not its responsive activity, which is
inherited from parent by child.

While no one can come into possession of a language without
learning it, and while each acquires the tongue which the acci-
dent of birth places within his reach, Whitney reminds us that
man learns language because " he possesses, as one of his most
marked and distinctive characteristics, a faculty or capacity of
speech, — or, more accurately, various faculties and capacities which
lead inevitably to the production of speech ; but the faculties are
one thing, and their elaborated products are another and very
different one."

" It needs not only the inward power, but also the outward
occasion, to make man what he is capable of becoming."

There is no place for a treatise on human knowledge, but I
think that the mind to know truth seems, to most, as essential as
truth to be known; for it does not seem good common sense to
attribute our minds to either the direct or the indirect effects of
knowledge. The general opinion seems to be that our minds
come by nature, rather than by nurture, although some, who
admit that our minds are ours by nature, strangely suppose that
these same minds may be efficient causes of changes in our
nature.

It is legitimate and relevant to ask the difficult question
whether natural knowledge is the discovery of truth, or only the
avoidance of error; and there is much to be said in favor of

NATURE AND NURTURE 69

Berkeley's assertion, that "the work of science is to unravel our
prejudices and mistakes, untwisting the closest connections, distin-
guishing things that are different; instead of confused and per-
plexed, giving us distinct views; gradually correcting our judgment
and reducing it to a philosophical exactness."

Physical exercise corrects our bodily movements, and reduces
them to exactness, by giving us distinct movements, instead of
confused and perplexed ones ; but we are unable to believe that
training gives us any new muscles, and their fitness for improve-
ment by exercise is 'itself an adaptation which calls for explana-
tion.

If Berkeley is right, as he seems to me to be, and if what we
call natural knowledge is no more than the correction of our
judgment and its reduction to exactness, it seems clear that
knowledge no more accounts for our judgment than training ac-
counts for our muscles, and that physical culture and mental cult-
ure are, in this respect, exactly alike.

The modern zoologist, who reflects upon the phenomena of
nature, is forced, like all who have gone before him, to consider
anew the ancient and difficult question whether there are "innate
ideas"; and, even if his success be slight, and his conclusions
indefinite, he may, perhaps, make use of his acquaintance with
living things to focus the point at issue, and to show that this
may be, in part at least, a matter of words and definitions.

" It is Plato's remark, in his ' Theaetetus,' that while we sit still
we are never the wiser, but going into the river, and moving up and
down, is the way to discover its depths and shallows. If we exercise
and bestir ourselves, we may even here discover something." 1

So far as it concerns the zoologist, the question seems to be this :
Is it something we find in our nature, or something we discover in
the outer world, which justifies our confidence in our mental states
and in our responsive actions ; or may there not be a sense in which
each point of view is the true one ?

I have tried to show, page 59, that, while the responsive activities
of living things do not take place until they- are called forth by a
proper stimulus, the things they do under stimulus are no more than
their organic mechanism would lead us to expect ; and that there

1 Berkeley, " Siris," p. 367.

70 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

need be no necessary antagonism between those who attribute the
development of the germ to mechanical conditions and those who
attribute it to the inherent potency of the germ itself.

We must now ask whether there is any more necessary antag-
onism between those who attribute knowledge to experience and
those who attribute it to our innate reason.

If this question could be considered in itself, it might not be
formidable ; but it is hedged about with complications, for some of
which the modern zoologist is responsible, although only a few of
the perplexities by which his efforts are beset can be laid to his
own charge.

Some zoologists tell us that the value of our responses is equiva-
lent to confidence in their value, although it is clear that our hearts
had value before men studied anatomy, and that digestion was
useful to them before they knew that it occurs.

We are also told, in effect, that confidence in the value of our
mental states is the same as judicious confidence in their value,
although we all know that while one who has led an uneventful
life may dread all accidents, a life of adventure may teach that,
while some accidents are to be avoided at any cost, the danger from
others is trifling. The confidence of the man with little experience
is no less strong than that of the adventurer, but it is less judicious;
and, as we use words, we do not call it knowledge, but " ignorant "
prejudice, or "unreasoning" cowardice, although there is no reason
why those who wish should not use words in some other sense.

The question whether experience is or is not the only source of
knowledge clearly turns, in part at least, on our definition of know-
ledge. An infant who has never known a tumble may act as they
act who know the danger of a fall, and, if response to the order of
nature were evidence of knowledge, it would be obvious that some
knowledge is innate, or independent of experience ; but it is not our
custom to call the blind prejudice of ignorance and the prudent
conservatism of the wise by the same name.

Some zoologists hold that beneficial response to a stimulus is
evidence that the stimulus is perceived, and that the response is
made with knowledge, and, if this were admitted, it would be clear
that some knowledge is innate in living things ; for all admit
that they may respond to the order of nature without experience,

NATURE AND NURTURE ?l

although few assert that every response is evidence of knowledge.
The impulse to eat when we are hungry is useful, but we do not
call it knowledge, although we do give this name to the physiology
which tells us when and how far food is beneficial ; and we distin-
guish our innate "moral sense" from knowledge of good and evil.

We are sometimes told by those who are not zoologists, that,
admitting that all the responsive actions of living things may be
useful, rational responses may nevertheless be distinguished, by
perfectibility, from fixed instincts and blind mechanical reflex acts.
It is said that while mechanical responses are persistent, those which
are due to knowledge are improvable ; but no zoologist can admit
that any property of living things is immutable, or that perfecti-
bility is evidence of knowledge. If the correction of our natural
responses and their gradual reduction to exactness by the suppres-
sion of those which are confused and perplexed, and the survival
of those which are distinct and useful were evidence of knowledge,
might not the zoologist ask, in this case, whether the whole history
of the origin of species by means of natural selection may not be
a history or the acquisition of knowledge ? For it is a history of
the acquisition of something which our reason approves, even if
we are quite unable to tell, in most cases, whether it is accompanied
by mind or not. Whether perfectibility be held to be evidence of
knowledge or not, may not the zoologist ask if the question whether
knowledge is or is not innate may not depend upon the answer we
give to the farther question whether it is the activity of the organic
mechanism, or only the mechanism itself, that is transmitted from
parent to child ; for if no act is inherited, is it not hard to see how
there can be any innate or hereditary knowledge ?

No one who has propagated plants from cuttings or seen a sea-
anemone divide into two, can ask whether a material organism may
be multiplied ; but they who hold that actions may be transmitted
and multiplied by inheritance seem to hold that the law of the con-
servation of energy does not here hold good. While all who hold
that this law is empirical and experimental must stand ready to admit
exceptions to it when proved, he must be of bold mind who holds
that inheritance is an exception ; and we have already, page 59,
examined evidence which seems to show that, while the things which
living beings do under stimuli are no more than their nature would

/2 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

lead one to expect, we have no reason to expect these things to take
place in the absence of these stimuli or some equivalent.

If the believer in innate ideas tells us all this is quite con-
sistent with his principles; if, while admitting that he knows no
mental act or state without physical concomitants, he assert that
the subjective or mental aspects of our responsive actions arise
in us because of our inherent nature; if he tell us that the physi-
cal concomitants are only the " occasion " of the mental states, or
the stimulus under which they arise in our minds, — I do not see
why the zoologist should not agree, and admit that he is, to this
extent, an intuitionist after the ancient school of Plato ; for, so
far as science tells us, what we call the " causes " of physical
events are no more than "occasions." In physical science all
we mean, when we say we understand a thing, is that, certain
conditions or occasions being given, it may be counted on with
confidence, while we cannot judiciously expect it in their absence.

The question at issue between the Lamarckian and the Dar-
winian is not whether knowledge arises in the mind in the
absence of experience, but whether experience is anything more
than the "physical cause," or occasion, or stimulus, in the pres-
ence of which knowledge may be expected to arise in the mind,
and in the absence of which it cannot reasonably be looked for.
If this latter is the case, is it not hard to see how experience
can be either the efficient or the- physical cause of the mind in
which it arises?

It is hard to calmly ask whether training and education and
experience add anything to our nature, for we know that a man
educated is different from the same man uneducated. If, at first
thought, the question seems repugnant to common sense, we
must remember that it is also hard, when looking through a bit
of colored glass at a neutral wall, to believe that no color is
added, and that the effect is due to negative and passive ex-
clusion by selection or sifting.

The assertion that there is no more redness on the wall, or
on the retina, than there was before the red glass was interposed,
seems, at first, to be contradicted by our sensations, and repug-
nant to common sense.

Who can imagine more color outside the limits of a rainbow

NATURE AND NURTURE 73

than within the borders of the arch ? When the rich colors of
evening spread over the glowing clouds, after a dull, gray day,
we feel that new wealth of beauty has been added at the end,
and that the dying day has taken on new splendors, which were
absent in our working hours.

The emotional value of nature, and its moral influence, gain
so much strength as the day dies, that the impression of a cor-
responding gain in sensible value is irresistible, and effort to
imagine all this glorious color in the common light of day is
vain; yet there are more rays of crimson and red and purple at
noonday than in the declining light of evening.

One modern zoologist has defined life as "memory"; and
while Plato's belief that learning may, in effect, be reminiscence
seems repugnant to common sense, the zoologist must hold it an
approximation to the truth ; although he cannot forget that, so far
as natural selection is a physical explanation of the " archetype,"
or species, of which the germ becomes reminiscent in develop-
ment, just so far is it a physical explanation of those "forms,"
or " necessities of intellect," of which the " soul " becomes remi-
niscent in knowledge ; for improvement under experience is, as
much as embryonic development, a part of the life history of
a normal human being.

We are told that "it is a maxim of the Platonic philosophy
that the soul of man was originally furnished with native inborn
notions, and stands in need of sensible occasions, not absolutely
for producing them, but only for awakening, rousing, or exciting
into act what was already preexistent, dormant, and latent in the
soul; as things are said to be laid up in the memory, though
not actually perceived until they happen to be called forth and
brought into view by other objects."

The zoologist of our day may ask whether all that the living
organism does may not be latent in its physical organization,
ready to be called forth by that " sensible occasion " which we
now call a stimulus ; although, when pressed for an exhaustive
definition of latent potency, he may find no better answer than
an admission that these words are no more than a generalized
statement of his observations on the actions of living things in
general, and on the operations of his own mind in particular,

74 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

joined to an expression of his confidence that these observations
may be repeated, and are no more than might have been expected.

When the believer in innate ideas goes farther than this, and
asserts that the " forms " or " archetypal ideas " which thus arise
in the mind are universal or necessary, the zoologist must ask
him how this is known. Things that are innate, or natural, are
not always universal or necessary, for while parental affection is
natural, some parents are unnatural.

If the believer in innate ideas' asserts that, while our latent or
potential sensational knowledge does not become active or mani-
fest until it is called forth by some change in the physical world,
we are the ultimate and efficient causes of our own thoughts, the
zoologist must ask, once more, how this is known. If any assert
that we know that our thoughts are ours because we can control
them, the physiologist, while admitting the control, asks how we
know that the way we control them is different from the way we
control our visual sensations by going into a dark room, or by
shutting our eyes.

All admit that all normal human beings who are not helpless
infants, or aged dotards, are able to control their thoughts, and
the actions which follow them, in some practical sense of the
words.

" If I take things as they are and ask any plain, untutored man
whether he acts or is free in any particular action, he readily
assents, and I as readily believe him from what I find within.
And if man be free, he is plainly accountable. But if you shall
define, abstract, suppose, and it shall follow that according to your
definitions, abstractions, and suppositions, there can be no free-
dom in man, and you shall therefore infer that he is not account-
able, I shall make bold to depart from your metaphysical abstract
sense and appeal to the common sense of mankind."

May not the modest zoologist, who humbly admits that, while
he does not know what the relation between mind and matter
is, he would like to find out, also ask, in all sincerity, whether it
is he who has perplexed our common sense by defining and ab-
stracting and supposing? May he not also ask, not in a critical
spirit, but in order that he may approach this difficult subject
without prejudice, whether some of the responsibility for this

NATURE AND NURTURE 75

perplexity may not be laid to the charge of those metaphysicians
and theologians and philosophers who have told him that actions
which are mechanical cannot be free, because they are necessary ?

When we control our visual sensations by shutting our eyes,
we employ physical means, and while one who is thus enabled
to control some of his mental states by physical means may also
be able to use these means or not as he chooses, how can this
be evidence that his ability is independent of physical means ?

Is it necessary to know what the relation between mind and
matter is, in order to study mind ? As we know what we mean
by a plant, and may study botany, without knowing when or how
plants become differentiated from animals, and without knowing any
absolute diagnosis of a plant, so, too, may we not study know-
ledge, without knowing when or how it becomes differentiated from
instinct and impulse and emotion and unperceived cerebration ?

As we use the words, is knowledge equivalent to response,
or to beneficial response, or to the improvement of response, or
to response which is immediately controlled? Is it not rather
the correction of our judgment and its reduction to exactness ?
Whether knowledge is innate or not, does any one believe that
our judgment is ever corrected without a "sensible occasion"?
May not the amount of this correction be measured by experi-
ence ? If what we mean by knowledge is the correction of our
judgment under the stimulus of experience, is it not idle to ask
whether we may have knowledge without experience, for is not
this a contradiction in terms ? If any choose to define knowledge
as response, and to thus use the word consistently, no one need
object, for words are conventional symbols, which change their
meaning continually, although no one who uses common words
in an uncommon way, without defining them, can hope to be
understood.

We are told that if the " Lamarckian factors " are in any
degree operative at all, their great function "must be that of
supplying to natural selection the incipient stages of adaptive
modification, in all cases where, but for this agency, there would
be nothing of the kind to select"; but unless these "factors"
can be proved to have this function, they are unworthy of con-
sideration as a contribution to the history of adaptive modification.

76 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

I, for one, have found little to interest me in the interminable
dispute as to the inheritance or non-inheritance of the effects of
the conditions of individual life, because the gist of the whole
matter has seemed to me to lie in the deeper question whether
these effects are inherently adaptive ; and I am forced to ask for
evidence that the " Lamarckian factors " can give rise to even the
incipient stages of adaptive modification, before I care to inquire
whether they are or are not inherited. We are told that, " Inas-
much as we know to what a wonderful extent adaptive modifica-
tions are secured during individual lifetime, by the direct action
of the environment on the one hand, and by increased or dimin-
ished use of special organs and mental faculties on the other, it
becomes obvious of what importance even a small measure of
transmissibility on their part would be, in furnishing to natural
selection ready made variations in required directions, as distin-
guished from promiscuous variations in all directions."

This a priori argument to prove that the effect of these
"factors" must be inherited, because if so, it would be so useful,
has seemed plausible to many; but its fallacy is clear, unless the
inheritance of nurture can be proved to be beneficial prior to selec-
tion ; for, while the ways to use our bodies and our faculties are
few and definite, the ways to abuse them are innumerable ; and
the inheritance of all the effects of the conditions of life would
seem more likely to lead to cumulative destruction than to cumu-
lative adaptation. Unless the " Lamarckian factors " can be shown
to have, prior to selection, a determinate influence in beneficial
lines, it seems, on the whole, rather fortunate than otherwise that
evidence of the inheritance of their effects is so hard to find.

When bodily structure is improved and developed by use, we
find structural adjustments, which themselves require explanation,
for bringing this useful end about ; nor does there seem to be
any reason to believe the case is any different when intellectual
and moral improvement are in question. Here, as elsewhere, we
are benefited by training and practice and education because our
nature fits us for improvement by judicious nurture.

Capacity for individual development and improvement, muscu-
lar or mental or moral, under the normal conditions of life, is an
adaptation, — by far the most wonderful and admirable of adapta-

NATURE AND NURTURE 77

tions, — and the beneficial influence of the " Lamarckian factors,"
so far as this influence is beneficial, is not an explanation, but a
fact, that itself calls for explanation.

Is there any evidence that the influence of nurture is inherently
beneficial ? If there is not, must we not believe that all its effects,
except those which result from preexisting adaptive nature, will
be haphazard, so far as their fitness for the needs of living things
is in question ? Will they not be identical with what Darwin has
called "fortuitous variation"?

It scarcely seems necessary to point out, at this late day, that
Darwin's assertion that an event is " fortuitous " is not to be inter-
preted as belief that it is due to Chance, or that it is out of the
chain of natural causation. If, with Aristotle, we say the rain
does not fall to make the farmer's corn grow, any more than it
falls to spoil his corn, all we mean is that we discover no connec-
tion between the physical causes of the shower and the farmer's
needs.

Few are bold enough to assert that what we fail to discover
does not exist, although all must admit that it explains nothing.

The hypothesis that the rain falls to spoil the farmer's corn is
inadmissible, not because we know it to be untrue, but because we
find no evidence of its truth, and no value in its practical applica-
tion. If, in the absence of an adaptive nature, we find no con-
nection between the effects of nurture and the needs of living
things, then nurture is fortuitous, so far as we are concerned, as
an explanation of adaptive structure.

So far as I can see, there is no a priori reason why nurture
might not give rise to adaptive structures, as perfect and admi-
rable as the heart or the eye, although we find, as a matter of fact,
that injurious nurture is just as compatible with the system of
things as beneficial nurture. Nor is the difficulty at all diminished
by the belief that a necessary law of universal progress or evolu-
tion gives to nurture a beneficent impetus ; for men of science
repudiate the opinion that natural laws are rulers and governors
over nature ; looking with suspicion on all " necessary " or " uni-
versal " laws.

The production of words and sentences and great works of
literature and science, by running type through a hopper, is not

78 THE FOUNDATION'S OF ZOOLOGY

impossible, and, in the long history of living things, adaptive struct-
ures may have been produced, without selection, by the fortuitous
coincidence of fortuitous variations, but many generations of readers
have approved Swift's assertion that the attempt to advance know-
ledge by turning a crank failed to produce a single learned treatise.
The presumption against the production of adaptations, incipient
or otherwise, by nurture, seems so overwhelming that we are justi-
fied in demanding demonstrative evidence, before we accept this
explanation of any adaptation.

They who think that the "inheritance of acquired characters"
must be a factor in organic evolution, because we find, in living
nature, so much that we cannot yet explain without it, would do
well to ask themselves whether it would, after all, help them out
of any of their difficulties, even if its occurrence were proved. If
this is the case, would they not do well to rest on their oars, and
to look about them ? For that which they are in search of may
prove to be plainly in the sight of those who have the eyes to see.

An English writer has recently formulated what, he tells us, is
the Lamarckian answer to this sort of reasoning. He says : " The
assimilation and growth of a muscle under stimulus must be as-
cribed to a fundamental property of protoplasm, which it is not
the business of Lamarckians or evolutionists of any other school
to explain."

"According to the Lamarckian view all adaptations, at any
rate all adjustments concerning whose action and efficacy there is
no dispute, have arisen in the same way as the enlargement of a
muscle by exercise ; " and, whereas " Brooks supposes that these
structural adjustments have to be explained, Lamarckians suppose
they are merely the fundamental properties of protoplasm."

As this writer also says " Brooks has quite failed to understand
the Lamarckian view," I shall not attempt to interpret his belief
that such an adaptation as the fitness of the eye for vision, con-
cerning whose action and efficacy there does not seem to be any
dispute, is merely a property of protoplasm ; and I shall content
myself with the admission that he is quite right in asserting that
Brooks supposes this fitness has to be explained if it can be. He
may be pleased, however, to know that a still shorter way with the
Darwinian would be to ascribe all things to the cosmic vapor, and,

NATURE AND NURTURE 79

closing our laboratories and observatories, to rest content with the
assertion that things like those which distinguish men from turnips
are merely the fundamental properties of primitive nebulosity.

If I understand this author, he believes the attributes of all
living things are deducible from the properties of protoplasm ; and
as I myself believe nothing inconsistent with this creed, except
that the assertion which outstrips evidence is a crime, I am quite
ready to agree with him when he has deduced such things as his
logic, for example, from protoplasm ; although, if an Americanism
may be permitted, his assertion seems a little previous.

After this has been proved, if it ever is proved, it seems clear
that it will hold true of the properties of the unsuccessful, the
unfit, and the exterminated, as well as those of the fit; and that
the problem of fitness will still be as it was.

This problem is real. By recognizing and boldly facing it
Darwin and Wallace succeeded in making one of the greatest
strides in the whole history of human thought; and I must refuse
to admit that any good thing can come from a denial of its exis-
tence, or from the creed that it is "universal" and beyond the
reach of science.

LECTURE IV

LAMARCK

" Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense of a tendency to progression, adapta-
tions from the slow willing of animals, etc.; but the conclusions I am led to are not
widely different from his ; though the means of change are wholly so. I think I have
found out (here's presumption !) the simple way by which species become exquisitely
adapted to various ends." — C. DARWIN to J. D. HOOKER, Jan. n, 1848.

"The hypothesis of Lamarck — that progressive changes in species have been pro-
duced by the attempts of animals to increase the development of their own organs,
and thus to modify their structure and habits — has been repeatedly and easily refuted
by all writers on the subject." — WALLACE : " On the Tendency of Varieties to depart
indefinitely from the Original Type," yourn. Proc. Linnean Soc." August, 1858.

" The Lamarckian hypothesis has long since been justly condemned." — HUXLEY :
"Collected Essays," II., p. 12, 1859.

" It may be doubted whether Lamarck has not suffered more from his friends
than from his foes." — HUXLEY : " Collected Essays," II., p. 69.

" Lamarck assigned partly unreal, partly insufficient causes ; and the attempt to
account for a progressive change in species through the direct influence of physical
agencies, and through the appetencies and habits of animals reacting upon their struct-
ure, thus causing the production and the successive modification of organs, is a con-
ceded and total failure." — ASA GRAY : "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection," Amer. Journal Science and Arts, March, 1860.

LECTURE IV

LAMARCK

CONCLUSIVE proof of the inheritance of the effects of the direct
action of the conditions of life may be found at any moment, ft or
all one knows to the contrary^ but even if /they who) are acquainted
with no positive evidence think, with the writer, that a dogmatic
assertion, from negative evidence, or in the absence of all evidence,
that these effects are not inherited, or cannot be inherited, would
be rash and unscientific, they may, nevertheless, be interested in
an attempt to test the value of the assumption that they are inher-
ited ; admitting, in the interest of clear thinking, that the assump- ]
tion is reasonable and admissible.

That " inheritance of acquired characters " might produce some
system of living nature seems probable ; if we start with organisms
with such constitution that this "factor" tends to produce modifi-
cations which are both adaptive and inherited. That it has not "
produced, or materially aided in producing, the system which we
know seems certain.

Our business is to study that which is, not that which might
be ; and I shall try to show, as it has been shown again and again,
that the adjustments which are exhibited by living things are such
as to show that the " inheritance of acquired characters " has played
no essential part in their production.

The most extreme Lamarckian must admit that no organism can
transmit or inherit modifications produced by the conditions of
any life except its own, or that of its ancestors. The nurture
of A cannot be transmitted by B ; nor can it be part of the inherited
nature of B's descendants unless they are also descended from A.
How, then, are we to explain such things as the bee's sting or the

83

84 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

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poison of serpents, — mings which are useful only in their effect
on other animals than the user ?

How are we to explain adjustments to the life of other beings
than the ones that exhibit the adjustment?

As the serpent which is able to destroy its prey, and the bee
which is able to drive away its enemies, have an advantage in the
struggle for existence, it is easy to understand how these powers may
have arisen through selection ; for the bee's sting is a modified ovi-
positor, and it is used by some of the Hymenoptera both as a
weapon of defence, and as an organ for laying the eggs in the
tissues of plants, thus exciting pathological changes in these tissues,
so that they form galls, and store up, around the eggs, starch to
serve as food for the larvae which hatch from the eggs. While the
origin of these adjustments by selection is quite intelligible, there
does not seem to be any other way to account for them.

The white upturned tail of the rabbit is a danger-signal. When
disturbed or alarmed on the feeding-ground, which they visit soon
after sunset or on moonlight nights, the rabbits make for their
burrows, and the white upturned tails of those in front serve as
guides and signals to those more remote from home, to the young
and feeble ; and thus, each following the one or two before it, all
are able, with the least possible delay, to reach a place of safety.

Many defenceless insects are protected by their resemblance to
dangerous animals, or by some threatening or unusual appearance.
The great green caterpillar, known in some of our Southern states
as the "hickory-horned devil," has an immense crown of orange-
red tentacles, which, if disturbed, it erects and shakes from side
to side in a manner so alarming that the negroes believe it is
more deadly than a rattlesnake.

Who can believe that the inherited effect of the terror it excites
has modified the hickory-horned devil? After giving the matter
my best and most serious thought, I am unable to imagine any way
in which the effect of the upturned tail of the hinder rabbit can act
upon the tail of the rabbit in front, or any way by which the sight
of the tail in front can modify the tail of the rabbit behind. I find
the production of adaptations of this sort by the inheritance of
the beneficial effects of use, or in any way except by selection, quite
unthinkable. Most pelagic larvae are transparent, even when the

LAMARCK 85

adults are beautifully and conspicuously colored, and their bodies
are often drawn out into long spines and processes. In the zoea
of Porcellana, for example, these spines are so long, as compared
with the body proper, that this zoea when seen with a lens reminds
one of an oarsman seated in the middle of a very long, sharp-pointed
glass boat. Often the spines are strengthened by calcareous ladders
formed of long parallel transparent side-strips, like glass threads,
with cross-bars at regular intervals. No one who has strained his
eyes to discover in a glass of water one of these transparent
larvae which he has captured, and, after repeated attempts to suck
'it into a dipping-tube for study under the microscope, fails, because,
even when the end of the tube is at last brought directly over it,
it catches across the end of the tube and permits the current of
water to rush by without drawing it in, can doubt that the transpar-
ency of pelagic larvae is protective, or that the spines and processes
keep them out of the mouths of their enemies, just as a long
ladder may keep the man who carries it from slipping through holes
in treacherous ice.

The way the spines of a zoea, or the ladders of a pluteus, increase
what may, figuratively, be called the angle of incidence, is so clear
that few students of marine zoology will hesitate to make still farther
use of the language of the mathematicians, and to assert that the
number of mouths large enough to swallow a pluteus decreases
inversely as the square of the angle of incidence.

A naturalist was stopped, in the jungle of Java, by a dense bush,
on a leaf of which he saw a butterfly sitting on what he took to be
a bird's dropping, and, as he had often wondered at this habit, he
approached with gentle steps and ready net, to see, if possible, how
the insect was engaged. It permitted him to get quite close and
even to seize it with his fingers, but he tells us that to his delighted
surprise part of the body remained behind, adhering, as he thought,
to the excreta; but looking more closely, and finally touching it
with his finger, he found, to his astonishment, that his eyes had
been most perfectly deceived, and that what seemed to be the ex-
creta was a most artfully colored spider, lying on its back with its
feet crossed over and closely pressed to its body, thus producing a
living bait for butterflies and other insects so artfully contrived as
to deceive a pair of human eyes, even when intently examining it.

86 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

Who can believe that the transparent color and the long spines
of pelagic larvae have been produced by the direct action of these
adjustments upon their enemies^? When we remember that it is
not the spider but the butterfly which is deceived, can we believe
that the structure and habits of the Java spider are due, either
wholly or in any degree, to the inheritance of the effects of the
deception ?

The brilliant colors and the pleasant fragrance of the flower are
useful to the plant, or at least to its species, since they attract
insects, and thus fertilize the seeds, and provide for its perpetuation.

There is no difficulty in understanding how these useful properties
of the flower may have arisen by selection ; but if they are directly
due to the conditions of plant-life, their usefulness must be acci-
dental, for no one has any reason to believe that, prior to selection,
these conditions bear any relation to the feelings of an insect ; nor
can we believe that the visits of an insect will modify the color or
odor of a flower in such a way as to suit the insect's taste, except
by pure accident; unless, indeed, we choose to fancy that the insect
designedly modifies the flower. Even if this hypothesis be admitted,
it does not help the matter, unless we show that the insect intended
to modify the flower in such a way as to benefit the plant.

Some may possibly be able to believe that the use of the color
and perfume of the plant in attracting insects is accidental ; but
can any one believe this of the complicated and delicate machinery
for securing insect-fertilization, which we find in the flowers of
orchids ?

For all I know, the Lamarckian may claim that the visits of
insects have, in some way, modified the flower, to its own good, by
their mechanical action, by pulling down this part, and by pushing
up that, generation after generation, until they have caused adap-
tive modification in the flower. I do not know how much his
ingenuity may be able to make out of this hypothesis ; but no one
can believe that the hooks and spines, which are so obviously
adapted for distributing burrs and seeds, by fastening them to the
fur of passing mammals, have been produced by the inheritance of
the effects of this sort of mechanical contact; for these structures
do not come into use until they are dead ; and, most assuredly, dead
things cannot transmit " acquired characters " to their descendants.

LAMARCK 87

When a drop of rain or dew falls on the dead, dry, twisted
glume of the animated oat (Avena sterilis), it untwists in such a
way as to push like the leg of a grasshopper, and, raising the seed,
to send it off with a jump. After the seed has fallen, this process
is repeated again and again, until the heavy end, where the seed is
placed, falls at last into some roughness in the ground, when the
glumes begin to kick and to struggle, and, catching in the grass and
roots, or on the rough ground, to push the seed down and to
plant it.

The seed is alive, but the glumes are dead and dry, and as com-
pletely out of the line of descent to future generations as the dead
leaves which drop from a tree.

Is it not impossible to see how the effects of the use of dead things
can be transmitted to their descendants ? As the properties of the
dead glumes are as useful to the species as the dead sticks with
which a bird builds its nest are to the nestlings, is it any harder to
see how the power to produce glumes which, after they are dead,
shall have this useful property, may have arisen through selection,
than to understand that an annual plant, which dies before its seeds
ripen, may have thus arisen ? Many organs have two functions,
one accessory to the other. A muscle may be said to serve its
purpose when it is used ; and the opinion that its continual use has
brought about, or helped to bring about, its useful structure, has
seemed plausible to many ; but consider organs such as the reproduc-
tive organs. They are useful to their possessors in many ways. The
normal development of a male mammal is arrested if they are
removed ; so we must believe that this normal development is itself
due to some stimulus, which is given, by these organs, to all parts of
the body. It may be no harder to imagine the development of the
reproductive organs by use, than it is to imagine the development
of the muscle in the same way ; for these organs are wonder-
fully adapted for gratifying one of the most intense natural passions
of their possessors : but this use is only a means to an end ; and it
is evident that this end, an offspring, has no existence, as such, when
they are used. Their true use is such that it brings to the user
care and responsibility and loss of freedom, or even suffering and
death.

In many species, sexual union ends the life of the male ; while

88 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

the female often dies in the act of laying her eggs. To most ani-
mals the impulse to use these organs comes before they can have
any experience of its purpose, and the fulfilment of this purpose is
separated, by such a length of time, from the act of use, that few
animals can possibly have any knowledge of the relation between the
two events. When this relation is most clearly understood, we find,
instead of a desire to increase the fitness of these organs for their
purpose, a well-marked impulse to enjoy the gratification, without
the burden of care and responsibility which comes, in course of
nature, when their true purpose is accomplished.

How can the Lamarckian deal with a case like this where
conscious effort is ruled out, and where the true use is the benefit of
a being which was not in existence as such at the time when the
organs were used ?

The same thing is true of all our other natural passions and
appetites. So far as the actions to which they lead are voluntary,
they are attended with pleasure, or else their restraint is attended
with discomfort, but we are usually quite unconscious of their real
use, until this is discovered by the indirect methods of scientific
inquiry. Hunger stimulates the animal to actions which satisfy the
calls of hunger ; but the mere satisfaction of hunger is of no use,
and the real function of the digestive organs, the nutrition of the
tissues, goes on in unconsciousness.

The snake's poisoned fang and the bee's sting and the perfume
of the flower are useful, but the useful property is an effect on other
organisms than the one which exhibits the adjustment. If any one
thinks he can see how this sort of adjustment might be brought
about, or even essentially aided, through the inheritance, by one
being, of the influence of its structure on another being, I cannot
reason with him ; for I find his thesis quite unthinkable.

It is most important to note that this is not a special plea, based
upon exceptional cases. I have called attention to these examples
because, far from being exceptions, they are simple and obvious
illustrations of a general law, for all of the adaptations of nature are
of this sort.

In all cases, the structure, habits, instincts, and faculties of living
things, from the upward growth of the plumule of the sprouting
seed to the moral sense of man, are primarily for the good of other

LAMARCK 89

beings than the ones that manifest them ; and there is nothing
anomalous or exceptional in either the poison of serpents or the
organs of reproduction, or in the altruistic moral sense of man.

The conditions of life can stand, prior to selection, in no causal
relation to the life of any being except the one on which they act ;
but no fact in nature is more incontestable than the insignificance of
the individual, as compared with the welfare of the species. While
this has no existence apart from the series of individuals which com-
poses it, the individual counts for nothing in nature while the species
is supreme.

The contrast between what we may call the solicitude of nature
to secure the production of new beings, and the ruthlessness with
which they are sacrificed after they have come into existence, is a
stumbling-block to the Lamarckian, and the crowning glory of
natural selection is that it solves this great enigma of nature, by
showing that it is itself an adaptation and a means to an end, for
the sacrifice of individuals is the means for perfecting the adjust-
ments of living things to the world around them and for thus
increasing the sum of life.

The sacrifice of individuals is the means by which variety and
diversity in living nature, and the number of living beings, are
increased, and, if life is adjustment, as I believe to be the case,
the perfection and improvement of the adjustments of living beings
is in itself, and directly, an addition to the sum of life.

" And this," says Harvey, " is the round that makes the race [of
the common fowl] eternal; now pullet, now hen, the series is con-
tinued in perpetuity ; from frail and perishing individuals an immor-
tal species is engendered. We therefore see individuals, males as
well as females, existing for the sake of preparing eggs, that the
species may be perennial though their authors pass away. And
it is indeed obvious that the parents are no longer youthful, or
beautiful, or lusty, and fitted to enjoy life, than while they possess the
power of producing and fecundating eggs, and, by the medium of
these, of engendering their like. But when they have accomplished
this grand purpose of nature, they have already attained to the
height of their being : the final end of their existence has been
accomplished ; after this, effete and useless, they begin to wither, and
as if cast off and forsaken of nature and the Deity, they grow

90 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

old, and a-weary of their lives they hasten to the end. How differ-
ent the males when they make themselves up for intercourse, and
swelling with desire are excited by the venereal impulse ! It is
surprising to see with what passion they are inflamed, and then how
pugnacious they prove. But the grand business of life accomplished,
how suddenly and with failing strength, and pristine fervor quenched,
do they take in their swelling sails, and from late pugnacity grow
timid and desponding. Even during the season of jocund masking
in Venus's domains, male animals in general are depressed by inter-
course, and become submissive and pusillanimous, as if reminded
that in imparting life to others they were contributing to their own
destruction. The cock alone, replete with spirit and fecundity, still
shows himself alert and gay, clapping his wings and crowing tri-
umphantly, he sings the nuptial song at each of his espousals ; yet
even he, after some length of time in Venus's service, begins to fail ;
like the veteran soldier, he by and by craves discharge from active
duty, and the hen, too, like the tree that is past bearing, becomes
effete, and is finally exhausted."

Usefulness to one's kind is not entirely a matter of physiology.
The wisdom and cunning which long years of conflict with the ways
of the world have given to the old wolf is useful to the pack, even
after his bodily powers begin to fail, but all must agree with Harvey
that, with the loss of all usefulness or value to others, the final
end of the existence of the individual, so far as this is recognized
in nature, has been accomplished.

While the law that the adaptations of nature serve to promote
the welfare of the species, rather than the good of the individual,
is as universal as life, it is usually hidden from view because the
welfare of the species is, in most circumstances, practically the
same as that of the individuals which compose it in each genera-
tion, and it is only when the two come into conflict, that the
law becomes manifest. When the welfare of the species demands
the sacrifice of individuals, the adaptations for securing this use-
ful end are as wonderfully perfect and efficient, and as obvious,
as any in nature. Most of them, like the self-sacrificing devotion
of the maternal instinct, relate to reproduction, and are so well
known that illustrations drawn from other fields may be more
novel, and therefore more impressive.

LAMARCK 91

The possibility that the queen may be lost exposes a hive of
bees to great danger, for their social organization requires a queen.
The danger is met by a reserve of queen-larvae ; but the presence
in the hive, at one time, of a number of royal larvae is a new source
of danger; for the presence of two reigning queens, at one time,
when there is no need to send out a swarm, to found a new hive,
would be demoralizing. Queens are developed from larvae which,
under ordinary treatment, would have become workers, and the
worker-bees themselves cause the selected eggs to develop into
queens, by placing them in large cells which they construct for the
purpose by tearing down partition walls, and by feeding the larvae
with an abundance of the highly nutritious food known as queen-
jelly. The workers tend the royal larvae with unceasing care,
until they are nearly ready to escape, when they gnaw away the
wax until it becomes transparent and so thin as to permit ventila-
tion; but if the queen-mother be still in the hive waiting for
favorable weather to lead forth a swarm, the young queen is not
permitted to leave her cell. The royal guard of workers is re-
enforced, and the cell is thickened by new layers of wax, per-
forated by a small opening, through which the prisoner thrusts her
tongue, in order that her attendants may feed her ; for the old
queen is impelled by an implacable instinct to destroy all the
young queens she can reach. For this reason the workers use
every means to keep her away from the royal cells so long as
there is a prospect of swarming. They guard every approach to
the cell, and even, forgetting their allegiance, bite and strike and
push her, and beat her off whenever she tries to approach. When
the old queen has left the hive with a swarm, and one of the young
queens is permitted to escape and take her place, she at once seeks
to destroy her sisters, but is bitten, pulled, and shoved without cere-
mony until she is driven off. As the season advances, until it be-
comes too late for swarming, the impulses of the workers change
completely. They cease to resist her, and even incite her to destroy
her rivals. She now attacks the royal brood, and stings them to death,
one after another, in their cells, while the workers, who are spectators
of the carnage, share in the spoil, greedily devouring any food they
may find in the cells, and even sucking the fluids from the carcasses
before they toss them out of the cells and drag them away.

92 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

Few things in nature are more wonderful than the perfection
of the organization, in the hive, for ensuring the presence of one
queen, and for destroying all the others ; but the provision the
royal larva makes for its own murder seems to claim a place
among these few.

When a larval bee has completed its growth, and is about to
assume the pupa-state, from which it is to emerge as a perfect
bee, it spins, like the larvae of many other insects, a protective
cocoon of silk, around its body, but, as this is firm enough to
offer some resistance to a sting, and as it might even injure the
murderess, the royal larva spins an imperfect cocoon, open behind,
and covering only the head, thorax, and first abdominal ring.
Huber, who discovered this peculiarity, pointed out that the pur-
pose of the imperfection is to expose the soft abdomen of the
royal larva naked to the mortal sting of the reigning queen.

The supreme importance of the species, and the relative insig-
nificance of the individual, are well illustrated by animals which
have dropped their adult structure out of their life history, that the
perpetuation of the species may be the more assured. The flying
butterfly, with its highly perfected sense-organs, leads an active,
independent life, which must, according to any standard, be held
higher than the helpless creeping life of the blind caterpillar, yet
many species of butterflies and moths have lost this most perfect
stage in their life so that they cannot wander away from the
plants which are best suited for their larvae, or lay their eggs in
any but the best spot. The active, swimming jelly-fish, with its
complicated muscular apparatus, its centralized nerve-ring, and its
well-developed organs of special sense, is a higher organism than
the sessile plant-like hydroid ; yet many hydroids which live in
places where swimming adults might be swept out into the open
ocean far away from any resting-place for the larvae, have gradually
lost the jelly-fish stage, and they now pass their lives and repro-
duce their kind, in what was, at one time, their larval or immature
condition. From the standpoint of the individual, the degeneration
of the jelly-fish into a sexual larva is distinctly a step backwards,
marked by disregard of all the best results of a long history of
gradual progress and improvement. It is a sacrifice of all that is
"best" in the life of the individual for the good of the species.

LAMARCK 93

Many other groups of animals, notably the Crustacea and in-
sects, furnish familiar examples of the loss of the adult structure,
and of the broader life which it permitted, in order that the per-
petuation of the species may be the more assured. They illus-
trate, in the clearest way, the supreme importance of the species,
and the "indifference" of nature to the welfare of the individual
when this welfare is incompatible with the good of the species as
a whole. Whether we agree with Weismann that old age and
natural death owe their existence to their usefulness or not, they
are clearly useful to the species, but it is not necessary to dwell
upon the subject, for the examples which we have considered are
enough to illustrate the familiar fact that the end which the
adjustments of living things bring about is the good of the species,
rather than the success of individuals.

All the adaptations of living nature are like the bee's sting
and the poison of serpents, inasmuch as their use is exhibited in
the lives of other individuals than those which exhibit the struct-
ural adjustment. It also seems clear that, even if the direct
effects of nurture are both beneficial and inherited, they can have
no controlling or notable influence in the production of the sort
of adjustments which actually exist, however competent they may
be to produce others. Can any zoologist say, with Lysicles:
" Look throughout the universe, and you shall find birds and
fishes, beasts and insects, all kinds of animals, with which creation
swarms, constantly engaged by instinct in the pursuit of sensible
pleasure ; and shall man alone be the grave fool, who thwarts and
crosses and subdues his appetites, while his fellow-creatures do all
most joyfully and freely indulge them?"

Must he not rather, with Euphranor, " infer the excellency of
animal bodies from observing the frame and fitness of their sev-
eral parts, by which they mutually conspire to the well-being of
each other as well as of the whole " ?

Certain Neo-Lamarckians assert, however, that while natural
selection is the chief factor in the origin of species, it cannot act
unless the conditions of life furnish the necessary "variations."
I shall examine this proposition in another place, and shall now
do no more than to point out that, unless the differences between
individuals which are brought about by nurture are useful, prior to

94 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

selection, they are fortuitous, so far as their fitness is in question.
The mere fact that species change is no more remarkable than the
change of seasons, or the melting of a snowdrift ; nor do I suppose
that any one believes that any change ever takes place in nature
without those antecdent changes which we call physical causes.
The thing to be explained is not that species change, but how the
changes of species tend to establish harmony between them and
the world in which they live. Since many species, many more in
fact than all that now exist, have disappeared during the long
history of life without leaving descendants ; and since the early
extinction of the blood of the vast majority of the individual
organisms which now exist can be demonstrated, the adjustments
of these which survive cannot be accounted for by any law of
" necessary " or " universal " progress or evolution.

Living things, like everything else, act in accordance with the
laws of matter and motion. Animals, like clouds, grow lighter as
they ascend a mountain, and their volume increases as their
temperature rises ; but changes of this sort are all that external
changes can produce prior to selection, unless they tend to bring
about responsive modification, or adjustment; and it is begging the
question to attribute the origin of this tendency to the inheritance
of modifications in the right direction unless some reason why the
right ones should be the ones which are inherited is pointed out.

I have tried to show, page 66, that instead of a preliminary
condition to selection, the adaptive influence of the environment,
so far as this influence is adaptive, is the result of past selection,
and Darwin's explanation of the origin of species by selection is
the only one worth considering.

It scarcely seems necessary, at this late day, to point out that
by fortuitous variations, Darwin means those differences between
individuals which stand in no discoverable relation to the use to
which they are turned by selection ; for Darwin admits, as every
one must, that if there were no changes in the external world we
should have no reason to expect any difference between individual
living things; but, whatever may be our opinion of the nature of
those "variations" which are said to be a necessary preliminary to
selection, it seems clear that the effects of the conditions of life
cannot be transmitted to future generations, unless the organisms

LAMARCK 95

which are exposed to these conditions have children. If sterile
organisms, which have no descendants, are ever gradually adapted
to the conditions of their life, the mechanical effect of these con-
ditions can have no part, direct or indirect, incipient or otherwise,
in the production of the adjustment. As the sterile workers of
allied species of social insects differ from each other in habits, in
instincts, and in anatomical structure, more than the males and
the fertile females, this diversity among the workers must have
become established after the workers themselves had become
sterile.

Whole books have been written on the marvellous fitness of
the structure, the instincts, and the habits of the worker of the
honey-bee for its life of active industry, a life in which the male
has no share, and from which the female is cut off by her seclu-
sion in the depths of the hive, and by her devotion to her own
peculiar duties. While the queen and the drones are well fitted
for their own parts in the social organization of the hive, these
duties are quite simple, and very different from the duties of the
workers ; and as these latter do not normally have descendants,
and as they never, under any circumstances, have female descen-
dants, all the workers are the descendants of queens and not of
workers.

Their wonderful and admirable fitness for their own most neces-
sary part in the economy of the hive must, therefore, be inherited
from parents who have never been exposed to those conditions to
which the workers are adapted; and this adaptation cannot be
due to the inheritance of the effect of these conditions; nor can
we believe that they are inherited from some remote time, when
the workers were perfect females, or when the queens were also
workers; for the sterile workers of allied species differ among
themselves, thus proving that they have undergone modification
since they became sterile.

Here we have a most complicated and perfect, adjustment, of
marvellous efficacy, to external conditions which are of such a
character as to prove that the inheritance of the effect of these
conditions has had no part in the production of the adaptation.

This is not a solitary case, but a familiar illustration of a
general law ; for a little thought will show that most of the

96 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

adaptations of living nature have much in common with those
which are presented by a hive of bees.

Some of the members of the floating community known as a
siphonophore have mouths and stomachs which furnish an
abundant supply of food for all; and this food flows through
tubes to the places where it is needed, as water flows to all the
houses in a city. Other members of the community do the
swimming for the whole, and are especially fitted for this work,
which calls for an abundant supply of food to replenish the
energy expended in swimming. As they have no mouths they
take no food for themselves, but their bodies are supplied with
branches from the main canal, distributed, like blood-vessels, in
the course of the muscles. Other mouthless members are con-
verted into protecting lids, and others into long poisonous arms for
destroying the prey or for repelling enemies. Others form floats
from which the whole hangs suspended in the water, while still
others are sexual, male or female, and carry on the work of
reproduction.

A colony of siphonophores is both a community and a unit;
for while the members are, to a certain degree, independent, they
all work together for the common good, and find all the condi-
tions for perfect life nowhere but in the community. A hive of
bees is, also, a unit; for while each bee is able to live an in-
dependent life, the welfare of all depends upon the integrity of
the community, although there is no physical continuity between
its members, as there is in a siphonophore. A hive of bees has
been called a " state " to distinguish it from communities like the
siphonophore, in which the bond of union between the members
is organic. As all the members of the siphonophore-community
are physically bound together by structural continuity, into an or-
ganic unit, it is not possible to prove that some influence does not
pass from the bodies of those which are specialized for the capture
or the digestion of food, or from the bodies of these which are
specialized for swimming, to the germ-cells in the bodies of
those which are specialized for reproduction ; but the history of
the sterile workers among the bees shows that there is no need
for imagining the transmission of any such influence, for there is
no organic connection between the bodies of the workers and the

LAMARCK 97

germ-cells in the bodies of the queen or of the drones, and, therefore,
no channel through which such an influence can be propagated.

I hope to show, in another place, that natural selection meets
all the difficulties we find in the hive of bees. If so, it must also
be an adequate explanation of the origin of the siphonophore as
well; and the hypothesis that the germ-cells are affected by the
conditions of the life of the sterile members of the community is
as superfluous in the latter case as it is inadmissible in the case of
the bee.

While the siphonophore has, on the one hand, many features of
resemblance to a hive of bees, it also, on the other hand, resembles
the body of an ordinary animal, for this is, also, both an unit and
a community. The cells which compose it have a certain individ-
uality, and are specialized for different functions, as are the bees
and the members of the hydroid community. Certain cells are set
apart, very early in the history of the whole, in mammals long
before birth, as germ-cells, destined to become, in time, the ova or
the spermatoa of the adult, while all the other specialized cells are
out of the line of descent to future generations, like the worker-
bee. The constituent cells of the body are much more intimately
bound together, and are much more dependent for their welfare
upon the integrity of the whole, than the bees in the hive, or the
members of the siphonophore, and we cannot prove that they are not
all in some sort of telegraphic or sympathetic connection with the
germ-cells; in fact, there are reasons for believing that a connection
of this sort does actually exist; but it is no more necessary to call
in its aid to account for the origin of a cellular community, like the
body of a dog, than it is to imagine anything of this sort to account
for the origin of the worker-bees; and, in this case, the facts must
be accounted for without this hypothesis or not at all.

Even if it should be proved, as seems not improbable, that the
germ-cells are in some sort of responsive connection with all the
other elements of the body, it would still remain true that the adjust-
ments which we find in living things are of such a character as
to prove that the " inheritance of acquired characters " has had no
controlling influence in their production.

Some may ask whether it may not be possible that, while natural
selection is the chief factor in the origin of species, there may still

98 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

be a residuum to be accounted for by the " inheritance of acquired
characters." For all I know this may be not only possible, but
actually the case. I have never felt the slightest interest in a priori
demonstrations of the impossibility of this sort of inheritance, and,
for all I know to the contrary, proof of its occurrence may be found
at any time, although I know no good evidence of its occurrence.
I had satisfied myself, long before the recent revival of interest in
the matter, that whether it be a real factor or not, the so-called
Lamarckian factor has little value as a contribution to the solution
of the problem of the origin of species; and renewed study has
strengthened this conviction.

LECTURE V

MIGRATION IN ITS BEARING ON LAMARCKISM

LECTURE V1

MIGRATION IN ITS BEARING ON LAMARCKISM

IN the last lecture I tried to show that the adaptations of
nature are primarily for the good of the species ; that they are
beneficial to individuals only so far as these individuals are essen-
tial to the welfare of the species ; and that they often are inju-
rious or destructive to the individual. I also pointed out that,
since this is so, the nurture of the individual does not seem to
have any bearing upon the origin of adaptation.

To my mind, no illustration of this great natural law is more
simple or more easy to understand, than that afforded by some of
the phenomena of migration.

The young salmon which is born in a mountain stream is
soon impelled, by something in its nature, to journey downward,
often many hundred miles, until it reaches the unknown ocean,
where it would discover, if it had faculties for anything so sub-
jective as discovery, that, while it was born in a mountain stream,
it was made for life in the great ocean.

It has brought from its mountain home a natural aptitude for
eluding all the strange enemies, and for avoiding all -the novel
dangers, which it finds in this new world ; and it leads an active
predatory life, fiercely pursuing and destroying its natural, but
previously unknown, prey ; growing rapidly ; quickly acquiring all
the characteristics of the adult salmon ; and storing up the intense
nervous energy, and the muscular strength, which will be needed
for forcing its way up the rapids in the mountain torrents, leap-
ing waterfalls, and fighting for its passage, where it had, long
ago, darted down with the current. As sexual maturity ap-
proaches, some stimulus, which has its origin in the developing

1 Reprinted with slight changes from the Popular Science Monthly. April, 1898.

101

102 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

reproductive organs, impels it to leave the ocean, and, entering
the mouth of a river, to journey on and on, often a thousand miles
or more, to its sources in the mountains.

At this time the king of fishes, as it is well called, is in physi-
cal perfection, with few rivals in beauty, or strength, or fierce
energy, or indomitable courage and perseverance; but its strength
is soon exhausted in surmounting the obstacles, and in fighting
the rivals, which oppose its progress ; until, at last, worn and thin,
torn and mangled by battle, and battered by rocks and whirl-
pools, with its skin in rags, its fins crippled and bleeding, and its
whole body from nose to tail bruised and emaciated, nothing of
its kingly nature remains except the indomitable impulse, which
nothing can quench, still urging it onwards, until, if any life
remain, it at last reaches the breeding ground.

One of the most magnificent species of this kingly genus was
so abundant in the Columbia River, before canning houses had
reduced its numbers, that the lower reaches were packed with
salmon, while the surface was covered with the drifting bodies
of those which had perished in fierce struggles with the crowd:
yet there is good authority for the assertion that not a single one
ever returns alive from the breeding grounds in the head-waters
of the St. Cloud. The whole race is wiped out, utterly exter-
minated, as soon as it arrives at maturity and physical perfec-
tion, in order that the perpetuation of the species may be assured.
The whole object and end of the beautifully coordinated body,
which is provided for by such admirable and wonderful adapta-
tions, which is built up so slowly and at so much cost, is rapid
and total destruction.

The marvellous instinct which leads the young fish to the
ocean ; the organization and the habits which fit it for marine
life — all, in a word, which makes of the salmon our ideal of a
lordly fish — is worth nothing as compared with the welfare of
generations yet unborn.

Scientific men who are not zoologists are fond of telling us
science has nothing to do with the Why? and is concerned
only with the How ? but, in zoology, it is often easy to discover
why an action is performed, while we are very ignorant of the
structural conditions under which it takes place. As all the indi-

MIGRATION IN ITS BEARING ON LAMARCKISM 103

vidual California salmon seem to act alike, and as the young
salmon has no opportunity for parental instruction, it seems
probable that everything it does is the result of its structure,
or of such nurture as this structure provides for; but we can
safely say that vno one now living is at all likely to discover or
to predict its migration from the study of its body, although the
reason why the migration takes place is obvious.

Whole books, and not a few of them, have been devoted to
learned speculations on the nature of the impulse which leads to
the migration of birds, and, while the subject is most fascinating,
the value of the result has not, in all cases, been commensurate
with the labor.

Newton " Encyclopaedia Britannica," article Birds says : " We
have here more than enough to excite our wonder, and indeed
are brought face to face with perhaps the greatest mystery which
the whole animal kingdom presents, — a mystery which attracted
the attention of the earliest writers, and can in its chief point be
no more explained by the modern man of science than by the
simple minded savage or the poet or prophet of antiquity. Some
facts are almost universally known and have been the theme of
comment in all ages and in all lands. The hawk that stretches
her wings toward the south is as familiar to the latest Nile-boat
traveller or dweller on the Bosphorus, as of old to the author of
the Book of Job.

"The autumnal thronging of myriads of water-fowl by the
rivers of Asia is witnessed by the modern sportsman, as it was of
old by Homer. Anacreon welcomed the returning swallow, in num-
bers which his imitators of the colder north, to whom the associa-
tions connected with it are doubly strong, have tried in vain to
excel. The Indian of the fur-countries, in forming his rude
calendar, names the recurring moons after the birds of passage
whose arrival is coincident with their changes. But there is no
need to multiply instances. The flow and ebb of the mighty
feathered wave has been sung by poets and reasoned by philoso-
phers, has given rise to proverbs, and entered into popular
superstitions, and yet we may say of it still that our ignorance is
immense."

While this author does not exaggerate either the interest or our

104 THE FOUNDATION'S OF ZOOLOGY

ignorance of the life of birds, which goes on in regions which
are almost inaccessible and unknown to us, there is no reason
to suppose their migrations are any more mysterious than most
biological problems ; for it is doubtful whether the modern man of
science is much more able than the simple-minded savage or the
poet and prophet to tell how all the coordinated faculties of a
predaceous animal are so thrown into action by the stimulus of
hunger as to lead to the pursuit and capture of prey; yet there
is no mystery in the physiology of hunger, for while there is
much we do not understand, we do know that hunger incites to
actions which are responsive, and adapted for satisfying hunger.

So also we may make progress in our study of migration not-
withstanding ignorance of the nature of the impulse which excites
and regulates it. While I gratefully acknowledge my debt to
Newton for many of the facts in this chapter, I am not able to
agree with him that there is any peculiar mystery in the subject.

While there is reason to believe almost every bird of temperate
and arctic climates is migratory to some degree, those which
simply range over a wider area at one season than at another
present nothing notable, and it is only in regions which are al-
most or quite abandoned by birds for part of the year that their
migrations attract the attention of students. As many birds which
are most valued as food are found in temperate regions for only
a short time in spring and fall, sportsmen and hunters and all
who pursue them for food have been familiar with the habits of
the birds of passage from the dawn of history; but most of the
best literature on the subject is by northern ornithologists, and
the home of the writer has had and still has great influence upon
opinion as to the meaning and origin of the migratory habit.

Scandinavians, and Saxons, and Anglo-Saxons are home-loving
folks who, in all their wanderings through this world of care,
keep a warm affection for the fatherland, and are much given to
the belief that their home is the choicest spot on earth.

A learned professor in the University of Upsala once wrote a
book to prove that the Garden of Eden was in Sweden, by the
simple and obvious argument that no one who knows the delights
of life in that country can believe Paradise was anywhere else.
He showed that the Atlantis of Plato, the country of the Hyper-

MIGRATION IN ITS BEARING ON LAMARCKISM 105

boreans, the garden of the Hesperides, the Fortunate Islands, and
the Elysian Fields are but faint and imperfect reminiscences of
the lovely and favored climes of Sweden, from which the Greeks
themselves derived their alphabet, their astronomy, and their religion.

To the men of the north home seems the natural refuge of the
birds, and, as much of the literature of migration is northern,
the birthplace of summer birds has been regarded as their true
or natural home, and while their disappearance in winter has
seemed to call for explanation, their return in summer has been
regarded as a matter of course, for the intense love of home
which many exhibit has seemed enough to draw them back when
the season of scarcity is over.

It is the " homing " instinct which makes the carrier pigeon so
useful to man; and one of the most impressive features of the
migratory habit is the definiteness of the journey northwards,
which often leads to a particular bush or ledge of rocks. Many
species of our common birds lay their eggs year after year in the
same nest, although they may spend the rest of the year in the
heart of a strange country thousands of miles away, and although
the chosen spot may have changed so much that it is no longer
a judicious selection.

A bottle in the branches of a tree at Oxbridge in England is
known to have been occupied every year, with only one exception,
since 1785, by a pair of blue titmice; and on a hill in Finland,
well known to tourists as the most southern point in Europe
where the sun may be seen at midnight, a nest is said to have
been occupied by a pair of peregrine falcons ever since the visit
of the French astronomer Maupertius in 1736. There are other
records of similar instances, and while it is not probable that the
birds which visit a nest year after year for centuries are the same,
the fact is all the more remarkable if they belong to successive
generations.

According to folklore some of the summer birds do not go
away, but hide near home, and Carus, in his history of zoology,
refers to several learned writers who, early in the seventeenth
century, quoted from the older literature much venerable authority
for the belief that the swallows hide through the winter in holes
and clefts in the rocks, or even under the water.

106 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

Many writers on migration believe, as they have been told
from childhood, that the birds go south to escape the rigors of a
northern winter, although little reflection is needed to show that
no animals are more thoroughly protected or more indifferent to
changes of temperature, and that, while sea-birds are highly mi-
gratory, the open waters of arctic seas are little colder in winter
than in summer. Nestlings are often killed by cold, and eggs
require a high temperature, but old birds are, as a rule, very
indifferent to cold.

When this fact is recognized, the prevailing belief is that birds
leave their homes in search of food, and scarcity is most certainly
an important factor in the origin of migration, but this view of
the matter fails to show why, with the whole world to choose from,
they do not settle in lands which are habitable the year round.

" The shuddering tenant of the frigid zone
Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own " ;

and to the Esquimaux the return of the birds seems only natural ;
but to us, who are not Esquimaux, the wonder is not that any-
thing which can get away should do so, but why the birds pass
by so many lovely and fertile regions to seek a home in the bar-
ren and desolate ends of the earth ; and it is plain that, of the
two journeys, which make up the migration, the spring and sum-
mer visit to northern lands and waters is at least as remarkable,
and as well worthy of consideration, as the journey southwards in
the fall.

Failure of food in the birthplace is no doubt the chief reason
why the migratory birds do not spend the whole year there, and,
so far, is a sufficient reason for migration, for no animals are
better fitted for moving from regions of scarcity to regions of
abundance, but they are little more able than creeping things to
establish themselves in new lands which are already well stocked
with inhabitants, and, like other animals, they are kept within the
limits of their natural habitat by competitors and enemies, rather
than by physical barriers, although their power to wander and to
overcome physical barriers is without a parallel, for there are few
oceanic islands, however remote, which are not inhabited by land

MIGRATION IN ITS BEARING ON LAMARCKISM 1 07

birds, descended from lost wanderers who, finding these spots
unoccupied, have been able to establish themselves.

The list of North American birds which are occasionally found
in Europe is a long one, and stray specimens of the gray plover,
whose summer home is the shore of the Arctic Ocean, have been
found at the Cape of Good Hope, in Ceylon, in Australia, in New
Zealand, and in Tasmania. Most of the wanderers are shore birds
which make long migrations and, being much exposed to storms,
are often driven far out of their path, but this is not always the
case, for the great albatross follows ships across the whole breadth
of the South Pacific, or nearly half the circumference of the
earth. Many birds seem to make their whole journey by a single
flight, for some which are common in the West Indies and in
Nova Scotia are almost unknown within the limits of the United
States, making the whole journey past our borders by water and
probably by a single flight. The blue-throat, which breeds in the
northern part- of Scandinavia, is so seldom found in Europe south
of the Baltic that there seems to be good evidence that it makes
its whole journey to its winter quarters, which are in the region
of the upper Nile, by a single flight.

There is no reason to suppose that all migratory birds inherit
the habit from a common source, or that its purpose is always
the same; and many birds of prey seem to have acquired the
habit of ranging far in winter in search of food, and of following
their prey into warmer regions, to return to their birthplace in
seasons of reproduction. In these cases the birthplace may have
been the original home, before the migratory habit was acquired,
and the scarcity of food the reason why it was acquired ; and the
influence of scarcity in causing migration is well shown by the
occasional migrations of certain prolific animals which do not
ordinarily leave their birthplaces, although, when these become
overstocked, migrations take place, just as colonies are sent out
by the people of thickly settled countries to find new room for
growth in foreign lands. From time to time, at irregular inter-
vals, great armies of the smaller and more prolific rodents, which
usually spend their lives where they were born, are met with on
the march from homes where overproduction has exhausted the
food; and several of the older American naturalists have described

108 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

the migration of our gray squirrels, although the phenomenon has
been most carefully studied in the Norwegian lemmings, whose
remarkable migrations have figured in literature for centuries.

The lemming is a small, restless, pugnacious, and very prolific
rodent, somewhat like a guinea pig in shape, which, at uncertain
intervals of from five to twenty years, migrates from its ordinary
home in the central mountains of Norway and invades the low
lands so suddenly and in such numbers that it is still popularly
believed to drop from the sky, as in the day of Olaus Magnus,
who wrote of it in 1490.

The great army of lemmings moves on in a straight line and
overruns the cultivated country, swimming the lakes and rivers,
and causing so much destruction that a special formula to be
used against it was authorized by the church, which attempted to
check its march by exorcism, as the Bishop of Montreal once
tried to exorcise the wild pigeons. The lemmings journey at
night, but their march is not continuous, for they make long
stops in fertile spots, where they are even more prolific than they
were at home, so that they become more and more numerous,
although they are attended by bears and wolves, dogs, eagles,
hawks, owls, and other birds and beasts of prey, and although
even the cattle and reindeer are said to kill and eat them. The
march may last for several years, but as they never go back, but
continue to move forwards, they at last reach the ocean, and,
attempting to swim this, as they have the rivers in their course,
all are drowned, like the rats of Hamlin.

While the migration of the lemmings is undoubtedly due to
scarcity, it is difficult to understand its use, for the only ones
which profit by it are the ones which have it least developed and
stay at home in the mountains, although it may have been useful
before the low lands were occupied by man, who now destroys
the stragglers and prevents them from scattering and finding per-
manent homes.

While the determining influence is the scarcity of food which
comes from crowding, we have no reason to believe that the
lemmings consciously and deliberately set out in search of a new
feeding ground, or that they have traditions of the rich low lands
which attract them as the wealth and luxury of China and Meso-

MIGRATION IN ITS BEARING ON LAMARCKISM 109

potamia and Asia Minor and the Roman Empire attracted the
Tartars and Scythians and Goths from their sterile and desolate
northern lands into the fertile homes of southern civilization.
Their journeys are no doubt initiated by an unconscious impulse,
which, before it brought them into contact with man, was useful
in some way to the species; and this seems to be true also of the
migrations of certain prolific species of grasshoppers and locusts
which, inhabiting sandy and sterile regions, often overflow the
limits of their natural home, and invade more fertile regions
where they are not usually found. While there is no reason to
suppose that these movements are undertaken through a deliber-
ate intention to find new feeding grounds, lack of food is no
doubt the chief factor in the development of the migratory
instinct of rodents, as well as that of grasshoppers and locusts,
which resemble birds in their ability to make long journeys on
the wing without rest. The African locust has been met with at
sea, in great clouds, more than twelve hundred miles from land, and
the species sometimes wanders from its home in Africa to England.
While the movements of rodents and insects show that the
search for food has much to do with migration, they lack most
of the features which make the migration of birds so remarkable.
They occur at irregular intervals, while the movements of birds
are almost as regular as the almanac ; for while sea-birds seem
much exposed to storms, the days of their arrival and departure
may be predicted with as much certainty as if they were satellites
revolving around the earth. " Foul weather and fair, hot or cold ;
the puffins make their appearance at the proper day as promptly
as if they were moved by clock work." While the course of the
migration of rodents and locusts is determined by conditions so
complicated and irregular that they may be called' accidental, the
northward journey of birds is often directed to a definite spot
thousands of miles from the starting-point, and the resemblance
between irregular migrations in search of food and the migrations
of birds is too imperfect to tell us much about the latter, which
is much more like the movements of certain fishes like the shad,
which at a definite season enters upon a journey along a definite
path to a spot hundreds of miles away, to return again after the
purpose of the journey is accomplished.

110 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

Since the number of shad which enter a river in the spring
is out of all proportion to its resources as a feeding ground, we
might say of them, as we are disposed to say of birds, that they
leave their birthplace in search of food ; but as they find so little
proper food in the rivers that it may be said with almost literal
exactness that they make their journey fasting, it is quite plain
that this is the wrong point of view; that we must believe that
they enter the rivers to lay their eggs, and that we must see in
this, and not in the return journey to the ocean, the purpose of
their migration.

As the shad is a marine fish which does its eating at sea,
and as its visits to fresh water are only for the purpose of repro-
duction, the numbers which make their way up the rivers bears
no comparison to the capacity of the streams for supplying them
with food. When it visits our coast in the spring, it enters the
mouths of our rivers in great schools, and it journeys up them
to a surprising distance ; the total length of the journey from the
sea to the spawning ground and back again often exceeds a
thousand miles, and this journey is made almost or quite without
food. Many of them, and among these the largest ones, go on
and on until they reach some insurmountable obstacle, such as a
water-fall or a dam, or until they reach the sources of the river.
Before dams were built in the Susquehanna River, many shad
which entered the Chesapeak Bay at the Capes continued their
long fasting journey across Virginia and Maryland and Pennsyl-
vania, into the state of New York, and travelled through more
than five hundred miles of inland waters before they reached the
end of their journey upwards.

Fragments of Indian pottery, stamped with a pattern made
by the impression of a shad's backbone have been found in
southern New York, and the number of stone net-sinkers which
have been picked up in the Wyoming valley shows that the
Indians had known and used the shad-fisheries long before the
first white settlers found them at work with their rude seines.
In the early part of this century, before canals and the dams
which supply them were made, there were forty fishing stations
beyond the forks of the Susquehanna in northern Pennsylvania, and
some of them were worth from $1000 to $1200 a year to their

MIGRATION IN ITS BEARING ON LAMARCKISM 1 1 1

owners, at a time when money represented much more than it
does now. There is a record, which seems trustworthy, of the
capture, at a single haul, of ten thousand shad at one of these
fisheries, on Fish Island, near Wilkesbarre. Dams across the river
have excluded the shad from more than two hundred miles of the
course of the Susquehanna, and the profitable fisheries now reach
for only a few miles above the boundary of Maryland, while the
shad are excluded from many of the best breeding grounds, which
are the sandy flats near the shores of streams and the sand-bars
which lie in their course. The fishes run up on to these places
in pairs, in the early evening, after sunset, and the eggs are
thrown into the water while the fishes are swimming about, but
they soon sink to the bottom, and develop very rapidly. The
average number of eggs is about twenty-five thousand, but a
hundred thousand have been obtained from a single large shad.

Few adult shad escape all the dangers of their journey, and
these few are so battered and emaciated that they are of no
value as food, and they are unknown in our markets, which are
supplied with those which are caught on their way upward. The
young fishes remain in the rivers until late in the fall, feeding upon
small Crustacea, the larvae of insects, the young of other fishes, and
other minute active animals, and they grow to a length of two or
three inches by November, when they leave our waters for the ocean.

The shad is a marine fish which has gradually acquired the
habit of depositing its eggs in fresh water, out of the reach of
the innumerable enemies which abound on the shoals and sand-bars
of the seashore. As the eggs are abandoned by their parents as
soon as they are laid, prolonged residence at the breeding place is
not necessary, and the shad has thus been able to utilize locali-
ties which supply no proper food, and are unfit for prolonged
residence. If it were compelled to incubate its eggs and to
guard and protect and feed its nestlings like a bird, it would
have been restricted to some breeding place where conditions are
favorable to a more prolonged residence, and we should then feel
something of the same tendency to call its birthplace its true
home that we have in the case of birds. We should refer the
migration to this place as the starting-point, and should try to
find some reason why they spend part of the year elsewhere.

112 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

Most animals owe their existence to the occurrence, in their
natural home, of all that their life requires, but the power to
traverse great distances at great speed, and to pass over all the
barriers of land and water, joined to their indifference to changes
of temperature, permits birds to divide their time between two
widely separated regions; and whether the choice be conscious or
unconscious, the breeding places of migratory birds are selected
on account of their safety and not because they furnish all that
is needed for a permanent home.

If we believe, with Professor Marsh, that the power of flight
was acquired by birds after they became arboreal, we must look
for the ancestral home of the migratory birds in the great tropi-
cal and sub-tropical forests, where arboreal reptiles and arboreal
mammals still abound, nor can we believe the great armies of
northern birds which find abundant food in southern lands in
winter, are driven out by scarcity on the approach of spring.
Enemies are numerous in the tropics, but no animals are more
alert, or have sharper senses, or better means of escape, than
birds, and, trusting to their powers of flight, and their quick sight
and hearing, they venture into danger with confidence, for the
great charm of birds to us is the fearlessness with which they
approach man, who is the most dreaded enemy of all other verte-
brates. But while this is eminently true of adult birds, its opposite
is true, in even greater degree, of nestlings; for no animals are
at the same time more helpless and more exposed to danger than
many young birds, while the exposed eggs are of course abso-
lutely helpless, and very tempting and attractive to enemies,
although there is no group of animals in which the safety of the
eggs and young is more important. As their eggs are very
large and heavy, a high birth-rate is incompatible with flight,
and the preservation of each species imperatively demands that
every egg shall be cared for with unceasing solicitude; for
while in other animals increased danger to eggs or young may
be met and compensated by an increase in the birth-rate, the
birth-rate of birds cannot be much increased without a corre-
sponding restriction of the power of flight. Every one knows
how quickly birds may be exterminated by the destruction of
their eggs or young, and the low birth-rate of all birds of power-

MIGRATION IN ITS BEARING ON LAMARCKISM 113

ful flight is a sufficient reason for migration, for at the same
time that their fitness for flight limits the birth-rate, it permits
them to seek nesting places beyond the reach of their enemies;
and as there is rigorous selection of the nestlings which are born
in safe nests, it is easy to understand how the instinct has been
gradually acquired by selection, and how, as it has become more
and more firmly fixed, and as the safety of the eggs and young
has become assured by the remoteness and isolation of the nests,
the birth-rate has been still more reduced, and the power of
flight still more extended. Many sea-birds, which make their
nests on desolate rocks in mid-ocean, lay only a single egg each
year and exhibit the power of flight in its highest perfection.
The power of the storm-petrel to wander is as boundless as the
ocean, and while it lays only a single egg, there is reason to
believe that it is the most prolific of all birds, for the number of
individuals is said to be greater than in any other genus.

We cannot believe that all migratory birds inherit the habit
from some common parent which was migratory, nor is it proba-
ble that, in all cases, it owes its origin to the same influences;
but if the view here advanced be correct, we must believe that,
in most migratory birds, it has been brought about by the needs
which arise in connection with reproduction, and not by the sup-
ply of food, and that the winter home in tropical and sub-
tropical regions, and not the birthplace of modern birds, must
be regarded as the original starting-point for the migratory habit.

While Wallace was the first to recognize the importance of
selection in the formation of this as well as other habits and
instincts, he seems to regard selection alone, without the assist-
ance of geological changes, as inadequate to explain all the facts
of migration. He says: "It appears to me probable that here,
as in so many other cases, survival of the fittest will be found
to have had a powerful influence. Let us suppose that in any
species of migratory birds, breeding can as a rule be only safely
accomplished in a given area; and farther, that during the
greater part of the rest of the year sufficient food cannot be
obtained in that area. It will follow that those birds which do
not leave the breeding area at the proper season will suffer, and
ultimately become extinct; which will also be the fate of those

1 14 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

which do not leave the feeding area at the proper time. Now
if we suppose that the two areas were, for some remote ancestor
of the existing species, coincident, but by geological or climatic
changes gradually diverged from each other, we can easily under-
stand how the habit of incipient and partial migration at the
proper season would at last become hereditary, and so firmly
fixed as to become what we term an instinct. It will probably
be found that every gradation still exists in various parts of the
world, from a complete coincidence to a complete separation of
the breeding and subsistence areas, and when the natural history
of a sufficient number of species is thoroughly worked out, we
may find every link between species which never leave a re-
stricted area where they breed and live the whole year round,
to those other cases in which the two areas are absolutely
separated."

Modern zoology owes its basis to the work of Wallace and Dar-
win on the distribution of birds, which, in their hands, has led to
a revolution in our conceptions of nature, and has given so much
weight to all their utterances on the subject that no one would
venture to differ from them inconsiderately, although, when we
try to interpret the language which Wallace here uses in the
light of his other works, it seems very doubtful whether he has
carefully weighed the words in which he here states that " the
habit of incipient and partial migration " may " at last become
hereditary." We must also bear in mind that migration and dis-
tribution are distinct phenomena, and that while the geographical
distribution of birds shows clear indications of the effect of past
geological changes in the distribution of land and water, migra-
tory birds, like other birds, are kept from invading other provinces
than their own by competitors and enemies, rather than by geo-
graphical barriers. As so many birds move towards the poles of
the earth to lay their eggs, and towards the equator to spend
the winter, the view that their breeding area and their subsistence
area have gradually become widely separated by changes of cli-
mate seems probable at first sight, but this rule is not universal,
for many of the great breeding grounds of sea-birds are in tem-
perate or tropical waters. The petrels and albatrosses, terns, gulls,
and many other birds pass most of their lives scattered over the

MIGRATION- IN ITS BEARING ON LAMARCKISM 1 1 5

surface of the ocean, but this affords no nesting place, while the
wastes of water which keep carnivorous mammals and reptiles
and other enemies of nesting b'irds from approaching the remote
and desolate rocks and sand-bars of the open ocean, are no ob-
stacle to them. These spots are so secure that birds born in
them are much more likely than those born on the shores of in-
habited lands to survive, so that it has come about that all the
modern members of these groups are descended from ances-
tors who shunned the dangerous nesting places, not because
acquired characters have become inherited, nor because their
feeding ground and their nesting places have been drawn apart
by geological changes, but because those which did not instinc-
tively seek safe places for the few eggs which are all that their
fitness for continuous and rapid flight permits have been extermi-
nated. These birds now gather from all parts of the ocean, on
the few widely scattered rocks and islands where their young are
safe, and the periodic assemblies of innumerable multitudes of
wandering sea-birds in their " rookeries " are true migrations, for
they are as regular as the almanac in the time of arrival and
departure, although their feeding ground is almost as extensive
as the ocean, and although the food-supply has nothing to do
with their movements, and although they do not reach the rook-
eries by a single path.

In this case the needs of reproduction are the controlling influ-
ence, and the site of the rookery has been fixed by its safety ; and
while it is difficult to say how far the birds are guided by experi-
ence of the danger of . other places, the well-known tameness of
sea-birds in their breeding places, and their apparent ignorance of
the existence of enemies, seem to show that they are quite uncon-
scious of the advantages of the chosen spot, and that they resort
to it automatically or naturally, since they owe their existence to
its isolation and its safety.

Zoologists are far too ready to resort to the boundless fields
for speculation which geology affords, and Crotch has gravely sug-
gested that the migration of the lemmings, and their death in the
waters of the ocean, may be due to their efforts to reach the lost
Atlantis which their ancestors inhabited during the Miocene period ;
although this opinion has no better basis than the belief of Olaus

Il6 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

Magnus that they rain down from the clouds, where they are devel-
oped from decomposing exhalations impregnated with the semen
of rats.

It is easy to understand how birds near the northern limit of
their range may invade the territory of those whose home is a little
further south, and compete with them for food as this becomes
scarce on the approach of winter, and how this movement spreads
until all the members of the species are involved, although many
of these might have been able to satisfy all the necessities of life
for some time longer in their breeding grounds, if they had been
undisturbed.

We have noted that this has commended itself to northern natu-
ralists as a sufficient reason for the acquisition of the migratory
habit, and that the fondness for their birthplace which is so strongly
developed in birds has been thought enough to draw them back ;
but the love of home is itself a result of natural selection, and the
necessity for finding safe places for the eggs and young enough
to account for the origin of migration without the aid of geological
changes.

Even if we know little as to the means by which birds find their
way over land and water, we know as a fact that they are able to
do so ; and we also know that the instinct which leads them to
seek safe places for their nests is so strongly implanted in their
nature that centuries of domestication weaken it but little, for it is
still as strong in the guinea fowl and the turkey and the hen as it
is in wild birds. As birds of powerful flight have a range of choice
in the selection of places for their nests which is almost as wide as
the earth itself, it is not surprising that the continual destruction
of those born in the least safe nests has at last resulted in the sur-
vival of the ones which build their nests thousands of miles away
from their ancestral home.

While most writers on the subject have thought that migration
had its origin in an annual journey which, while short, was definite
for all the members of the species, and while they have felt forced
to call in the aid of geology to account for the gradual separation
of the two termini, and the length of the journey from one to the
other, the hypothesis of geological change seems gratuitous and
unnecessary, since the known habits and instincts and needs of

MIGRATION IN ITS BEARING ON LAMARCKISM 1 1/

the birds are, in themselves, a sufficient explanation of all the
broader and more general characteristics of migration.

It seems much more simple, and much more consistent with
our knowledge of the past history of living things, in general, to
believe it had its origin in an intense but geographically indefinite
impulse, which led birds to scatter at the breeding season, and to
hunt out safe hiding places for their nests, and that, as enemies
also improved in power to find the most accessible nests, the
instinct gradually shaped itself into definiteness through selection
and extermination, until, at last, safe breeding grounds far away
from home, and far away from the enemies which there abounded,
have become established, and until many species and all the sur-
viving members of each species have come to share the impulse
to resort to these selected breeding places on the approach of the
period of sexual excitement, and to follow the same path between
points far apart ; that the increasing safety of the eggs and young
has permitted a low birth-rate, and the improvement by selection
of the power of rapid and long-continued flight ; and that this has,
in its turn, permitted the migration to become longer and longer,
and more and more protective to the eggs and young.

The history of migratory birds has been long and complicated ;
and there has been time for great changes in the distribution of
land and water, and for changes of climate, and these have, no
doubt, left some permanent impression on the habits of birds.

4

They have not eluded all their enemies, for predaceous birds and
their prey are found together in both the summer and the winter
homes. New ways to escape enemies and new ways to find food
are as important as they ever were, and birds undoubtedly have
capacity for improving by experience and for forming new habits.

All these influences have, no doubt, had and still have, their
effect on migration, so that the history of the subject is very
complicated ; although it seems clear that its broader outlines
admit of explanation by natural selection without recourse to
geology or to the inheritance of the direct effects of nurture.

In conclusion I wish to remind the reader that our present
interest in migration lies in its value as an illustration of the
general law that the adaptations of nature are for the good of
the species and not for the benefit of the individual. This law

Il8 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

is universal, but since the welfare of the species is usually iden-
tical with that of the constituent individuals it is not obvious
unless the good of the species demands the sacrifice of individuals.

Long journeys are hazardous. Every California salmon which
enters upon the long journey to the breeding ground is destroyed,
and the whole race is wiped out of existence for the good of
generations yet unborn. Very few shad ever return to the ocean,
and storm and accident and ruthless enemies work their will on
the migrating birds and decimate them without mercy, yet the
dangerous return to safe breeding grounds still goes on in order
that children which are yet unborn may survive to produce chil-
dren in their turn.

The safeguards which nature throws around eggs, and infants,
and immature animals, and the indifference to the fate of the
mature animals which seems to be exhibited by the influences
which have shaped species into fitness for their environment, are
facts which must never be lost sight of; for if we forget them,
our attempts to understand the history of the properties of living
things or the meaning of our own nature are certain to mislead.

Transition from the migration of the salmon to the altruistic
moral sense of ethical man may seem abrupt, yet the two subjects
may not be so far apart as they seem, if the natural attributes
of every living thing are primarily for the good of others, as I
have sought to show in the last two lectures.

The fish owes its existence to the migratory impulse, which is
therefore useful, although it is not useful to the fish that migrates.
It has a utilitarian basis and a utilitarian history ; but if the salmon
were enlightened, its actions would exhibit enlightened self-sacri-
fice and not enlightened selfishness.

Many good and thoughtful people hold that proof that our
moral sense has had a natural history would have very dreadful
consequences ; that it would show that duty is not duty, right
and wrong neither right nor wrong, and that the significance
man has attributed to this part of his nature a mistake.

I cannot believe anything so beneficial and wholesome as the
increase of natural knowledge can lead to disaster, and while
I do not suppose my own inability to see why these dreadful
consequences should follow will count for much, this inability is

MIGRATION IN ITS BEARING ON LAMARCKISM 119

real; for while I am convinced that the moral sense owes its
existence to its utility, I fail to see what bearing its history has
on its significance or its value.

They who perceive that all the nature of living things is prima-
rily for the good of others, and that the poison of serpents and
the ferocity of the tiger are as free from selfishness as the industry
of the bee or the mother's love for her child, can no longer wondetf
if something in our own nature should impel us to acts which
are not to our personal liking or advantage ; nor need they feaif
lest the discovery of the natural history of the moral sense may
destroy its value.

Should it not rather " seem to follow that reasonable creatures
were, as the philosophical Emperor observes, made one for another ;
and, consequently, that man ought not to consider himself as an
independent individual, whose happiness is not connected with that
of other men ; but rather as a part of a whole, to the common
good of which he ought to conspire, and order his ways and
actions suitably, if he would live according to nature " ? " Will it
not follow that a wise man should consider and pursue his private
good, with regard to, and in conjunction with, that of other men ?
though, indeed, the sympathy of pain and pleasure, and the
mutual affections by which mankind are knit together, have been
always allowed a plain proof of this point; and though it was
the constant doctrine of those who were esteemed the wisest and
most thinking men among the ancients."1

1 Berkeley, " Alciphron," I. 16 and II. 13.

LECTURE VI

ZOOLOGY, AND THE PHILOSOPHY
OF EVOLUTION

" I have nothing to say to any Philosophy of Evolution. . . . Attempts to construct
such a philosophy may be .... useful, but in my judgment they are .... premature."
— HUXLEY : " Collected Essays," V.

LECTURE VI — PART I

ZOOLOGY, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION

THE facts given in the last two lectures seem to show that
we cannot expect much from the " Lamarckian factors," even if
they should prove to be factors ; and while this impression may
be wrong, it seems to be the rational frame of mind until it has
proved wrong.

He who follows the current literature of zoology finds that
many writers assure him, in effect, that the years which Darwin
and Wallace gave to hard labor on the problem of species were
thrown away, since all they tried to find out by hard work might
have been deduced from the Philosophy of Evolution.

We were warned, long ago, that "whoever, unable to doubt
and eager to affirm, shall establish principles, and, according to
the unmoved truth of these, shall reject or receive others, ... he
shall exchange things for words, reason for insanity, the world for
a fable, and shall be incapable of interpreting."

In "philosophy" current history is sometimes ancient history,
and the ardent disciples of " philosophers " who, in modest earnest-
ness, undertake to formulate the scientific knowledge of their day,
often become bolder than their teachers, and, growing arrogant
and reckless with success, find at last that they have sold their
birthright in nature for what proves, when examined, to be no
better than a mess of pottage.

The evidence that living matter is continuous, from beginning
to end, is so conclusive that it convinces all who know its value.
All living things are one by birth, and the system of living nature
is, historically, a unit, a consistent whole ; not a collection of isolated
and independent species. How does it happen, then, that at every
point in its history, we find it divided into detached groups, sep-

123

124 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

arated by gaps, and characterized by fitness ? Why is the system
of living nature such that we cannot picture it as a circle, spread-
ing in all directions from a common centre, and growing wider
around its whole circumference ? Why is it such that it is more
exactly represented by a number of growing radii, independent at
their outer ends ?

This is the problem which Darwin undertook to solve, by show-
ing that it results from extermination according to a standard of
fitness. How does the Lamarckian meet it? Sometimes by deny-
ing the existence of fitness. Sometimes by asserting, even in the
same breath, that fitness is universal and necessary, and that there
is no real problem.

He asserts that it is the outcome or expression of a deeper
principle of necessary progress or evolution, which must result in
fitness. The tendency to regard natural selection as more or less
unnecessary and superfluous, which is so characteristic of our
day, seems to grow out of reverence for the all-sufficiency of the
philosophy of evolution, and pious belief that the history of
living things flows out of this philosophy as a necessary truth or
axiom.

"The inheritance of characters acquired during the life of the
individual is an indispensable axiom of the monistic doctrine of
evolution." 1

The writer yields to no one in admiration of the doctrine of evo-
lution. So far as it is a scientific generalization from our know-
ledge of nature, it is one of the greatest triumphs of the human
mind ; rivalled only by its reciprocal, the doctrine of dissolution.

Experience seems to show, very clearly, that our system of
nature is, on the whole, moving towards what commends itself to
our minds as evolution, or progress to greater and greater per-
fection. While there is just as much evidence that each step in
evolution is also a step toward dissolution, we have the same
rational ground for expecting that this movement will continue,
without any sudden radical change, that we have for other expec-
tations which we base on knowledge of nature.

So far as the doctrine of evolution is based on knowledge, it is
not only a part, but one of the most valuable and suggestive parts

1 Haeckel, " Monism," p. 96.

ZOOLOGY, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 12$

of the system of science, for the scientific law of evolution is part
of science ; but the philosophy of evolution is held by many as a
creed, superior to and able to direct science. As men of science,
we, like Huxley, have "nothing to say to any philosophy of
evolution," except so far as it stands in the way of scientific
progress.

We are sometimes told that while the other idols of which
Bacon warned us are still worshipped, the idols of the theatre
have been deserted, and their temples abandoned ; although he
himself lays peculiar stress on their persistency.

" Lastly, there are idols which have crept into men's minds
from the various dogmas of particular systems of philosophy, . . .
and these we denominate idols of the theatre. For we regard all
the systems of philosophy hitherto received or imagined as so
many plays brought out and performed, creating fictitious and
theatrical worlds. Nor do we speak only of the present systems,
or of the philosophy and sects of the ancients, since numerous
other plays of a similar nature can still be composed."

They who worship this modern idol of the theatre hold that
everything which has taken place and everything which can take
place in our universe is deducible from the primal distribution of
matter and energy. They tell us that everything in the past and
everything in the future follows, of necessity, from this starting-
point, inasmuch as it might all have been predicted ; but while
science knows laws, — laws of evolution and others, — it knows
no necessity except the logical necessity for stopping when evi-
dence stops.

The evolutionist tells us that if we start with a homogeneous
universe, with all the matter uniformly distributed, and all the
energy kinetic ; and if any break in this indefinite unstable homo-
geneity exist or be brought about, all the rest must follow of
necessity, as a matter of course, from the nature of things; that
all things must go on along their predetermined course until all the
matter shall have fallen into stable equilibrium, and all the energy
shall have become latent or potential.

As no one can say the basis for all this is not true, and as
it seems much more consistent with scientific knowledge than
other systems of philosophy, we must admit that, for all we know

126 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

to the contrary, it may be true ; and we must ask whether, if
true, it is any substitute for science ; although we must remember
that there is no end to the things which, while no one treats
them seriously, may nevertheless be true.

All the fancies of the poets, which do not involve a con-
tradiction, may be true; but while anything which is not ab-
surd may be good poetry, science is founded on the rock of
evidence.

Many have found the opinion that all nature is conscious and
endowed with volition, that the morning stars sing together, that
the waters laugh, that trees talk, and that the wind bloweth
where it listeth, worthy of belief ; and it is clear that we can-
not oppose any belief of this sort by evidence, or convert the
sailor who believes that the wind obeys his whistle, by asking for
proof.

The path of scientific progress is strewn with beliefs which
have been abandoned for lack of evidence, as burst shells strew
a battlefield, and it is our boast that they are abandoned, and
not lugged along the line of march. As a shell which has failed
to burst is, now and then, picked up on some old battlefield, by
some one on whom experience is thrown away, and is exploded
by him in the bosom of his approving family, with disastrous
results, so one of these abandoned beliefs may be dug up by
the head of some intellectual family, to the confusion of those
who follow him as their leader.

So far as the philosophy of evolution involves belief that
nature is determinate, or due to a necessary law of universal
progress or evolution, it seems to me to be utterly unsupported
by evidence, and totally unscientific.

This system of philosophy teaches that, for purposes of illus-
tration, our universe may be compared to an unstable, homoge-
neous, saturated solution; which remains unchanged so long as
it is undisturbed, but crystallizes when shaken. The process of
evolution must be supposed to start with a disturbance or shock.
Something, inherent in the nature of things or outside, must press
the button ; but matter and its properties do all the rest, just as
crystallization follows from the properties of the solution. Even
if all this is granted, it is not apparent that the mind of the

ZOOLOGY, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 12?

evolutionist has any power by the aid of which it could deduce
anything whatever from homogeneity, even if it were present at
the beginning.

There are homogeneous solutions of sugar and homogeneous
solutions of brine, and no one without experience of similar facts
has any way to tell what potencies are latent in a solution except
by finding out. While we find no reason to suppose a homo-
geneous saturated solution has any power to initiate anything,
we cannot think of it as inert. It is, as it were, alive with energy,
and its inactivity is due to the exact balancing of all its powers.
It is prepared to spring into energetic action the instant the
bonds that chain it are broken by something that disturbs the
balance and sets its forces free.

So, too, the primeval homogeneity of the evolutionist is imagined
as instinct with world-producing energy, ready to evolve stars and
systems and worlds and oceans and continents and living things and
men, and all that is " in the round ocean, and the living air, and the
blue sky, and in the mind of man," the instant it is set free; and
so on to the end, which will come when all the energy has worked
itself out in motion, and all the matter has found rest in stable
equilibrium.

Unless he who worships this idol of the theatre is prepared to
assert that there is only one kind of indefinite incoherent homo-
geneity; and unless he knows, in some way of which men of science
are ignorant, what sort of homogeneous solution our universe was
at the beginning ; the only way for him to learn what potencies are
latent in it is to find out by studying their products. It is hard to
see how he can deduce anything whatever from his necessary law
of universal progress except what he discovers. If his premises
are admitted, all he can deduce from them regarding our subject
is that, if he finds natural selection, the potency of natural selection
was latent in his solution.

The philosophy of evolution is of no more use as a substitute
for science than any other system of philosophy, although it is, no
doubt, not only the latest, but the most consistent with our know-
ledge of nature, and although it may, for all I know to the contrary,
be true. All this fails to give it any value as a short cut to natural
knowledge.

128 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

The true believer may say, however, that while our finite, im-
perfect minds may be unable to deduce anything from homo-
geneity, in the absence of knowledge drawn from experience, the
outcome of the process must nevertheless be determinate. As it
has all come out of the primeval homogeneity, he says this must
have contained it all potentially.

I am no philosopher, but this does not seem obvious or neces-
sary to me. Nature, as we know it, consists, in the main of per-
mutations and combinations. " I do not know," is one thing, and
" I do know not " is another, even if some fail to discriminate.

" It is easy to perceive that the prodigious variety which ap-
pears, both in the works of nature and in the acts of men, and
which constitutes the greatest part of the beauty of the universe,
is owing to the multitude of different ways in which its several
parts are mixed with or placed near each other."

When we say three dice can be thrown in only two hundred and
sixteen ways, all we mean is that we cannot throw them in any other
way. We cannot throw three zeros, or three sevens, in any way,
with ordinary dice without changing the marks; but we cannot
attribute to the dice any latent capacity for being thrown in any
way, or any capacity to do anything whatever as dice, even after
we have been informed by Haeckel that "the real maker of the
organic world is, in all probability, a tetrahedron."1

Except for a few odd thousands of quintillions of permutations
and combinations no others can be formed from twenty-six letters,
and if Galileo means any more than this by his remark that all
truth is contained in the compass of the alphabet; if his words are
more than figurative; if he intends to assert that the potency of
literature is latent in the alphabet, independently of an author, — it
seems to me, with all respect for Galileo, that he is talking non-
sense; for while the production of a learned treatise by the fortui-
tous concourse of letters may not be impossible, all the books we
know of have come about in another way.

Twenty-eight figures are required to express the number of dis-
tinct deals in whist. "If the whole population of the world, say
one thousand millions of persons, were to deal cards day and night
for a hundred million years," they might justify Sarah Battle's criti-

J" Monism," pp. 27, 28.

ZOOLOGY, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 1 29

cism of the game, but " they would not in that time have exhausted
one hundredth-thousandth part of the possible deals."

It is not clear to me that combinations are latent in the things
combined. In fact, the bearing of these things on the matter
seems to be negative and passive, rather than active or positive.

It is not clear that, with all their latent potency, a pack of
cards would ever evolve a single hand without a dealer ; but if a
part of the universe, so trivial and insignificant, present opportu-
nities so boundless, the matter and motion of our universe may
present to a dealer opportunities for universes without end, no
one like another. I do not see how one can assert that anything
in the material universe is necessary or predetermined, except so
far as it is one among an infinite number of possibilities.

Huxley tells us that, " if the fundamental proposition of evo-
lution, that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of
the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces
possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of
the universe was composed," be true, "it is no less certain that
the existing world lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapour; and that
a sufficient intelligence could, from a knowledge of the properties
of the molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say, the state of
the fauna of Great Britain in 1868, with as much certainty as
one can say what will happen to the vapour of the breath in a
cold winter's day."

The thoughtful reader will note that Huxley's assertion that,
if this proposition be true, it is no less certain that the existing
world lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapor is no admission that
the proposition is true, or the deduction certain ; nor must we
forget that the most notable and valuable characteristic of Hux-
ley's teachings is the declaration, in all his works, of the truth
that the scientific basis of our confidence in the order of nature is
evidence.

Again and again, in words which are unmistakable, he tells
us that, while we may have reasonable confidence what to expect
from the vapor of our breath in a cold winter's day, we know
nothing about it except what has happened. The scientific value
of our confidence depends, he tells us, on the extent of our expe-
rience of the behavior of the vapor of our breath, and similar

130 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

bodies, on a cold day, or under similar circumstances. As, in
this case, our experience is pretty extensive, the deduction is safe
and reasonable ; but when a young man who had passed his life
in the tropics spent the night on top of a high mountain with
my students, he was so far from deducing anything from the
frosty morning air that he was, at first, alarmed by the behavior
of the vapor of his breath.

If Huxley is right, — if the logical basis for confidence in
nature is evidence, — it seems clear that no amount of knowledge
can ever give it any other basis ; for nothing seems more obvious,
or more strictly logical, than our inability to deduce anything
from a single experience. The burnt child may dread the fire as
much as if it had been burned twenty times, but the only way
for it to learn whether, and to what degree, its dread is wise
and prudent, without passing through the slow and painful pro-
cess of selection, is to get knowledge, for a single experience
affords no basis for any logical process.

While the emotional value of a sensation is, no doubt, limited
by inherited structure, and dependent, to some degree, on inten-
sity, its objective value as knowledge is regulated in accordance
with the statistical law of probability.

If the history of what we call our universe were complete
from beginning to end ; if everything which exists in it were
reduced to mechanical principles, and traced back to primitive
nebulosity, — this history would be only a single experience in cos-
mogony, so far as the history of universes is in question. If we
were to find, somewhere, a second nebulosity, we would not be
able to infer anything, except from the worthless analogy of a
single experience ; nor would we be able to infer or deduce, from
our own, anything, not already known, with more than reasonable
confidence. If we were still ignorant of any part of our order of
nature, we should have no way to find out but the way we have
now ; and while our confidence in its stability would be reasonable
and judicious, it would not be necessary or absolute unless our experi-
mental knowledge were also absolute.

It seems to me that the truth for which Huxley strives, and
hits with imperfect aim, would be more correctly expressed by the
statement that, if our knowledge of nature were to be made com-

ZOOLOGY, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 131

plete, from beginning to end, we should expect to find that our
confidence in its stability had been reasonable, and judicious, and
wise throughout, and that any other expectation would have been
folly and suicide, bodily as well as mental; and that it is only in
this sense that we could assert that it all lay potentially in the
cosmic vapor.

It is not because I dread or fear the philosophy of evolution,
that I refuse to accept it ; but because it is not yet proved. When
it is proved I shall accept it with cheerfulness ; for I most as-
suredly hold no belief which is inconsistent with it ; although I
fail to see how the reduction of all nature to mechanical princi-
ples could show that nature is determinate ; for if exhaustive
knowledge of "primitive nebulosity" should sometime show that
there is nothing in nature which might not have been expected,
I cannot see how this could show why the things we expect
should be the things which come about.

They who assert that complete knowledge would be fore-
knowledge, forget that, for minds like ours, the only source of
knowledge, either complete or incomplete, is evidence ; for evi-
dence can tell us only what has happened, and it can never as-
sure us that the future must be like the past. Even if we knew
all that has happened, from the beginning down to the present
moment, we should have to regard the unknown remainder as
equal, in all probability, to the known past. To my mind, Jevons's
demonstration that, if certainty be represented by unity, the utmost
confidence we can ever reach by complete knowledge can never
exceed a value of one-half, seems conclusive; but even if it be
increased until it differ from certainty by less than any assignable
quantity, it must still remain nothing but reasonable confidence.

There may be some unknown reason why the stone which I
set free from my hand must fall, and it may be that, as my mind
has been shaped by natural selection, I am unable to expect any-
thing else than that it shall fall; but science affords no evidence
that its fall is necessary or predetermined; for most thoughtful
students assure us that the inductive study of nature tells us
nothing about it, except that, so far as we know, all stones, so
placed, have fallen according to Newton's laws, and that we have
not the smallest reason to expect that any stone, so placed, will

132 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

act differently ; nor, so far as I can see, would proof that all
nature is mechanical, from beginning to end, be inconsistent with
belief that everything in nature is immediately sustained by Provi-
dence; nor am I able to see how it would be inconsistent with my
conviction that my volition counts for something as a condition
of the course of events.

I have tried to show, page 59, that, while the responsive
activities of living things do not take place unless they are called
forth by a stimulus, the things which they do under a stimulus
are no more than their organic mechanism would lead one to
expect; and that there is no necessary antagonism between those
who attribute the development of the germ to mechanical con-
ditions and those who attribute it to the inherent potency of the
germ itself.

I have also tried to show, page 70, that there need be no
more antagonism between those who attribute knowledge to expe-
rience and those who attribute it to our innate reason ; for, while
knowledge does not arise in our minds without a sensible occasion,
the knowledge which does thus arise may be no more than one who
knew the whole natural history of our minds might have expected.

We must now ask whether proof that all nature was latent in
the cosmic vapor would be inconsistent with belief that every-
thing in nature is immediately intended rather than predeter-
mined.

Certain monists tell us that the scientific doctrine of evolution
is the same as Pantheism, for "since the simpler occurrences of
inorganic nature and the more complicated phenomena of organic
life are alike reducible to the same natural forces, and since,
furthermore, these in their turn have their common foundation in
a simple primal principle pervading infinite space, we can regard
this last [the cosmic ether] as all-comprehending divinity, and
upon this found the thesis : Belief in God is reconcilable with
science." l

They who agree with Haeckel may worship stones, if they see
fit; but they seem to me -to fail as completely as any South Sea
islander to understand the nature of scientific evidence ; for it is
one thing to find sermons in stones, and quite another to see a

1 Haeckel, " Monism."

ZOOLOGY, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 133

divinity in the stone itself; "which, if with reason we may do,
then let our hammers rise up and boast they have built our
houses, and our pens receive the honour of our writings." l But
everything must be determinate, says the pious evolutionist, or
what would become of the fixed order of nature? Among the
things that occupy the biologist are such aspects of nature as life,
and consciousness, and volition, and reason, and right and wrong.
Whatever these things mean, they are part of nature, and the
zoologist cannot push them out of sight, if others may. He does
not know what their places in the system of nature are, but he
would like to find out; and he knows no way to find out except
to discover.

When they who worship at the shrine of evolution tell him
there can be no spontaneity in nature, because the order of nature
is fixed and unchangeable, he asks what reason there is for think-
ing that proof that everything in nature is mechanical, and no
more than might have been expected, would show that anything
is fixed, or predetermined, or necessary. _

Science has nothing to do with the notion of "necessity," and
is quite content to leave it in the hands of its originators, the
metaphysicians and theologians and " philosophers," who alone are
responsible for all the mental confusion it has brought about.

What the man of science asserts is that he will not admit
that anything is "arbitrary." "It was the ignorance of man's
reason that begat this very name, and by a careless term mis-
called the Providence of God ; for there is no liberty for causes
to operate in a loose and straggling way." l

Belief that everything in nature is mechanical is neither more
nor less than belief that everything in nature is .orderly and what
might have been expected ; and if any one thinks that discovery
that things do take place in order is any reason why they should,
his distrust of science is only reasonable; for science is not for
such minds as his.

It is in my mind to ask a question. Will any amount of
knowledge of matter and motion tell the evolutionist whether I
shall ask it, or pass it by and go on to another subject? If he
answer Yes, I ask my question : How does he know ? If he

1 " Religio Medici."

134 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

assure me that a being so reasonable as I am known to be will
not ask anything that might not have been expected, I thank him
for the compliment ; for I try to be a reasonable creature. But if
he assert that his confidence in my thoughts and actions proves
that they are necessary, I must ask him how he knows ; for I fail-
to see how proof that an event is mechanical and neither less nor
more than might have been expected, shows that it is necessary ;
nor can I see any more reason why my confidence in my free-
dom proves that my acts are arbitrary.

The man of science quarrels with no man's opinions ; but he
will not be held responsible for perplexities which are none of his
making.

I am unable to share the dread of the evolutionist that the
basis of science may be destroyed if we do not admit that all
nature must be determinate. All agree that the past is determi-
nate, so far as the word means anything to us, and there seems
to be valid ground for the belief that every part of the material
universe contains a permanent record of every change which has
ever occurred in any part.

" If on a cold polished metal, as a new razor, any object, such
as a wafer, be laid, and the metal be breathed upon, and, when
the moisture has had time to disappear, the wafer be thrown off,
though now the most critical inspection of the polished surface
can discern no trace of any form, if we breathe once more upon it,
a spectral image of the wafer comes plainly into view ; and this
may be done again and again. Nay, more, if the polished metal
be carefully put aside, where nothing can deteriorate its surface,
and be kept so for many months, on breathing upon it again, the
shadowy form emerges. A shadow never falls upon a wall with-
out leaving thereupon a permanent trace, a trace which might be
made visible by resorting to proper processes. Upon the walls of
our most private apartments, where we think the eye of intrusion
is altogether shut out, and our retirement can never be profaned,
there exist the vestiges of all our acts." 1

Babbage has pointed out ( " Ninth Bridgewater Treatise " pp.
113-115) "that if we had power to follow and detect the minutest
effects of any disturbance, each particle of existing matter would fur-

1 Draper, " Conflict of Science and Religion."

ZOOLOGY, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 135

nish a register of all that has happened. The track of every canoe,
of every vessel that has as yet disturbed the surface of the ocean,
whether impelled by manual force or elemental power, remains
forever registered in the future movement of all succeeding particles
which may occupy its place. The furrow which it left is indeed
instantly filled up by the closing waters, but they draw after them
other and larger portions of the surrounding element, and these
again, once moved, communicate motion to others in endless suc-
cession. The air itself is one vast library, in whose pages are
forever written all that man has said or even whispered. There,
in their mutable but unerring characters, mixed with the earliest
as well as the latest sighs of mortality, stand forever recorded
vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled, perpetuating in the united
movements of each particle the testimony of man's changeful will." l

So far as we know, nothing that has ever been can be as if it had
not been ; and we seem to have good ground for believing that every
portion of the material universe contains a record of every change
that has taken place in all its parts, and also for believing that there
is no limit to the power of minds like ours to read and interpret
this record. Every new experience also shows that our expectation
that the future will, on the whole, be like the past is reasonable. In
these facts science finds a basis broad enough and firm enough
for all our needs ; for to this extent the data of science are latent
in the physical universe, even if the future is, in part, to be what
man and other living things make it.

If these evolutionists who hold that all nature is determinate and
necessary are right, mind would seem to be useless. It may, for
all I know to the contrary, be true that, when I perform an action
because my reason approves it, neither the performance of the
action nor the approval of my reason is anything more than exhaust-
ive knowledge of the mechanism of my brain might have led one
to expect ; and if it follows that my action is necessary, and must
take place, whether my reason approve it or not, reason would seem
to be useless ; but I cannot see why this should follow, for I fail
to see how or why proof that my reason is mechanical and no
more than might have been expected from my structure should
be inconsistent with my confidence in its value, since I cannot con-

1 Quoted by Jevons, " Principles of Science," p. 758.

136 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

ceive how this proof could show that it is necessary, or predetermined,
or useless.

I know the value of my reason by what seems to me the best
of all evidence. If it were proved useless, I should be quite ready
to believe; but the improbability of this opinion seems to me so
much like impossibility, that I must ask for proof which is corre-
spondingly conclusive ; for I most assuredly refuse to give any
weight to the " faith " of pious evolutionists, and I must insist on
my right to demand more evidence if more is to be had, for I
cannot accept the mind of the evolutionist as a measure of nature.

Living things are continually bringing about rearrangements of
matter and motion which would never, so far as I can see, have
come about without them, and many of the things which they thus
bring about are useful to the beings which bring them about. The
earth would be very different in many respects if man had never
inhabited it, and the effects of his activity will last as long as matter,
whatever may be his fate. His influence upon the earth would
have been very different if the plants of Carboniferous times had
not stored up solar energy and worked their changes in matter
millions of years ago. If the dodo, and the great auk, and the
halicore, and the American bison could tell their story, they would
bear witness that man is a factor in the order of nature.

They who are discontented with reasonable or "moral" certainty,
and tell us they want absolute certainty, must find this sort of certainty
if they can and where they can, but their words seem strange to
the zoologist. He knows that the rocks are full of the remains of
organisms which passed out of existence because they were born
in evil times, when the adjustments to the order of nature, which
had served the purposes of their ancestors for millions of years,
ceased to hold good.

If our race should ever find itself where the old order changes ;
if our reasonable expectations should disappoint us; if what we
call the " order " of nature should prove to be no more than natural
selection would lead us to expect; and if a different selective
standard should some time modify this order, — every zoologist knows
that the human species would not be the first to meet this evil fate.

If, with Aristotle, we believe " that is natural which holds
good"; if, with Erigena, we hold that nature is the sum of all

ZOOLOGY, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 137

things, — we cannot believe that life and consciousness and reason
and volition are anything but part of nature. The question the
zoologist would like to answer is, what their place in nature is.
So far as I am aware, no one believes that these aspects of nature
exist in themselves, without antecedents, for we know that many
of their antecedents are physical, and we want to find out, if we
can, whether this is true of all of them or not. For my own part,
I fail to see what bearing this wish has on the question whether
the order of nature is "fixed" or unfixed; nor can I see how
proof that the conditions which, being given, are good reasons
for expecting reason or the moral sense, are mechanical, should
show that reason and morality are useless.

They who take refuge in an imponderable ether as soon as
they find it difficult to discover, in ponderable matter, the key to
all the antecedents to certain phenomena of light and electricity,
have no reason to cry out that the fixed order of nature is threat-
ened, because the modest zoologist has not yet been able to find,
in ponderable matter and physical energy, the key to all his
problems.

Berkeley tells us that human knowledge has its basis in experi-
ence, and that its scientific value is to be measured by the amount
of this experience ; and Huxley assures us that there is but one
kind of knowledge and but one way to acquire it. They hold our
practical test of truth to be evidence, although a pious evolutionist,
who admits that, for all he knows, they may be right, is a heretic ;
for Herbert Spencer tells him that the Philosophy of Evolution
stands or falls with the assertion that the ultimate criterion of truth
is inability to conceive its negative.

If you will read Part VII. of his " Principles of Psychology" with
care, you will note that its author tells us that, unless we admit
this, we cannot be his disciples. It is not enough to admit igno-
rance of things ultimate, or to confess that, for all one knows, in-
ability to conceive its negative may sometime prove to be the
ultimate criterion of truth. One may admit that he is unable to
discover any line which separates the responsive actions of living
things in general from the rational actions of thinking men ; that
he does not know how or where instinct and impulse and emotion
give place to reason. One may have as little faith in the idealism of

138 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

Berkeley as he has in Spencer's realism, or in the materialism of
German physics, or in the monism of the psychologists ; but unless
he knows what the relation between mind and matter is, he can-
not join the throng of worshippers before the shrine of this modern
idol of the theatre; for its leader tells him that suspension of judg-
ment on this difficult question is as fatal as disbelief.

Proof that we should not be here if our remote ancestors had
not responded to the order of nature as they did is no proof that
our minds are a measure of nature, or that our responses will be
valuable in the future, or that nature is determinate.

Now the difference between belief that the ultimate test of
truth is the inconceivability of its negative, and belief that our
practical test of truth is evidence, is this : that while inability to
conceive the negative of a proposition may be absolute to us, as
nature has made us, at our present intellectual level, evidence is
progressive, and can afford no basis for ultimate philosophy.

Our pre-Cambrian ancestors may have been unable to conceive
the negative of many propositions ; but what does the inability of
a turnip or a sponge to conceive the negative of Newton's laws
signify ? Or what would our own inability signify if we should
sometime find out that the ponderable matter which makes up
what we call "our universe" has been sifted out or segregated
from other forms of matter, by its property of weight ? For no
less distinguished an authority than Herschel held that there is
proof of the existence * of levitative matter as well as gravitative
matter.

One volume of Herbert Spencer's " Philosophy " is devoted to
proof that we primarily know objects; but to this long argument
Berkeley answers : Granted. Most assuredly we primarily know
objects ; but he tells us that the objects we know primarily are
objects of sense.

So the frozen river of philosophy grinds on, scratching the
surface of the everlasting hills, and melting before the genial sun-
shine of science, only to receive new accretions from the unknown
and frozen space beyond the snow-line.

Some fifteen hundred years have passed since we were told
by Procles that "there are two sorts of philosophers. The one
placed Body first in the order of beings, and made the faculty of

ZOOLOGY, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 139

thinking depend thereupon, supposing that the principles of all
things are corporeal; that Body must really or principally exist,
and all other things in a secondary sense, and by virtue of that.
Others, making all corporeal things to be dependent upon Soul or
Mind, think this to exist in the first place and primary sense, and
the being of Bodies to be entirely derived from, and to presuppose
that of Mind."1

While the modern psychologist tells us that there is a third
point of view, and that, for all we know to the contrary, both
mind and matter may ultimately prove to be phenomenal ; that all
mind may be matter in motion, and all matter in motion mind, or
at least the raw material of mind, I cannot see why the admis-
sion of this possibility compels us to take a side and make a
choice; for may we not find a fourth alternative, in a humble
confession that, while we do not know what the relation between
mind and matter is, we wish to find out? "And, although it may,
perhaps, seem an uneasy reflection to some that, when they have
taken a circuit through so many refined and unvulgar notions, they
should at last come to think like other men; yet, methinks, this
return to the simple dictates of nature, after having wandered
through the wild mazes of philosophy, is not unpleasant. It is
like coming home from a long voyage : a man reflects with pleas-
ure on the many difficulties and perplexities he has passed
through, sets his heart at ease, and enjoys himself with more satis-
faction for the future."2

If the antecedents to consciousness are outside consciousness,
it seems no more than natural that we should be unconscious of
them ; and the zoologist who admits that he does not know whether
they are or are not all to be found in that part of the universe
which may be made manifest to sense, does not feel guilty of a
threat to the fixed order of nature, or to anything or anybody else.

There are two reasons why biology and the " Philosophy of
Evolution " should be associated.

In the first place, there is a wonderful analogy between the
problems of the sensible universe and the unfolding of the latency
of the germ into the potency of the fully developed living being.

1 Berkeley, " Siris," p. 263.

2 Berkeley, Preface to " The Three Dialogues."

140 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

It is not impossible that the key to the more specific problem may
fit the lock which seals the greater.

In the second place, the two subjects are historically associ-
ated. So long as men believed that species are distinct creations,
no philosophy of evolution could have gained general acceptance.
By convincing all thoughtful persons that species have a history
which may be studied by scientific methods, Darwin led many who
would not otherwise have given it a hearing, to treat the new
philosophy with respect: but natural science is not "philosophy,"
notwithstanding this intimate historical connection between the
proof that species are mutable and the spread of belief in the
" Philosophy of Evolution." I have selected the passage which
I have put at the head of this chapter in order to show that the
view of the matter which is here set forth is not new, even among
advanced biologists.

Huxley's attitude will, no doubt, be a surprise to many who
think they have read his books with diligence. He continually
calls himself an " Evolutionist," and he can hardly blame a reader
who, failing to draw nice distinctions, holds him to be one of the
chief pillars in the temple of the new philosophy. Some confu-
sion may be permitted to those who remember his public lectures
on " Evolution," his essays with the same title, and his declaration
that the work of his life has involved him "in an endless series
of battles and skirmishes over evolution."

It is easy for one who understands his true position to see
that his essays lend no countenance to the opinion that he has
ever been or sought to be either a pillar or a disciple of any
system of philosophy ; for he has never ceased from affirming his
ignorance of many of the subjects which philosophy seeks to
handle.

His evolution is not a system of philosophy, but part of the
system of science. It deals with history — with the phenomenal
world — and not with the question what may or may not lie
behind it.

During the last half-century natural science has become his-
torical. We have opened and learned to read a new chapter in
the records of the past. The attributes of living things, which
seemed to the older naturalists to be complete and independent

ZOOLOGY, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 141

in themselves, have proved to have a history which can be studied
by the methods of science. They have been found to be steps in a
long sequence of events as orderly and discoverable as the events
which are studied by the astronomer or the geologist.

The cultivation of natural science in this historical field, and
the discovery that the present order of living things, including
conscious, thinking, ethical man, has followed after an older and
simpler state of nature, is not " philosophy," but science. It
involves no more belief in the teachings of any system of phi-
losophy than does the knowledge that we are the children of our
parents and the parents of our children; but it is what Huxley
means by "evolution." 1

His lectures on " Evolution " deal with paleontology, and
narrate facts which are found in every text-book on the subject;
but natural science, as it is taught in the text-books on botany
and zoology and embryology and paleontology, is, most assuredly,
no " Philosophy of Evolution." It fell to Huxley to fight and
win a battle for science ; and while he himself calls it a battle
for evolution, his use of the word need mislead none, although it
has misled many.

One word in its time plays many parts, and the word "evo-
lution " has had many meanings. To-day, in popular estimation,
an evolutionist is not a follower of Bonnet; nor one who is occu-
pied with the binomial theorem, or with the evolutions of fleets
and armies. Neither is he a cultivator of natural science. What-
ever the word may have meant in the past, it has, in common
speech, come to mean a believer in that philosophy of evolution
which, according to such evolutionists as Huxley, is "premature."
Since this is so, and since the growth of language is beyond in-
dividual control, would it not be well for those who stand where
Huxley stands, and " have nothing to say to any philosophy of
evolution," to stop calling themselves "Evolutionists," and to be
content with the good old name of " Naturalist " ?

To the pious evolutionist, who asks what will become of the
fixed order of nature if we are not convinced that everything is
determinate, we answer that, while this sort of reasoning is not
new, it has a strange sound in the mouth of a student of science.

1 See Huxley, " Essays," V. i., pp. 44-54.

142 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

The order of nature has outlasted many systems of philosophy,
and it may survive others. We have found our astronomy and
our geology and our law of the mutability of species, and none
of the dreadful things predicted by "philosophers" have come
about. There may still be more things in heaven and earth than
are dreamed of in "philosophy."

History warns us that, as the price of progress in science,
all the idols of the theatre, and all other idols, "must be abjured
and renounced with firm and solemn resolution, and the under-
standing must be completely freed and cleared of them; so that
the access to the kingdom of man, which is founded on the
sciences, may resemble that to the kingdom of heaven, where no
admission is conceded except to children."

If the world thinks hard names are the just due of them who
assert their living wish to know, while humbly confessing igno-
rance, the biologist must bear up as well as he can if he is called
a " scientific Rip Van Winkle," or an " agnostic," or even " a malig-
nant and a turban'd Turk."

If we seek admission to the temple of natural knowledge
naked and not ashamed, like little children, hard names cannot
hurt us, nor need they scare us.

LECTURE VI — PART II

A NOTE ON THE VIEWS OF GALTON AND WEISMANN ON
INHERITANCE

Two of the most prominent writers on inheritance, Weismann
and Galton, base their views of variation on the assumption that
at each remote generation, the ancestors of a modern organism
were innumerable, although a little reflection will show that this
assumption is quite untenable.

Weismann, in his earlier writings at least, finds the "cause of
variation " in the recombination, by sexual reproduction, of the
effects of the diversified influences which acted upon the innumer-
able protozoic ancestors of each modern metazoon ; but this
opinion deserves little consideration, as a contribution to our
knowledge of inheritance, if we can prove that these protozoic
ancestors must have been very few, and if we can also prove that,
if these few were ancestors of any modern metazoon, they must
have been the common ancestors of all the modern metazoa.

Galton's view of the diversity among individuals is much like
Weismann's. He says : " It is not possible that more than one-
half of the varieties and number of the parental elements, latent
or potential, can on the average subsist in the offspring. For if
every variety contributed its representatives, each child would on
the average contain, actually or potentially, twice the variety and
twice the number of elements, whatever they may be, that were
possessed at the same stage of its life by either of its parents,
four times as many as any of its grandparents, 1024 times as
many as any of its ancestors of the tenth degree, and so on."

As he holds that each offspring must therefore get rid, in
some way, of half the variety transmitted from its ancestors, he
finds an explanation of the diversity between individuals in the
diversity of the retained halves of their variety.

143

144 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

Each person has two parents, and four grandparents ; but
even in a country like ours, which draws its people from all
quarters of the earth, each of the eight great-grandparents is not
always a distinct person ; for when the parents are cousins, this
number is six, or five, or even four, instead of eight. Among
more primitive folks, who stay at home generation after genera-
tion, and marry neighbors, a person whose ancestors have trans-
gressed none of our social laws may have a minimum ancestry
of only four in each generation. The maximum and the mini-
mum fixed by our customs are given, for ten generations, in the
two lines below: —

2 — 4—8 — 16 — 32 — 64— 128 — 256 — 512 — 1024 . . . 2046
2-4-4-4-4-4- 4- 4- 4 - 4 • • • 3§

Few persons who can trace their ancestry for ten generations
with completeness are descended from 1024 distinct persons in
the tenth generation; and in all old stable communities of simple
folks the number is very much smaller. In the long run, the
number of ancestors in each generation is determined by the
average sexual environment, and it must be a small and pretty
constant number.

All genealogical study gives indirect evidence of this familiar
fact, which has not been adequately recognized by students of in-
heritance. I have made a computation from the genealogical his-
tory of the people of a small island on our coast. These people
lead a simple life, or at least they have done so in the past; but
most of the men have been sailors, and have ranged much farther
in search of mates than agricultural people. I have selected three
persons whose ancestry is recorded in detail for some seven or
eight generations. These three persons would not be popularly
regarded as near relations, for they have no parents or grand-
parents with like names, although two of the grandparents were
cousins. The generations are not quite parallel, for the period
covered by eight in one line is covered by seven in the two others,
and the average is about seven and a half.

In seven and a half generations the maximum ancestry for one
person is 382, or, for three persons, 1146. The names of 452 of
them, or nearly half, are recorded, and these 452 named ancestors

VIEWS OF GALTON AND WEISMANN ON INHERITANCE 145

are not 452 distinct persons, but only 149; many of them, in the
more remote generations, being common ancestors of all three in
many lines. If the lines of descent from the unrecorded ancestors
were interrelated in the same way, as they would surely be in an
old and stable community, the total ancestry of these three per-
sons, for seven and a half generations, would be 378 persons in-
stead of 1146.

Few of us know even the names of all the living descendants
of each of our sixty-four ancestors of the sixth generation ; and, so
far as our own choice is concerned, marriage with one of them
may be an accident; for the probability of such a marriage de-
pends upon things which are in great part independent of us,
upon the size of the circle of acquaintances, and the distance
of the places to which ancestors wandered. For if each pair of
ancestors had only four children, more than twelve thousand of
their descendants may now be living (4048 + 8096).

If a city like Baltimore, where the strangers to each one of us
outnumber our acquaintances a thousand fold, could be quaran-
tined against people from outside for a thousand years, each suc-
cessive generation would be much like the present, so far as known
relationships are concerned, although, at the end of this period,
the inhabitants would not be descended from the Baltimoreans of
our day, but from only a very few of them. Most of our lines
would be extinct; and the few that survived would include most
of the Baltimoreans of the year 2898.

All this is proved, indirectly but conclusively, by genealogical
statistics ; and while a thousand years are but as yesterday in the
history of species, zoological phenomena furnish evidence that
allied animals must be related to each other, at two widely sepa-
rated generations, like these successive generations of Baltimoreans.

Of all the individual animals which make up the species at a
given period, very few will have descendants at a later period, and
these few will be the common ancestors of all the individuals
which represent the stock at the later period.

The extinction of species is a familiar conception. The extinc-
tion of the lines of descent from individuals is no less real, and,
in the study of inheritance, vastly more important; for it is the
fact of which the extinction of species is only an expression.

146 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

As we trace back the ancestral tree, it divides into two branches
for the parents, and again into four, and into eight, for the grand-
parents and great-grandparents, and so on for a few generations ;
but a change soon takes place.

The student of family records may be permitted to picture
genealogy as a tree whose branches become more and more
numerous as we go farther and farther backwards from our start-
ing-point into the past; but this cannot be permitted to the
zoologist; for the average number of ancestors in each generation
cannot be greater than the average number of individuals in the
average sexual environment. It may be very much less, however,
for most of the individuals in each generation may fail to perpetu-
ate their lines to remote posterity. Now, no animal in a state of
nature ranges so far as man in search of a mate ; and the sexual
environment of such animals as the fishes in a brook or pond,
or the parasites in the intestine of a mammal, is very narrow, as
it is in many plants. While new blood no doubt finds its way in
from time to time, its influence is more than balanced by the ex-
tinction of genetic lines. The series of ancestors of each modern
animal is long beyond measure or conception, but the number of
ancestors in each remote generation can never be very great, though
it may be extremely small.

The data of systematic zoology also force us to believe the
ancestry of all the individuals of a species has been practically
identical, except for some slight divergence in the most recent part
of their history.

Instead of picturing the genealogy of a species as a tree, the
zoologist must picture it as a slender thread, of very few strands,
a little frayed at the near end, but of immeasurable length, and
so fine that its thickness is as nothing in comparison. The num-
ber of strands is fixed by, but is very much smaller than, the aver-
age sexual environment. If we choose, we may picture a fringe
of loose ends all along the thread, to represent the ancient animals
which, having no descendants, are now as if they had never been.
Each of the strands at the near end is important as a possible line
of union between the thread of the past and that of the distant
future.

The gist of the whole matter is this : that we must picture

VIEWS OF G ALTON AND WEISMANN ON INHERITANCE 147

this slender thread as common to all the individuals of the species,
whose divergence from each other is infinitesimal as compared
with the ancestry which they share in common. The branches of
a human genealogical tree diverge for a few generations by geo-
metrical progression, but we soon find traces of a change, and if
the record were long enough to have any zoological significance,
we should surely find all the members of the species descended
from a few ancestors in each remote generation, and these few
the common ancestors of all. So too of the common ancestors of
divergent species, or those of larger groups; if one metazoon is
descended from pre-Cambrian unicellular ancestors, the same uni-
cellular individuals must have been the common ancestors of all
the metazoa; and we may be confident that there were not very
many of them in any one generation. It is quite possible that
they were so few as a single pair, or even one.

There is nothing novel in all this. Galton has himself
devoted an appendix to the mathematical study of the extinction
of family names; although he, like other writers on inheritance,
seems to forget it when he assumes that the remote ancestors of
two persons were, like the parents, distinct individuals, and that
the child must therefore have twice as much ancestry as either
parent, and consequently twice as much variety, unless there is
some way to cancel half of it at each step.

I called attention to the bearing of this convergence of ances-
try on the problem of inheritance, in 1883, in words which still
seem clear; although the views of both Galton and Weismann on
variation are based on the unfounded assumption that each
sexual act brings together two totally dissimilar sets of factors,
instead of two factors which are alike in innumerable features,
for each one in which they differ.

My statement is as follows : " In order to breed together,
animals must be closely related; they must belong to the same
species, or to two closely related species. Since the individuals
which belong to two closely related species are the descendants
of a common and not very remote ancestral species, it is clear
that almost the whole of their history has been shared by them
in common ; all their generic characteristics being inherited from
this ancestor. Only the slight differences in minor points which

148 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

distinguish one species from another have been acquired since
the two diverged, and not even all of these slight differences.

"We know that the duration of even the most persistent
species of the higher animals is only an infinitesimal part of
the whole history of their evolution, and it is clear that the com-
mon characteristics of two allied species must outnumber, thou-
sands of times, the differences between them. It follows that the
parents of any possible hybrid must be alike in thousands of
features for one in which they differ. Crossing simply results in
the formation of a germ by the union of a male and a female
element derived from two essentially similar parents, with, at
most, only a few secondary and comparatively slight differences,
all of which have been recently acquired."

I trust that you will agree with me that due consideration of
the subject which is here presented might have saved much
unprofitable discussion of " the causes of variation " ; for it seems
clear that we must seek in the modern world, and not in the
remote past, for an explanation of that diversity among individ-
uals which passes under the name of "variation."

I have called your attention to these facts because they serve
to introduce, and to throw light upon, the subject of the next
lecture, The Statistical Study of Inheritance ; although they seem
to me to throw light upon other zoological problems.

If the extinction of a genetic line may be so slow that a fail-
ing stock may go on from bad to worse for many generations
before it is utterly destroyed, is it not clear that we can seldom
hope to discover what determines the ultimate survival or extinc-
tion of a genetic line? Is it not equally clear that artificial selec-
tion, by the sudden and utter destruction of the discarded, is no
measure of natural selection ?

Unless individuals with the same useful quality breed together
it is hard to see how this useful quality can be intensified by
natural selection, and as it also seems hard to find in nature any
reason why these individuals should seek out and unite with each
other, this criticism of natural selection seemed to Darwin to be a
real difficulty ; but we must remember that while the sexual union
of those individual animals whose descendants would be the fit-
test to survive may be rare and exceptional, the survival of a

VIEWS OF G ALTON AND WEISMANN ON INHERITANCE 149

genetic line in remote generations is also rare and exceptional ;
for the posterity of most of the living beings that now exist is
destined to speedy extinction.

While we may discover nothing in the modern world to draw
together those individuals which, if they were so drawn together,
might become the parents of the fittest, this is no evidence that
the fittest may not be, in the long run, the descendants of ances-
tors who did bring together characteristics which, when thus
intensified, were so transmitted to posterity as to give to this
posterity an advantage over their competitors in the struggle for
existence.

LECTURE VII

GALTON AND THE STATISTICAL STUDY OF
INHERITANCE

LECTURE VII1— PART I

GALTON AND THE STATISTICAL STUDY OF INHERITANCE

To talk about inheritance is much easier than to study it. Of
the books and essays which meet us at every turn few have much
basis in research, but among the few are those of Francis Galton.
His works, which have appeared at intervals during the past twenty
years, are not speculations, but studies. They describe long and
thorough investigations, carried out by rigorous methods, in lines
laid down on a plan which has been matured with great care and
forethought.

The simplicity of their language is as notable as their substance.
Dealing with conceptions which are both new and abstruse, their
author finds our mother tongue rich enough for all his needs,
and while the reasoning often taxes all our powers, there is never
any doubt as to the meaning of the words.

When, in rare cases, a technical term is inevitable, some famil-
iar word is chosen with so much aptness that it does its duty, and
presents the new conception better than any which half a dozen
dead languages could afford. The terms, "mid-parent" or "mid,"
"fraternity," "nurture," and "Q" cannot mislead or convey any
idea except the right one.

My own debt to Galton is great, and it is acknowledged with
gratitude. Such acquaintance with the statistical method as I
possess, I owe to the study of these books, especially the ones
on "Hereditary Genius" (1869), on " Natural Inheritance" (1889),
and on "Finger Prints" (1892).

My attempt to question Galton's generalizations may therefore
seem ungracious and presumptuous, but the uncertainties of vital

1 A review of the works of Francis Galton; reprinted from the Popular Science Monthly
for February and March, 1896.

153

154 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

statistics are proverbial ; and it is not impossible that Galton's
data may fail to cover all the ground which they should in order
to prove his general conclusions.

One of these generalizations is so far-reaching that it must, if
well founded, lead to fundamental change in our view of the
origin of species.

According to Darwin and Wallace, specific identity in living
things is the outcome of the extermination, in the struggle for
existence, of the individuals which depart too widely from that
" type " which is, on the whole, the best adapted to existing condi-
tions. As these conditions change, the type is also slowly modi-
fied through a change in the standard of extermination. Accord-
ing to this view, the type is the outcome of the statistical "law
of error " or the deviation from the mean, that holds good in the
environment ; and while the " events " are properties of the organ-
ism, the type is fixed by the external world, and not by any-
thing in the organism itself.

Galton holds that specific identity is not due to the process of
extermination, but to " organic stability." As I understand him,
he holds that this fills up the gaps made by extermination, and
thus keeps the type intact. This " principle of stability," which
is held to result in the persistency of types, is said to be quite
independent of selection. " Genera and species may be formed
without the slightest aid from either natural or sexual selection."
"Organic stability is the primary factor by which the distinctions
between genera are maintained." Galton holds, furthermore, not
only that specific stability is independent of selection, but that
selection is " scarcely competent " to effect a change of type " by
favoring mere varieties " — that is, the ordinary slight differences
between individuals; and that it is only when a "sport" has
made its appearance, only when the type has actually changed,
that selection can exert any influence. According to this view
the agencies which cause sports are the real causes of the
mutation of species, and natural selection can do no more than to
exterminate disadvantageous sports, and thus favor advantageous
ones. The "organic stability" to which so much is attributed is
held to be due to the fact that the child inherits in part from its
parents, and in part from more remote ancestors ; and since the

G ALTON AND STATISTICAL STUDY OF INHERITANCE 155

sum of its ancestry, or its "mid-parentage," is, on the average,
nearer than any exceptional parent to the mean of the race, the
children of selected parents are, on the average, more mediocre
than their parents.

It is quite possible that Galton's data may be valuable, and
that they may be trustworthy in the study of human faculties, and
yet that they may fail to prove this generalization ; and I shall
try to show that this is the case, although I am not sure I fully
grasp his point of view. I assume that he regards a zoological
type, or species, as something which owes its origin to a " principle
of stability" which is not itself due to selection. This is assuredly
the current interpretation of his statements, and it is from this
standpoint that I shall examine his writings. If this is not his
opinion ; if he in fact believes that this " principle " owes its
existence to past selection; if from his data he deduces only the
generalization that the results of past selection may persist after
it has ceased to act, — I see no ground for criticism, for his data
assuredly prove this much, although I cannot reconcile his state-
ment that " the principle of stability is independent of selection "
with belief that it is the result of past selection.

Before we discuss the subject it may be well to ask what evi-
dence there is that the child does inherit from any ancestor except
its parents, for descent from a long line of ancestors is not neces-
sarily equivalent to inheritance from them, and it is quite possible
that the conception of a "mid-parent" may be nothing but a
logical abstraction, useful, perhaps, for statistical purposes, but
without any real existence in nature.

Most of its support is derived from the phenomena of rever-
sion or atavism; from the appearance, in children, of ancestral
features which were not exhibited by the parents. While these
phenomena are real and familiar, we may well doubt whether
any of them are reversions in Galton's sense. In some cases
we can show that a so-called reversion is simply the manifesta-
tion of a possibility which is latent in the structure of all the
normal members of the species. The occurrence, in man, of a
distinct premaxillary bone is an example of this sort of rever-
sion. It is due to arrest of normal development, and this arrest
might have happened to any member of the species, with the

156 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

same result. We do not know what arrested development, but
the view that this was some adverse circumstance in the history
of the individual is surely more simple than the opinion that the
child inherits its distinct premaxilla from any ancestor except its
parent. The same thing is true of the polydactylism of horses,
although this is sometimes attributed to reversion to miocene
ancestors.

When the son of a beardless boy and a beardless woman
grows up and acquires a beard, we may be permitted to say he
has inherited his grandfather's beard ; but this is only a figure
of speech, for he actually acquires nothing except what was latent
in his parents; nor would the case of a bearded man descended
from a series of ten or a hundred beardless boys and beardless
women be any different. If we were to propagate a plant by
cuttings for ten or a hundred generations under conditions which
did not permit it to flower, and if, finally, we put the last where
it does flower, we should not be justified in saying that it does
not inherit its flower from the preceding cutting; nor would the
case be any different if, for some reason, this preceding cutting
could not be made to bloom.

The phenomena of polymorphism in insects and hydroids
present illustrations of the normal inheritance of latent characters,
but we find in them no ground for the assertion that the ances-
tral characters of the medusa are not inherited from the hydroid
which produces it.

The sum of the visible features of the parent, plus the sum
of its latent potencies, may be called a " mid-parent " for statis-
tical purposes, if we see fit, but there is no evidence that this
"mid-parent" is anything else than the actual parent.

With this introductory note, we may now enter upon the
study of Galton's works, the central point of which is as follows :
If we select any one characteristic of a group of animals, —
such a characteristic as the weight of the individuals, or the
ratio between the length of their arms and legs, or anything
else which admits of exact numerical statement, — it will be
found that, while no two members of the group are exactly
alike, they nevertheless conform to a type, and show the exis-
tence of a standard, the mean or average, to which the majority

G ALTON AND STATISTICAL STUDY OF INHERITANCE 157

adhere pretty closely, while other members of the group may
be more abnormal, showing marked deviation from the mean.
The deviation of these abnormal individuals from the mean is
not accidental or due to " chance," for it is part of the orderly
system of nature. If the cases tabulated are numerous enough,
the individuals will conform, so far as this quality is concerned,
to what is known in statistical science as the law of frequency
of error. This agreement will be so close, when great numbers of
individuals are compared, that the number which depart from the
mean to any specified degree may be computed mathematically.

For example, the chest measurements of 5738 soldiers gave
the following results : —

If the number of events had been five
hundred thousand or five million instead of
five thousand, the agreement between the
computed and observed frequency of each
degree of departure from the mean would
have been very much closer. When the
number of cases is unlimited, the agree-
ment is perfect.

Galton gives the following illustration
of the significance of a type : Suppose
a large island inhabited by a single race,
who intermarry freely and have lived for
many generations under constant condi-
tions, then the average height of the adult
male of that population will undoubtedly

be the same year after year. Also — still arguing from the expe-
rience of modern statistics, which are found to give constant results
in far less carefully guarded examples — we should undoubtedly
find year after year the same proportion maintained between the
number of men of different heights. I mean if the average stature
were found to be sixty-six inches, and if it were also found in any
one year that one hundred per million exceeded seventy-eight
inches, the same proportion of one hundred per million would be
closely maintained in all other years.

An equal constancy of proportion would be maintained
between any other limits of height we please to specify, as

INCHES

MEASURED

COMPUTED

33

5

7

34

3i

29

35

141

1 10

36

322

323

37

732

732

38

1305

1333

39

1867

1838

40

1882

1987

4i

1628

1675

42

1148

1096

43

645

560

44

1 60

221

45

87

69

46

38

16

47

7

3

48

2

i

158 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

between -seventy-one and seventy-two inches, between seventy-two
and seventy-three, and so on. Now, at this point, the law of
deviation from an average steps in. It shows that the number
per million, whose heights range between seventy-one and seventy-
two inches, or between any other limits we please to name, could
be predicted from the previous datum of the average, and of any
other one fact, such as that of one hundred per million exceeding
seventy-eight inches.

Suppose a million of the men to stand in turn with their
backs against a vertical board of sufficient height, and their
heights to be dotted off upon it. The line of average height is
that which divides the dots into two equal parts, and stands, in
the case we have assumed, at the height of sixty-six inches. The
dots will be found to be ranged so symmetrically on either side
of the line of average that the lower half of the board will be
almost a precise reflection of the upper. Next, let a hundred
dots be counted from above downwards, and let a line be drawn
below them. According to the conditions, this line will stand at
the height of seventy-eight inches. Using the data afforded by
these two lines, it is possible to reproduce with extraordinary
closeness the entire system of dots on the board.

This law of deviation from an average is not restricted to
vital phenomena, but holds true of all events which are the
resultants of variable conditions, which remain the same through
all the events recorded. If the marks on the board had been made
by bullets fired at a horizontal line stretched in front of a target,
they would have been distributed according to the same law, their
average value would be constant, and the deviations of the several
events from the average would be governed by the same law, which
is identical with that which governs runs of luck at a gaming table.

Galton has described an apparatus which mimics in a very
pretty way the conditions on which deviations from a mean
depend. It is a long, shallow box set on end and glazed in
front, leaving a depth of about a quarter of an inch behind the
glass. Strips are placed in the upper part to act as a funnel.
Below the outlet of the funnel stands a succession of rows of pins
stuck fairly into the backboard, and below these, again, are a
series of vertical compartments. A charge of small shot is

G ALTON AND STATISTICAL STUDY OF INHERITANCE 1 59

enclosed. When the frame is held topsy-turvy, all the shot runs
to the upper end ; then when it is turned back into its working
position, the desired action commences.

The shot passes through the funnel and, issuing from its
narrow end, scampers deviously down through the pins in a
curious and interesting way; each one of them darting a step to
the right or left, as the case may be, every time it strikes a pin.
The pins are so placed that every shot strikes a pin in each
successive row. The cascade issuing from the funnel broadens
as it descends, and at length every shot finds itself caught in a
compartment immediately after freeing itself from the last row of
pins. The outline of the columns of shot that accumulate in the
successive compartments approximates to the mathematical law of
frequency, and is closely of the same shape, however often the
experiment is repeated.

The outlines of the columns would become more nearly iden-
tical with the normal law of frequency if the rows of pins were
much more numerous, the shot smaller, and the compartments
narrower ; also, if a larger quantity of shot were used.

The principle on which the action of the apparatus depends
is that a number of small accidents befalls each shot in its career.
In rare cases a long run of luck continues to favor the course
of a particular shot towards either outside place, but in the large
majority of instances the number of accidents that cause deviation
to the right balances in a greater or less degree those that cause
deviation to the left. Therefore most of the shot finds its way
into the compartments that are situated near to a perpendicular
line drawn from the outlet of the funnel, and the frequency with
which shots stray to different distances diminishes in a much
faster ratio than these distances increase.

Types which are based upon vital statistics have peculiar interest,
since they persist from generation to generation, according to the
law of specific stability, while they also undergo slow changes
according to the law of the mutability of species.

Individuals come and go, but the type persists, and its slow
changes may be pictured as quite independent of and more substan-
tial than the procession of individuals which files past only to vanish
from the world.

160 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

For more than fifteen hundred years men of the most acute and
well trained intellect devoted their lives to efforts to find out in what
sense a type exists, as contrasted with the individuals which exhibit
it; yet the modern zoologist still finds himself face to face with this
old problem, which, when analyzed, proves to be the same as the
question : What is the cause of nature ?

The great intellectual difference between the schoolmen of the
Middle Ages and the man of science seems to me to be this : "that
the modern student has at last come to see clearly that we find in
nature no ultimate explanation of types ; and no reason to believe
that there is anything in nature which does not conform to statistical
laws and exhibit types.

Statistical science, like all other branches of science, helps us to
regulate our actions and to act with wisdom and prudence, by mak-
ing known to us that order of events which makes up the system of
nature ; but discovery that events do take place in order is no reason
why they should, or even why they should take place at all. The
problem of the zoologist is not the existence of types, but the fitness
of living types for the world around them, and to my mind the
problem of the " origin of species," as the zoologist understands
these words, would be greatly simplified if we clearly recognize the
fact that science holds out no well-grounded hope for any final
explanation of " species," in the logical sense of the word ; for while
we may prove that the occurrence of types is no more nor less than
might have been expected, this cannot show us why the thing we
expect should be the thing which comes about.

The statistical study of vital types affords a means for studying
the phenomena of inheritance by the exact methods of mathematics,
and it is capable of yielding definite and valuable results, so far as
the vital phenomena which are studied can be treated as if they
stood alone ; but the attempt to generalize from vital statistics, and
to deduce general laws of inheritance from them, is attended by
peculiar difficulties, due in great part to the fact that the data which
are studied are not separable from the organism which exhibits them.
Stature, or size, or weight, may be treated abstractly for statistical
purposes, but the stature of an organism is not an abstraction, for
the organism is not only a bundle of properties, but a unit as well,
and its stature is only one of many features which are all beauti-

G ALTON AND STATISTICAL STUDY OF INHERITANCE l6l

fully coordinated with each other in such a way as to promote the
welfare of the species. A generalization which ignores this fact may,
while proved by statistics, be untrustworthy as a contribution to our
knowledge of inheritance.

In popular language, specific stability may be said to be due to
inheritance, and specific mutability to variation ; but in this connec-
tion these words have only a loose meaning. In so far as they con-
vey the impression that the stability of species and mutability of
species are antagonistic to each other, or are due to two distinct and
opposing influences, these terms are unfortunate, for we have good
ground for believing that they are only contrasted aspects of the same
phenomenon — the extermination of certain individual peculiarities,
and the preservation of others, by natural selection.

The older naturalists held that adherence to type is due to some
innate principle of specific stability which is an essential and immu-
table attribute of each species of living things ; but the accumulation
of conclusive evidence of the mutability of species has driven this
conception out of the field. Most naturalists now regard the type as
nothing but that normal which is most perfectly fitted to the environ-
ment, and they hold that it is kept true through the extinction of
aberrant individuals by selection.

According to this view, which seems to be supported by ample
evidence, the stability of species is due to survival — to the same
mechanism which brings about the mutability of species. They hold
that neither the stability nor the mutability of species is anything
more than the struggle for existence would lead one to expect ; and
that which we call inheritance and that which we call variation not
two things, but one thing in two points of view.

Galton is led by his statistical studies of vital characters to a
view which bears an odd resemblance to that of the older naturalists ;
for, according to him, the principle which results in the permanency
of types is quite independent of selection.

He shows, for example, by the statistical study of stature, that
the type of human stature is very constant from generation to gener-
ation, although the statistics of marriage show that there is no con-
trolling tendency for persons of like stature to marry. He also
shows that the children of parents who are both tall or both short do
not on the average have the stature of their parents, but are nearer

l62 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

than they to the mean for the race. These facts, and others like
them, are held to prove the existence of a principle of stability
independent of selection.

In his more recent work on the patterns of human fingers he
says that, since it has been shown (Chapter XII.) that the character
of the finger prints is practically identical in Englishmen, Welsh-
men, Jews, negroes, and Basques, the same familiar patterns appear-
ing in all of them with much the same degree of frequency, and that
persons belonging to different classes, such as students in science
and students in art, farm laborers, men of culture, and the lowest
idiots in the London district, show no decided difference in their
finger prints, it seems to be proved that no sensible amount of cor-
relation exists between any of the patterns on the one hand and any of
the bodily faculties and characteristics on the other. It seems absurd,
therefore, to hold that, in the struggle for existence, a person with,
say, a loop on his right middle finger has a better chance of survival
or a better chance of early marriage than one with an arch. Conse-
quently, genera and species are here seen to be formed without the
slightest aid from either natural or sexual selection, and these finger
patterns are apparently the only peculiarity in which panmyxia, or
the effect of promiscuous marriage, admits of being studied on a
large scale.

He says that the results of panmyxia in finger-markings cor-
roborate his arguments in " Natural Inheritance " and elsewhere
to show that "organic stability" is the primary factor by which
the distinctions between genera are maintained. Consequently,
the progress of evolution is not a smooth and uniform progres-
sion, but one that proceeds by jerks, through successive "sports,"
as they are called, some of them implying considerable organic
changes, and each in turn being favored by natural selection.

Galton's explanation of this specific stability is as follows : The
child inherits in part from the parents, in part from more remote
ancestors ; and since the sum of its ancestry, or, as Galton calls
it, the "mid-parentage," is on the average nearer than the excep-
tional parents to the mean for the race, the children of selected
parents are on the average more mediocre than their parents.

I have tried to show that, while the child is descended from a
long line of ancestors, it inherits from none but the parents, and

GALTON AND STATISTICAL STUDY OF INHERITANCE 163

that it can only be said in a figurative sense to inherit from more
remote ancestors. I shall soon refer to proof that the persistency
of adaptive types is due to natural selection, and not to any prin-
ciple of organic stability which is independent of selection, although
this view itself at once brings up difficulties.

If it be true, if the stability of adaptive types is due to the
survival of the fittest, why do we have a type and not a fixed
standard ? If speed and courage and strength are good things,
why is not every surviving individual as swift as the swiftest, as
brave as the bravest, and as strong as the strongest? Why does
not every individual have every useful quality developed to the
highest excellence which it may reach in any individual of the
species ? Why should we find that diversity among individuals
which usually passes under the name of " variation " ?

We can measure strength and can treat it abstractly, and we can
artificially select and breed from the strongest members of a stock,
neglecting all other features; but this is not what happens in
nature. Here the most favored individuals are not the strongest,
but the ones in which all the qualities of the species are most
perfectly coordinated with each other in relation to the external
world. Excessive strength may involve deficiency in some other
essential, and the mean or average strength of the species is that
degree of strength which is most in harmony with the mean degree
of development of all the other characteristics of the species, and
the individuals which depart too widely from this mean, either
through excess or deficiency of strength, are the ones which are
ultimately exterminated.

Galton has himself given such a clear statement of the way a
type is established by selection that it cannot be improved upon,
and I quote it in his own words : " Suppose," he says, " that we
are considering the stature of some animal that is liable to be
hunted by certain beasts of prey in a particular country. So far
as he is big of his kind, he would be better able than the medi-
ocres to crush through the thick grass and foliage whenever he
was scampering for his life, to jump over obstacles, and possibly
to run somewhat faster than they. So far as he is small of his
kind, he would be better able to run through narrow openings,
to make quick turns, and to hide himself. Under the general

164 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

circumstances it would be found that animals of some particular
stature had on the whole a better chance of escape than any
other ; and if their race is closely adapted to these circumstances
in respect to stature, the most favored stature would be identical
with the mean of the race. Though the impediments to flight are
less unfavorable to this (stature) than to any other, they will differ in
different experiences. The course of an animal might chance to
pass through denser foliage than usual, or the obstacles in his
way may be higher. In that case the animal whose stature
exceeded the mean would have an advantage over mediocrities.
Conversely, the circumstances might be more favorable to a small
animal. Each particular line of escape might be most favorable
to some particular stature, and, whatever this might be, it might
in some cases be more favored than any other. But the acci-
dents of foliage and soil in a country are characteristic and per-
sistent, and may fairly be considered as approximating to a typical
kind. Therefore those which most favor the animals of the mean
stature will be more frequently met with than those which favor
any other stature, and the frequency of the latter occurrence will
diminish rapidly as the stature departs from the mean.

" It might well be that natural selection would favor the
indefinite increase of numerous separate faculties if their improve-
ment could be effected without detriment to the rest; then medi-
ocrity in that faculty would not be the safest condition. Thus an
increase of fleetness would be a clear gain to an animal liable to
be hunted by beasts of prey, if no other useful faculty were
thereby diminished.

"But a too free use of this 'if would show a jaunty disre-
gard of a real difficulty. Organisms are so knit together that
change in one direction involves change in many others ; these
may not attract attention, but they are none the less existent.
Organisms are like ships of war, constructed for a particular pur-
pose in warfare, as cruisers, line-of-battle ships, etc., on the prin-
ciple of obtaining the utmost efficiency for their special purpose.
The result is a compromise between a variety of conflicting de-
siderata, such as cost, speed, accommodation, stability, weight of
guns, thickness of armor, quick steering power, and so on. It is
hardly possible in a ship of any established type to make an

G ALTON AND STATISTICAL STUDY OF INHERITANCE 165

improvement in any one of these respects without a sacrifice in
other directions. If the fleetness is increased, the engines must
be larger, and more space must be given up to coal, and this
diminishes the remaining accommodation.

" Evolution may produce an altogether new type of vessel that
shall be more efficient than the old one, but when a particular
type has become adapted to its functions, through long experience,
it is not possible to produce a mere variety of its type that shall
have increased efficiency in some one particular without detriment
to the rest. So it is with animals."

Neo-Lamarckians are fond of asserting that natural selection
cannot bring about an adaptation which involves the coordinated
modification of many correlated parts; and they may be inter-
ested in the clear demonstration which I have quoted from
Galton of the way natural selection brings about coordination.

His assertion that after a coordinated type has been estab-
lished it cannot be changed by the mere selection of individual
differences, seems to be well founded, so far as the modification
by artificial selection of a type which has been established by
natural selection is in question. As it is with vessels, so it is
with animals in the hands of a breeder who, having in mind
some one point of excellence, picks out the individual animals in
which the desired peculiarity is most marked, and, propagating
from them, destroys all the others.

A breeder of domesticated animals or of cultivated plants,
who devotes his attention to one or two characteristics, must soon
reach a point where no further improvement is practicable unless
the species is at the same time greatly modified in many other
respects. This fact does not prove that specific stability is due
to anything else than selection, but only that no great change
is possible without the coordinated modification of all the corre-
lated features, and this is just what we should expect, on Gal ton's
own showing, as the effect of long ages of selection. Here, as in
so many other cases, artificial selection proves to be an imperfect
analogy ; for while the breeder may utterly destroy all the animals
except the few which he positively selects, extermination in the
struggle for existence is often so slow as to be imperceptible.
Before a failing genetic line is utterly cut off, it may continue

1 66 THE FOUNDATION'S OF ZOOLOGY

to lose ground for many generations, during which there are
innumerable opportunities for every useful quality to count for
all it is worth. The survivors are the ones in which all these
useful qualities are most perfectly coordinated, and the effect of
the struggle is to make this coordination more and more perfect,
although we must remember that no essential change can occur
in a type unless some change in the external world makes a
place for a new type.

"That natural selection generally acts with extreme slowness,"
says Darwin, " I fully admit. It can act only when there are
places in the natural polity of a district which can be better
occupied by the modification of some of its existing inhabitants.
The occurrence of such places will often depend on physical
changes, which generally take place very slowly, and on the im-
migration of better adapted forms being prevented. As some few
of the old inhabitants become modified, the mutual relations of
others will often be disturbed; and this will create new places,
ready to be filled up by better adapted forms; but all this will
take place very slowly. Although all the individuals of the same
species differ in some slight degree from each other, it would often
be long before differences of the right nature in various parts of
the organization might occur."1

The passage I have quoted from Galton seems to indicate that,
after all, he may believe that the specific types of zoology and
botany are nothing more than the persistent effects of past selec-
tion, and that his statement that "organic stability is independent
of selection " may refer to present selection only.

These statements are clear and explicit, however, and they have
been interpreted by most readers as a flat contradiction of the
view that the mechanism which leads to the formation of new
types is identical, on its vital side, with that which preserves es-
tablished types; the view that the differences between the two
are differences in the external world.

He says (Natiire, September, 1885): "It is some years since I
made an extensive series of experiments in the produce of seeds
of different sizes, but of the same species. ... It appears from
these experiments that the offspring did not tend to resemble their

1 " Origin of Species," p. 84.

G ALTON AND STATISTICAL STUDY OF INHERITANCE 1 67

parent seeds in size, but to be always more mediocre than they;
to be smaller than they if the parents were large ; to be larger
than the parents if the parents were very small." He says that
this regression is a necessary result of the fact that "the child
inherits, partly from his parents, partly from his ancestors. Speak-
ing generally, the further his genealogy goes back, the more
numerous and varied will his ancestors become, until they cease
to differ from any equally numerous sample taken at hap-hazard
from the race at large. Their mean stature will then be the same
as that of the race ; in other words, it will be mediocre."

He illustrates this by comparing the results of the combination
in the child of the mean stature of the race with the peculiarities
of its parents to the result of pouring an uniform proportion of
pure water into a vessel of wine. It dilutes the wine to a certain
fraction of its original strength, whatever that strength may have
been.

He then goes on to the deduction that the law of regression
to the type of the race "tells heavily against the full hereditary
transmission of any rare and valuable gift, as only a few of
many children would resemble their parents. The more excep-
tional the gift, the more exceptional will be the good fortune of a
parent who has a son who equals, and still more if he has a son
who surpasses him. The law is even-handed; it levies the same
heavy succession tax on the transmission of badness as well as
goodness. If it discourages the extravagant expectations of gifted
parents that their children will inherit all their powers, it no
less discountenances the extravagant fears that they will inherit
all their weaknesses and diseases. . . . Let it not for a moment
be supposed that the figures invalidate the general doctrine that
the children of a gifted pair are much more likely to be gifted
than the children of a mediocre pair; what it asserts is that the
ablest of the children of one gifted pair is not likely to be as
gifted as the ablest of all the children of many mediocre pairs."

In his recent work on " Finger Prints " he says : " It is impossi-
ble not to recognize the fact so clearly illustrated by these patterns
in the thumbs that natural selection has no monopoly of influence
in the construction of genera, but that it could be wholly dis-
pensed with, the internal conditions acting by themselves being

1 68 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

sufficient. Not only is it impossible to substantiate a claim for
natural selection that it is the sole agent in forming genera, but
it seems, from the experience of artificial selection, that it is
scarcely competent to do so by favoring mere varieties in the
sense in which I understand the term. Mere varieties from a
common typical centre blend freely in the offspring, and the off-
spring of every race where statistical characters are constant, neces-
sarily tend, as I have shown, to regress toward their common
typical centre. A mere variety can never establish a sticking
point in the forward course of evolution."

Galton therefore holds that, while specific stability is due to
inheritance from a long line of ancestors, the transmutation of
species is due to the sudden appearance of "sports," which, if use-
ful, are seized upon and perpetuated by selection.

He says that a sport is a substantial change of type effected
by a number of small changes of typical centre, each more or less
stable, and each being in its turn favored and established by natural
selection to the exclusion of its competitors.

"The distinction between a mere variety and a sport is real
and fundamental."

This generalization, based upon numerical data, is so funda-
mental and far-reaching that a critical discussion of the evidence
is most important.

LECTURE VII— PART II

IT may be well to remind those who are not familiar with statis-
tical reasoning that a type may exhibit the influence of inheritance,
and yet be of no value as a basis for generalization on inheritance.

The bullet type shows the influence of aim, but if we use it to
test the accuracy of aim or the excellence of the rifle, we may be led
astray if some other influence, such as the weight of the bullet, act
on all or on a majority of the shots, and escape detection. In this
case the type may seem to prove that the rifle is inaccurate or im-
properly aimed when it is not, and we cannot assume that because
a type shows the influence of aim it is a test of aim.

So a characteristic or a group of characteristics of living things
may conform to the mathematical law of deviation from a mean,
and may thus form a type, and this type may show the influence of
inheritance, without being a safe basis for generalization regarding
inheritance.

This may be illustrated by an example. If we were to tabulate
the prices of all the horses sold within a given period, we should
undoubtedly find that they would conform to a type ; that there is
a mean or average price ; that the horses which fetch more than
this price are equal in number to those which fetch less, and that
the prices group themselves about the mean according to the law of
error. If the term be long enough to include several generations,
we shall find that inheritance or "blood" has a marked influence
on price, and that the children of high priced horses are much
more likely than horses selected at random to bring the same
high prices. The type will exhibit the influence of inheritance, but
it will be of no value in studying inheritance unless we can in some
way separate the influence of blood from the influence of supply and
demand which has far more to do with the average price and with
the type.

169

THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

That the price of horses is, on the whole, fixed like that of other
commodities, is obvious, and it is also clear that the type may be
changed by events which have no relation to inheritance, such as
the application of electricity to street cars.

A change of this sort, such as took place when steam replaced
stage coaches, is a " sport " or sudden and fundamental change of
type, but this may also be changed by slight and gradual modifica-
tion with the slow growth of a complicated civilization and an
increased demand for horses.

As inheritance has an influence on the price of horses, what will
be the result if we destroy the children of all horses which fetch less
than +2 of Galton's scheme, and breed from only that fourth of the
whole which sell for more than 75 per cent of his centesimal scale ?

We may, at first, get fancy prices for our expensive stock, but
if selection cease with this first step, and we supply as many colts
as before, the price will "revert" to the type, and the mean will
become the same as it was.

Does this prove that those qualities in horses for which money
is paid have " retrograded to mediocrity " in these descendants of
high-priced horses ? It proves nothing of the sort, for the qualities
which command a price are one thing, and the price another. Even
if the horses have much more of these qualities than the old stock,
the price will still be fixed by the ratio between demand and
supply, and while blood will tell in use, it will not tell in price.

It is clear, then, that characteristics of living things which are
influenced by inheritance may conform to a type which exhibits
"specific stability," "regression to mediocrity," an occasional
" sport," and all the other properties of the types which Galton has
studied, without furnishing proof that " inherited " qualities behave
in the same way. To prove this, we must cancel, or neutralize,
or make allowance for, all the factors which have an influence upon
the type, except "inheritance."

Galton's generalizations upon the laws of inheritance from the
statistical study of finger prints rest upon the belief that the
patterns are inherited. If they are not, they can teach nothing
of inheritance, when considered in themselves, without farther
analysis. He proves that they are, to some degree, dependent,
either directly or indirectly, upon inheritance, just as the price of

GALTON AND STATISTICAL STUDY OF INHERITANCE 171

horses is, but this is not enough. To warrant his deductions, he
must either prove that inheritance is the controlling factor in fixing
the type, or else he must show that, in the long run, all the other
factors will balance ; and this, it seems to me, he fails to prove.
He has studied, in 150 fraternal couples, or children of the same
parents, the frequency with which the same pattern occurs on the
same finger of both, and he finds that, when marked on a scale in
which o indicates no resemblance, and 100° the greatest possible
relationship, they show 10° of relationship. This number is great
enough to prove the influence of inheritance, but it seems to me
to be too small to show that the patterns are themselves directly
inherited; for it seems to me to indicate that they are indirectly
influenced by some other inherited character, such, perhaps, as the
ratio between the growth in the embryo of the ball of the finger
and that of the nail.

Inheritance is not, unfortunately, a word which is always used
with scientific precision, for it has many meanings. Most of the
qualities which give a horse its value in the market, as compared
with other horses, are due to breeding, but this word has many
meanings. Orlando says : " His horses are bred better ; for besides
that they are fair with their feeding, they are taught their man-
age, and to that end riders dearly hired." The "breeding jennet,
lusty, young, and proud," seems to be a wild mare, with no
breeding in the first sense, and the horse which did not lack
what a horse should have, " Round-hoofed, short-jointed fetlocks
shag and long, Broad breast, full eye, small head, and nostrils
wide, High crest, short ears, straight legs, and passing strong,
Thin mane, thick tail, broad buttocks, tender hide," is a thorough-
bred.

Recent speculations have forced us to attend to the difference
between these meanings of the word. In the last sense breeding
is the influence of ancestry, and it may practically be treated as
synonymous with the word ancestry. In the first sense, breeding,
broadly used, is that influence of the ontogenetic environment for
which that most objectionable term, "acquired characters," has
been thoughtlessly adopted ; for no one who believes that species
are mutable can believe that there is any character which has not
been "acquired."

THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

In his earlier writings Galton, borrowing, I suppose, from " The
Tempest," uses the word nurture to designate what is commonly
called acquired characters, and this term is so apt and expressive
that it should not be permitted to pass out of use, for it may be
given a definite technical meaning without violence to its ordinary
use. Using nurture instead of acquired characters for the influence
of the environment of the individual, we may speak of the two
elements of breeding as ancestry and nurture.

It is obvious at the present day that our studies of inheritance
can have little value unless we distinguish between these two
factors; for many naturalists hold that there is good ground for
asking whether the effects of nurture are ever inherited, and most
naturalists admit that it is possible that the value of these two
elements in breeding may be very different.

If breeding is to be studied by the statistical method, for the
purpose of exhibiting the laws of inheritance, we must employ
types in which we can separate the effects of ancestry from the
effects of nurture ; for if we make use of types which do not admit
of this analysis, our results may tell us no more of inheritance than
the scheme of prices tells us of the value of blood in horses.

If, as many teach, inheritance is the equivalent to ancestry,
and nurture is never inherited, no type in which these two factors
are combined can tell us anything about inheritance.

It seems probable to me that the resemblance which Galton
points out between the finger marks of fraternal couples may be
due to nurture, in this broad sense of the word, and not to inheri-
tance, for there is ample evidence that the value, in breeding, of
a given parental characteristic does depend upon its origin, and
that one due to nurture has a very different value from one which
is itself inherited.

Of the 2459 deaf pupils of the American Asylum, nearly 600
have married, and have become the parents of over 800 children,
of whom 104, or more than 12 per cent, were born deaf — a
ratio which is great enough to prove that inheritance has some
influence. Analysis of the record shows clearly, however, that
these deaf children are not uniformly distributed among the
married pupils of the asylum, but that the result is influenced by
the character of the parental deafness. From 283 of the 596

G ALTON AND STATISTICAL STUDY OF INHERITANCE 1/3

marriages no children are reported, while from three other families
no report is made except that all the children hear, so that the
811 children which are reported are from only 304 families, and
in many of these only one parent was deaf. Of the 101 children
of 40 of these marriages none are reported as deaf, and all but
ii are reported as hearing, and the 710 children are from the
remaining 264 marriages. In 52 of the marriages both father and
mother were congenitally deaf, and these are the parents of 48
out of the 104 congenitally deaf children, but they are the parents
of only 151 of the total number of 811 children, and nearly 32
per cent of all the children of these congenitally deaf parents
are congenitally deaf.

In two of the groups in which the marriages may be classified
the number of marriages and the number of children are about
equal, but there is a most remarkable difference in the number of
deaf children.

In 55 marriages, with 139 children, both parents are reported
as adventitiously deaf, while in 52 marriages, with 151 children,
both were congenitally deaf. In the latter group, 52 children, or
31.78 per cent, are congenitally deaf, only 88 are stated to hear,
and no facts are given about the hearing of 15 of them. In the
first group only 4 of the 139 children, or 3.87 per cent, are re-
ported as congenitally deaf, 129 are reported as hearing, and 6 are
not reported.

I have divided all the marriages into four groups: In one
all the children hear; in the second 5 to 6 per cent are deaf;
in the third from 12 to 18 per cent are deaf; and in the fourth
31.78 per cent are deaf. In the first group, in which all the
children hear, 5 of the marriages, with 18 children, are be-
tween a hearing husband and a wife who is adventitiously deaf;
i marriage, with 4 children, between a hearing man and a woman
the source of whose deafness is not stated; 6 marriages, with 13
children, where wife hears and husband is adventitiously deaf ;
23 marriages, with 51 children, where husband is adventitiously
deaf, and wife deaf from unknown causes; 2 marriages, with 6
children, where both were deaf from unknown causes; i marriage,
with 4 children, where husband is deaf from unknown causes and
wife hears ; and 2 marriages, with 5 children, where wife is con-

174 THE FOUNDATION'S OF ZOOLOGY

genitally deaf, and husband deaf from unknown causes. None of
the 101 children of these 40 marriages are reported as deaf.

In the second group, where 5 to 6 per cent of the children
are deaf, 87 are the children of 37 marriages where the hus-
band was congenitally deaf and wife adventitiously deaf ; and
139 are the children of 55 marriages where both husband and
wife were adventitiously deaf. We must bear in mind, while
considering this last case, that adventitious deafness may indicate
an hereditary predisposition ; for many of the pupils of the asylums
who lost their hearing after birth have deaf relatives, and thus show
that their deafness is not strictly adventitious, in the scientific sense,
but is due to a congenital predisposition to deafness.

In the third class, where from 12 to 18 of the children are
congenitally deaf, 124 are the children of 51 marriages where
husband was adventitiously and wife congenitally deaf; 66 were
children of 16 marriages of hearing husband and congenitally
deaf wife; 72 were children of 26 marriages where wife hears
and husband is congenitally deaf; and 71 of 29 marriages of con-
genitally deaf husband with wife deaf from unknown causes. In
all the families in this group one parent was congenitally deaf.

In the fourth class, where 31.78 per cent of the children are
congenitally deaf, all the parents in the 52 marriages, with 151
children, are congenitally deaf.

While too few to give quantitative results, these statistics prove
that it is the congenital and not the adventitious deafness which
descendants have to fear.

Careful study of the history of these pupils of the asylums
shows that the relatives of deaf persons must also be taken into
consideration, and that statistical data which do not include this
factor are inadequate as a basis for generalization on inheritance.
Of the 26 families in which both parents are deaf and have con-
genitally deaf children, there are 5 families in which one of the
parents has a deaf parent, 17 families in which both parents have
deaf relatives of the same generation, 4 in which one parent has
deaf relatives of the same generation, and only 5 in which no deaf
relatives of the same generation are reported.

Of the 26 families in which both parents are congenitally deaf
and have hearing children only, there is not one parent, so far as

G ALTON AND STATISTICAL STUDY OF INHERITANCE 1/5

reported, with a deaf parent; there are 12 families in which both
parents have deaf relatives of the same generation ; 1 1 in which
one parent has deaf relatives of the same generation ; and 3 in
which neither parent has deaf relatives of the same generation.

This illustration proves that the origin of an individual pecu-
liarity has much to do with the question of its inheritance, and that
we cannot be sure that statistical data illustrate inheritance unless
we can separate the phenomena of ancestry from those of nurture.

Furthermore, in order to prove that children always revert to
the mean or type of the race, and are on the average more medi-
ocre than their parents, we must prove that this is the case when
both parents have the same inherited peculiarity. Galton shows
that this is true of the stature of children both whose parents
were tall or both short, but he has not shown that it is true
when the peculiarity in the stature of both parents is the same
inherited peculiarity. He points out that stature may be affected
by diversity in the thickness of more than one hundred bodily
parts, and it is plain that if the extra height of a tall father is
due, for example, to a long femur, the chances are a hundred to
one that the femur of the tall mother is normal, and that her
extra height is due to some other peculiarity — thick intervertebral
bodies, for example.

There is statistical evidence from other sources to show that
if both the parents have long femurs and have brothers and sis-
ters with long femurs, the children, instead of reverting to medi-
ocrity, may be expected to have, on the average, femurs very
much above the mean, and that some of them may have them
longer than either parent.

Many facts in our stock of information regarding domesticated
animals and cultivated plants show that hereditary peculiarities
are often very persistent independently of selection, and the expe-
rience of all breeders shows that this tendency is greatly intensified
when both parents have the same inherited peculiarity. Not only is
this the case, but it may be proved by many observations that the
normal or type to which the average children of exceptional parents
tend to revert may itself be rapidly modified. In proof of this
I refer to the following experiments in selection by Fritz Muller,
("Ein Zuchtungs-versuch an Mais," Kosmos, 1886, 2, I, p. 22) : —

THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

Yellow corn is very variable in many respects. The number
of rows of kernels on the cob was, at the time Miiller made his
experiments, from 8 to 16; cobs with 10 or 12 rows being the
most common, while one with 18 or 20 rows was very seldom
found. After searching through several hundred cobs he found
one ear with 18 rows, but none with more.

In 1867 he sowed, at different times, and in such a way as
to prevent crossing, (i) seed from the cob with 18 rows; (2) the
seed from the finest i6-rowed ear; and (3) the seed from the
finest i4-rowed ear. In 1868 he sowed (i) seed from a i6-rowed
ear which had grown from a i6-rowed ear; (2) seed from an 18-
rowed ear that had grown from i6-rowed seed; and (3) seed
from an i8-rowed ear from i8-rowed seed. In 1869 he sowed
(i) seed from an i8-rowed ear with i8-rowed parents and grand-
parents; (2) seed from a 2O-rowed ear with i8-rowed parents and
grandparents ; and (3) seed from a 22-rowed ear from seed from
an i8-rowed ear produced from seed from a i6-rowed ear. The
results are given in the following table : —

1867

1868

1869

Number of rows on
cob from which seed
were taken.

14

16

18

16
16

16
18

18
18

18
18
18

18
18

20

16
18

22

Total number of cobs
produced.

658

385

205

1789

262

460

2486

740

373

8-rowed cobs .

Per c't
CM

Per c't

Per c't
o.c

Per c't

O.I

Per c't

Per c't

Per c't

Per c't

Per c't

lo-rowed cobs . . .

I4..4

3.O

I.O

1.4.

08

0,2

O.I

12-rowed cobs . . .
14-rowed cobs . . .
i6-rowed cobs . .
1 8-rowed cobs . .
2O-rowed cobs .

48.0

35-6
3-2

o-5

22.8
48.6

I8.7

6.8

O.I

13.0

37-8
34-5

12.6
O."?

22.6

48.5
22.2

4-9
O.7

14-5
46.7

23-7
12.3

1.2

7-8
35-4
33-8

1 8.2

4.4.

6.1
37-3
33-5
1 8.6

•}.Q

6.1

28.5
41.6

20.2

2.8

2-7

25-3
41.8
24.1
4.8

22-rowed cobs . . .
26-rowed cobs .

o-3

0.8

O.2

o-5

0.8

I.O

o.c

Average ....

12.61

14.08

14.9

14-15

14-39

I5-52

15-57

I5-70

16.15

It will be seen from this table that the number of ears with
few rows decreases very rapidly in plants grown from seed taken

G ALTON AND STATISTICAL STUDY OF INHERITANCE 1 77

from ears with many rows, and that the greater the number of
rows on the ear from which the seed is taken, the smaller is the
number of ears produced with a small number of rows. It is also
plain that, as the number of rows on the ear from which the seed
was taken increases, the number of ears produced with a large
number of rows increases, and that we have in each case a very
considerable number of ears which equal their parents and a few
which excel them, even when the parent seeds are far beyond the
maximum for all ordinary corn. Fritz M tiller says he has never
under ordinary conditions, except in three instances, found an ear
with more than 18 rows, and Darwin puts the maximum at 20
rows ; yet we have among the children of seed from a 22-rowed
ear no less than 4.8 per cent, or 18 ears out of 373 with 20
rows, and one ear out of 373 with 26 rows, and it will also be
seen that the number of children which equalled their parents
increases in each case in each successive generation.

Thus the seed planted in 1867 from an i8-rowed ear produced
12.6 per cent of i8-rowed children. The i8-rowed ear planted
in 1868 from an i8-rowed parent produced 18.2 per cent of 18-
rowed children, and the i8-rowed seed planted in 1869 from 18-
rowed parents and grandparents produced 18.6 per cent of
i8-rowed children. The series is 12.6 per cent, 18.2 per cent,
and 1 8. 6 per cent. The rapid change which took place in the
" type " after only three years of selection is well shown by the
following table, which gives the dominant number of ears at each
sowing and also the percentage of ears which had this number : —

1867, 12 rows . . . . 48% 1868, 14 rows .... 35.4%

1867, 14 rows .... 48.6% 1869, 14 rows .... 37.3%

1868, 14 rows .... 48.5% 1869, 16 rows .... 41.6%
1867, 14 rows .... 38.8% 1869, 16 rows .... 41.8%

The minimum for the third generation is equal to the mean
for the first ; the mean for the third generation, 16 rows, is very
near the maximum for ordinary corn, and the maximum for the
third generation is far beyond the maximum for the grandparents,
and much beyond the maximum for the parents.

No one can dispute the well-known fact that this sort of pedi-
gree selection for a single point quickly grows less and less effec-

178 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

tive, and soon reaches a maximum ; but this is no proof of any
"principle of organic stability," or anything else except the truth
that long ages of natural selection have made the organism such
a unit or coordinated whole that no great and continuous change
in one feature is possible, unless it be accompanied by general
or constitutional change.

Nor must we forget that, in a state of nature, selection is not
for one feature, nor is it pedigree selection, or breeding from the
fittest. It is the extermination of the unfit, and unfitness may
come from the imperfect coordination of the whole, or from
defect in any quality whatever.

It is undoubtedly true that many of our domesticated races
can be proved to have arisen as "sports," and that no great
change of type can be effected, by the methods of the breeder,
without sports; but there seem to be both evidence and theoreti-
cal ground for holding that, in this particular, artificial selection
gives no measure of natural selection.

It seems to me that, notwithstanding the great value of Gal-
ton's data, they fail to prove that the "principle of organic
stability " owes its existence to anything except past selection ;
that regression to mediocrity occurs when ancestry is studied
uncomplicated by nurture; that the "mid-parent" is anything else
than the actual parent ; that " sports " are fundamentally different
from the ordinary differences between individuals; or that natural
selection is restricted to the preservation of sports.

Our tendency to believe that a type is something more real
and substantial than the transitory phenomena which exhibit it, is
deeply rooted in our minds.

As the very nature of this belief renders disproof of it impos-
sible, we can feel little surprise at its appearance and reappear-
ance time after time in the history of thought, although science
is based upon the well-warranted opinion that, whether types are
real or unreal, we know them only as generalizations or abstrac-
tions constructed by our minds out of experience of the orderly
sequence of phenomena.

In zoology and botany the conception of species is unquestion-
ably valid and justifiable, and as its most obvious characteristic is
its persistency, as contrasted with the fleeting procession of eva-

179

nescent individuals, we cannot wonder at the vitality of the
belief that specific types of life are more real than the individual
animals, although Darwin's work has done away with whatever
evidence may at one time have seemed to support this belief.

To the further question, whether specific types are inherent in
living matter or external and objective to it, Darwin answers that
they are both ; that they are inherent, insomuch as all their data,
or "events," are properties of the physical basis of life; but that
they are external, inasmuch as the agreement of the " events "
with the " law of frequency of error " is the effect of the
environment.

Biology is not a closed science, and Darwin's view of the mat-
ter is not proved — possibly it is not provable; but its great value
is in the proof that there is no shadow of evidence for any other
view.

When embryologists talk about the doctrine of evolution in
embryology as antagonistic to the doctrine of epigenesis ; when \
biologists seek for the origin of species in " laws of variation "
which are not the outcome of selection ; when they talk about a
"principle of organic stability" which does not owe its origin to
the same agency, — it seems to me that they fail to grasp the sig-
nificance of Darwin's work, and that they are wandering from the
only path in which we can have any well-grounded hope for prog-
ress— the path which takes its departure from that conception
of specific types which leads us to seek for the origin of the
"events" which exhibit the type in the physical properties of
living matter, and to seek in the order of nature external to the
organism for the origin of the "law of error," which forms a
type out of these events.

LECTURE VIII

DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

"The idols of the market are the most troublesome of all; those, namely, which have
entwined themselves around the understanding from the associations of words and names.

" There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words a wonderful obstruction to the
mind." — BACON.

" Language being accommodated to the prsenotions of men and the uses of life, it is
difficult to express therein the precise truth of things, which are so contrary to our prse-
notions. But to one of due attention, and who makes my words an occasion of his own
thinking, I conceive the whole to be very intelligible ; and when it is rightly understood I
scarce doubt but it will be assented to." — BERKELEY.

LECTURE VIII

DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES

THE aim of this lecture is to show that most of the post-Dar-
winian criticism of natural selection might have been avoided if
Darwin and Wallace, and they who have come after, had not been
unconsciously led to make use of words and forms which have
since outlived their meaning.

I do not allude to the assertion so often made that natural selec-
tion personifies nature, and attributes to it the power of deliberate
choice ; for no one who thinks for himself can attach any such
meaning to Darwin's words, or be misled by them.

The Duke of Argyll, indeed, says Darwin's work is " essentially
the image of mechanical necessity concealed under the clothes and
parading in the mask of mental purpose," since natural selection
" personifies an abstraction." If the roses in a garden differ among
themselves in power to resist cold, and the more tender ones are
found dead after a hard winter, the Duke of Argyll may, if he
sees fit, charge him who says the toughest ones have been selected,
with infantile belief in the personal agency of Jack Frost, but I
cannot believe thoughtful men will support him.

If living things differ among themselves, and if those which
survive the struggle for existence are the ones which might have
been expected to survive, natural selection is a fact ; and while
opinions as to the value of this fact may differ, the name we call
it by matters little.

One of the most familiar criticisms of natural selection is that,
since it does not produce, but only preserves, the fitness which
exists, it does not show why there should be any fit to survive, but
only why the unfit are exterminated.

"Natural selection," says Darwin ("Origin," p. 75), "acts only

183

1 84 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

by the preservation and accumulation of small inherited modifica-
tions, each profitable to the preserved being." This has seemed,
and still seems, to many, a valid reason for questioning its value
as a scientific explanation of the origin of species ; although no
one who makes Darwin's words an occasion of his own thinking
need be perplexed by this criticism. If peas are rolled down an
inclined board, the largest go fastest, the smallest slowest, and the
round ones go straight to the bottom, while the irregular ones run
off the sides. What if one were to assert that this device can have
no value as a means for sorting peas until we know what makes
one pea large and another small, one round and another irregular ?
Yet this is, in effect, asserted by those who declare that natural
selection has no value as an explanation of the origin of species,
because it does not show why there should be anything useful to
select. Without knowing why one horse is more fleet than another,
or even why horses exist, breeders have increased the speed of
horses by breeding from the most fleet; just as a pack of wolves
may increase it in nature by destroying, generation after genera-
tion, all the horses they can run down. If at every stage in the
ancestry of horses there has been need for greater speed, natural
selection accounts for the whole history of this power, and even
for the first vague beginnings of locomotion in sedentary or float-
ing animals, which may have found shelter from their enemies,
or more abundant food, by those slight changes of place which
may, at first, have been the incidental result of changes of
shape.

While it is obvious that a useful quality must exist before it
can be useful, and before it can be influenced by selection, and
while no Darwinian holds natural selection to be an ultimate ex-
planation of fitness, all admit that horses do differ among them-
selves in speed, and that each may reasonably be expected to be
more like its parents in speed than like a horse selected at random.
As no one disputes the existence of these prerequisites to selec-
tion, the statement that selection could not act unless they existed
is childish.

I have tried to show, page 178, that the work of Darwin and
Wallace teaches that the only path in which we can have any well-
founded hope of progress in the explanation of the origin of species

DARWIN; AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 185

is that which takes its departure from that conception of specific
adaptive types, which leads us to seek the origin of the " events "
that exhibit the type in the physical properties of living matter,
and to seek the origin of the statistical " law of error " which forms
an adaptive type out of these events in the order of external nature.
I shall now try to illustrate the way in which the order of nature
forms adaptive types, or zoological species, out of the events which
are afforded by the properties of living beings.

While no one doubts that the paths of all the drops in a shower
of rain might have been predicted from mechanical data, one who
knows none of these data may, by an umbrella, make determinate
the paths of all the drops which immediately concern him. In statis-
tical language we may say that, even if we know nothing of the
causes of the events, we may make an adaptive type out of them by
means of an umbrella; and if we move the umbrella to another
place, we may make a new type, identical in adaptive value, out
of a different set of events; for the causes of the events have
nothing to do with the use to which we put them, except in this,
that we could not use them unless they occurred.

If before a long line of machine guns, scattering bullets to all
quarters of the field, we set up a target, exhaustive knowledge of
machine guns might enable one to say how many balls will strike
it in a given time, and how they will be distributed, but, as we use
words, we say certain balls chance to hit, for the target does not
affect in any way the course by which a ball reaches it. If we
now put before the target a screen with a hole in it, no one safely
before the screen would wish to show his face at the hole incon-
siderately, since, so far as it affects him, the course of the balls which
concern him has been made determinate.

Now imagine an unlimited series of similar screens set in line,
each within range of the next, and suppose, furthermore, that while
each ball that hits a screen drops and is lost; each one that goes
through a hole grows into a new machine gun. No two objects,
natural or artificial, are exactly alike, and among the original
machine guns some would put more balls through the first
screen, and have more descendants than others, even if they
had been set, one after another, in the same place before the
target.

1 86 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

If we suppose that while the guns in each generation differ among
themselves like the original guns, each is more likely than a gun
taken at random to resemble its parent, is it not clear that if the
guns in each generation and the screens in the series are both
innumerable, the ultimate outcome of this survival of the fittest
will be the production of a race of guns adapted for sending their
balls through the holes in this particular series of screens, and
that if another series of screens arranged in a different line or of
a different size or shape were set up, the guns in later generations
would become adapted for sending their bullets through them ?
It is not necessary for us to know anything about the mechanism
of guns, or the reason why they differ among themselves, or any
data which might enable us to predict the paths of the bullets,
in order to see that this result may be expected to follow, in
course of nature, if only the trials be innumerable ; if all the balls
which fail to go through a hole are counted out, and if each gun
is, on the average, more like its parent than a gun selected at
random.

Each discharge of a bullet is an event ; the race of guns adapted
for driving the bullets through the holes is an adaptive type, and
the series of screens is the equivalent of those conditions of life
which, in course of nature, form a zoological type, or species, out of
the events which the infinite diversity among living things affords.
I have used the illustration as the simplest way to show the error
of the opinion that natural selection does not account for the origin
of species unless the differences between individuals are adaptive
prior to selection ; for it is plain that, in our illustration, the result
is independent of the nature of the projectiles, and equally inde-
pendent of the mechanism by which they are propelled, since our
reason for expecting the result would be the same even if they were
unknown projectiles propelled by unknown means. It is also clear
that one who witnessed the process from the far end, through the
holes in the targets, might suppose that the course of adaptive
modification had been directed, from behind, to a definite end, since
none of the balls that failed to go through the holes would be
visible from this point of view; nor would the discovery of fossil
machine guns do much to correct this error; for the difference
between the exterminated guns and the survivors in the same gen-

DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 187

eration would be so slight as to be unrecognizable except by actual
trial.

A living thing is a being which responds to the stimulus of-
one event in such a way as to adjust its actions to other events,
of which the stimulus is the sign, and as all that have not thus
responded have been exterminated in the struggle for existence, the
adjustment of the survivors is no more than might have been
expected.

Natural selection seems to me a strictly scientific explanation
of the fitness of living things, and they who assert that it is inade-
quate because it fails to show why beneficial response should ever
follow a stimulus, and thus furnish fitness to be selected, must
remember that all science is inadequate to exactly the same degree ;
for in no case does science tell us why natural phenomena do
occur in order, although it does tell what order we may reasonably
expect.

If we find in nature no reason why extended things should
have weight, except that the fact is so, need we wonder if we
fail to discover any ultimate or final reason why sensitive things
should respond, for does not every scientific explanation rest
upon something which is granted even if unexplained ?

" It passeth with many, I know not how, that mechanical
principles give a clear solution of the phenomena. . . . But,
things rightly considered, perhaps it will be found not to solve
any phenomena at all."

They who challenge the sufficiency of natural selection, because
it does not show why there should be any fitness to select, must
find all science equally inadequate; although the common verdict
of mankind is that scientific knowledge is very adequate and suf-
ficient for all the practical needs of living beings ; even if it does
fail to show us in nature any efficient cause for any phenomenon
at all.

The task which faced Darwin when the " Origin of Species "
was written, was to convince those who deny that species are
mutable. At the present day, when all naturalists admit this,
many question the adequacy of natural selection as an explanation
of the origin of species. Now the way of presenting the argu-
ment, and the choice of words, which are best adapted for con-

1 88 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

vincing those who deny the mutability of species, may not be, in
fact cannot be expected to be, the best for demonstrating the
value of natural selection to those who admit that species are
mutable.

Before Darwin's day most systematic zoologists and botanists
believed that certain characteristics of each living being have
"specific value" while others are "varietal." The question how
you are to tell, from a single specimen, what characters are
specific and what varietal gave rise to interminable disputes, but
there was general agreement that the distinction exists in nature,
and that very dreadful consequences would attend doubt of its
reality.

Specific characters, and those of generic or ordinal value as
well, were held to be immutable; and while the individual mem-
bers of a species were admitted to differ among themselves, or
to "vary," in characters which are not of specific, or more than
specific value, all were held to be exactly alike in their specific
characters, and also in all characters of generic or of still higher
taxonomic importance.

As an exact science the Taxonomy of the last century is as
extinct as the dodo, for its very name is well-nigh forgotten ; and
since few zoologists of the new school carry their so-called bibli-
ographical researches into the dust-covered books in which it is
entombed on the top shelves of old libraries, they fail to discover
that the words variety, -vary, and variation were technical terms
when the " Origin of Species " was written.

Of the twenty years and more which were devoted to the prepa-
ration of the book, many were spent in the study of domesti-
cated animals and cultivated plants, and in the comparison and
measurement of each species part by part. Darwin devoted him-
self to this work until he had obtained conclusive proof that
specific characters are as mutable as varietal characters, and until
he had shown that there is no organ or structure or marking
or measurement or habit or instinct which may not exhibit
diversity if many representatives of the species are carefully
compared.

These observations and measurements, which were afterwards
published as a book under the title of "The Variation of Animals

DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 189

and Plants under Domestication," firmly planted the word vari-
ation in the literature of a generation which has forgotten that it
is a technical term ; although any one who will make the attempt
will find few places, in this book, or in the " Origin of Species,"
or in the writings of Wallace, where diversity may not be sub-
stituted for variation without changing the meaning; and although
Darwin has himself defined the word in the introduction to this
work ("Animals and Plants," Amer. ed., p. 14) in the promise
that " in a second work I shall discuss the variability of organic
beings in a state of nature, namely, the individual differences pre-
sented by animals and plants, and those slightly greater and
generally inherited differences which are ranked by naturalists
as varieties or geographical races." " We shall see," he says,
" how difficult, or rather impossible, it often is, to distinguish
between races and sub-species, as the less well-marked forms
have sometimes been denominated, and again between sub-species
and species."

Now, as words are commonly used, the great practical differ-
ence between diversity and variation in this; that, while all admit
the infinite diversity of nature, variation is a dynamical change,
and is not held to be accounted for until a physical cause of the
change has been discovered.

I cannot believe any one would have thought that natural
selection fails to account for the origin of species until we
discover some other explanation of the fitness of the varia-
tions which are selected, if Darwin and Wallace had not used
the word with this technical meaning; for we may admit that
living things do not differ from each other without cause, with-
out admitting that the physical causes of this diversity are
adaptive.

The objection to natural selection which has thus arisen is
often formulated as an assertion that since natural selection does
not produce, but only preserves, the variations which are fittest,
it accounts for nothing in itself, since the real explanation of the
origin of species is to be sought in the " laws of variation " or
"causes of variation," which must, it is said, supply the raw
material for selection before this can be selected.

As it is self-evident that natural selection originates nothing,

THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

this objection is a very subtle one. In one or another of its many
forms it has afforded the basis for most of the post-Darwinian criti-
cism of Darwin's work; nor do I hope to demonstrate its error,
at this late day, to any who have mastered the first four chapters
of the "Origin" without conviction; for he who does not succeed in
making Darwin's clear and simple words an occasion of his own
thinking, reminds one of the five brethren of a certain rich man
mentioned in history.

If the individuals which, in each generation, make up a species
differ among themselves in innumerable characters, and yet tend,
on the whole, to be more like their parents than individuals taken
at random, and if, furthermore, the rate of increase of all living
things tends to outrun the means of support, the survival of the
fittest, and the gradual perfection of the adjustments of each species
are no more than might have been expected.

Fifteen years before he published the "Origin," Darwin wrote to
Hooker as follows: "Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense,
but I think I have found out the simple way in which species
become adapted to various ends " : although the assertion that
natural selection is dependent upon laws of variation, or causes of
variation, for its raw material denies, explicitly or by implication,
that he had found out, in natural selection, the simple means by
which species become adapted to the conditions of their life, for
we must look to these laws or causes for the real explanation of
the usefulness of the properties which natural selection picks out
and accumulates.

It must not be supposed that the only advocates of this opinion
are natural theologians who are so short-sighted as to fear that, if
natural selection were admitted to be an explanation of the fitness
of living things, this might show that their fitness is not real fit-
ness; for while it has been made much of in what has been
supposed to be the interest of natural theology, it has also been
held by men of science who seek no alliance with the natural
theologians. In fact, one modern writer who tells us that this
reasoning has no value when used in their interest (Romanes,
" Darwin and after Darwin," I., p. 336), himself makes use of it
a few pages further on in the supposed interest of science ;
for he tells us that if the Lamarckian principles are in any

DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES K)l

degree operative at all, the great function of these principles must
be that of supplying to natural selection the incipient stages of
adaptive modification in all cases, where, but for this agency, there
would be nothing of the kind to select.

I hope to show that formidable as this criticism appears, and
grave as the difficulty has seemed to many able thinkers, it is,
after all, verbal in origin ; and that they who believe that natu-
ral selection fails to account for the origin of species until some
other source for the incipient stages of adaptive modification has
been discovered are misled by words ; for no Darwinian supposes
that selection produces either the incipient or final stages of any
modification, adaptive or otherwise, although all are aware that
there is, unfortunately, no incompatibility between the system of
things and injurious modification.

Darwin very wisely made much of the history of domesticated
animals and cultivated plants, for many reasons; and, as I believe,
for this among others: that since the use or purpose of fancy
breeds is the gratification of the whim of the breeder, or conformity
to the arbitrary rules of fanciers' clubs, good common sense must
decline serious consideration of the belief that the causes of varia-
tion stand in any relation, incipient or otherwise, to this purpose,
except so far as all nature may be intended.

Darwin writes to Asa Gray: "You lead me to infer that you
believe that variation has been carried along certain beneficial lines.
I cannot believe this: and I think you would have to believe that
the tail of the Fantail was led to vary in the number and direction
of its feathers in order to gratify the caprice of a few men." Few,
even among those who believe that all nature bears witness to
intention, will hold it good common sense to expect to discover any
natural laws, or causes of variation, competent to adapt pigeons to
the arbitrary rules of pigeon clubs; for while we may be unable
to believe that fanciers can bring about any change which a suf-
ficient knowledge of the nature of pigeons might not have led us
to expect, I cannot imagine how this nature, or the history of its
origin, can be thought to stand, prior to selection, in any specific
adjustment to the caprice of pigeon-fanciers; for we are much more
likely to find the physical causes of this adjustment in the mechan-
ism of the breeders' structure than to find it in the nature of pigeons.

IQ2 THE FOUNDATION'S OF ZOOLOGY

The evidence that man has produced all the fancy breeds of
pigeons from a single wild species is admitted to be satisfactory ; and
if these fancy breeds differ among themselves as much, and under
continued selection keep as true to their kind as wild species,
it seems clear that we need not call the causes of variation to the
aid of natural selection to account for the origin of the various
species of wild pigeons from a common stock. Now the evidence
that these fancy breeds do thus resemble wild species, as it is
summarized by Darwin, in the first chapters of the " Origin," is as
convincing as it is familiar, and there would be no need to refer to
it here, did not the strange impression prevail that selection can
accomplish nothing unless some other source of adaptive modifica-
tion furnish the raw material to be selected.

Of domesticated pigeons Darwin says: "The diversity of the
breeds is something astonishing. Compare the English carrier
and the short-faced tumbler, and see the wonderful difference in
their beaks entailing corresponding differences in their skulls.

" The carrier, more especially the male bird, is also remarkable
for the wonderful development of the carunculations about the
head; and this is accompanied by greatly elongated eyelids, very
large external orifices to the nostrils, and a wide gape of mouth.
The short-faced tumbler has a beak in outline almost like that of
a finch ; and the common tumbler has the singular inherited habit
of flying at a great height in a compact flock, and tumbling in
the air head over heels.

" The runt is a bird of great size, with very long, massive beak
and large feet; some of the sub-breeds of runts have very long
necks, others very long wings and tails, others very short tails.
The barb is allied to the carrier, but, instead of a long beak, has
a very short and broad one. The pouter has a much elongated
body, wings, and legs ; and its enormously developed crop, which
it glories in inflating, may well excite astonishment and even
laughter. The turbit has a short and conical beak, with a line
of reversed feathers down the breast; and it has the habit of
continually expanding, slightly, the upper part of the oesophagus.
The Jacobin has the feathers so much reversed along the back
of the neck that they form a hood; and it has, proportionally to
its size, elongated wing and tail feathers. The trumpeter and

DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 193

laugher, as their names express, utter a very different coo from
the other breeds. The fantail has thirty or even forty tail feathers
instead of twelve or fourteen, — the normal number in all the
members of the great pigeon family ; these feathers are kept ex-
panded, and are carried so erect, that in good birds the head and
tail touch : the oil-gland is quite aborted. Several other less dis-
tinct breeds might be specified.

" In the skeletons of the several breeds, the development of
the bones of the face in length and breadth and curvature differs
enormously. The shape as well as the breadth and length of
the ramus of the lower jaw varies in a highly remarkable manner.
The caudal and sacral vertebrae vary in number, as does the num-
ber of the ribs, together with their relative breadth and the pres-
ence of processes. The shape and size of the apertures in the
sternum are highly variable; so is the degree of divergence and
relative size of the two arms of the furcula. The proportional
width of the gape of the mouth, the proportional length of the
eyelids, of the orifice of the nostrils, of the tongue (not always
in strict correlation to the length of the beak), the size of the
crop and of the upper part of the oesophagus; the development
and abortion of the oil-glands ; the relative length of the wing
and tail to each other and to the body ; the relative length of
the leg and foot, the number of scutellas on the toes, — are all
points of structure which are variable. The period at which the
perfect plumage is acquired varies, as does the state of the down
with which the nestling birds are clothed when hatched. The
shape and size of the eggs vary. The manner of flight, and in
some breeds the voice and disposition, differ remarkably. Lastly,
in certain breeds the males and females have come to differ in a
slight degree from each other. . . . Altogether, at least a score of
pigeons might be chosen which, if shown to an ornithologist, and
he were told that they were wild birds, would certainly be ranked
by him as well-defined species.

" Moreover, I do not believe that any ornithologist would, in
this case, place the English carrier, the short-faced tumbler, the
runt, the barb, pouter, and fantail in the same genus; more espe-
cially as in each of these breeds several truly inherited sub-breeds
or species, as he would call them, could be shown him."

194 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

As fancy pigeons are obviously adapted to the tastes of pigeon-
fanciers, and as they owe their continued existence to this adapta-
tion, in the absence of which they would have been exterminated
long ago by man, it is hard to see why any one who knows what
changes man has brought about by selection should assert that
natiiral selection cannot bring about adaptation unless it is first
supplied, from some other source, with adaptive " variations " in,
at the least, their incipient stages ; yet the incompetency of natural
selection to account for these incipient stages has been made much
of, not only by those who believe that there is no scientific or
natural explanation of these incipient stages, but also by those who
attribute them to the direct adaptive action of the conditions of
life.

In a book on the " Genesis of Species," published soon after the
" Origin," Mivart argues that even if we admit that natural selection
is worthy of consideration, it can be no explanation of any adapta-
tion which is not so useful that it preserves the life of its pos-
sessor; and he asserts that while perfected adaptations may thus
preserve life, we cannot believe that the first minute beginnings of
adaptation are valuable enough to be preservative.

Mivart's argument has recently been revived, in a somewhat
modified form, by Romanes ("Darwin and after Darwin," II.), who
holds that there are cases of adaptation where the degree of use-
fulness is so small that we cannot believe it has " selective value,"
and that even when useful reflex mechanisms have been fully
formed, " it is often beyond the power of sober credence to believe
that they now are, or ever can have been, of selective value in the
struggle for existence."

Darwin's work would not have gained a hearing from contempo-
raries if he had not emphasized the results of artificial selection,
but I shall now try to show that this emphasis has led many to
infer, consciously or unconsciously, that the resemblance between
natural selection and the methods of the breeder is greater than it
really is ; and that the prevalence of the belief that selection cannot
account for the incipient stages of useful structures, and that there
may be useful adaptations without selective value, is itself a result
of Darwin's choice of the word selection ; for no one can doubt that
domesticated animals and cultivated plants may have characteris-

DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 19$

tics which fail to attract the breeder's notice, and that, so far as he
is concerned, they may be without " selective value."

The breeder may either destroy, promptly and utterly, the ani-
mals and plants which he discards, or else, if he have some use
for them which is independent of reproduction, as he has for
horses, he may cut them off, at once and forever, from all part
in history; but it is a mistake to infer from this analogy that
extermination in the natural struggle for existence always or even
generally, means sudden death. Nothing could be further from
the truth ; for the total extinction of a genetic line is usually slow,
and it may be carried on for many generations before it is finally
consummated. Among the terrestrial animals and plants which
we know best, sudden death during the reproductive period, when
the living being is in its prime, is not uncommon, but each organ-
ism is so well adjusted to the dangers and hardships which it may,
on the average, expect that those which are cut off completely from
posterity are exceptional. "I must premise," says Darwin, "that I
use this term struggle for existence in a large and metaphorical
sense, including dependence of one being on another, and includ-
ing (which is more important) not only the life of the individual,
but success in leaving progeny. ... A plant which annually pro-
duces a thousand seeds, of which on an average only one comes
to maturity, may be said to struggle with the plants of the same
and other kinds which already clothe the ground."1

In a long series of generations all degrees of success or failure
in rearing progeny are possible, and when we bear in mind that,
so far as natural selection is concerned, success in leaving de-
scendants is practically equivalent to survival, no matter what the
after-fate of the individual may be, it is plain that the process of
extinction, far from being sudden, may go on so slowly as to be
imperceptible, and that there may be many opportunities for
every useful quality, however slight its value, to count for some-
thing in the result. " Battle within battle must be continually
recurring with varying success ; and yet in the long run the forces
are so nicely balanced, that the face of nature remains for long
periods of time uniform, though assuredly the merest trifle would
give the victory to one organic being over another." 2

1 " Origin," p. 50. 2 " Origin," p. 57.

196 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

We must not think of natural selection, after the analogy of
artificial selection, as a competitive examination in one subject,
where failure to pass means loss of all future chances. Rather
must we think of it as a long but indefinite series of examina-
tions, each in innumerable subjects, some of which count for
much, others for little, some for very little, but all for something.
We must, furthermore, suppose that all candidates who do not
fail utterly may try again and again, but that each partial failure
may, if some other candidate does better, diminish, in so far, the
chance for success in future trials.

" Many different checks, acting at different periods of life,
and during different seasons or years, probably come into play ;
but all will concur in determining the result. When we look at
the plants and bushes clothing an entangled bank, we are tempted
to attribute the proportional numbers and kinds to what we call
chance. But how false a view is this ! Every one has heard
that when an American forest is cut down, a very different vege-
tation springs up ; but it has been observed that ancient Indian
ruins in the southern United States, which must formerly have
been cleared of trees, now display the same beautiful diversity
and proportion of kinds as in the surrounding virgin forest.
What a struggle must have gone on during long centuries be-
tween the several kinds of trees, each annually scattering its
seeds by the thousand; what a war between insect and insect,
between insects, snails, and other animals, with birds and beasts
of prey, — all striving to increase, all feeding on each other, or
on the trees, their seeds and seedlings, or on the other plants
which first clothed the ground, and thus checked the growth of
the trees ! Throw up a handful of feathers, and all fall to the
ground according to definite laws; but how simple is the problem
where each shall fall, compared to the action and reaction of the
innumerable plants and animals which have determined, in the
course of centuries, the proportional numbers and kinds of trees
now growing on the old Indian ruins ! " l

While the breeder cannot consciously and deliberately select
any peculiarity which has not enough selective value to attract
his notice, I do not see how any one who is familiar with Dar-

1 " Origin," p. 58.

DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 197

win's explanation of the struggle for existence can believe any
useful structure will, in nature, be without selective value. All
who grasp the meaning of the struggle for existence, which nature
exhibits to all who have eyes to see, must agree with Darwin
that, " owing to this struggle, variations, however slight, and from
whatever cause proceeding, if they be, in any degree, profitable to
the individuals of a species, in their infinitely complex relations
to other organic beings and to their physical conditions of life, will
tend to the preservation of such individuals." 1

If the opinion that natural selection cannot account for the
incipient stages of useful structures did not exhibit such vitality,
there would be no reason to dwell upon it ; but as Romanes's
book shows that thoughtful men still find it a real difficulty, I
shall now examine two adaptations which have been used to illus-
trate the difficulty.

In a chapter which he added to the later editions of the
" Origin," Darwin says that " after reading with care Mr. Mivart's
book, and comparing each section with what I have said on the
same head, I never before felt so strongly convinced of the gen-
eral truth of the conclusions here arrived at " ; although few illus-
trations of the extent and accuracy and minuteness of Darwin's
acquaintance with nature are more impressive than his demon-
stration of the existence of useful adjustments similar to the
incipient stages in the very adaptations which Mivart uses to
prove his assertion that "natural selection cannot account for the
incipient stages of useful structures."

"The Greenland whale," says Darwin, "is one of the most won-
derful animals in the world, and the baleen, or whalebone, one of
its greatest peculiarities. The baleen consists of a row, on each
side of the upper jaw, of about three hundred plates or laminae,
which stand close together transversely to the long axis of the
mouth. Within the main row there are some subsidiary rows.
The extremities and inner margins of the plates are frayed with
stiff bristles, which clothe the whole gigantic palate, and serve
to strain or sift the water, and thus secure the minute prey on
which these great animals subsist. The middle and longest
lamina in the Greenland whale is ten, twelve, or even fifteen

i " Origin," p. 49.

198 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

feet in length ; but in the different species of Cetaceans there
are gradations in length ; the middle lamina being in one species,
according to Scoresby, four feet, in another three, in another
eighteen inches, and in the Balcenoptera rostrata only about nine
inches in length.

" With respect to the baleen, Mr. Mivart remarks that if it
had once attained such a size and development as to be at all
use/ill, then its preservation and augmentation within serviceable
limits would be promoted by natural selection alone. But how to
obtain the beginning of such useful development?

" In answer it may be asked, why should not the early pro-
genitors of the whales with baleen have possessed a mouth con-
structed something like the laminated beak of a duck? Ducks,
like whales, subsist by sifting the mud and water; and the fam-
ily has sometimes been called the Cribratores, or sifters. I hope
I may not be misconstrued into saying that the progenitors of
whales did actually possess mouths laminated like the beak of a
duck. I wish only to show that this is not incredible, and that
the immense plates of baleen in the Greenland whale might have
been developed from such laminae by finely graduated steps, each
of service to its possessor.

" The beak of a shoveller-duck {Spatula clypeatd) is a more
beautiful and complex structure than the mouth of a whale. The
upper mandible is furnished on each side (in the specimen examined
by me) with a row or comb formed of 188 thin elastic laminae
obliquely bevelled so as to be pointed, and placed transversely to
the long axis of the mouth. They arise from the palate, and are
attached by flexible membrane to the sides of the mandible. Those
standing towards the middle are the largest, being about one-third
of an inch in length, and they project fourteen-hundredths of an
inch beneath the edge. At their bases there is a short subsidiary
row of oblique transverse laminae. In these several respects they
resemble the plates of baleen in the mouth of a whale. But towards
the extremity of the beak they differ much, as they project inwards
instead of straight downwards. The entire head of the shoveller,
though incomparably less bulky, is about one-eighteenth of the
length of the head of a moderately large Balcenoptera rostrata, in
which species the baleen is only nine inches long, so that if we

DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 199

were to make the head of the shoveller as long as that of the
Balaenoptera, the lamellae would be six inches in length; that
is, two-thirds of the length of the baleen in this species of whale.
The lower mandible of the shoveller duck is furnished with lamellae
of equal length with those above, but finer; and in being thus
furnished it differs conspicuously from the lower jaw of the whale,
which is destitute of baleen. On the other hand, the extremities
of the lower lamellae are frayed into fine bristly points, so that they
thus curiously resemble the plates of baleen. In the genus Prion, a
member of the distinct family of the Petrels, the upper mandible
alone is furnished with lamellae, which are well developed and
project beneath the margin, so that the beak of this bird in this
respect resembles the mouth of a whale.

" From the highly developed structure of the shoveller's beak
we may proceed, without any great break, as far as fitness for
sifting is concerned, through the beak of the Merganetta armata,
and in some respects through that of the Aix sponsa to the beak
of the common duck. In this latter species the laminae are much
coarser than in the shoveller, and are firmly attached to the sides
of the mandible ; they are only about fifty in number on each side,
and do not project at all beneath the margin. They are square-
tipped, and are edged with translucent, hardish tissue, as if for
crushing food. The edges of the lower mandible are crossed by
numerous fine ridges, which project very little. Although the beak
is thus very inferior to that of the shoveller as a sifter, yet this bird,
as every one knows, constantly uses it for this purpose. There are
other species in which the laminae are considerably less developed
than in the common duck, but I do not know whether they use their
beaks for sifting the water.

" Turning to another group of the same family. In the Egyptian
goose (Chenoplax) the beak closely resembles that of the common
duck ; but the laminae are not so numerous, nor do they project
so far inwards; yet this goose uses its bill like a duck by throwing
the water out of the corners. Its chief food, however, is grass,
which it crops like a common goose. In the latter bird the laminae
of the upper mandible are much coarser than in the common duck,
almost confluent, about twenty-seven in number on each side, and
terminating upwards in tooth-like knobs. The palate is also covered

200 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

with hard, round knobs. The edges of the lower mandible are
serrated with teeth much more prominent, coarser, and sharper
than in the duck. The common goose does not sift the water,
but uses its beak exclusively for tearing or cutting herbage,
for which purpose it is so well fitted that it can crop grass
closer than almost any other animal. There are other species of
geese in which the laminae are less developed than in the common
goose.

" We thus see that in a member of the duck family with a beak
constructed like that of the common goose, and adapted solely for
grazing, or even a member with a beak having less well developed
laminae, might be converted by small changes into a species like
the Egyptian goose, — {his into one like the common duck, — and,
lastly, into one like the shoveller, provided with a beak almost
exclusively adapted for sifting the water ; for this bird could hardly
use any part of its beak except the hooked tip for seizing or tearing
solid food.

" Returning to the whales. The Hyperoodon bidens is desti-
tute of true teeth in an efficient condition, but its palate is
roughened with small, unequal points of horn. There is, there-
fore, nothing improbable in supposing that some early Cetacean
form was provided with similar plates of horn on the palate, but
rather more irregularly placed, and which, like the knobs on the
beak of the goose, aided it in seizing or tearing its food. If so,
it will hardly be denied that the points might have been con-
verted through variation and natural selection into laminae as well
developed as those of the Egyptian goose, in which case they
would have served exclusively as a sifting apparatus. From this
stage, in which the laminae would have been two-thirds of the
plates of baleen of the Balcenoptera rostrata, gradations, which
may still be observed in existing Cetaceans, lead us onwards to
the enormous plates of baleen in the Greenland whale. Nor is
there the least reason to doubt that each step in this scale might
have been as serviceable to certain ancient Cetaceans, with the
functions of the parts slowly changing during the progress of
development, as are the gradations in the beaks of the existing
members of the duck family. We should bear in mind that each
species of duck is subjected to a severe struggle for existence,

DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 2OI

and that the structure of every part of its frame must be
adapted to its conditions of life." 1

In Romanes's hands, Mivart's old argument, which made Dar-
win more strongly convinced of the correctness of his own views
than before, assumes a new form ; for he attempts to show that
many reflex actions have been brought about by the coadaptation
of parts which were "severally useless," and that the degree of
adaptation exhibited by the resulting whole is often so slight as
to be incompatible with belief that the reflex response has now,
or ever had, " selective value."

While he holds natural selection incompetent to account for
the mechanism which brings about a reflex action of this sort, he
believes that this mechanism may be satisfactorily explained as
the inherited effect of use ; for he says that the doctrine that
constantly associated use of the same parts for the performance
of the same action will progressively organize these parts into a
reflex mechanism, is the very essence of the theory of use-inheri-
tance,— no matter how high a degree of coadaptation may thus
be reached on the one hand, or how low a degree of utilitarian
value on the other.

" In our organization," he says in illustration, " there is a
reflex mechanism which insures the prompt withdrawal of the legs
from any source of irritation supplied to the feet. For instance,
after a man has broken his spine in such a manner as totally to
interrupt the functional continuity of his spinal cord and brain,
the reflex mechanism in question will continue to retract his
legs when his feet are stimulated by a touch, a burn, etc. This
action is clearly a responsive action, and, as the man neither feels
the stimulus nor the resulting movement, it is as clearly a
reflex action. The question now is as to its mode of origin and
development.

" I ask whether we can reasonably hold that this particular
reflex action — comparatively simple though it be — has ever
been of selective value to the human species, or to the ancestors
thereof? Even in its present fully formed condition it is fairly
questionable whether it is of any adaptive value at all. The
movement performed is no doubt an adaptive movement; but

1 "Origin," pp. 182-186.

202 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

is there any occasion upon which the reflex mechanism concerned
therein can ever have been of adaptive use? Until a man's legs
have been paralyzed as to their voluntary motion, he will always
promptly withdraw his feet from any injurious source of irritation
by means of his conscious intelligence. True, the reflex mechan-
ism secures an almost inappreciable saving in the time of response
to a stimulus as compared with the time required for response to
an act of will; but the difference is so exceedingly small, that we
can hardly suppose the saving of it in this particular case can be
a matter of any adaptive — much less selective — importance.

" Nor is it more easy to suppose that the reflex mechanism
has been developed by natural selection for the purpose of replac-
ing voluntary action when the latter has been destroyed or sus-
pended by grave spinal injury, paralysis, coma, or even ordinary
sleep. In short, even if for the sake of argument we allow it to
be conceivable that any human being, ape, or still more distant
ancestor, has ever owed its life to the possession of this mechan-
ism, we may still be certain that not one in a million can have
done so. And if this is the case with regard to the mechanism
as fully constructed, still more must it have been the case with
regard to all the previous stages of construction. For here, with-
out elaborating the point, it would appear that a process of con-
struction by survival of the fittest is incomprehensible." J

As Romanes says that this is a typical illustration of the diffi-
culty he finds in explaining the production of reflex actions in
general by selection alone, it may be worth while to examine it;
although the source of Romanes's difficulty is hard to discover.

When all the complicated muscles of the foot and leg and
trunk are at rest, the irritation of the sole may be followed by vio-
lent retraction of the foot, but when they are brought into bal-
anced action in the complex movements of walking or running,
this does no more than to counterbalance and thus arrest some
of these movements. The importance of perfect locomotor coor-
dination is so clear to all that a moment's thought must show
that the past history of our race has furnished abundant oppor-
tunities for the perfection of this coordination by selection. No
one who reflects how often the life of a barefooted savage and

1 " Darwin and after Darwin," II., pp. 73-77.

DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 2O3

the lives of all who depend upon him for food must be staked
upon his ability to creep silently and rapidly to the side of his
unsuspecting enemy, or upon his power to elude his pursuers by
stealth, or upon his skill in stalking his prey without warning it
by any movements which may be detected by its delicate and
alert senses, — no one who bears all this in mind can doubt that
the ability to arrest the descending foot before it treads upon a
thorn or cracks a dry twig, has selective value. But, says Ro-
manes, even if we admit that the sole of the foot has selective
value, the savage is able to interpret its warnings and to adjust
his footsteps intelligently; and while the reflex mechanism acts
a little more promptly, the saving of time is too small to have
selective value. I am not aware that any one has measured the
time required to drive into the foot a thorn which has scratched
it, or the time required for cracking a dry twig which the foot
has touched ; but Romanes tells us in an other place (" Mind and
Motion and Monism," p. 9) that while a nerve-centre requires
only about one-twentieth of a second to perform its part in a
reflex action, where no thought or consciousness is involved, the
operations which are comprised in perceiving a simple sensation,
and the volitional act of signalling the perception, cannot be per-
formed in less than one-twelfth of a second, which is nearly twice
as long as the time required by the lower nerve-centres for the
performance of the reflex action.

It seems probable that, in less than a thirtieth of a second, a
scratch from a thorn might have become a disabling injury,
which would place a warrior at the mercy of his pursuer; or that
the prey which might have preserved the hunter and his family
from starvation might be alarmed by the crackling of a twig in
as short a time; although the mere saving of time is, no doubt,
less valuable than the freedom from care about his footsteps
which permits the warrior or the huntsman to fix every sense
and every faculty on the matter in hand, and to trust to this
reflex mechanism for prompt warning by the mechanical arrest
of a dangerous step long enough for conscious intelligence to
seek a place to finish it.

But Romanes says he does not see how we are to explain
either the origin or the development of a reflex mechanism by

204 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

selection alone; for even if we admit all that has been said, it
seems to him to be self-evident that a reflex action must, from its
very nature, already be given in a state of working efficiency if it
is to work at all so as to count for anything in the struggle
for life.

The history of the adjustment between tactile and muscular
sensations and the orderly balancing of all the movements con-
cerned in locomotion has been so long and complicated that we
know little of its details, but I am not sure I understand what
Romanes means by working efficiency. While slight irritation
of the sole is followed by retraction of the foot, more prolonged
irritation is followed, especially in the young, who have not yet
learned to repress them, by indefinite but violent involuntary
movements in many parts of the body, and I fail to see why any
of these vague movements might not have been picked out by
natural selection, if peculiarly useful, and gradually made more
delicate and more definite and more useful; nor can I see why
each step in this process of gradual specialization may not have
been beneficial, or why it may not have had selective value.

All admit that while natural selection picks out, and preserves,
it produces nothing, and if we can show how it corrects our bodily
movements and reduces them to exactness by giving us distinct
actions instead of confused and perplexed ones, I fail to see why
this process should not be gradual. Romanes, it is true, seems
to believe that responses which are now brought about involun-
tarily or unconsciously, by adaptive structure, would be easier to
understand if we could show that they arose as " consciously intel-
ligent adjustments"; for he holds that the inheritance of the
effects of use furnishes an explanation of the origin of the adap-
tations which natural selection picks out and preserves, inasmuch
as it shows how natural selection has been aided by "consciously
intelligent action " ; but I cannot reconcile with other opinions
which I find in Romanes's works, his belief that a reflex response
would be any easier to understand if we could show that it was,
at one time, rational and accompanied by consciousness and
volition.

Many thinkers of no little eminence, Romanes among them,
hold the opinion that not only instincts and habits, but rational

DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 2O$

actions as well, may some time prove to be reflex from the begin-
ning to the end of their history. There are men of science who
believe that it may some time be proved that when we perform an
action because our reason approves it, neither the response nor the
approval of our reason is anything more than exhaustive know-
ledge of our organic mechanism would lead one to expect. No
one who admits that, for all he knows to the contrary, rational
actions may be reflex in this sense, can, in consistency, believe
that the origin of an adaptive mechanism which is used intelli-
gently is any easier to understand than the origin of one which is
used unconsciously.

Romanes is not content with the admission that, for all one
knows, rational actions may thus be mechanical; for he accepts
this as a thing proved and accomplished, and says, " I think we
may fairly expect that within a time less remote than the two cen-
turies which separate us from Hobbes, the course of ideas in a given
train of thought will admit of having its footsteps tracked in the
corresponding pathways of the brain. Be this, however, as it
may, even now we know enough to say that, whether or not these
footsteps will ever admit of being thus tracked in detail, they are
all certainly present in the cerebral structure of each one of us.
What we know on the side of mind as logical sequence is, on the
side of the nervous system, nothing more than the passage of
nervous energy through one series of cells and fibres rather than
another ; what we recognize as truth is merely the fact of the
brain vibrating in tune with nature." 1

While thus convinced that rational actions are mechanical,
Romanes holds that proof that instincts which are now mechan-
ical arose as " consciously intelligent adjustments " would make
the history of these adjustments easier to understand.

" If function produces structure in the race, as it does in the
individual," he says (" Darwin and after Darwin," I., p. 86), " the vol-
untary and frequently repeated actions may very well have led to
an organic integration of the neuro-muscular mechanism concerned.

" Thus with regard to the phenomena of reflex action in gen-
eral, all the facts are such as this theory (the inheritance of the
effects of use) requires, while many of the facts are such as the

1 " Mind and Motion, and Monism," p. 17. ,

206 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

theory of natural selection alone cannot conceivably explain. In-
deed, it is not too much," says he, " to say that most of the facts
are such as directly to contradict the latter theory in its application
to them. I have endeavored," he says, " to show that we have a
large class of such cases in the domain of reflex action, and shall
next endeavor to show that there is another large class in the
domain of instinct. . . .

" If instinct be hereditary habit, i.e. if it comprises an element
of transmitted experience, we at once," says Romanes, "find a
complete explanation of many cases of the display of instinct which
otherwise remain inexplicable. In all cases where instincts become
complex and refined, we seem almost compelled to accept the view
that their origin is to be sought in consciously intelligent adjust-
ments on the part of ancestors.

" Thus, to give only one example, a species of Sphex preys upon
caterpillars which it stings in their nerve-centres for the purpose
of paralyzing, without killing them. The victims, when thus ren-
dered motionless, are then buried with the eggs of the Sphex, in
order to serve as food for her larvae which subsequently develop
from these eggs. Now, in order to paralyze a caterpillar, the
Sphex has to sting it successively in nine minute and particular
points along the ventral surface of the animal — and this the Sphex
unerringly does, to the exclusion of all other points of the cater-
pillar's anatomy. Well," says Romanes, "such being the fact,
it is conceivable enough that the ancestors of the Sphex, being,
like many other hymenopterous insects, highly intelligent, should
have observed that on stinging caterpillars in these particular spots
a greater amount of effect was produced than could be produced
by stinging them anywhere else; and therefore that they habit-
ually stung the caterpillars in these places only, till, in course of
time, this originally intelligent habit became by heredity instinc-
tive. But now, on the other hand, if we exclude the possibility
of this explanation, it appears to me incredible that such an
instinct should ever have been evolved at all ; for it appears to
me incredible that natural selection unaided by originally intelligent
action could ever have developed such an instinct out of merely
fortuitous variations — there being, by the hypothesis, nothing to
determine variations of an insect's mind in the direction of stinging

DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 2O/

caterpillars in only these nine intensely localized spots. Finally,
in the case of our species, it is self-evident," says Romanes, " that
the aesthetic, moral, and religious instincts admit of a natural and
easy explanation on the hypothesis of use-inheritance, while such
is by no means the case if that hypothesis be rejected."

No phenomena in the whole realm of nature are more difficult
to handle than those Romanes here refers to. Many, no doubt,
think, with him, that they are inexplicable by natural selection,
although few among those who, so far, think as he does, seem
likely to find satisfaction in that view of morality and religion
which attributes these things to the inheritance of the effects of
use.

We have already asked, page 66, what evidence there is that
function ever does produce structure, either in the race or in the
individual ; and we have seen that when organs are improved by
normal use, structures for bringing this useful end about already
exist. Capacity for improvement by practice is itself an adapta-
tion which calls for explanation, rather than an explanation or
cause of adaptation.

The opinion that deliberate acts, habits, instincts, and reflex
acts form a descending series, in which each lower manifestation
has, at some time in the past, climbed down from the top of the
ladder seems to commend itself to many. For this reason I have
quoted Romanes's recent statement at some length, although no
one can, with logical consistency, find, in this opinion, even if it
be well founded, any help in accounting for the origin of
instincts, or that of reflex acts, if deliberate acts are themselves
mechanical and dependent upon the presence of adaptive structure.

If practice does no more than to correct responsive actions
and to reduce them to exactness by the repression of those that
are vague and indefinite and by the preservation of those that
are exact and definite, how can it add anything to the nature of
organisms? Romanes not only considers it proved that delib-
erate acts are mechanical, but he also holds that the only way
to escape what he regards as the materialistic consequences of
this conviction is to be found in the monistic creed that "the
antithesis between mind and motion — subject and object — is
itself phenomenal or apparent ; not absolute or real." " We have

208 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

only to suppose," he says, "that the seeming duality is relative
to our modes of apprehension ; and, therefore, that any change
taking place in the mind, and any change taking place in the
brain, are not two changes, but one change." " To suppose mind
the cause of motion, or motion the cause of mind, is equally to
suppose that which is neither true nor untrue, but nonsensical."
" It is equally nonsense to speak of mental action causing cerebral
action, or of cerebral action causing mental action, nonsense of
the same kind as it would be to speak of the ' Pickwick Papers '
causing a storm at sea, or the eruption of a volcano causing the
forty-seventh proposition of the first book of Euclid."

I am myself quite unable to see how one who holds it
nonsense to suppose mind can cause motion, can for a moment
think the origin of a reflex act or automatic response would be
easier to understand through proof that it was, at one time,
accompanied by conscious intelligence. Neither they who know
no reason why thought should not, some day, be reduced to
mechanics, nor they who believe, with Romanes, that this has
already been accomplished, can, in consistency, believe that use
directed by intelligence can either bring about adaptive structures,
or supply to natural selection even the incipient stages of adaptive
modification, unless they attribute this adaptive influence to mere
use, in itself, and not to the guidance of use by intelligence. If
the Lamarckians tell us that this is their contention, and that it
is mere use in itself that brings about adaptive structures, is it
not obvious that, inasmuch as rational actions are, as a rule, more
complicated than those we call reflex, their origin is not easier,
but harder, to understand?

If we agree with Romanes that "what we know on the side
of mind as logical sequence is on the side of the nervous system,
nothing more than the passage of nervous energy through one
series of cells and fibres rather than another," how can practice
in logical reasoning bring about any of these cells or fibres or
direct nervous energy into one series rather than another, except
so far as adaptive mechanism for bringing this about already
exists ?

If "what we know as truth is merely the fact of the brain
vibrating in tune with nature," is the belief that natural know-

DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 209

ledge adds anything to our nature more or less than belief that
the brain is made to vibrate in tune with nature by vibrating in
tune with nature ? Is this belief any more significant or any more
instructive than belief that the brain is made to vibrate in tune
with nature by the " Pickwick Papers " ?

It may be well to dwell a little on the assertion that what we
know as truth is merely the vibration of a brain in tune with
nature ; and to ask what these words mean. Vibrations are said
to be demonstrated when, directly or indirectly, we are made to
perceive them by our senses ; nor do I suppose that Romanes
could ask or hope for better proof of his assertion than the
demonstration, to our senses, of the actual vibration of a brain
in tune with nature whenever a truth arises in the mind.
Whether we share his confidence that this proof will be found
in the next two hundred years or not, we may ask what it would
mean, if found.

It is a truth that stones are heavy, and the vibration of a
brain in tune with heaviness under the visual stimulus of a stone
would be a response ; but we know no reason why extended
bodies should have weight, except that the fact is so. With-
out, at present, asking Berkeley's old question whether sensible
vibrations of the brain or of anything else can exist otherwise
than in a mind, may we not ask whether the vibration of the
brain in tune with heaviness would tell us why we should think
the thought that stones are heavy, any more than the fact that
stones are heavy tells us why they should be ? Would the sen-
sible perception of the vibrations of our brains in tune with
nature, whenever a truth arises in our minds, tell us anything
except that, with experience, comes knowledge ? Would it be any
reason why this should be the case except that the fact is so ?
And do we not now all admit this as a fact?

We have good reason to hope that practical advantage to
mankind will follow progress in the physiology of the brain, as
it has followed all progress in natural knowledge; although it is
hard to see what use there could be in proof that truth is the
vibration of a brain in tune with nature, unless we also discover,
outside our brains, some way to tell when their vibrations are in
tune.

210 THE FOUNDATION'S OF ZOOLOGY

I cannot conceive what better basis for a philosophy of mind
and matter one who had seen the vibrations of a brain would
have than one who knows he sees, and, as a rule, sees to his
advantage, when he opens his eyes.

Must we not also reflect that some of the things we see may
be hallucinations, or illusions, or somnambulatory dreams ? Must
we not ask the difficult but preeminently practical question how,
admitting the vibrations, we distinguish those that are in tune
with nature from those that are out of tune ? How, for example,
do the vibrations that go on as we think the thought that a stick
half in water is bent, differ from those that go on as we think
that the stick in the air is straight? Is it not because "snap"
judgments about our sensible perceptions often lead us into diffi-
culties and tend to our physical destruction ; while rectified judg-
ments are beneficial ; because, for example, the savage who has
corrected his judgment spears his fish, while he who has not
loses his dinner. May not the difference perhaps prove, in ulti-
mate analysis, to be that adjustments that are preservative of life
are said to be in tune with nature, and their corresponding mental
states truths; while those that are injurious are said to be out of
tune, and their corresponding mental states errors or illusions ?
May it not be because our brains are the ones that have so far
survived the struggle for existence that we hold their normal
vibrations to be in tune with nature ? If this should prove to be
the case, would it not be due to natural selection that our brains
vibrate in tune with nature ? If it were not for natural selection,
might not all seem delusion ; nothing truth ?

No Darwinian questions the benefit of training, and practice,
and education, and experience; for all this is matter of fact,
admitted by all. Who can ask whether a man educated is differ-
ent from the man uneducated? or whether the beneficial effects
of nurture are anything more than might have been expected ?

While he admits that, in some practical sense of the words, he
is a free agent, responsible for his thoughts and actions, and
able to act wisely or foolishly and to do right and wrong ; the
Darwinian asks whether voluntary acts are efficient causes of
structure, or only antecedents of the sort which we call physical
causes, or occasions, or stimuli; and whether they do anything

DARWIN, AND THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 211

more than to make manifest what was latent or potential. When
pressed for a definition of latent potency, can he do more than to
assert that activity is latent in a body if, while this body does what
he expects under certain conditions, knowledge of these conditions
does not tell him why it should? He asks, furthermore, whether
it is conceivable that one cubit can be added to his stature by
taking thought, either for one lifetime or for a million; although
he admits that no one could expect to attain to his normal or
natural stature without the stimulus of healthy muscular and
nervous activity. He also asks whether the improvement of our
faculties by use is anything more than the correction of our
natural responses, and their reduction to exactness, by the suppres-
sion of those that are confused and perplexed, and the survival
of those that are definite and distinct; and, ultimately, by the
extinction of the deluded minds and the survival of those that
are sane; and whether the history of individual life is anything
more than the continuance of the process of natural selection.

Some hold that our race has, by its intelligence, emancipated
itself from natural selection, and escaped from its domain into the
realm of reason ; but if we agree with Berkeley that the work
of experience "is to unravel our prejudices and mistakes, grad-
ually correcting our judgment and reducing it to a philosophical
exactness," may we not ask whether knowledge itself is anything
more than conscious apprehension of the unceasing activity of
the selective process?

Darwin points out, even in the first edition of the " Origin,"
many difficulties which he is not able to solve. Some of them
have been ably treated by later writers. Some are still unex-
plained, and in the next lecture I shall try to throw new light
upon one of them.

LECTURE IX

NATURAL SELECTION, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF

LIFE

LECTURE IX

NATURAL SELECTION, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF LIFE

IN the "Origin of Species" Darwin says that the sudden appear-
ance of species belonging to several of the main divisions of the
animal kingdom in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks is at pres-
ent inexplicable, and may be truly urged as a valid objection to
his views.

If his theory be true, he says that " it is indisputable that
before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited long periods
elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval
from the Cambrian age to the present day, and that during these
vast periods the world swarmed with living creatures. Here,"
he says, "we encounter a formidable objection; for it seems
doubtful whether the earth, in a fit state for the habitation of
living creatures, has lasted long enough. To the question why
we do not find such fossiliferous deposits belonging to these
assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system I can give
no satisfactory answer."

On its geological side this difficulty is even greater than it was
in Darwin's day, for we now know that the fauna of the Lower
Cambrian was rich and varied ; that most of the modern types of
animal life were represented in the oldest fauna which has been
discovered, and that all its types have modern representatives.
The paleontological side of the subject has been ably summed up
by Walcott in an interesting memoir on the oldest fauna which
is known to us from fossils, and his collection of one hundred
and forty-one American species from the Lower Cambrian is dis-
tributed over most of the marine groups of the animal kingdom,
and, except for the absence of the remains of vertebrated animals,
the whole province of animal life is almost as completely covered

215

2l6 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

by these one hundred and forty-one species as it could be by a
collection from the bottom of the modern ocean. Four of the
American species are sponges, two are hydrozoa, nine are actino-
zoa, twenty-nine are brachiopods, three are lamellibranchs, thir-
teen are gasteropods, fifteen are pteropods, eight are Crustacea,
fifty-one are trilobites, and trails and burrows show the existence
of at least six species of bottom forms, probably worms or crusta-
cea. The most notable characteristic of this fauna is the com-
pleteness with which these few species outline the whole fauna
of the modern sea-floor. Far from showing us the simple unspe-
cialized ancestors of modern animals, they are most intensely modern
themselves in the zoological sense, and they belong to the same
order of nature as that which prevails at the present day.

The fossiliferous beds of the Lower Cambrian rest upon beds
which are miles in vertical thickness, and are identical in all their
physical features with those which contain this fauna. They
prove beyond question that the waters in which they were laid
down were as fit for supporting life at the beginning as at the
end of the enormous lapse of time which they represent, and
that all the conditions have since been equally favorable for the
preservation and the discovery of fossils. Modern discovery has
brought the difficulty which Darwin points out into clearer view,
but geologists are no more prepared than he was to give a satis-
factory solution, although I shall now try to show that the study
of living animals in their relations to the world around them does
help us, and that comparative anatomy and comparative embry-
ology and the study of the habits and affinities of organisms tell
us of times more ancient than the oldest fossils, and give a more
perfect record of the early history of life than paleontology.

While the history of life as told by fossils has been slow and
gradual, it has not been uniform, for we have evidence of the
occurrence of several periods when modification was comparatively
rapid.

We are living in a period of intellectual progress, and among
terrestrial animals cunning now counts for more than size or
strength, and fossils show that, while the average size of mam-
mals has diminished since the Middle Tertiary, the size of their
brains has increased more than one hundred per cent ; that the

NATURAL SELECTION, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF LIFE 21 7

brain of a modern mammal is more than twice as large, compared
with its body, as the brain of its ancestors in the Middle Tertiary.
Measured in years the Middle Tertiary is very remote, but it is
very modern compared with the whole history of the fossiliferous
rocks, although more of brain development has been effected in
this short time than in all preceding time from the beginning.

The later paleozoic and early secondary fossils mark another
period of rapid change, when the fitness of the land for animal
life, and the presence of land plants, brought about the evolution
of terrestrial animals.

I shall give reasons for seeing, in the Lower Cambrian, another
period of rapid change, when a new factor — the discovery of
the bottom of the ocean — began to act in the modification of
species, and I shall try to show that, while animal life was abun-
dant long before, the evolution of animals likely to be preserved
as fossils took place with comparative rapidity, and that the zoologi-
cal features of the Lower Cambrian are of such a character as
to indicate that it is a decided and unmistakable approximation
to the primitive fauna of the bottom, beyond which life was repre-
sented only by minute and simple surface animals not likely to
be preserved as fossils.

Nothing brings home more vividly to the zoologist a picture
of the diversity of the Lower Cambrian fauna and of its intimate
relation to the fauna on the bottom of the modern ocean than the
thought that he would have found on the old Cambrian shore the
same opportunity to study the embryology and anatomy of ptero-
pods and gasteropods and lamellibranchs, of Crustacea and medusae,
echinoderms and brachiopods, that he now has at a marine labora-
tory ; that his studies would have followed the same lines then
that they do now, and that most of the record of the past which
they make known to him would have been ancient history then.
Most of the great types of animal life show by their embryology
that they run back to simple and minute ancestors which lived at
the surface of the ocean, and that the common meeting point must
be projected back to a still more remote time, before these ancestors
had become differentiated from each other.

After we have traced each great line of modern animals as far
backward as we can through the study of fossils, we still find these

2l8 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

lines distinctly laid down. The Lower Cambrian Crustacea, for
example, are as distinct from the Lower Cambrian echinoderms or
pteropods or lamellibranchs or brachipods as they are from those of
the present day, but zoology gives us evidence that the early steps
in the establishment of these great lines were taken under condi-
tions which were essentially different from those which have pre-
vailed, without any essential change, from the time of the oldest
fossils to the present day, and that most of the great lines of
descent were represented in the remote past by ancestors, which,
living a different sort of life, differed essentially, in structure as
well as in habits, from the representatives of the same types which
are known to us as fossils.

In the echinoderms we have a well-defined type represented
by abundant fossils, very rich in living forms, very diversified in
its modifications, and therefore well fitted for use as an illustration.
This great stem contains many classes and orders, all constructed
on the same plan, which is sharply isolated and quite unlike the
plan of structure in any other group of animals. All through
the series of fossiliferous rocks echinoderms are found, and their
plan of structure is always the same. Paleontology gives us most
valuable evidence regarding the course of evolution within the
limits of a class, as in the crinoids or the echinoids ; but we appeal
to it in vain for light upon the organization of the primitive echino-
derm or for connecting links between the classes. To our ques-
tions on these subjects, and on the relation of the echinoderms
to other animals, paleontology is silent, and throws them back
upon us as unsolved riddles.

The zoologist unhesitatingly projects his imagination, held in
check only by the laws of scientific thought, into the dark period
before the times of the oldest fossils, and he feels absolutely certain
of the past existence of a stem from which the classes of echino-
derms have inherited the fundamental plan of their structure. He
affirms with equal confidence that the structural changes which
have separated this ancient type from the classes which we know
from fossils are very much more profound and extensive than all
the changes which each class has undergone from the earliest
paleozoic times to the present day. He is also disposed to assume,
but, as I shall show, with much less reason, that the amount of

NATURAL SELECTION, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF LIFE 219

change which structure has undergone is an index to the length
of time which the change has required, and that the period which
is covered by the fossiliferous rocks is only an inconsiderable part of
that which has been consumed in the evolution of the echinoderms.

The zoologist does not check the flight of his scientific imagi-
nation here, however, for he trusts implicitly to the embryological
evidence which teaches him that still farther back in the past all
echinoderms were represented by a minute floating animal which
was not an echinoderm at all in any sense except the ancestral
one, although it was distinguished by features which natural selec-
tion has converted, under the influence of modern conditions,
into the structure of echinoderms. He finds in the embryology
of modern echinoderms phenomena which can bear no interpreta-
tion but this, and he unhesitatingly assumes that they are an in-
heritance which has been handed down from generation to gen-
eration through all the ages from the prehistoric times of zoology.

Other groups tell the same story with equal clearness. A
lingula is still living in the sand-bars and mud-flats of the Chesa-
peake Bay under conditions which have not effected any essen-
tial change in its structure since the time of the Lower Cambrian.
Who cart look at a living lingula without being overwhelmed
by the effort to grasp its immeasurable antiquity; by the thought
that while it has passed through all the chances and changes of
geological history, the structure which fitted it for life on the earli-
est paleozoic bottom is still adapted for a life on the sands of the
modern sea-floor?

The everlasting hills are the type of venerable antiquity ; but
lingula has seen the continents grow up, and has maintained its
integrity unmoved by the convulsions which have given the crust
of the earth its present form.

As measured by the time-standards of the zoologist lingula
itself is modern, for its life history still holds locked up in its em-
bryology the record, repeated in the development of each individ-
ual, of a structure and a habit of life which were lost in the unknown
past at the time of the Lower Cambrian, and it tells us vaguely
but unmistakably of life at the surface of the primitive ocean
at a time when it was represented by minute and simple floating
ancestors.

220 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

Broadly stated, the history of each great line has been like that
of the echinoderms and brachiopods. The oldest pteropod or
lamellibranch or echinoderm or crustacean or vertebrate which we
know from fossils exhibits its own type of structure with perfect
distinctness, and later influences have done no more than to expand
and diversify the type, while anatomy fails to guide us back to the
point where these various lines met each other in a common source,
although it forces us to believe that the common source once had
an individual existence. Embryology teaches that each line once
had its own representative at the surface of the ocean, and that
the early stages in its evolution have passed away and left no record
in the rocks.

If we try to call before the mind a picture of the land surface
of the earth we see a vast expanse of verdure stretching from high
up in the mountains over hills, valleys, and plains, and through
forests and meadows down to the sea, with only an occasional lake
or broad river to break its uniformity.

Our picture of the ocean is an empty waste, stretching on and
on with no break in the monotony except now and then a flying-
fish or a wandering sea-bird or a floating tuft of sargassum, and
we never think of the ocean as the home of vegetable life. It
contains plant-like animals in abundance, but these are true ani-
mals and not plants, although they are so like them in form and
color. At Nassau, in the Bahama Islands, the visitor is taken in
a small boat, with windows of plate glass set in the bottom, to
visit the " sea-gardens " at the inner end of a channel through
which the pure water from the open sea flows between two coral
islands into the lagoon. Here the true reef corals grow in quiet
water, where they may be visited and examined.

When illuminated by the vertical sun of the tropics and by
the light which is reflected back from the white bottom, the pure,
transparent water is as clear as air, and the smallest object forty
or fifty feet down is distinctly visible through the glass bottom of
the boat.

As this glides over the great mushroom-shaped coral domes
which arch up from the depths, the dark grottoes between them
and the caves under their overhanging tops are lighted up by the
sun, far down among the anthozoa or flower animals and the

NATURAL SELECTION, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF LIFE 221

zoophytes or animal plants, which are seen through the waving
thicket of brown and purple sea-fans and sea-feathers as they
toss before the swell from the open ocean.

There are miles of these " sea-gardens " in the lagoons of the
Bahamas, and it has been my good fortune to spend many months
studying their wonders, but no description can convey any concep-
tion of their beauty and luxuriance. The general effect is very
garden-like, and the beautiful fishes of black and golden yellow
and iridescent cobalt blue hover like birds among the thickets of
yellow and lilac gorgonias.

The parrot fishes seem to be cropping the plants like rabbits,
but more careful examination shows that they are biting off the
tips of the gorgonias and branching madrepores or hunting for the
small Crustacea which hide in the thicket, and that all the apparent
plants are really animals.

The delicate star-like flowers are the vermilion heads of boring
annelids or the scarlet tentacles of actinias, and the thicket is
made up of pale lavender bushes of branching madrepores, and
green and brown and yellow and olive masses of brain coral, of
alcyonarians of all shades of yellow and purple, lilac and red, and
of black and brown and red sponges. Even the lichens which
incrust the rocks are hydroid corals, and the whole sea-garden is
a dense jungle of animals, where plant life is represented only by
a few calcareous algae so strange in shape and texture that they
are much less plant-like than the true animals.

The scarcity of plant life becomes still more notable when we
study the ocean as a whole. On land herbivorous animals are
always much more abundant and prolific than the carnivora, as
they must be to keep up the supply of food, but the animal life of
the ocean shows a most remarkable difference, for marine animals
are almost exclusively carnivorous.

The birds of the ocean, the terns, gulls, petrels, divers, cormo-
rants, tropic birds and albatrosses, are very numerous indeed, and
the only parallel to the pigeon roosts and rookeries of the land is
found in the dense clouds of sea-birds around their breeding
grounds, but all these sea-birds are carnivorous, and even the birds
of the seashore subsist almost exclusively upon animals such as
mollusca, Crustacea, and annelids.

222 THE FOUNDATION'S OF ZOOLOGY

The seals pursue and destroy fishes ; the sea-elephants and
walruses live upon mollusks; the whales, dolphins and porpoises
and the marine reptiles all feed upon animals, and most of them
are fierce beasts of prey.

There are a few fishes that pasture in the fringe of seaweed
which grows on the shore of the ocean, and there are some that
browse among the floating tufts of algae upon its surface, but most
of them frequent these places in search of the small animals
that hide among the plants.

In the Chesapeake Bay the sheepshead browses among the
algae upon the submerged rocks and piles like a marine sheep,
but its food is exclusively animal, and I have lain upon the edge
of a wharf watching it crunch the barnacles and young oysters
until the juice of their bodies streamed out of the angles of its
mouth and gathered a host of small fishes to snatch the fragments
as they drifted away with the tide.

Many important fishes, like the cod, pasture on the bottom,
but their pasturage consists of mollusks and annelids and Crustacea
instead of plants, and the vast majority of sea-fishes are fierce
hunters, pursuing and destroying smaller fishes, and often exhibit-
ing an insatiable love of slaughter, like our own bluefish and the
tropical albacore and barracuda. Others, such as the herring, feed
upon smaller fishes and the pelagic pteropods and copepods; and
others, like the shad, upon the minute organisms of the ocean ; but
all, with few exceptions, are carnivorous. In the other great groups
of marine animals we find some scavengers, some which feed upon
micro-organisms, and others which hunt and destroy each other,
but there is no group of marine animals that corresponds to the
herbivora and rodents and the plant-eating birds and insects of
the land.

There is so much room in the vast spaces of the ocean, and
so much of it is hidden, that it is only when surface animals are
gathered together that the abundance of marine life becomes visi-
ble and impressive ; but some faint conception of the boundless
wealth of the ocean may be gained by observing the quickness
with which marine animals become crowded together at the sur-
face in favorable weather. On a cruise of more than two weeks
along the edge of the Gulf Stream I was surrounded continually

NATURAL SELECTION, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF LIFE 22$

night and day by a vast army of dark-brown jelly-fish (Linerges
mercutia), whose dark color made them very conspicuous in the
clear water. We could see them at a distance from the vessel,
and at noon, when the sun was overhead, we could look down to
a great depth through the centre-board well, and everywhere, to a
depth of fifty or sixty feet, we could see them drifting by in a
steady procession like motes in a sunbeam. We cruised through
them for more than five hundred miles and we tacked back and
forth over a breadth of almost a hundred miles, and found them
everywhere in such abundance that there were some in every
bucketful of water we dipped up ; nor is this abundance of life
restricted to tropical waters, for Haeckel tells us that he met
with such enormous masses of Limacina to the northwest of Scot-
land that each bucket of water contained thousands. The ten-
dency to gather in crowds is not restricted to the smaller animals,
and many species of raptorial fishes are found in densely packed
banks.

The fishes in a school of mackerel are as numerous as the
birds in a flight of wild pigeons, and we are told of one school
which was a windrow of fish half a mile wide and at least twenty
miles long. But while pigeons are plant eaters, the mackerel are
rapacious hunters, pursuing and devouring the herrings as well as
other animals.

Herring swarm like locusts, and a herring bank is almost a
solid wall. In 1879 three hundred thousand river herring were
landed in a single haul of the seine in Albemarle Sound; but the
herring are also carnivorous, each one consuming myriads of cope-
pods every day.

In spite of this destruction and the ravages of armies of
medusae and siphonophores and pteropods, the fertility of the cope-
pods is so great that they are abundant in all parts of the ocean,
and they are met with in numbers that exceed our power of
comprehension. On one occasion the Challenger steamed for two
days through a dense cloud formed of a single species, and they
are found in all latitudes, from the arctic regions to the equator,
in masses which discolor the water for miles. We know, too, that
they are not restricted to the surface, and that the banks of cope-
pods are sometimes more than a mile thick. When we reflect

224 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

that thousands would find ample room and food in a pint of water,
one can form some faint conception of their universal abundance.

The organisms which are visible in the water of the ocean and
on the sea-bottom are almost universally engaged in devouring
each other, and many of them, like the bluefish, are never satis-
fied with slaughter, but kill for mere sport.

Insatiable rapacity must end in extermination unless there is
some unfailing supply, and as we find no visible supply in the
water of the ocean we must seek it with a microscope, which
shows us a wonderful fauna made up of innumerable larvae and
embryos and small animals, but these things cannot be the food
supply of the ocean, for no carnivorous animal could subsist very
long by devouring its own children. The total amount of these
animals is inconsiderable, however, when compared with the abun-
dance of a few forms of protozoa and protophytes, and both obser-
vation and deduction teach that the most important element in
marine life consists of some half-dozen types of protozoa and
unicellular plants ; of globigerina and radiolarians, and of trichodes-
mium, pyrocystis, protococcus and the coccospheres, rhabdospheres,
and diatoms.

Modern microscopical research has shown that these simple
plants, and the globigerinas and radiolarians which feed upon them,
are so abundant and prolific that they meet all demands and supply
the food for all the animals of the ocean. This is the fundamental
conception of marine biology. The basis of all the life in the modern
ocean is found in the micro-organisms of the surface.

This is not all. The simplicity and abundance of the micro-
scopic forms and their importance in the economy of nature show
that the organic world has gradually taken shape around them as
its centre or starting-point, and has been controlled by them.
They are not only the fundamental food supply, but the primeval
supply, which has determined the whole course of the evolution of
marine life.

The pelagic plant life of the ocean has retained its primitive
simplicity on account of the very favorable character of its envi-
ronment, and the higher rank of the littoral vegetation and that of
the land is the result of hardship.

On land the mineral elements of plant food are slowly supplied,

NATURAL SELECTION, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF LIFE 22$

as the rains dissolve them; limited space brings crowding and com-
petition for this scanty supply ; growth is arrested for a great part
of each year by drought or cold; the diversity of the earth's sur-
face demands diversity of structure and habit, and the great size
and complicated structure of terrestrial plants are adaptations to
these conditions of hardship.

At the surface of the ocean the abundance and uniform distri-
bution of mineral food in solution, the area which is available for
plants, the volume of sunlight and the uniformity of the tempera-
ture are all favorable to the growth of plants, and as each plant is
bathed on all sides by a nutritive fluid, it is advantageous for the
new plant-cells which are formed by cell-multiplication, to separate
from each other as soon as possible, in order to expose the whole
of their surface to the water. Cell-aggregation, the first step
toward higher organization, is therefore disadvantageous to the
pelagic plants, and as the environment at the surface of the ocean
is so monotonous, there is little opportunity for an aggregation of
cells to gain any compensating advantage by seizing upon a more
favorable habitat. The pelagic plants have retained their primi-
tive simplicity, and the most distinctive peculiarity of the micro-
scopic food supply of the ocean is the very small number of forms
which make up the enormous mass of individuals.

All the animals of the ocean are dependent upon this supply
of microscopic food, and many of them are adapted for preying
upon it directly, but a review of the animal kingdom will show
that no highly organized animal has ever been evolved at the sur-
face of the ocean, although all depend upon the food supply of
the surface.

The animals which now find their home in the open waters of
the ocean are, almost without exception, descendants of forms
which lived upon or near the bottom, or along the seashore, or
upon the land, and all the exceptions are simple animals of minute
size. A review of the whole animal kingdom would take more
space than we can spare, but it would show that the evidence from
embryology, from comparative anatomy, and from paleontology
all bears in the same direction and proves that every large and
highly organized animal in the open ocean is descended from
ancestors whose home was not open water, but solid ground, either
Q

226 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

on the bottom or on the shore. Embryology also gives us good
ground for believing that all these animals are still more remotely
descended from minute and simple pelagic ancestors, and that
the history of all the highly organized inhabitants of the water
has followed a roundabout path from the surface to the bottom
and then back into the water. When this fact is seen in all its
bearings, and its full significance is grasped, it is certainly one of
the most notable and instructive features of evolution.

The food supply of marine animals consists of a few species
of microscopic organisms which are inexhaustible and the only
source of food for all the inhabitants of the ocean. The supply
is primeval as well as inexhaustible, and all the life of the ocean
has gradually taken shape in direct dependence upon it. In view
of these facts we cannot but be profoundly impressed by the
thought that all the highly organized marine animals are products
of the bottom or the shore or the land, and that while the largest
animals on earth are pelagic, the few that are primitively pelagic
are small and simple. The reason is obvious. The conditions of
life at the surface are so easy that there is little fierce competition,
and the inorganic environment is so simple that there is little
chance for diversity of habits.

The growth of terrestrial plants is limited by the scarcity of
food, but there is no such limit to the growth of pelagic plants
or the animals which feed on them, and while the balance of life
is no doubt adjusted by competition for food, this is never very
fierce, even at the pre'sent day, when the ocean swarms with highly
organized wanderers from the bottom and the shore. Even now
the destruction or escape of a microscopic pelagic organism de-
pends upon the accidental proximity or remoteness of an enemy
rather than upon defence or protection, and survival is determined
by space relations rather than a struggle for existence.

The abundance of food is shown by the ease with which wan-
derers from the land, like sea-birds, find places for themselves in the
ocean, and the rapidity with which they spread over its whole extent.

As a marine animal the insect Halobates must be very modern
as compared with most pelagic forms, yet it has spread over all
tropical and subtropical seas, and it may always be found skim-
ming over the surface of mid-ocean as much at home as a Gerris

NATURAL SELECTION, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF LIFE 22 /

in a pond. I have never found it absent in the Gulf Stream when
conditions were favorable for collecting.

The easy character of pelagic life is shown by the fact that
the larvae of innumerable animals from the bottom and the shore
have retained their pelagic habit, and I shall soon give reasons
for believing that the larva of a shore animal is safer at sea than
near the shore.

There was little opportunity in the primitive pelagic fauna
and flora for an organism to gain superiority by seizing upon an
advantageous site or by acquiring peculiar habits, for one place was
like another, and peculiar habits could count for little .in compari-
son with accidental space relations. After the fauna of the sur-
face had been enriched by all the marine animals which have
become secondarily adapted to pelagic life, competition with those
improved forms brought about improvements in those which were
strictly pelagic in origin, like the siphonophores, and those wan-
derers from the bottom introduced another factor into the evolu-
tion of pelagic life, for their bodies have been utilized for protection
or concealment and in other ways, and we now have fishes which
hide in the poison curtain of Physalia, Crustacea which live in the
pharynx of Salpa or in the mouth of the menhaden, barnacles and
sucking fish fastened to whales and turtles, besides a host of exter-
nal and internal parasites. The primitive ocean furnished no such
opportunity, and the conditions of pelagic life must at first have
been very simple, and while competition was not entirely absent
the possibilities of evolution must have been extremely limited and
the progress of divergent modification very slow so long as all
life was restricted to the waters of the ocean.

There can be no doubt that floating life was abundant for a
long period when the bottom was uninhabited. The slow geologi-
cal changes by which the earth gradually assumed its present
character present a boundless field for speculation, but there can
be no doubt that the surface of the primeval ocean became fit for
living things long before the deeper waters or the sea-floor, and
during this period the proper conditions for the production of
large and complicated organisms did not exist, and even after the
total amount of life had become very great it must have consisted
of organisms of small size and simple structure.

228 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

Marine life is older than terrestrial life, and as all marine life
has shaped itself in relation to the pelagic food supply, this itself
is the only form of life which is independent, and it must there-
fore be the oldest. There must have been a long period in prime-
val times when there was a pelagic fauna and flora rich beyond
limit in individuals, but made up of only a few simple types.
During this time the pelagic ancestors of all the great groups of
animals were slowly evolved, as well as other forms which have
left no descendants. So long as life was restricted to the surface
no great or rapid advancement, through the influences which now
modify species, was possible, and we know of no other influences
which might have replaced them. We are therefore forced to be-
lieve that the differentiation and improvement of the primitive
flora and fauna were slow, and that, for a vast period of time,
life consisted of an innumerable multitude of minute and simple
pelagic organisms. During the time which it took to form the
thick beds of older sedimentary rocks the physical conditions of
the ocean gradually took their present form, and during a part,
at least, of this period the total amount of life in the ocean may
have been very nearly as great as it is now without leaving any
permanent record of its existence, for no . rapid advance took
place until the advantages of life on the bottom were discovered.

We must not think of the populating of the bottom as a
physical problem, but as discovery and colonization, very much
like the colonization of islands. Physical conditions for a long
time made it impossible, but its initiation was the result of bio-
logical influences, and there is no reason why its starting-point
should necessarily be the point where the physical obstacles first
disappeared. It is useless to speculate upon the nature of the
physical obstacles; there is reason to think one of them, probably
an important one, was the deficiency of oxygen in deep water.

Whatever their character may have been, they were all, no
doubt, of such a nature that they first disappeared in the shallow
water around the coast, but it is not probable that bottom life
was first established in shallow water, or before the physical con-
ditions had become favorable at considerable depths.

The sediment near the shore is destructive to most surface
animals, and recent explorations have shown that a stratum of

NATURAL SELECTION, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF LIFE 229

water of very great thickness is necessary for the complete de-
velopment of the floating microscopic fauna and flora, and it is a
mistake to picture them as confined to a thin surface stratum.
Pelagic plants probably flourished as far down as light penetrates,
and pelagic animals are abundant at very great depths. As the
earliest bottom animals must have depended directly upon the
floating organisms for food, it is not probable that they first estab-
lished themselves in shallow water, where the food supply is both
scanty and mixed with sediment ; nor is it probable that their es-
tablishment was delayed until the great depths had become favor-
able to life.

The belts around elevated areas far enough from shore to be
free from sediment, and deep enough to permit the pelagic fauna
to reach its full development above them, are the most favorable
spots, and paleontological evidence shows that they were seized
upon very early in the history of life on the bottom.

It is probable that colony after colony was established on the
bottom and afterwards swept away by geological change like a
cloud before the wind, and that the bottom fauna which we know
was not the first. Colonies which started in shallow water were
exposed to accidents from which those in great depths were free,
and in view of our knowledge of the permanency of the sea-floor
and of the broad outlines of the continents, it is not impossible
that the first fauna which became established in the deep zone
around the continents may have persisted and given rise to modern
animals. However this may be, we must regard this deep zone
as the birthplace of the fauna which has survived, as the ancestral
home of all the improved metazoa.

The effect of life upon the bottom is more interesting than
the place where it began, and we are now to consider its influence
upon animals, all whose ancestors and competitors and enemies
had previously been pelagic. The cold, dark, silent, quiet depths
of the sea are monotonous compared with the land, but they intro-
duced many new factors into the course of organic evolution.

It is doubtful whether the animals which first settled on the
bottom secured any more food than the floating ones, but they
undoubtedly obtained it with less effort, and were able to devote
their superfluous energy to growth and to multiplication, and thus

230 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

to become larger and to increase faster than pelagic animals.
Their sedentary life must have been favorable to both sexual and
asexual multiplication, and the tendency to increase by budding
must have been quickly rendered more active, and one of the first
results of life on the bottom must have been to promote the ten-
dency to form connected cormi, and to retain the connection
between the parent and the bud until the latter was able to obtain
its own food and to care for itself. The animals which first
acquired the habit of resting on the bottom soon began to multiply
faster than their swimming allies, and their asexually produced
progeny, remaining for a longer time attached to and nourished
by the parent stock, were much more favorably placed for rapid
growth. As the animals of the bottom live on a surface, or at
least a thin stratum, while swimming animals are distributed
through solid space, the rapid multiplication of bottom animals
must soon have led to crowding and to competition, and it quickly
became harder and harder for new forms from the open water to
force themselves in among the old ones, and colonization soon
came to an end.

The great antiquity of all the types of structure which are
represented among modern animals is therefore what we should
expect; for, after the foundation of the fauna of the bottom was
laid, it became, and has ever since remained, difficult for new forms
to establish themselves.

Most of our knowledge of the sea-bottom is from three sources :
from dredgings and other explorations, from rocks which were
formed beyond the immediate influence of continents, and from
the patches of the bottom fauna which have gradually been
brought near its surface by the growth of coral reefs; and from
all these sources we have testimony to the density of the crowd
of animals on favorable spots. Deep-sea explorations give only
the most scanty basis for a picture of the sea-bottom, but they
show that animal life may thrive with the dense luxuriance of
tropical vegetation, and Sir Wyville Thomson says he once brought
up at one time on a tangle, which was fastened to a dredge, over
twenty thousand specimens of a single species of sea-urchin. The
number of remains of paleozoic crinoids and brachiopods and trilo-
bites which are crowded into a single slab of fine-grained limestone

NATURAL SELECTION, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF LIFE 23 1

is most astounding, and it testifies most vividly and forcibly to
the wealth of life on the old sea-floor.

No description can convey any adequate conception of the
boundless luxuriance of a coral island, but nothing else gives such
a vivid picture of the capacity of the sea-floor for supporting life.
Marine plants are not abundant on coral islands, and the animals
depend either directly or indirectly upon the pelagic food supply,
so that their life is the same in this respect as that of animals in
the deep sea far from land.

The abundant life is not restricted to the growing edge of the
reef, and the inner lagoons are often like crowded aquaria. At
Nassau my party of eight persons found so much to study on a
little reef in a lagoon close to our laboratory, that we discovered
novelties every day for four months, and our explorations seldom
carried us beyond this little tract of bottom. Every inch of the
bottom was carpeted with living animals, while others were darting
about among the corals and gorgonias in all directions; but this
was not all, for the solid rock was honeycombed everywhere by
tubes and burrows, and when broken to pieces with a hammer
each mass of coral gave us specimens of nearly every great group
in the animal kingdom. Fishes, Crustacea, annelids, mollusca,
echinoderms, hydroids, and sponges could be picked out of the
fragments, and the abundance of life inside the solid rock was
most wonderful.

The absence of pelagic life in the landlocked water of coral
islands is as impressive and noteworthy as the luxuriance of life
upon and near the bottom.

On my first visit to the Bahama Islands I was sadly disap-
pointed by the absence of pelagic animals where all the condi-
tions seemed to be peculiarly favorable.

The deep ocean is so near that, as one cruises through the
inner sounds past the openings between the islets which form
the outer barrier, the deep blue water of mid-ocean is seen to
meet the white sand of the beach, and soundings show that the
outer edge is a precipice as high as the side of Chimborazo and
much steeper.

Nowhere else in the world is the pure water of the deep sea
found nearer land or more free from sediment, and on the days

232 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

when the weather was favorable for outside collecting we found
siphonophores and pteropods, pelagic mollusks and Crustacea and
tunicates and all sorts of pelagic larvae in great abundance in the
open water just outside the inlets.

Inside the barrier the water was always calm, and day after
day it was as smooth as the surface of an inland lake. When I
first entered one of these beautiful sounds, where the calm, trans-
parent water stretches as far as the eye can reach, while new
beauties of islets and winding channels open before one as those
which are passed fade away on the horizon, I felt sure that I had
at last found a place where the pelagic fauna of mid-ocean could
be gathered at our door and studied on shore. The water proved
to be not only as pure as air but almost as empty. At high water
we sometimes captured a few pelagic animals near the inlets, but
we dragged our surface nets through the sounds day after day
only to find them as clean as if they had been hung in the wind
to dry. The water in which we washed them usually remained
as pure and empty as if it had been filtered, and we often returned
from our towing expeditions without even a copepod or a zoea or
a pluteus.

The absence of the floating larvae is most remarkable, for
the sounds swarm with bottom animals which give birth every
day to millions of swimming larvae. The mangrove swamps and
the rocky shores are fairly alive with crabs carrying eggs in all
stages of development, and the boat passes over great black
patches of sea-urchins crowded together by thousands. The num-
ber of animals engaged in laying 'their eggs or hatching their
young is infinite, yet we rarely captured any larvae in the tow net,
and most of these we did find were well advanced and nearly
through their larval life.

It is often said that the water of coral sounds is too full of
lime to be inhabited by the animals of the open ocean, but this is
a mistake, for the water is perfectly fit for supporting the most
delicate and sensitive animals, and those which we caught out-
side lived in the house in water from the sounds better than in
any other place where I ever tried to keep them, for instead
of being injurious, the pure water of coral sounds is peculiarly
favorable for use in aquaria for surface animals.

NATURAL SELECTION, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF LIFE 233

The scarcity of floating organisms can have only one explana-
tion. They are eaten up, and competition for food is so fierce
that nearly every organism which is swept in by the tide and
nearly every larva which is born in the sounds is snatched by
the tentacles around some hungry mouth.

Nothing could illustrate the fierceness of the struggle for
food among the animals on a crowded sea-bottom more vividly
than the emptiness of the water in coral sounds where the bot-
tom is practically one enormous mouth. The only larvae which
have much 'chance to establish themselves for life are those which
are so fortunate as to be swept out into the open ocean, where
they can complete their larval life under the milder competition of
the pelagic fauna, and while it is usually stated that the larvae
of bottom animals have retained the pelagic habit for the purpose
of distributing the species, it is more probable that it has been
retained on account of its comparative safety.

These facts show that competition must have come quickly
after the establishment of the first fauna on the bottom, and that
it soon became very rigorous and led to severe selection and
rapid modification ; and we must also remember that life on the
bottom brought with it many new opportunities for divergent
specialization and improvement. The increase in size which came
with economy of energy increased the possibilities of variation
and led to the natural selection of peculiarities which improved
the efficacy of the various parts of the body in their functions
of relation to each other, and this has been an important factor
in the evolution of complicated organisms.

The new mode of life also permitted the acquisition of pro-
tective shells, hard-supporting skeletons, and other imperishable
parts, and it is therefore probable that the history of evolution in
later times gives no index as to the period which was required
to evolve from small, simple pelagic ancestors the oldest animals
which were likely to be preserved as fossils.

Life on the bottom also introduced another important evolu-
tionary influence — competition between blood-relations. In those
animals which we know most intimately, divergent modification,
with the extinction of connecting forms, results from the fact
that the fiercest competitors of each animal are its closest allies,

234 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

which, having the same habits, living upon the same food, and
avoiding enemies in the same way, are constantly striving to
hold exclusive possession of all that is essential to their welfare.

When a stock gives rise to two divergent branches, each es-
capes competition with the other so far as they differ in struct-
ure or habits, while the parent stock competing with both at a-
disadvantage is exterminated.

Among the animals which we know best, evolution leads to a
branching tree-like genealogy, with the topmost twigs represented
by living animals, while the rest of the tree is buried *in the dead
past. The connecting form between two species must therefore
be sought in the records of the past or reconstructed by compari-
son. Even at the present day things are somewhat different in
the open ocean, and they must have been very different in the
primitive ocean, for a pelagic animal has no fixed home, one local-
ity is like another, and the competitors and enemies of each indi-
vidual are determined in great part by accidents. We accordingly
find, even now, that the evolution of pelagic animals is often
linear instead of divergent, and ancient forms, such as the sharks,
often live on side by side with the later and more evolved forms.
The radiolarians and medusae and siphonophores furnish many
well-known illustrations of this feature of pelagic life.

No naturalist is surprised to find in the South Pacific or in the
Indian Ocean a Salpa or a pelagic crustacean or a surface fish or
a whale which was previously known only from the North At-
lantic, and the list of species of marine animals which are found
in all seas is a very long one. The fact that pelagic animals are
so independent of those laws of geographical distribution which
limit land animals is additional evidence of the easy character of
the conditions of pelagic life.

One of the first results of life on the bottom was to increase
asexual multiplication and to lengthen the time during which
buds remain united to and nourished by their parents, and to
crowd individuals of the same species together and to cause com-
petition between relations. We have in this and other obvious
peculiarities of life on the bottom a sufficient explanation of the
fact that since the first establishment of the bottom fauna, evolu-
tion has resulted in the elaboration and divergent specialization of

NATURAL SELECTION, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF LIFE 235

the types of structure which were already established, rather than
the production of new types.

Another result of the struggle for existence on the bottom was
the escape of varieties from competition with their allies by flight
from the crowded spots and a return to the open water above;
just as in later times- the whales and sea-birds have gone back
from the land to the ocean.

These emigrants, like the civilized men who invade the homes
of peaceful islanders, brought with them the improvements which
had come from fierce competition, and they have carried every-
thing before them and produced a great change in the pelagic
fauna.

The rapid intellectual development which has taken place
among the mammals since the Middle Tertiary, and the rapid
structural changes which took place in animals and plants when
the land fauna and flora were established, are well known, but the
fact that the discovery of the bottom initiated a much earlier and
probably more important era of rapid development in the forms of
animal life has never been pointed out.

If this view is correct, the primitive We of the bottom must
have had the following characteristics : —

(1) It was entirely animal, without plants, and it at first de-
pended directly upon the pelagic food supply.

(2) It was established around elevated areas in water deep
enough to be beyond the influence of the shore.

(3) The great groups of animals were rapidly established from
pelagic ancestors.

(4) The animals of the bottom rapidly increased in size and
hard parts were quickly acquired.

(5) The bottom fauna soon produced progressive development
among pelagic animals.

(6) After the establishment of the fauna of the bottom, elabo-
ration and differentiation among the representatives of each primi-
tive type soon set in and led to the extinction of connecting
forms.

Many of the oldest fossils like the pteropods are the modified
descendants of ancestors with hard parts, and there is no reason
to suppose that the first animals which were capable of preserva-

236 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

tion as fossils have been discovered, but it is interesting to note
that the oldest known fauna is an unmistakable approximation to
the primitive fauna of the bottom.

The Lower Cambrian fossils are distributed through strata
more than two miles thick, some, at least, of them showing by their
fine grain, and by the perfect preservation of tracks and burrows
which were made in soft mud, and of soft animals like jelly-fish,
that they were deposited in water of considerable depth. The
sediment was laid down slowly and gently in water so deep as to
be free from disturbance and under conditions so favorable that
it contains the remains of delicate animals not often found as
fossils.

While the fauna of the Lower Cambrian undoubtedly lived in
water of very considerable depth, it was not oceanic but conti-
nental, for we are told by Walcott that "one of the most impor-
tant conclusions is that the fauna of the Lower Cambrian lived
on the eastern and western shores of a continent that in its gen-
eral configuration outlines the American continent of to-day."
"Strictly speaking, the fauna did not live upon the outer shore
facing the ocean, but on the shores of interior seas, straits, or la-
goons that occupied the intervals between the several ridges that
ran from the central platform east and west of the main conti-
nental land surface of the time."

This fauna was rich and varied, but it was not self-supporting,
for no fossil plants are found, and the primary food supply was
pelagic. Animals adapted for a rapacious life, such as the ptero-
pods, were abundant, and prove the existence of a rich supply of
pelagic animals. All the forms known from the fossils are either
carnivorous, like the medusae, corals, Crustacea, and trilobites, or
they are adapted, like the sponges, brachiopods, and lamellibranchs,
for straining minute organisms out of the water or for gathering
those which rained down from above, and the conditions under
which they lived were very similar to those on the bottom at the
present day.

Walcott's studies show that the earliest known fauna had the
following characteristics: It consisted, so far as the record shows,
of animals alone, and these were dependent upon the pelagic food
supply for support. While small in comparison with many modern

NATURAL SELECTION, AND THE ANTIQUITY OF LIFE 237

animals, they were gigantic compared with primitive pelagic ani-
mals. The species were few, but they represent a very wide range
of types. All these types have modern representatives, and most of
the modern types are represented in the Lower Cambrian. Their
home was not the bottom of the deep ocean, but the shores of a
continent under water of a considerable depth.

The Cambrian fauna is usually regarded as a halfway station
in a series of animal forms which stretches backward into the
past for an immeasurable period, and it is even stated that the
history of life before the Cambrian is longer by many fold than
its history since. So far as this opinion rests on the diversity of
types in Cambrian times; it has no good basis ; for if the views
here advocated are correct, the evolution of the ancestral stems
took place at the surface, and all the conditions necessary for
the rapid production of types were present when the bottom
fauna first became established.

As we pass backward toward the Lower Cambrian we find
closer and closer agreement with the zoological conception of the
character of primitive life on the bottom. While we cannot regard
the oldest fauna which has been discovered as the first which
existed on the bottom, we may feel confident that the first fauna
of the bottom resembled that of the Lower Cambrian in its physi-
cal conditions and in its most distinctive peculiarities, — the abun-
dance of types, and the slight amount of differentiation among the
representatives of these types, — and we must regard it as a decided
and unmistakable approximation to the beginning of the modern
fauna of the earth, as distinguished from the more ancient and
simple fauna of the open ocean.

LECTURE X

NATURAL SELECTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY

LECTURE X

NATURAL SELECTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY

DARWIN'S book on the " Origin of Species " did not make its
way, even among men of science, without searching examination;
and it is interesting to note that, in the early days of its history,
all of its most prominent advocates were English in their intellec-
tual training, although some, like Asa Gray, were not English by
birth. Lyell, Wallace, Darwin, Gray, and Huxley knew Lamarck's
writings well, and, in this day of Neo-Lamarckism, we may find
profit in studying the influences that led all these vigorous and
independent thinkers to condemn his speculations as worse than
worthless, while they welcomed natural selection as one of the
greatest triumphs of the human mind.

The story of the reception of the "Origin," as it is told in
Darwin's letters, shows how it won its way in spite of prejudice.
Belief that the problem is one that man may hope to solve was rap-
idly growing among the thoughtful; for a long series of brilliant
discoveries in embryology, in anatomy, in paleontology, in geograph-
ical biology, and in many other fields, had shown that zoology is
orderly, and exhibits laws, like other sciences; but the remains
of so many failures lay beside the path of history that most cau-
tious students, in England at least, were in a hostile rather than a
sympathetic frame of mind, and were indisposed to welcome a
new attempt to bring all these classes of phenomena into a single
point of view.

To men like Huxley, who had refused to have anything to
say to a necessary principle of universal progress, and had grown
weary of speculation, Darwin's book commended itself as strictly
scientific ; for it is based upon the hard work of half a lifetime,
and, making no attempt to account for the fundamental properties
R 241

242 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

of living things, which it takes as it finds them, it demonstrates
that the features in which the species of living things differ from
one another, are due to influences that are still at work, and open
to observation and experiment by scientific methods.

Darwin shows that individual animals and plants, even those
of the same species, differ greatly among themselves; that these
differences may be exhibited by any characteristic whatever —
those upon which the species and genera of the systematist are
based, as well as those which had been held to be varietal or
individual; that, notwithstanding these differences, offspring tend
to resemble their parents, and to be like them in the main ; that
man is able to bring about, and to fix or establish, changes of
type, by breeding from selected parents; and that features exactly
like those upon which species are based may be modified or pro-
duced by selection ; and that what is thus accomplished by man
may come about with equal certainty, even if more slowly, in
nature through the struggle for existence and the extermination
of the unsuccessful.

None of these propositions are very profound, or very difficult
to grasp. They call for no unexampled powers of abstract thought,
for they lie so near the surface that they have been formulated
again and again.

Darwin says : " My brother, who is a very sagacious man,
always said, ' You will find that some one has been before you ' ; "
and on the first page of the first edition of the "Origin," which
was published in November, 1859, he says, after telling the reader
that the subject has occupied him steadily for twenty years : " My
work is now (1859) nearly finished; but as it will take me many
more years to complete it, and as my health is far from strong,
I have been urged to publish this Abstract. I have the more
especially been induced to do this, as Mr. Wallace, who is now
studying the natural history of the Malay archipelago, has arrived
at almost exactly the same general conclusions that I have on
the origin of species. In 1858 he sent me a memoir on this
subject, with a request that I would forward it to Sir Charles
Lyell, who sent it to the Linnean Society, and it is published
in the third volume of the Journal of that Society. Sir Charles
Lyell and Dr. Hooker, who both knew of my work, — the latter

NATURAL SELECTION- AND NATURAL THEOLOGY 243

having read my sketch of 1844, — honored me by thinking it
advisable to publish, with Mr. Wallace's excellent memoir, some
brief extracts from my manuscript."

Soon after the publication of the " Origin," he writes to Lyell
as follows : " Now for a curious thing about my book, and then
I have done. In last Saturday's Gardener's Chronicle a Mr. Patrick
Mathew publishes a long extract from his work on ' Naval Tim-
ber and Arboriculture,' published in 1831, in which he briefly
but completely anticipates the theory of Natural Selection." A
few days later, in the Gardener's Chronicle, he says : " I freely
acknowledge that Mr. Mathew has anticipated by many years the
explanation which I have offered of the origin of species, under
the name of natural selection. I can do no more than offer an
apology to Mr. Mathew for my entire ignorance of this publica-
tion. If another edition of my work is called for, I will insert
to the foregoing effect."

A few years later Darwin writes to Hooker as follows : " Talk-
ing of the 'Origin,' a Yankee has called my attention to a paper
attached to Dr. Wells's famous ' Essay on Dew,' which was read
in 1813 to the Royal Society, but not then printed, in which he
applies the principle of Natural Selection to the Races of Man.
So poor old Patrick Mathew is not the first, and he cannot, or
ought not, any longer to put on his title-page ' Discoverer of
the Principle of Natural Selection.' "

In the " Historical Sketch " which is printed in all subsequent
editions, Darwin fulfils his promise to Mathew, and also refers
at length to Dr. W. C. Wells of Charleston, S.C., whose state-
ment is contained in "An Account of a White Female, part of
whose skin resembles that of a negro," afterwards (1818) pub-
lished as part of an appendix to his "Two Essays on Dew and
Single Vision."

After remarking that negroes and mulattoes enjoy an immunity
from certain tropical diseases, he observes that all animals tend
to vary to some degree, and that agriculturalists improve their
domestic animals by selection, and that what is done in the latter
case by art, seems to be done with equal efficacy, though more
slowly, by nature, in the formation of varieties of mankind, fitted for
the country which they inhabit. Of the accidental varieties of man,

244 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

which would occur among the first few and scattered inhabitants
of the middle regions of Africa, some one would be better fitted
than the others to bear the diseases of the country. This race
would consequently multiply, while the others would decrease,
not only from their inability to sustain the attacks of disease but
from their incapacity to contend with their more vigorous neigh-
bors. The color of this vigorous race would be black for the
reason given. The same disposition to form varieties still existing,
a darker and a darker race would in course of time occur; and
as the darkest would be the best fitted for the climate, this would
at length become the most prevalent if not the only race in the
particular country in which it had originated.

It is sometimes said that the success of the " Origin," and
the independent enunciation of its central conception by so many
thinkers, proved that the subject was in the air, or that men's
minds were prepared for it; but Darwin says he does not think
this was strictly true ; for while he occasionally sounded not a few
naturalists, he never happened to come across a single one who
seemed to doubt about the permanency of species. Even Lyell
and Hooker, though they would listen with interest, never seemed
to agree. He says that he tried once or twice to explain to able
men what he meant by Natural Selection, but signally failed;
and Huxley bears witness, as do others, that the sentiment of
the most profound naturalists was critical rather than sympathetic.

Darwin tells us the publication in 1858 of Mr. Wallace's
clever and admirably expressed essay, together with an abstract
from his own notes, " excited very little attention, and the only
published notice of them which I can remember was by Profes-
sor Houghton of Dublin, whose verdict was that all that was new
in them was false, and that what was true was old."

Darwin has himself tried to analyze the mental qualities and
conditions on which his success has depended; and he is no
doubt right in attributing much of his success as an investigator
and much of his influence upon scientific thought to the indefati-
gable industry which is so clearly shown in all his works ; and
the success of the " Origin " was no doubt due to its vast array
of demonstrated facts, rather than to the way in which the argu-
ment was stated; but Lamarck was also an earnest, simple-

NATURAL SELECTION' AND NATURAL THEOLOGY 245

hearted, indefatigable student, whose interest in nature never
halted or wavered, and whose most important work, the " History
of the Invertebrates," was undertaken when he was old and blind,
and in poverty and suffering.

We must, therefore, search more deeply for the secret of the
rejection by English naturalists of Lamarck's hypothesis, and their
welcome to the "Origin of Species."

In 1844, or sixteen years before the publication of the "Ori-
gin," Darwin writes to Hooker: "I have been now ever since
my return engaged in a very presumptuous work, and I know
not one individual who would not say a very foolish one. I am
so struck with the distribution of the Galapagos organisms, etc.,
and with the character of the American mammifers, etc., that I
determined to collect blindly every sort of fact which could bear
in any way on what are called species. I have read heaps of
agricultural and horticultural books and have never ceased collect-
ing facts. At last gleams of light have come, and I am almost
convinced (quite contrary to the opinion I started with) that spe-
cies are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable. Heaven
forfend me from Lamarck nonsense of a 'tendency to progres-
sion,' ' adaptations through the slow willing of animals,' etc. But
the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from his:
though the means of change are wholly so. / think I have found
out (here's presumption) the simple way in which species become
exquisitely adapted to various ends. You will now groan, and think
to yourself, 'on what a man I have been wasting my time and
writing to.' I should five years ago have thought so."

Darwin gives a list of thirty-five writers who, during the early
part of the nineteenth century, expressed belief in the mutability of
species, or, at least, disbelief in separate acts of creation, before his
own work was published ; and even at an earlier date the specula-
tions of Oken, Goethe, Buffon, and others had brought the subject
into prominence.

Of all these writers Lamarck had put the question in the most
definite form and discussed it most completely. His views are the
only ones which had attracted much attention, but while they were
well known in England they had little influence there upon the men
of science, except to cast discredit on new attempts. " The hypoth-

246 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

esis had been sadly damaged by its supporters," says Huxley, who
" had studied Lamarck attentively," but had found no ground for
changing his negative and critical attitude.

In 1849 Darwin said of Lamarck, "his absurd though clever
work has done the subject harm " ; and I have quoted (p. 82) ex-
tracts from works written about the time the "Origin " was published,
by naturalists who saw clearly that nurture can have no practical
share in the origin of species unless it has a determinate influence in
beneficial lines; nor are matters helped at all by attributing this
determinate beneficial influence to a necessary law of universal prog-
ress ; for natural laws are not rulers or governors over nature, but
generalizations from an experience which seems to teach, among
other things, that progress is neither necessary nor universal.

"If all organic beings thus tend to rise in the scale, how is it that
throughout the world a multitude of the lowest forms still exist; and
how is it that in each great class some forms are far more highly
developed than others ? Why have not the more highly devel-
oped forms everywhere supplanted and exterminated the lower?
Lamarck, who believed in an innate and inevitable tendency towards
perfection in all organic beings, seems to have felt this difficulty so
strongly, that he was led to suppose that new and simple forms are
continually being produced by spontaneous generation. Science has
not yet proved the truth of this belief, whatever the future may
reveal. On my theory the continued existence of lowly organisms
offers no difficulty; for natural selection, or the survival of the
fittest, does not necessarily include progressive development, — it
only takes advantage of such variations as arise and are beneficial to
each creature under its complex relations of life." l

Even if it were shown that the sum of the conditions that make
up the environment of organisms does, in the long run, make for
fitness, the problem of the naturalist is not the existence of adapta-
tions as such, but the existence of adaptive species ; and if the
fitness of the living world as a whole were to be explained by a
general law of evolution, this would not tell us why we do 'not find
innumerable transitional forms, living side by side with the actual
species, and filling all the gaps between them.

While events in general take place, no doubt, according to the

1 " Origin," p. 98.

NATURAL SELECTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY 247

mathematical law of probability, and exhibit statistical types, there
is no necessary or inherent parallelism between the " generic types "
of the physical world and those which are known to naturalists as
species ; for we find mollusks and Crustacea and fishes living side by
side in every little brook, the world over ; and every part of the land
and of the water, in all regions of the earth, has its own representatives
of most of the great groups of animals and plants. Agassiz's " Essay
on Classification" failed to deal that death blow to the "Origin,"
which was in the mind of the author, although Lamarckians might
still study, with profit, its clear, earnest, and impregnable demonstra-
tion that there is no parallelism between the generic types of the
physical environment of each species and the attributes of the
species itself.

The most notable peculiarity of the English attitude of mind
regarding the species question was the feeling so clearly expressed
by Darwin, by Huxley, and by many other naturalists, that the
attempts at a solution had so far been valueless, and that they
had even excited hostility. Another notable fact is that, while the
thirty-five authors, between 1800 and 1860, to whom Darwin refers,
wrote in many countries, in England, Ireland, Scotland, the United
States, France, Belgium, Germany, and Russia, the four who defi-
nitely recognized and clearly stated the law of natural selection,
Wells, Mathew, Wallace, and Darwin, were English in their
intellectual training.

In order to grasp the full significance of the influences which
led to the production and acceptance of the " Origin," it is clear that
we must try to understand what caused a hostile frame of mind
towards Lamarck, while there was no permanent hostility to the
" Origin."

There seems to me to be no doubt that this influence came, in
part at least, from the works of a school of writers on what was
called natural theology, among whom John Ray (1624-1705), Wil-
liam Derham (1657-1735), and William Paley (1743-1805) are best
known. None of these men was a notable contributor to science :
even Ray, who has the greatest claim to remembrance as a natu-
ralist, was by no means the equal of contemporary students of
science; and Derham did nothing in science except to edit Ray's
works ; while Paley makes no claim to originality, owing much,

248 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

both facts and the manner of presenting them, to the Dutch
writer, Nieuwentyt, who, in 1716, wrote a book which was trans-
lated into English (1730) under the title of "The Religious
Philosopher," although the real starting-point for the series of
English books on natural theology, which culminated in the Bridge-
water Treatises about 1836, was the work on "The Wisdom of God
Manifested in the Works of Creation," by Ray (1691), who illus-
trates the delicacy and usefulness of all the parts of living creat-
ures by such familiar examples of adaptation as the structure of
the eye, the hollowness of the bones, the stomach of the camel,
the armor of the hedgehog, etc.

Science formed no part of a "liberal" education in the early
days of our century, and the youth who was born with the instincts
of a naturalist found little to satisfy these instincts except books
of this sort, which, scanty and inadequate as they are, have the
charm, which often eludes the laboratory handbook, of emphasiz-
ing the environment as the complement of structure. The share
of the writers on natural theology in shaping the education of
English naturalists has not been adequately esteemed; for they
substituted, for the vulgar ignorance which finds nothing but dis-
gust spiced with immodesty in our bodily frame, a living sense of
the grandeur and instructiveness of animated nature. No one can
read Paley and fail to see that the mechanism of living things is
at least as well worthy of study as the " humanities " ; for what-
ever our opinion of the value of his conclusions may be, he shows
that there is a field for the profitable employment of the best
powers of the best minds in the most familiar plant; and that
the humblest worm may furnish inexhaustible delight, and may
lead us to questions which demand the utmost exercise of our
highest faculties.

In 1859 Darwin writes to Lubbock : "I do not think I hardly
ever admired a book more than Paley's ' Natural Theology.' I
could almost, formerly, have said it by heart " ; and in his autobi-
ography he says the logic of Paley's " Evidences " and of his " Nat-
ural Theology" "gave me as much delight as did Euclid. The
careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any part
by rote, was the only part of the academic course which, as I
then felt, and as I still believe, was of the least use to me in the

NATURAL SELECTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY 249

education of my mind. I did not at that time trouble myself about
Paley's premises; and, taking these on trust, I was charmed and
convinced by the long line of argumentation."

As most of the writers on natural theology were clergymen
who united thorough literary education with professional training
in the art of interesting untrained audiences, they made use of
simple, familiar illustrations ; and Paley, whose influence was great-
est, bases his argument upon such things as the fitness of the eye
for vision ; the adaptation of the joints of our limbs to the move-
ments which the limbs are fitted for making ; the fitness of feathers
for covering animals which fly; the advantage of symmetry in
paired organs, like limbs and eyes; the compact arrangement of
parts exhibited by the irregular viscera which are packed within
the body without disturbing its external symmetry; and similar
facts which may be easily verified by all : but early in our century
there was published in England a series of books which, approach-
ing natural science in the same way, appeal to more mature minds.
The Rev. Francis Henry, eighth Earl of Bridge water, who died
Feb. n, 1829, left by will to the Royal Society ^8000, to be paid
to the author or authors selected to write and publish a treatise
" On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God as manifested in
Creation." The president of the society selected eight persons,
each to undertake a branch of the subject and each to receive
;£iooo, together with any benefit which might accrue from the sale
of his work.

The aim of these treatises is sufficiently indicated by the general
title which was given to them in the will; but this is set forth,
more at length, in the one on " Geology and Mineralogy considered
with Reference to Natural Theology," by the Rev. William Buckland
(1836).

" Its purpose," he tells us, " is to extend into the organic remains
of a former world the same kind of investigation which Paley had
pursued with so much success, in his examination of the evidences
of design in the mechanical structure of the corporeal frame of
man, and of the inferior animals which are placed with him on
the present surface of the earth.

" Every comparative anatomist is familiar," he says, " with the
beautiful examples of mechanical contrivances and compensations

2$0 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

which adapt each existing species of herbivora and carnivora
to its own position, place, and state of life. Such contrivances
began not with living species ; the geologist demonstrates their
prior existence in the extinct forms of the same genera, which he
discovers beneath the surface of the earth, and he claims for the
author of these fossil forms under which the first types of such
mechanism were embodied, the same high attributes of Wisdom
and Goodness, the demonstration of which exalts and sanctifies the
labors of Science in her investigations of the living world.

"The myriads of petrified remains which are disclosed by the
researches of geology all tend to prove that our planet has been
occupied in times preceding the creation of the human race by
extinct species of animals and vegetables made up, like living
organic bodies, of clusters of contrivances." It is the description
of these " contrivances " which has given to this work and others
like it their educational influence.

While all the books of this sort take special creation for granted,
and are based, in one way or another, upon the assumption that
fitness involves and implies "contrivance," they did good service
to science by keeping clearly and distinctly before the minds of
English naturalists the fact that, whatever the reason may be,
adaptation or adjustment is the essential characteristic of living
beings; that Me is adjustment; and that what Aristotle sought to
define as the " essence " of a living being, is its fitness for its place
in nature.

As the facts of embryology and paleontology and geography
began to press for explanation, and it became more and more
obvious, during the first part of the nineteenth century, that species
must owe their origin to some influence which is part of the dis-
coverable order of nature, it is due to the writers on natural theology
that the English naturalists repudiated all inadequate attempts,
like that of Lamarck, and, maintaining a sturdy suspense, waited
for some more adequate explanation.

Huxley says that in conversation with Herbert Spencer in 1852
and the years following, he himself took the ground that no sug-
gestion respecting the causes of the transmutation assumed, which
had been made, was in any way adequate to explain the phenomena ;
and Darwin's "Letters" show that his point of view was at first

NATURAL SELECTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY 251

identical with that of Huxley, who says that the same influence
which led him to put as little faith in the current speculations on
this subject as in the venerable traditions recorded in the first
two chapters of Genesis, was perhaps by a curious irony of fate
more potent than any other in keeping alive a sort of pious con-
viction that the transmutation of species, after all, would turn out
true.

He says, too, that most of his contemporaries who thought
seriously about the matter were very much in his own state of
mind, inclined to say to both creationists and evolutionists, " A plague
on both your houses ! " and disposed to turn aside from an intermi-
nable and fruitless discussion to labor in the fertile fields of ascer-
tainable fact.

The publication of the work of Darwin and Wallace had, he
tells us, the effect of " a flash of light, which to a man who has
lost himself in a dark night, suddenly reveals a road which, whether
it takes him straight home or not, certainly goes his way."

"That which we were looking for and could not find, was a
hypothesis respecting the origin of known organic forms, which
assumed the operation of no causes but such as could be proved
to be actually at work."

The " Origin " provided us with the working hypothesis we
sought. . . . My reflection, when I first made myself master of
the central idea . . . was, How extremely stupid not to have
thought of that ! . . . the facts of variability, of the struggle
for existence,, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough;
but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the
species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace
dispelled the darkness, and the beacon-fire of the ' Origin ' guided
the benighted."

Clear and strong as was the light which fell on natural history
with the discovery of the full significance of the fierce and un-
ceasing struggle for existence which springs from the geometrical
multiplication of organisms, the " beacon-fire of the ' Origin ' '
shone with no less penetration on the basis of the argument of
Ray and Paley and the authors of the Bridgewater Treatises; for
it revealed the unbroken chain of natural causation which binds
up, with the adaptations which Paley makes use of, those that

252 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

are pointed out by Buckland, so that it is no longer possible to
regard them as independent and distinct contrivances.

Darwin says : " The old argument from design in nature, as
given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails
now that natural selection is discovered. We can no longer argue
that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must
have been made by an intelligent being. There seems to be no
more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action
of natural selection than in the course which the wind blows."

If the supposed analogy between human contrivances and the
works of nature be a mistake, Paley assuredly makes this mistake;
although this is not pointed out in any hostile spirit, but solely
for the purpose of showing those who are convinced, with Darwin,
of the failure of the "old argument from design as given by
Paley," that they may perhaps find a stronger argument; and
that there may be more wisdom in Huxley's assertion that it is
only " the commoner and coarser forms of teleology " that fail
when tested by natural selection.

It is obvious to all that with the discovery of the significance
of natural selection, the teleology which supposes that the eye, such
as we see it in man or one of the higher vertebrates, was made
with the precise structure which it exhibits, for the purpose of
enabling the animal which possesses it to see, has undoubtedly
received its death-blow ; although Huxley, while pointing this out,
reminds us that "nevertheless it is necessary to remember that
there is a wider teleology, which is not touched by .the doctrine
of Evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposi-
tion of Evolution."

Asa Gray, writing at the same or nearly the same time, soon
after the " Origin " was published, says he cannot perceive that Dar-
win brings in any new kind of difficulty, and he expresses his
conviction that they who think there is any incompatibility be-
tween belief in the mutability of species and belief in teleology
occupy a position which is not only untenable, but " highly unwise
and dangerous in the present state and present prospects of physi-
cal and physiological science." "We should," he says, "expect
the philosophical atheist to take this ground ; also, until better
informed, the unlearned and unphilosophical believer ; but we

NATURAL SELECTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY 253

should think the thoughtful theistic philosopher would take the
other side. Not to do so seems to concede that only supernatural
events can be shown to be designed, which no theist can admit —
seems also to misconceive the scope and meaning of all ordinary
arguments from design in nature."

Where can we find three more eminent naturalists, or three
men more thoughtful, or more distinguished, than Darwin, Huxley,
and Gray, for integrity of mind and for that sturdy conservatism
which is not incompatible with independence ?

What are we to infer if, after studying a subject they were all
so preeminently fitted for handling, a subject which falls within a
province to which all three had devoted their lives, they are led
to such contradictory conclusions that one asserts that the old
argument from design fails, now that natural selection is discov-
ered, while another is convinced that natural selection presents to
the believer in teleology no new difficulties, at the same time that
a third tells us that although natural selection has given a death-
blow to the commoner and coarser forms of teleology, there is a
wider teleology which it does not touch at all ?

Is it not clear that they have not all considered the same
question ? Must we not seek a meeting-point for Darwin and
Gray in Huxley's more profound conception of the matter? May
not the argument from design which Darwin had in mind be
identical with the commoner and coarser teleology of Huxley ?
And may not the wider teleology which, as Huxley tells us, is
untouched by natural selection, be that in which Gray finds no
new difficulties?

Before we try to find out what this wider teleology is, it may
be well to look more closely into the nature of the "death-blow"
which science has given to "the old argument for design as given
by Paley," and to this I shall devote this and the following
lecture; while I shall try to show, in the lecture on the Mechan-
ism of Nature, that zoology leaves ample room for a wider tele-
ology, which may be independent of research into the sciences.

This blow cannot have come from the mere extension, as such,
of the domain of natural causation ; for Paley was as familiar as
we with Newton's demonstration that all the hosts of heaven are
a vast mechanism, regulated according to the same laws as those

254 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

which are shown by a falling stone. When Paley's argument
seemed so conclusive to Darwin, he had studied Lyell ; nor did
he doubt at all that the history of the earth, as we find it
recorded in the rocks, is also part of the same orderly system of
nature, and the changes now going on upon its surface part of
the same orderly history. No one finds any death-blow to teleology
in our confidence that the future history of the earth, and of the
solar system, and of the stellar universe will be an orderly extension
of its past history ; and, far from asking whether this view of
astronomy is rational, the teleologist asserts that an impregnable
basis for his argument must be sought in the fact that it is
rational; for if instead of order we discovered only a chaotic or
unintelligible history, which afforded no ground for reasonable
expectation as to the future, it is hard to see where he could
find any basis for his argument, for this seems to be founded on
our confidence in the order of nature.

Paley himself points out that, far from weakening his argu-
ment, the appearance of new individual organisms, in the course
of nature, by birth, is its very strength ; and he argues that if
the finder of a watch should find that it possessed the property
of producing, in the course of its movements, other watches like
itself, and so on indefinitely, this discovery would increase his
admiration of the consummate skill of the contriver. "Though
it be no longer probable that the individual watch which our
observer had found was made immediately by the hand of an
artificer, yet doth not the alteration in any wise affect the inference
that an artificer hath been originally employed and concerned in
the production. The argument from design and contrivance
remains as it was. Marks of design and contrivance are no
more accounted for now than they were before. Our going back
ever so far brings us no nearer to the least degree of satisfaction
upon the subject."

This passage shows that no death-blow can have been given
to his argument by anything inherent in the demonstration of the
mutability of species, in itself ; and that the blow must have
fallen upon some preconception of the matter ; for if any find
evidence of contrivance in the anatomical structure and in the
functional activity of the human heart, for example, and in its

NATURAL SELECTION- AND NATURAL THEOLOGY 2$$

development, according to nature, from a germ-cell which was part
of the body of a preexisting organism, I do not see how they can
find anything but new reason for their opinion in the discovery
that men and dogs and elephants and whales have all inherited
their hearts from a common mammalian ancestor ; nor need the
proof furnished by the structure and development of the heart in
all air-breathing vertebrates, of still more remote descent from
ancestors that lived in the water and breathed by gills, fail to give
new strength to the opinion.

Huxley, in 1864, says: "If we apprehend the spirit of the
' Origin of Species ' rightly, nothing can be more opposed to tele-
ology as it is commonly understood than the Darwinian theory.
According to teleology, each organism is like a rifle bullet fired
straight at a mark; according to Darwin, organisms are like grape-
shot, of which one hits something and the rest fall wide.

"For the teleologist an organism exists because it was made
for the conditions in which it is found; for the Darwinian an
organism exists because, out of the many of its kind, it is the
only one which has been able to persist in the conditions in which
it is found. Teleology implies that the organs of every organism
are perfect and cannot be improved; the Darwinian theory simply
affirms that they work well enough to enable the organism to
hold its own against such competitors as it has met with, but
admits the possibility of indefinite improvement. But an example
may bring into clearer light the profound opposition between the
ordinary teleological and the Darwinian conception.

" Cats catch mice, small birds, and the like, very well. Tele-
ology tells us that they do so because they were constructed for
so doing, — that they are perfect mousing apparatuses, so perfect
and so delicately adjusted that no one of their organs could be
altered, without the change involving the alteration of all the rest.
Darwinism affirms, on the contrary, that there was no express con-
struction concerned in the matter; but that among the multitudi-
nous variations of the Feline stock, many of which died out for
want of power to resist opposing influences, some, the cats, were
better fitted to catch mice than others, whence they throve and
persisted, in proportion to the advantage over their fellows thus
offered to them.

256 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

"Far from imagining that cats exist in order to catch mice
well, Darwinism supposes that cats exist because they catch mice
well, — mousing being not the end but the condition of their
existence."

If this were all the difficulty natural selection puts in the way
of the argument from contrivance, I cannot believe Paley would
have found it serious; for it is obvious that "it is not necessary
that a machine be perfect in order to show with what design it
was made " ; and I imagine Paley's answer to Huxley would be
that, whether the cat exists for catching mice or because of catch-
ing mice, the adjustment between its mechanism and the life of
mice is as real as the adjustment between the movements of the
watch and the movements of the earth, and as useful to cats as
watches are to those who make and buy them ; although we must
not forget to consider cats from the standpoint of the mouse.

Darwin's objection to Paley's argument has recently been de-
veloped, at greater length, by Romanes, who holds that while the
origin of species by gradual development does not in itself affect
the argument from contrivance, it does so, when contrasted with
belief in special creation, because it reveals the possibility that
structures like the human eye may have been proximately due to
the operation of physical causes, whereas this possibility is ex-
cluded by the hypothesis of sudden or special creation.

If the eye, as we find it in man, owes its origin to the slow
and gradual centralization and specialization, by natural selection,
of a vague sensibility to light, which was originally diffused over
the whole surface of the body, it follows "that each step in the
prolonged and gradual development of the eye was brought about
by the elimination of all the less adapted structures in any given
generation, z>..the selection of all the better adapted to perpetuate
the improvement by heredity."

"Will the teleologist," asks Romanes, "maintain that this selec-
tive process is itself indicative of special design ? If so, it appears
to me," he says, "that he is logically bound to maintain that the
little veins of colored sand, and of fragments of shells which we
so often find on the seashore, separated out from the acres of
yellow sand and brought together by the selective action of grav-
ity, are all equally indicative of special design." "The general

NATURAL SELECTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY 257

laws relating to specific gravity are at least of as much importance
in the economy of nature as are the general laws relating to spe-
cific differentiation ; and in each illustration alike [that is, in the
eye and in the separation and segregation of the sands of the
sea-beach] we find the result of the operation of known physical
causes to be that of selection. If it should be argued in reply
that the selective action in the one case is obviously purposeless,
while in the other it is as obviously purposive, I answer that this
is a pure assumption. It is, perhaps, not too much to say that
every geological formation on the face of the globe is either wholly
or in part due to the selective influence of specific gravity, and
who can say that the construction of the earth's crust is a less
important matter in the general scheme of things (if there is such
a scheme) than is the evolution of the eye? Or who shall say
that because we see an apparently intentional adaptation of means
to ends as the result of selection in the case of the eye, there is
no such intention served by the result of selection in the case of
the seaweeds, stones, sand, mud ? For anything that we know
to the contrary, the supposed intelligence may take a greater
delight in the latter than in the former process."

While Romanes's reasoning is identical with that which I have
already quoted from Darwin, its failure to overthrow, or even
to fairly meet, Paley's argument is made all the more clear by
Romanes's more explicit statement of his difficulty; for Paley's
contention is not that the eye is designed in any way which may
not be equally true of nature as a whole, but that it gives peculiar
evidence of design.

However we may have come by our eyes, we prize sight as
a most useful and precious endowment, and we know that the
adjustment between the mechanism of the eye and- the data of
optics is so useful to all who see that they may at any time owe
to it their lives ; while we are unable to attach any meaning to an
assertion that the course which the wind blows is useful to the
wind, whatever may be the unknown significance of either eye
or wind in the economy of nature as a whole.

One may admit total ignorance of the significance, in the gen-
eral scheme of nature, of the skill of cats in catching mice; one
may fail to see how the way the grains of sand fall can be useful

258 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

or important to the sand ; and yet see clearly that skill in catching
mice is useful to cats, even if the mouse might also have some-
thing to say on the subject if he could be heard.

As I understand "the old argument from design as given by
Paley," it is as follows: —

(1) Nothing accounts for watches but mind.

(2) Nothing accounts for living things unless it accounts for
watches.

(3) Nothing but mind accounts for living things.

The resemblance between the watch and the eye is no less real
and no less obvious than it was before natural selection was dis-
covered ; and this discovery seems to me so far from destroying
Paley 's minor premise that it gives to human contrivances a sig-
nificance of which Paley never dreamed ; for it shows that the
basis for his argument, which he finds in the resemblance between
human contrivances and the attributes of living things, is impreg-
nable.

If it be true that natural selection has given a death-blow to
his argument, Darwin and Huxley and Romanes fail, in the pas-
sages I have quoted, to show either the nature of the blow or
how it hits the argument; for no one can see the whole meaning
of natural selection without seeing that we no longer have any
reason to think that the history of watches differs in any funda-
mental way from the history of spiders' webs, and birds' nests,
and eyes, and cats.

As the mind refuses to believe that the relation between cats
and mice is due to " chance," the difficulty pre-Darwinian thinkers
found in accounting for it, without attributing it to interference
with the course of nature, was inability to find, in our knowledge
of nature, any reason why the life of mice should ever be brought,
in course of nature, into that peculiar relation to the structure
of cats which we call physical causation.

Wallace and Darwin have shown that this causal relation
actually exists, and that the life of mice is an important element
in that objective or physical environment of cats which has deter-
mined all that is distinctive or characteristic in their structure by
extermination and survival. While it may be no explanation of

NATURAL SELECTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY 259

the properties which cats have in common with other living things,
and while it may leave the hardship which cats bring to mice as
much of a puzzle as ever, natural selection is a strictly scientific
explanation of the point in question : the specific adjustment of
cats to the life of mice ; for, when all the conditions of the prob-
lem are known, it shows that we have, through the discoveries of
Darwin and Wallace, the same rational confidence that the life of
mice will modify the structure of cats as we have for judicious
expectation that a current in the ocean will modify the course of
a ship ; although there is no reason to suppose, in either case, that
our confidence is more than reasonable and judicious; for we find
in nature no ultimate or final reason why the current should modify
the ship's course, or why the environment of cats should modify
their structure, except that the fact is so. Neither do we find in
nature any explanation of cats which seems to us perfectly satis-
factory to mice.

It is obvious, however, that in so far as natural selection
accounts for all that is distinctive or specific in the structure of
living things, it accounts, at the same time and to exactly the
same degree, for all that their structure does ; and that the web
the spider makes out of silk is no harder to understand than the
web the radiolarian makes out of protoplasm.

So far as Paley's reasoning concerns the zoologist, it is a trea-
tise on the minor premise of his argument; for no one in his day
seems to have thought that the major premise needs defence or
is open to attack, although the modern zoologist must ask whether
we are sure that nothing but mind accounts for watches. In
science we hold a thing accounted for when, certain conditions
being given, we have every reason to expect it; and Paley's
major premise — that nothing but mind accounts for watches — is
worthless, if the conditions which, being given, are good reasons
for expecting watches are physical.

If a watchmaker were to tell us he was so distracted by care
or grief that he did not know what he was about when he made
the watch, no one would think this incredible'; for we are familiar
with the unconscious performance of equally delicate and com-
plicated and definite series of bodily movements, as in piano
playing; nor would we see any reason to doubt the assertion of

260 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

the members of a church choir that they have been absorbed in
trivial gossip while producing solemn harmony.

We all know the feeling of surprise that the time has passed
and that so much has been done after an hour of absorbed study ;
and many profound thinkers on abstract subjects assure us that
their best efforts in reasoning are those which go on in ecstatic
unconsciousness of self or of the intellectual process. I imagine
many a thinker grows conscious of cold feet and an empty stomach
before he becomes aware what he has been about or how hard he
has worked.

It may be said that while the piano player, or even the watch-
maker, might carry on their acquired arts unconsciously, the
training which has set apart and bound together the series of
bodily movements was accompanied by conscious attention, but
there is no reason to suppose that the mere repetition of these
acts would not give the same result if it could be brought about in
unconsciousness ; for all teachers and all good students know that
the effort to attend is more difficult than the mere act of acquisition.
Training is most valuable and most rapid when attention comes
without conscious effort ; when the brain is a passive recipient.

No one except the Lamarckians supposes that training gives
the watchmaker any new muscles or nerves, or that it enables
him to execute any bodily movements which are not within the
reach of any other normal human being whose muscles are
equally plastic and delicate and definite in action. We have
already seen, page 60, that physical training is beneficial only so
far as structural adjustments for bringing about improvement by
use already exist, and that it corrects our actions by converting
confused and perplexed movements into exact and definite ones;
nor does there seem to be any good reason to believe that the
case is any different when mental nurture is in question, or to be-
lieve that mental powers which come with training are different
in kind from those that " come by nature."

" Newton said that he made his discoveries by intending his
mind on the subject'; no doubt, truly." " But to equal his suc-
cess," says Huxley, "one must have the mind which he intended.
Forty lesser men might have intended their minds till they
cracked, without any like result."

NATURAL SELECTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY 261

Fruits and vegetables must have good nurture to reach perfec-
tion, but the gardener knows his labor will be vain unless he
starts with seed which is adapted by nature for improvement by
judicious nurture ; and while it is hard for us to consider the
question whether the arts and accomplishments of normal men are
due to anything else than training and education, we feel no such
difficulty when the faculties of abnormal or exceptional individuals
are in question ; for the restriction of the powers of idiots is
clearly correlated with deficient structure, and training and educa-
tion are so obviously incompetent to account for the achievements
of men of genius that we are apt to believe that their natural or
innate powers are different in kind from anything in our own more
commonplace selves.

" The child who is impelled to draw as soon as it can hold a
pencil ; the Mozart who breaks out into music as early ; the boy
Bidder who worked out the most complicated sums without learn-
ing arithmetic; the boy Pascal who solved Euclid of his own con-
sciousness,— all these," says Huxley, "may be said to have been
impelled by instinct as much as the beaver or the bee. And the
man of genius is distinct from the man of mere cleverness, by
reason of the working in him of strong innate tendencies — which
cultivation may improve, but which it can no more create than
horticulture can make thistles bear figs. Art and industry may
get much music, of a sort, out of a penny whistle ; but when all is
done, it has no chance against an organ."

It is most important to bear in mind that while some animals
acquire only slowly, and after long training and practice, faculties
of which others are born fully possessed, there does not seem to
be any corresponding difference in the excellence or in the use-
fulness of these faculties, or in those coordinations among them
which fit their possessor for useful and beneficial response to the
order of nature in the outer world.

Many birds and some mammals have perfect use of their
senses, and have all their muscular movements perfectly coor-
dinated at birth ; while others — kittens, for example — are born
blind, all their movements are as vague and aimless as those of the
human infant, and even when they are half grown, each deter-
minate movement in their frolics is accompanied by many pur-

262 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

poseless and uncoordinated movements in all parts of the body ;
but it would be difficult to show that the vision of a dog, which
is slowly " acquired " during early puppyhood, or the coordina-
tions between it and the movements of the body, is any more
perfect, or any more useful as a means for adjusting action to
the external world, than that of the wild lamb which, in less
than five seconds after its birth, was seen by Hudson to run
freely at its mother's side, as she started off at a brisk trot after
the flock ; or the jacana which, as the egg which he held in his
hand parted, leaped from the cracked shell, and from his hand,
into the water, and " swimming rapidly to a small mound, and
escaping from the water, concealed itself in the grass, lying down
and perfectly motionless like a young plover."

Spalding tells us that when he placed a chick which had been
blindfolded at birth, on rough ground, in sight of a hen, " it started
off towards the hen, displaying as keen a perception of the qual-
ities of the outer world as it was ever likely to possess in after
life. It never required to knock its head against a stone to dis-
cover that there was no road that way. It leaped over the smaller
obstacles that lay in its path, and ran round the larger, reaching
the mother in as nearly a straight line as the nature of the ground
would permit. This, let it be remembered, was the first time it
had ever walked by sight."

The coordination between tactile and muscular impressions,
and those we get through the eyes, which enables us to walk with
sure feet, by sight, among the obstacles which beset our path
through the world, comes with training which is accompanied by
conscious judgment, but it would be difficult to show that human
sight is superior in any way to that of birds ; although the newly
hatched bird may coordinate its visual and tactile and muscular
impressions as it runs, and may be able, before its first sally into
the world is fairly begun, to maintain its balance on rough ground,
to leap over small obstacles, to go around larger ones, and to fitly
adjust its actions to the invisible properties which are associated,
in course of nature, with visible ones.

"A chick two days old," says Morgan, "had learned to pick
out pieces of yolk from others of white of egg. I cut little bits
of orange peel of about the same size as the pieces of yolk, and

263

one of them was soon seized, but at once relinquished, the chick
shaking his head. Seizing another, he held it for a moment in
his bill, but then dropped it and scratched at the base of his beak.
This was enough ; he could not again be induced to seize a piece
of orange peel. The obnoxious material was now removed, and
pieces of yolk of egg substituted, but they were left untouched,
being probably mistaken for orange peel. Subsequently, he looked
at the yolk with hesitation, but presently pecked doubtfully, not
seizing but merely touching, then he pecked again, seized, and
swallowed."

The words, as they are here quoted, describe the facts as if
they were known to be accompanied by consciousness, and to be
in all respects like human actions; and as words are adapted to
human needs, this is hard to avoid, although it is so obviously
impossible to say whether the chick is conscious or not, that Mor-
gan's assertion that his study of young chicks shows that they
soon learn what is good to eat and what is unpleasant, and rapidly
associate the appearance with the taste, would be more accurate
if he had confined himself to some such statement as that his
studies teach that they rapidly acquire power to respond to visual
stimuli by actions adjusted to those flavors which are associated,
in course of nature, with certain optical properties. While the
restriction of our descriptions of the actions of animals to words
which have no subjective implications would be intolerable to the
reader and well-nigh impossible to the writer, we must discriminate,
so far as possible, what we really learn by observation from what
we infer from the analogy of our own actions. The important
point is, that whether actions like those of the new-born lamb are
conscious or unconscious, they are not determined by conscious-
ness, but are the outcome of innate congenital structure ; although,
so far as their fitness for the needs of the animal goes, they are
in no way inferior to actions which we acquire only after long
training which is accompanied by consciousness and attention and
intellectual apprehension of the desired end.

If adaptations like the muscular coordinations of the new-
born lamb, which are manifested without previous experience of
their use, are as perfect and as useful as those which are slowly ac-
quired by long training accompanied by conscious effort and by

264 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

rational apprehension of the desired end, like the muscular coordi-
nations involved in making a watch, are we not forced to ask the
question whether we can be sure that the mental states which have
accompanied the watchmaker's training are anything more than
the occasion of this training, or the stimulus under which it exhibits
itself ? Is it any harder to believe an imperfect watch or a rough,
unfinished part of a watch might be made unconsciously than it is
to believe a finished watch might be made in the same way? If
a perfect art may be carried on unconsciously, when attention is
otherwise occupied, why might not each imperfect step in its grad-
ual acquisition be taken when all conscious knowledge of the pro-
cess is lost through absorption in the work? The question is not
whether men make watches voluntarily, for this all must admit,
even if we see reason to ask whether their unconscious produc-
tion is impossible.

Whether we can answer it or not, the progress of zoology has
forced us to ask anew the old question whether a watch may not
be part of the chain of physical causation just as truly as the
spider's web or the cat. Thoughtful men in times long past have
asked this question in one form or another without finding any
answer which could command general assent, and while we may be
no more able to solve it, it is plain that the discovery of natural
selection has put the matter in a new light.

If, fifty years ago, one had asserted that there can be no causal
relation between the mechanism of the watch and the movements
of the earth, except that which is found in the thinking minds of
those by whom watches are invented and made, I do not suppose
any one could then show the mistake in this assertion; but Dar-
win and Wallace have shown that such a relation actually exists,
in the external world, and as independent as the metal in the
watch of human thinkers. Watches help the watchmaker to hold
his own in the struggle for existence and to make and keep a
place in a crowded world for himself and for his family, pre-
cisely as the spider's web helps the spider. While the external
world of men is incomparably more vast and diversified than that
of cats, the adjustment of our actions to the flight of time is use-
ful and important to us just as adjustment to the life of mice is
useful and important to cats ; for the lives of thousands hang

NATURAL SELECTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY 26$

each day upon the accuracy of the ship's chronometer or on that
of the watch of the railway engineer.

The Duke of Argyll tells us ("Reign of Law" p. 35) the method
of creation by means of which the purpose of the serpent's poison
is carried into effect, is utterly unknown.

"Take one instance out of a million. The poison of a deadly
snake — let us for a moment consider what this is. It is a secre-
tion of definite chemical properties which have reference, not only
— not even mainly — to the organism of the animal in which it
is developed, but specially to the organism of another animal
which it is intended to destroy. Some naturalists have a vague
notion that, as regards merely mechanical weapons or organs of
attack, they may be developed by use, — that legs may become
longer by fast running, teeth sharper and longer by much biting.
Be it so ; this law of growth, if it exist, is but itself an instru-
ment whereby purpose is fulfilled. But how will this law of
growth adjust a poison in one animal with such subtle know-
ledge of the organization of another that the deadly virus shall in
a few minutes curdle the blood, benumb the limbs, and rush in
upon the citadel of life ? There is but one explanation, — a Mind
having minute and perfect knowledge of the organization of both,
has designed the one to be capable of inflicting death upon the
other. The mode of secretion by which this purpose is carried
into effect is utterly unknown."

Belief that this adjustment, and others like it, have been
produced by the inheritance of the effects of use, is, as the Duke
of Argyll points out, a notion too vague to have any value ; but since
natural selection is discovered, no one can assert that there is no
scientific explanation; for the snake which has power to destroy
its enemies has such an advantage in the struggle for existence
that its survival is no harder to understand than any other natural
phenomenon.

The question that faces the modern teleologist is not whether
the contrivances of man and the adjustments of living nature are
useful, for this all must admit ; but whether the snare of the
fowler gives any clearer or any different evidence of contriv-
ance than that given by the bird in whose sight it is spread in
vain.

266 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

If we give a negative answer to questions like this, it is clear
that belief that the works of nature prove design by their resem-
blance to human contrivances has indeed received its death-blow ;
not because Paley's analogy breaks down, but because it becomes
impregnable.

Natural selection forces us to reconsider the argument from
the analogy of human contrivances, not because it shows that
the eye and the cat and the hinge of the bivalve shell have
come about in order of nature; but because it gives to human
contrivances a significance of which Paley never dreamed, and
because it forces us to ask whether the hunter who contrives a
net furnishes any different basis for analogy with the works of
nature than the fish that contrives to get the bait without danger,
or the spider and the sundew which also spread their snares, or
the hydroid with its net of poisoned tentacles, or the radiolarian
with its web of protoplasm.

LECTURE XI

PALEY, AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CONTRIVANCE

LECTURE XI

PALEY, AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CONTRIVANCE

PALEY sometimes argues that it is because watches are made
by men that they prove design ; while in other places, he holds
that it because they are so put together as to point out the
hours of the day.

We must therefore ask what bearing natural selection has on
this statement of his argument : —

(1) Living things, and their works, such as watches, exhibit
peculiar evidence of usefulness.

(2) Evidence of usefulness is evidence of design.

(3) Living things and their works exhibit peculiar evidence of
design.

If it is true that watches come about in order of nature, and
are so joined, by natural causation, to the movements of the earth
that no one who knows all the data would have the least reason
to expect that men should not make and sell and buy and use
them, this may well raise a doubt whether the contrivance of
man is any interruption to the order of nature; but a moment's
thought shows that it by no means does away with the teleologi-
cal problem, or makes it any easier to solve ; for it is still as true
as ever it was that watches do not come about without human
makers, and that they are useful to mankind and help to preserve
the human species from destruction.

If the structure and orderly history of such things as eyes,
and cats, and spiders' webs, and watches were all we discover in
them, we might say these things are no harder to understand than
inorganic bodies and their movements ; for if living things are
continually bringing about rearrangements of inorganic matter
and physical energy, like watches, which never come about with-

269

2/0 THE FOUNDATION'S OF ZOOLOGY

out them, lifeless bodies continually do the same. The tide pro-
duces changes of matter and energy which would never have been
brought about in a tideless ocean, such as the gradual conversion
of the earth's motion of rotation into friction between sea and
land ; but no one finds, in the friction which has brought the
moon to rest upon its axis, anything that might not have been
expected. If living bodies did no more than to bring about things
which would never happen without them, no one could find in
this any essential difference between them and lifeless bodies ; but
we do find a most significant difference in the sort of things they
bring about, as Aristotle pointed out long ago. "To say what
are the ultimate substances out of which an animal is formed is
no more sufficient" now than it was two thousand years ago; for
the distinctive things that are brought about by living beings are
things that are useful to the beings which bring them about or
to their species; and usefulness implies the continued existence of
the user, as distinguished from the things that are used; for it
does not consist in the act of use, but in something that comes
after.

The words " survival of the fittest " are meaningless unless
the being that survives the selective process is identical with the
one that, remains fit after the selective process has acted; and
belief in the efficacy of natural selection involves belief in that
continuity of life which, in the form we know most intimately,
we call personal identity.

Just so far as natural selection tends to break down the dis-
tinction between the contrivances of man and the works of nature,
just so far does it show that the distinction between subject and
object ; the distinction which is the fundamental problem of all
systems of philosophy and the fundamental postulate of most sys-
tems of religion; the distinction between self and not-self; is co-
extensive with life. Since this is so, may we not still say with
Paley : " Marks of design are no more accounted for than they
were before. Our going back ever so far brings us no nearer to
the least degree of satisfaction upon the subject"?

As the human child seems, so far as we can ascertain, to gradually
discover its continued existence through consciousness and memory
of the past, we are apt to think that personal identity implies con-

PALEY, AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CONTRIVANCE 2/1

sciousness, and is equivalent to intellectual or rational sameness or
identity ; but a moment's thought will show that this is not the case,
for none of us have, or know whether we ever had, consciousness
of our early infancy, our birth, or our embryonic history, although
no naturalist can admit that there is any interruption in the con-
tinuity of our personal existence between the fertilized ovum and old
age, for while birth is a notable event in the history of man and of
most of the familiar animals, it is no necessary or universal stage
in the development of organisms in general.

Does any one who, while unconscious, has undergone a surgical
operation doubt whether he is personally identical with the uncon-
scious patient? May not one carry to the verge of the grave the
physical or mental or moral effects of an accident which occurred
before his earliest recollection ?

A moment's thought shows that we have the same sort of reason
for belief in the continued existence of every being whose acts are
useful to itself or to its species, as we have for belief in our own
persistent identity through much of our own history ; for, as Dr.
Butler pointed out long ago, " we should really think it self-evident
that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and, therefore,
cannot constitute, personal identity; any more than knowledge, in
any other case, can constitute truth, which it presupposes." "To
say that consciousness of our continued existence makes personal
identity, or is necessary to our being the same person, is to say," as
Butler shows, " that a person does not exist a single moment, or
do one action, but what he can remember; indeed, none but what he
reflects upon." "Present consciousness of past actions," says Butler
"is not necessary to our being the same person who performed those
actions," and he might have added that neither is past consciousness
necessary ; for it is not necessary that the acts of a being should be
rational to prove personal identity, but only that they should be such
that, if accompanied by mind, they would be rational. For all we
know to the contrary the human ovum may be conscious, and so
may the tree be, or, for that matter, the stone ; but we do know that,
whether living beings be conscious or not, they so respond to the
changes which go on in the outer world that our reason approves
their actions ; and it is their fitness itself, not their consciousness of
it, which proves their continued existence.

2/2 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

For all we know the properties of the stone may be useful to the
stone, and for all we know the stone may be conscious and rational,
but these words mean nothing to us ; although we can see clearly
that the distinctive properties of living things are useful to them or
to their species. If it is said that words which mean nothing are
nonsense, and that we are not to talk nonsense, we must answer that
no honest confession of ignorance can be nonsense, and that the bur-
den of proving he is not talking nonsense rests with him who asserts
that stones are not conscious.

So far as I am aware Butler is the only one of the older writers
on natural theology who perceived that the responsive actions of
living things prove that all living things have personal identity ;
and, whether he be the first or not, his reasoning seems conclusive,
although modern science cannot permit him to escape any of the
consequences of this admission by asserting that trees are not living
things.

" Consider," he says, " a living being now existing, and which
has existed for any time alive. This being must have done . . .
what it has done . . . formerly, as really as it does . . . what it
does . . . this instant. All these actions . . . are actions ... of
the same living being. And they are so prior to all consideration
of its remembering or forgetting ; since remembering and forgetting
can make no alteration in the truth of past matters of fact. And
suppose this being endowed with limited powers of knowledge and
memory, there is no more difficulty in conceiving it to have the
power of knowing itself to be the same living being which it was
some time ago, of remembering some of its actions, sufferings, and
enjoyments, and forgetting others, than in conceiving it to know
or remember or forget anything else." 1

If Butler is right, if consciousness of personal identity does
not make but presupposes personal identity, we may consider the
continued existence of living things quite apart from the question
whether they know their continued existence ; but personal iden-
tity is, so far, a phenomenon, a part of the order of objective
nature, which may be studied, like other natural phenomena, by

1 The reader who is familiar with Butler will note that the words I have omitted after
" done," and in other places are " suffered and enjoyed," for the argument does not seem to
demand any opinion as to the extent of the parallel between life and enjoyment and suffering.

PALEY, AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CONTRIVANCE 273

strictly scientific methods. It also seems clear that the signifi-
cance of the argument from contrivance or interference with the
order of physical nature, turns on the account which science gives
of this aspect of personal identity; for the discovery of natural
selection forbids us to assert, before this question is answered, that
the evidence of contrivance afforded by living things and their
works is different from that which is afforded by inorganic bodies
and their movements, inasmuch as it shows us the chain of physi-
cal causation which joins the works of man and of other living
beings to that part of the order of nature to which they are adjusted.

While I cannot agree with those enthusiastic zoologists who
hold that life has been proved to be a matter of physics and
chemistry, modern science seems, to me, to demand that we sus-
pend judgment upon this difficult question, and wait for more
evidence, for there seems to me to be no better basis for a negative
than for an affirmative answer.

If science furnishes proof that the continuity of life is not
only a natural phenomenon but a physical phenomenon, which
may be expressed in terms of physical matter and mechanical
energy, then, indeed, the argument from contrivance has received
its death-blow; for we can no longer find, in the actions of living
things, or in those of any living thing, evidence of interference
with the order of physical nature. If, however, the answer which
science gives is imperfect or indecisive, then I think we must
admit that, while weakened by the discovery of natural selection,
the argument from contrivance is not utterly destroyed. Finally, if
science fails to throw any light on the origin and meaning of per-
sonal identity, then the argument from contrivance has the same
value, whatever this may be, that it had before natural selection
was discovered.

Two hundred and fifty years ago no one thought of asking
whether living beings ever arise out of dead matter, for all believed
that they never arise in any other way ; and that this may be illus-
trated by observing how quickly dead things, like dung and rotten
meat and the carcasses of dead animals, breed maggots and flies
under the influence of the hot sun.

" The proposition that life may, and does, proceed from that
which has no life was held alike by the philosophers, the poets,

2/4 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

and the people of the most enlightened nations eighteen hundred
years ago; and it remained the accepted doctrine of learned and
unlearned Europe through the Middle Ages, and even to the
seventeenth century."

It is clear that natural selection would have given the death-
blow to the argument from contrivance if this opinion had been
well founded ; but it is equally well known that the progress of
science has shown the worthlessness of all the evidence for spon-
taneous generation.

In my opinion the second alternative is most consistent with
the present state of our knowledge; for while the discovery of
natural selection has shown how all the endless forms of life, with
all their admirable and wonderful adjustments to the diversity and
harmony of the external world, may have arisen from a common
starting-point in some primitive organism, so simple and so homo-
geneous that its production out of inorganic matter does not seem
improbable, the progress of our knowledge in other lines has
demonstrated that, as a matter of fact, all the living things we
know do arise from preexisting living things.

The demonstration of the continuity of life which we owe to
the embryologists and histologists of modern times, and to the
students of pathology and hygiene, is a contribution to philosophy
of the utmost value and significance. This law of continuity is a
discovery as real as the law of natural selection itself, for we now
have every reason to believe, not only that personal identity is
coextensive with life, but also that there is no break in its conti-
nuity at any point in the whole history of life. Every living thing
on earth, and, so far as we know, all that have ever lived, are
personally identical with the primeval living being, in exactly
the same sense as the mature, conscious, rational man is person-
ally identical with the human foetus and the new-born babe.

The history of the great modern discovery of the continuity
of life has been written by so many able students that there would
be no reason to review any part of it here if the share of that
great investigator and thinker, William Harvey, in the demonstra-
tion that the facts are, in this matter, opposed to venerable author-
ity, had not been so strangely misunderstood and misrepresented
as to call for correction.

PALEY, AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CONTRIVANCE 2?$

No less careful a writer than Huxley, himself an ardent
admirer and diligent student of Harvey, tells us (" Encyclopaedia
Britannica," article Evolution, p. 746) that " Harvey believed as
implicitly as Aristotle did in the equivocal generation of the
lower animals. Harvey shared the belief of Aristotle, whose writ-
ings he often quotes, and of whom he speaks as his precursor
and model, with the generous respect with which one genuine
worker should regard another — that such germs may arise by a
process of ' equivocal generation ' out of non-living matter " ; but
I am by no means confident that this assertion does justice to
Harvey, or that the quotations from Aristotle prove anything
except that Harvey was not fully prepared to demonstrate their
error. While Huxley ("Spontaneous Generation," 1870) tells us
he can find no justification for the notion that Harvey doubted
the occurrence of spontaneous generation, I find ample evidence
that he had made many experiments which led him to distrust
the opinion which prevailed in his day; although he may not
have felt fully armed to attack the teachings of " my leader, Aris-
totle, . . . one of nature's most diligent inquirers, . . . whose author-
ity has such weight with me that I never think of differing from him
inconsiderately."

It is true that he quotes without comment, and often without
credit, the very words in which Aristotle affirms spontaneous gen-
eration ; but, as an offset to this, he tells us explicitly (Exercise the
forty-first) that he shall show in another place "that many animals,
especially insects, arise and are propagated from elements and
seeds so small as to be invisible (like atoms flying in the air),
scattered and dispersed here and there by the winds ; and yet
these animals are supposed to have arisen spontaneously, or from
decomposition, because their ova are nowhere to be found."

He was far too courteous and too cautious to have ventured
to criticise "The Philosopher," to even this extent without scien-
tific evidence, and in Exercise the sixty-ninth he tells us why his
researches were never published.

"Let gentle minds forgive me," he asks, "if, recalling the
irreparable injuries I have suffered, I here give vent to a sigh.
This is the cause of my sorrow : whilst in attendance on his
majesty, the king, during our late trouble and more than civil

276 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

wars, not only by the permission but by the command of the
Parliament, certain rapacious hands stripped not only my house
of its furniture, but what is subject for far greater regret with
me, my enemies abstracted from my museum the fruits of many
years of toil.

" Whence it has come about that many observations, particularly
on the generation of insects, have perished, with detriment, I vent-
ure to think, to the republic of letters."

These extracts seem to prove that, while it is easy to find in
his writings many passages in which belief in spontaneous gen-
eration is asserted, usually in the words of Aristotle, the validity
of these beliefs is admitted out of courtesy to Aristotle and for
the sake of the argument, as a subject on which he is not yet
prepared to make his researches public.

If the reader who is interested will turn to the title-page of
the original edition of Harvey's Essay on Generation, he will note
that not only deer and human infants and serpents, but insects, as
well, are escaping from the bursting egg which Jove holds in his
hand.

As that practical old traveller, Herodotus, suggests that the
frogs and insects which are commonly supposed to be generated
out of the mud and slime of the Nile, may, perhaps, come from
eggs, Aristotle's readiness to believe in their spontaneous genera-
tion is hard to understand until we discover that the reason why
he saw nothing suspicious in the generation of animals from dead
and decomposing organic matter is to be found in his belief that
all generation takes place in the same way.

Every conception, according to Aristotle, is a case of sponta-
neous generation out of excrement, and he regards the generation
of insects out of putrescent slime as a simple example, what
we should now call a primitive type, of generation in general, by
comparison with which more complicated and obscure cases are
to be interpreted.

As a bloody substance is discharged at intervals from the
reproductive organs of the human female, he believed that the
mammalian embryo is generated out of this excrement, just as
other animals are generated out of decomposing matter of other
kinds. As heat causes milk to curdle, so he says the geniture of

PALEY, AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CONTRIVANCE

the male causes the purest part of the catamenia to set and form
a coagulum like curdled milk, and he believes that the embryo
arises from this coagulum by spontaneous generation.

One modification or another of this opinion continued to pre-
vail until Harvey's day, and it is plain that experiments on the
generation of insects was mere skirmishing on the outposts of the
problem until the belief in the generation of the higher animals
out of excrement had been corrected ; and Harvey wisely concen-
trated his attention on this citadel of the belief in the origin of
living things from dead matter. If a mass of excrement exists in
the uterus immediately after a fertile union, this ought to be dis-
coverable; and Harvey, a true scientific investigator, set to work
to hunt for it without a microscope, more than two hundred years
before the discovery of the human ovum by Von Baer.

His facilities for making the search, and its results, are best
described in his own words. He was the attending physician of
the king of England, and he tells us "it was customary with
his Serene Majesty, King Charles, after he had come to man's
estate, to take the diversion of hunting almost every week, both for
the sake of finding relaxation from graver cares and for his health ;
the chase was principally the buck and the doe, and no prince
in the world had greater herds of deer. This gave me an oppor-
tunity of dissecting these animals almost every day during the
whole season when they were rutting, taking the male, and falling
with young. I had occasion so often as I desired it to examine
and study all their parts, particularly those devoted to the offices
of generation."

His researches had a very definite result. Repeated dissections
performed in the course of the month of October, both before
the rutting season was over and after it had passed, never showed
a trace of coagulated blood or excrement of any sort. Neither
the bloody coagulum of Aristotle nor the geniture of the medical
men has any existence. The " conception " which should be discov-
erable, if their teachings are correct, cannot be found when search
is made for it, and actual observation shows that the opinion which
had been current for nearly two thousand years is erroneous and
fanciful.

The keepers and huntsmen said that " I was both deceiving

278 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

myself and had misled the king, and that there must of necessity
be something of the ' conception ' to be found in the uterus.
These men, however, when I got them to bring their own eyes
to the inquiry, gave up the point." Harvey tells us the king fully
appreciated the value of the investigation, and in order that this
important question might be the more satisfactorily settled in all
time to come, provided means for isolating the does and thus
proving that there was no error as to the fact of conception ;
but the physicians were still unconvinced, and " held it among
their impossibilities that any conception should ever be found
without the presence of excrement in one form or another." But
the man who had proved the error of their teachings regarding
the function of the heart and blood-vessels had little tolerance
for their belief in anything they were unable to demonstrate.

If they had insisted that Harvey's resources were inadequate,
and that the conception for which he sought is a living being
too minute to be found by such rough means, but, to use the word
he employs in another place, " like the youth who comes of age,
made independent even from its first appearance, as the acorn
taken from the oak, and the seeds of plants in general, are no
longer to be considered parts of the tree or herb that supported
them, but things made in their own right, and which already
enjoy life," we now know they would have been in the right. But
his proof of the non-existence in the uterus of the doe of the excre-
ment, of which they had taught that the conception consists, is
conclusive.

Harvey did not stop here, however; for he made careful obser-
vations on the fowl, the rabbit, the dog, and on many other animals,
and proved that none of them are generated out of excrement or
decomposing matter ; that there is no basis in nature for Aristotle's
opinion or that of the medical men of Harvey's day, and that all
their teachings break down when brought to the test of actual
observation.

It is no small thing to prove the error of the belief, which had
been current for nearly two thousand years, and is even now embod-
ied, through a quotation from St. Paul, in our burial service, that
all forms of reproduction are, at bottom, examples of spontaneous
generation out of dead putrescent matter. This Harvey accom-

PALEY, AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CONTRIVANCE 279

plished by methods which are rigorously scientific ; and no scien-
tific generalization, not even natural selection itself, has more
profound significance than the great natural law which modern stu-
dents have built upon his foundation ; for we now know that there
is no break in the continuity of life, and that every living thing
with which we are acquainted is in direct unbroken vital continu-
ity with the primeval living matter of pre-Cambrian times.

This being the case, is it not plain that, so far as the ques-
tion of origin is concerned, we know only a single example of
life ? Our knowledge is, in this respect, a single experience ; and it
affords no basis for comparison with any other aspect of nature,
or for scientific generalization, or for any other logical process,
either positive or negative.

So far as I can see, there is no reason why we should not say
now as Huxley said before natural selection was discovered : " It may
be that, by and by, philosophers will discover some higher laws of
which the facts of life are particular cases, — very possibly they
will find out some bond between physico-chemical phenomena on
the one hand and vital phenomena on the other. At present we
assuredly know of none ; and I think we shall exercise a wise
humility in confessing that, for us at least, . . . this distinction be-
tween living bodies and those which do not live is an ultimate fact."

If any choose to believe life is different from matter and
motion, I do not see how, in the present state of our knowledge,
they can be proved wrong; nor can we in justice charge them
with belief in the supernatural, for the assertion that belief in that
which is not physical is belief in the supernatural is not reasoning
until every natural phenomenon has been proved to be physical;
neither is there any more reason in the assertion that the inde-
structibility of energy disproves spontaneity even if some form of
dead matter should be proved to respond to the order of nature
to its own advantage, like living things.

On the other hand, it seems clear that we can give no reason
for disagreeing with those who believe life is a property of proto-
plasm except that this is not yet proved. Our inability to con-
ceive that a thought or a response can be a property of matter
is no reason why this may not be true. So far as I can discover,
the only reason why we are able to conceive that weight can be

280 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

a property of extended bodies is the fact that it is so ; and if we
had the same sort of evidence that life is a property of matter, I
do not see why this might not be equally conceivable.

I have no sympathy with those who base their philosophical
creed on their hope and their faith that we shall some day be able
to see our way from the physical and chemical properties of pro-
toplasm to the responsive actions of living things as clearly as
we predict the movements of a watch from the form of its parts,
nor have I any more sympathy with those who, on what seems
to me an equal lack of proof, live in the hope and in the faith
that this consummation is necessarily and forever beyond the reach
of science; for faith and hope are not knowledge, nor a creed
science.

" Those who take a monistic view of the physical world," says
Huxley, "may fairly hold abiogenesis as a pious opinion, sup-
ported by analogy and defended by ignorance. But, as matters
stand, it is equally justifiable to regard the physical world as a
sort of dual monarchy. The kingdoms of living matter and of
not-living matter are under one system of laws, and there is a
perfect freedom of exchange and transit from one to the other.
s But no claim to biological nationality is valid except birth."

The assertion that there can be but one order of things,
because it is so much neater than two, is, of course, unworthy
the name of argument.

The essential characteristic of life is fitness. A living organ-
ism is a being that uses the world around it for its own good.
I for one am unable to find, in inorganic matter, any germ of
this wonderful attribute. It is possible that after chemistry has
given us protoplasm this may be shaped by natural selection, or
some other purely physical influence, into persistent adjustment
to the shifting world around it, and that it may thus become
alive.

Everything is possible to them who know nothing; but why
should we believe anything on this matter until we have evidence ?

" Knowledge and truth may be in us without judgment, and
we may have judgment without them ; yea, the acknowledgment
of ignorance is one of the best and surest testimonies of judgment
that I can find."

PALEY, AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CONTRIVANCE 28 1

Of one thing we may be sure. The artificial production of
protoplasm would not be a solution of the problem of life; since
the nature of this problem must be grasped, in all its length
and breadth, with all its difficulties, before we can hope to solve
it; for the transformation of the truth that protoplasm is the
physical basis of life into a dogmatic assertion that life is the
sum of the physical properties of protoplasm is no solution.

Life cannot go on without food; and we may say that bread
is the staff of life; but the influence which shapes food into the
specific structure of an organism exquisitely adapted to the con-
ditions of the world around it is to be sought somewhere else
than in the properties of bread.

One of the distinctive characteristics of this organizing influ-
ence is that it may exist without any corresponding visible organi-
zation; for while the germ which is to become a man has an
organization of its own, we are most assuredly unable to find in
it any traces of the organization of a man. Another character-
istic is that, so far as we know, it has been handed down, in an
unbroken line of continuity, for many million years, from the
oldest living things, generation after generation, to the modern
forms of life, so that it has leavened the whole lump of living
matter.

While we know nothing of its origin, and while we must guard
ourselves from all unproved assumptions, there seem, from our
present standpoint, to be insuperable objections to the view that
this influence is either matter or energy. While we know it only
in union with protoplasm, it would seem that, if it is matter, it must
long ago have reached the minimum divisibile. If it is physical
energy, or wave motion, or perigenesis of plastidules, it is hard to
understand why it has not all been dissipated long ago, or how it
can multiply itself.

We know that it is, and this is in itself a fact of the utmost
moment, even if we are never to find out what it is. We are told
that belief that it has at some time arisen from the properties of
inorganic matter is a logical necessity, but the only logical necessity
is that where knowledge ends we should admit ignorance.

Honesty of purpose and expediency unite in the demand that
we build biology upon a foundation which can never be shaken;

282 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

and if our creed is a humble confession that while we do not know
whether life is independent of matter or not ; that while we do not
know what the relation between mind and matter is ; we should
like to find out ; we need fear no attack by anything in the universe
or outside it.

This being the case, the discovery of natural selection may
seem to some to have no bearing, either positively or negatively,
upon the argument from contrivance ; since the words " survival of
the fittest" are meaningless unless the being which remains fit after
the selective process has acted is the same as the one on which it
acted.

I am not able to share this opinion ; for while natural selection,
inasmuch as it presupposes personal identity, may be only an im-
perfect explanation of life, it still remains a strictly scientific ex-
planation of one great biological problem, the origin of species,
revealing to us the "physical causation" of the division of the
living world into more or less isolated species, characterized by
fitness for that part of the order of nature which makes up the
environment of each.

Aristotle believed that all living things, man included, are
generated out of dead matter ; and it seems clear that, before
natural selection was discovered, we should have been warranted
in demanding proof of Aristotle's view before admitting that living
beings are inorganic in origin ; but, nowadays, no one can logically
demand that some one shall make out of dead matter a living human
being, with a human mind, like the golden statues which Homer
attributes to the skill of Vulcan, before he will make this admission.

Whether the production of a living man by physico-chemical
methods be absolutely impossible or not, all admit that it is practi-
cally impossible ; although few will assert with the same confi-
dence that it is impossible to make in this way a being sufficiently
like some living things to create a reasonable expectation that
its history will be, in all essential particulars, like the history of
life as we actually know it. If any are bold enough to make this
assertion, their frame of mind seems to me to be highly injudicious
in the present condition and present prospects of science ; for
the progress of knowledge may at any time compel them to
abandon it.

PALEY, AND THE ARGUMENT FROM CONTRIVANCE 283

While I am unable to agree with Huxley that natural selection
has given the death-blow to the belief that the contrivances of
human artificers prove that nature is a contrivance and the work
of an artificer, it has, in my opinion, so greatly weakened the value
of the evidence for this belief that no one can safely hold that it
is conclusive.

Now, no one who is trained in the methods of science can find
in an inconclusive argument any legitimate basis for any other
state of mind than a suspension of judgment and a desire for
more evidence ; for all must hold it unwise and precarious to base
a positive opinion on absence of disproof.

The hardest of intellectual virtues is philosophic doubt, and
the mental vice to which we are most prone is our tendency to
believe that lack of evidence for an opinion is a reason for believing
something else. This tendency has value in practical matters which
call for action, but the man of science need neither starve nor
choose. Suspended judgment is the greatest triumph of intellectual
discipline, and while vacillation brands the man of affairs with
weakness, no opinion on philosophical matters has any value unless
it meets all possible contingencies.

I am neither a materialist nor a monist ; and yet I think it wise
to ask what would be the significance of the production of a living
being by physico-chemical methods; and this I shall try to do in
the next lecture ; for even if living beings and their ways and works
were shown to afford no peculiar evidence of purpose or intention,
this would not be proof that there is no such evidence in nature ;
for it may be that all nature, inorganic and organic alike, affords
equal evidence of purpose or intention.

LECTURE XII

THE MECHANISM OF NATURE

" Ideas which are observed to be connected together are vulgarly considered under the
relation of cause and effect, whereas, in strict and philosophic truth, they are only related as
the sign and the thing signified." — BERKELEY, "The Theory of Vision Vindicated and
Explained" (13).

LECTURE XII

THE MECHANISM OF NATURE

IN this lecture I shall review the evidence that has convinced
many thoughtful men that natural knowledge is no more than
knowledge of order. My reason for asking you to go with me
over ground which is already familiar is this : I wish you to ask
yourselves, as we make our review, if it is not obvious that the
discovery that nature is orderly can throw no light on the origin
of anything in nature. Order is not an explanation of anything;
but something that itself calls for explanation.

It must not be supposed that no " philosopher " has attempted
to account for order in nature; for many hold this a simple mat-
ter, easy to understand, although their reasoning may turn out,
when examined, to be no more than an assertion that nature is
orderly because there is order in nature.

Some tell us, for example, that the order we discover in nature
is a necessary result of the conservation of energy. Like causes
must be followed by like effects, they tell us, unless force has
in the meantime come into existence or gone out of existence;
and this cannot be the case if force is persistent. As proof that
force is persistent we are told that like effects do follow like
causes, or, in other words, that nature is orderly.

Some students of zoology go one step deeper into the heart
of the matter, and tell us that our minds are unable to conceive
the production or the destruction of energy, because the whole
history of life has been a history of response to causation, and
because all living things that did not thus respond have been
exterminated in the struggle for existence, and because, for this
reason, our confidence in the order of nature is no more than
our history would lead one to expect; although it seems plain

287

288 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

that our only reason for believing that the thing which we
expect will be the thing which comes about is our confidence that
nature is orderly ; and that this way of accounting for order in
nature brings us at last to the very point from which we set
out.

Of all the strange errors that vex the mind of man, one of
the strangest is the opinion that our faculties would lose their
reality and their value if the history of man were proved to be
orderly, and what might reasonably have been expected, for that
our history cannot have the slightest bearing on the reality of
anything in our nature seems so obvious that it is hard to see
why any one should question it.

If one knows that he is refreshed by food and drink, I fail to
see what bearing on this conviction any amount of anatomical
or physiological or historical acquaintance with his digestive
organs can have, even if it should enable him to deduce these
organs from physics and chemistry or to make others like them.

Scientific knowledge of digestion gives valuable information
as to the conditions under which food and drink are beneficial,
and it helps us to regulate our natural appetites and to avoid
errors and excesses; but no one ever dreams that this is evidence
that these appetites are not real.

You may perhaps find some reason to doubt whether you
see me in this room or hear this lecture ; for all I know, you may
find still more reason to doubt whether you profit by so doing;
but can you doubt that you see and hear, or that on the whole
you profit by seeing and hearing? Would you not be just as
sure even if you knew nothing of optics or acoustics or even of
eyes or ears ? For my own part I should be as sure I see
and hear, and see and hear to my advantage, as I am now, even
if my days were passed in a laboratory for the manufacture of
seeing and hearing beings. Since my reason began to make
itself known to me before I knew I had a brain, my conviction
that I am a rational being, like my conviction that it is good to
be a rational being, is independent of knowledge of the existence
of my brain. Since my power to draw inferences from the data
of sense and to profit by them is independent of acquaintance
with the mechanism of my brain, I fail to see why my reason

THE MECHANISM OF NATURE 289

should be any the less real or any the less valuable even if a skil-
ful physiologist should some time succeed in imitating all the
manifestations of rational life by playing on a human brain with
electrodes.

Knowledge of nature corrects our judgment by showing us
the conditions under which it is trustworthy, and by revealing
errors which rest upon imperfect experience ; but I cannot con-
ceive how any one should suppose that this fact has any bearing
upon the reality or the value of reason.

Centuries of discussion warn us that the establishment of
mechanical explanations of the phenomena of human life would,
in the opinion of many, destroy volition, and right and wrong,
and duty, and moral responsibility; and while I do not suppose
my own inability to see why any of these dreadful things should
happen will count for much, this inability is real.

So far as I can see, the reduction of all nature to mechanical
principles would mean nothing more than that all the phenomena
of nature are orderly and such as might have been expected;
and I am quite unable to discover what bearing the fact that
an event may be counted on with confidence has on the ques-
tion whether it is "necessary" or "spontaneous," for the dis-
covery that phenomena are orderly tells us nothing about their
origin.

I cannot see, for example, how the man who is unstable in
all his ways furnishes any better evidence of freedom than the
man who may be counted on with confidence; nor can I see
how the vagaries of a lunatic give better proof of moral accounta-
bility than the actions of the man who does what all his fellow-
men expect from him.

In a word, I do not see why the ultimate establishment of a
mechanical explanation of all the phenomena of nature should
destroy or set aside any one thing we know now.

"The notions of guilt and merit, justice and reward, are in
the minds of men antecedent to all metaphysical disquisitions ;
and according to these received notions, it is not doubted that
man is accountable."

Huxley, who like Sir Isaac Newton tells us that he lives in
the hope that all the phenomena of nature will be reduced to

290 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

mechanical principles, also tells us (" Physical Basis of Life," 1868),
that a wise man must be fully possessed of two beliefs : " The
first, that the order of nature is ascertainable by our faculties to
an extent which is practically unlimited; the second, that our
volition counts for something as a condition of the course of
events."

Again, twenty-five years later (1893), he says ("Evolution and
Ethics") that fragile reed as man may be, "there lies within
him a fund of energy, operating intelligently, and so far akin to
that which pervades the universe, that it is competent to influence
and modify the cosmic process."

While I see no reason why every living thing may not contain
some small part of this influence which counts for something as
a condition of the course of events, I am unable to see how or
where this assertion is irreconcilable with the admission that, for
all one knows to the contrary, all nature may ultimately prove
mechanical.

If I admit my accountability, if I have every reason to
believe, and no reason to doubt, that my volition will count, how
can proof that I do nothing which might not have been expected
show that my confidence is deceptive ?

" If it is foreseen that such an action shall be done, may it
not," asks Berkeley, " also be foreseen that it shall be an effect
of human choice and liberty ? To me, certain and necessary
seem very different; there being nothing in the former notion
that implies restraint, nor consequently which may not consist
with a man's being accountable for his actions. And though by
abstract reasoning you would puzzle me, and seem to prove the
contrary, this inward evidence of plain fact will bear me up
against all your reasonings, however subtle and refined."

Even if one doubt whether volition be a good thing, whether
ability to do wrong may not outweigh the ability to do right,
how does this disprove responsibility ? If what I will come about
as I expect, I am responsible; whether the "causa causarum," or
"I," or "physical causation," be the cause of the effect; or even
if I know nothing of absolute or efficient causation.

The answer I give to the question whether my volition be
within or without the chain of physical causation, has nothing to

THE MECHANISM OF NATURE 291

do with the reality of my freedom ; for one who knows nothing,
either positively or negatively, about absolute freedom may never-
theless be convinced that, as a practical matter, he is free and
responsible.

While we may from premises infer a conclusion, it will not fol-
low that we can argue reciprocally and from the conclusion infer
the premises.

Proof that my voluntary acts are arbitrary and not mechanical
might prove them free ; but it does not follow that my confidence
in my freedom proves that it is arbitrary and not mechanical; for
if mechanical means orderly, the only contrasted meaning I can find
for the word arbitrary is disorderly.

When we speak of the reduction of nature to mechanical princi-
ples, and when we compare the works of nature to a machine, what
do these words mean ?

Our notion of the human contrivances we call machines is clear
and definite. A clock is a machine, and so is a steam-engine. The
definition of machines in the " Encyclopaedia Britannica " tells us
they "produce some useful purpose," and use is the very essence
of an artificial machine; for mechanical toys are not made without
a purpose. In common speech a purposeless machine is, so far as
may be, a contradiction in terms; and they who find difficulty in
reconciling the mechanism of nature, or the mechanism of our
minds, with purpose or intention must have some other meaning in
mind. To put ourselves in their place, we must try to find out this
meaning if we can, for it may be that the assertion that our minds
are mechanical will prove to be only another way of saying that they
are useful.

Mechanics divide artificial implements into instruments, struct-
ures, and machines. Clocks and locomotives are machines; railroads
and bridges are structures; and the wrenches and files of the engi-
neer are instruments. While these three classes are not sharply
separated, I think they bring out the meaning we are seeking.
Machines, instruments, and structures are alike useful, but they
are not used in the same way. What the wrench and the bridge
were before they were used, that they remain while used and after
they have been used, and they are used only so long as they are

2Q2 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

actively employed by a user; but a clock wound up and started is
different from a clock run down, and so long as its pendulum swings
it counts the passing seconds and tells the flight of time whether we
use it or not. Once set agoing, it is independent of a user, and it
does its work "by itself" until it comes to rest; although its inde-
pendence of a user does not imply that it is useless, for so long as
it runs any one may use it who knows how. If it were kept wound
up by a wheel under a waterfall, it would be part of the mechanism
of nature; and, once started, it would, barring accidents, be inde-
pendent of human users. When the mechanism of nature is com-
pared to human machines, these often seem to be thought of in this
way, as contrasted with instruments and structures. Attention is
thus concentrated on their distinctive or specific characteristic, to
the temporary neglect of that usefulness which is the common or
generic characteristic of all artificial implements.

Water falls by gravitation and, winding up the weights, which
also fall by gravitation, keeps in motion the pendulum which, so
long as it moves, beats seconds by gravitation. As gravitation is
said to be mechanical and " universal," it has seemed to some that
the clock thus placed must go on recording the flight of time, since
it is part of the mechanism of nature, and is independent of human
support or intervention. In other words, the automatism of the
clock — that is, its independence of human users — is held to show
that it is self-sustaining; but they who infer from this analogy that
the mechanism of nature is self-sustaining, while they deny that the
analogy shows that this mechanism has a purpose, seem to me to
play fast and loose with the analogy, and to reason like the dema-
gogue who tells the workman cheap money will raise his wages, and
bring down the price of those products of labor for which he spends
his wages.

Must we not ask what we mean by the assertion that, once
started, the movement of the clock is automatic? What does the
word automatic mean in this connection? One thing it clearly
means: that the movement is independent of human users. It also
means that, the conditions being given, its movements may be
counted on with confidence. What else does it mean? Do we
find, in the clock or anywhere else, any ground for the belief that
its automatic movements, once started, are necessary or self-sustain-

THE MECHANISM OF NATURE t 293

ing? Or do we find any reason to think that its independence of
a user has any bearing on its usefulness to those who know how
to use it? As it is obvious that the clock will not go unless the
water continues to run down hill, the assertion that it is self-
sustaining clearly has no better basis than our confidence that water
which is free to run down hill will do so; but this basis is so firm
that I do not suppose any one looks for or holds that he has any
other.

Water runs down hill by gravitation ; and the predictions we
base on the stability of gravitation command our utmost confi-
dence. The nautical almanac, published several years in advance,
gives the predicted places of the sun, moon, and principal planets
from day to day, and in some cases, from hour to hour, through
the whole year. Unless gravitation is stable, these predictions are
worthless ; yet no one hesitates to trust his fortune and his life
and even the safety and honor of his country to the nautical
almanac. Even if this prove at fault, if, in any particular, obser-
vation fail to verify its predictions, no one ever dreams that its
principles are wrong. On the contrary, the astronomer himself,
after making sure that computers and printers and those who use
the predictions have made no mistake, uses this failure to correct
his estimates of the sizes and distances and velocities of the
heavenly bodies. Unknown planets and satellites, worlds which
no human eye had seen, have been deduced from the data of
astronomy with such exactness that the new world has been found
when the telescope has been turned to the designated spot.

When we reflect upon the meaning of our confidence in gravi-
tation, who can wonder if some think that the clock which is
found to fall into a place in the same system with the facts of
astronomy must go on of necessity, although no words can be more
emphatic than those in which the men of science repudiate this
belief ? Huxley, for example, " anathematizes " it in the following
words, to which all thoughtful men of science must subscribe : —

" What is the dire necessity and ' iron ' law under which men
groan ? Truly, most gratuitously invented bugbears. I suppose
that if there be an iron law, it is that of gravitation, and if there
be a physical necessity, it is that a stone, unsupported, must fall
to the ground. But what is all we really know about the latter

294 . THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

phenomenon ? Simply that in all human experience all stones
have fallen to the ground under these conditions, and that we
have not the smallest reason for believing that any stone so cir-
cumstanced will not fall to the ground, and that we have, on the
contrary, every reason to believe that it will so fall. It is very
convenient to indicate that all the conditions of belief have been
fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement that the unsup-
ported stone will fall to the ground a law of nature. But when,
as commonly happens, we change will into must, we introduce an
idea of necessity which most assuredly does not lie in the observed
facts, and has no warranty that I can discover elsewhere. For
my part I utterly repudiate and anathematize the intruder. Fact
I know; and Law I know; but what is this Necessity save an
empty shadow of my own mind's throwing ? " 1

"Attraction," says Berkeley, "cannot produce, and in that
sense account for the phenomena, being itself one of the phenom-
ena produced and to be accounted for."

If words like these mean anything, they mean that they who
think the movements of the mechanism of nature necessary utterly
misapprehend the value and significance of natural knowledge.
They mean that belief that the automatic clock is self-sustaining
and must go finds no support in the teachings of science; except
so far as it may be supported by something in our own nature.

If man were a pure intellect, the intensity of our confidence
in gravitation might be identical with its logical value ; but as a
man is a ponderable body and not a pure intellect, serious bodily
harm, or even death, may follow failure to respond to that part of
the order of nature which we formulate as the law of gravitation.

The actions of most terrestrial animals large enough to be
injured by a fall are so adjusted to this order that the practical
value of their responses does not bear any exact relation to their
opportunities for acquiring experience. When a mud-turtle or a
marine crab is put on a table, it may walk over the edge without
hesitation ; but a land-crab, on reaching the edge, hunts for a safe
place to climb down, and if forced to go over, clings to the table,
or else drops with caution after preparation. Nestling birds,

i "Physical Basis of Life," 1868.

THE MECHANISM OF NATURE 295

before they learn to fly, climb on to the edge of the nest, but they
seldom tumble; and they will cling to the ringer, when this is
inclined, in such a way as to keep their balance. They who
believe instinct is inherited knowledge may say the land-crab knows
the danger of a fall by instinct; and they may be disposed to
think that the intellectual value of our confidence in gravitation
is in part innate and independent of experience.

A single hard tumble may do more to convince a child that
unsupported bodies will fall than long impersonal experience; and
the intensity of any conviction which is consistent with our natu-
ral adjustments cannot be measured by the amount of experience,
although this is the only measure of its value as knowledge, for
we have no other way to learn when and how far an adjustment
is judicious, and when it is not, than through experience of the
order of nature. The question we now seek to answer is not
how strong our confidence in gravitation is, but what it is worth,
and we find that its value as knowledge may be measured, quan-
titatively as well as qualitatively, by human experience, and that
it has no inherent or a priori intellectual value; although the
practical value, in preserving life, of the responses of living things
to the stimulus of gravitation is often independent of experience;
and although we may, in these cases, be quite unable to tell
whether these responses are accompanied by mind or not.

Ignorance is not knowledge, as we use words ; and one school
of " philosophers " seems to me to have brought needless confu-
sion into the discussion of the nature and sources of human
knowledge by failure to distinguish the practical value to living
things of response to the order of nature from the logical value
of our own conscious intelligent confidence in the stability of this
order; for whether these things are fundamentally different or
not, they are practically different for us.

In another school of "philosophers," who teach that our minds
would lose their value unless we have a monopoly of reason,
equal confusion seems to me to follow failure to perceive that
every responsive action in nature may, for all we know to the
contrary, be accompanied by some small part of that which we
call mind.

If our scientific creed is a modest confession that while we

296 THE FOUNDATION'S OF ZOOLOGY

do not know what the relation between mind and matter is, we
should like to find out, the controversies between the realists and
the idealists and the monists and the evolutionists and the materi-
alists will concern us as little as a summer shower concerns a
duck.

Our knowledge of the stability of gravitation is accompanied
by an innate or natural tendency to respond to it as a stimulus,
— a tendency which we share with most terrestrial animals and
plants, — and all knowledge is no doubt accompanied by similar
emotional elements ; nor does it seem possible to discover any
sharp line between the responses which living things make by
nature and prior to experience and our own conscious, rational
adjustments ; although the response of a germinating seed to
gravitation and our own acquaintance with Newton's laws are
things so different that it would do violence to the usage of com-
mon speech to call them both knowledge.

If we analyze in the same way the scientific or objective value
of our confidence in the stability of the matter of the clock, of
the iron and the brass, and the wheels and bearings and pinions,
we find that this, like our confidence that its movements will be
orderly, is reasonable and judicious, but not necessary or absolute.

We are led back, step by step, to the law of the indestructi-
bility of matter, just as we are led, by the study of gravitation
and similar phenomena, to the law of the conservation of energy;
and finally we may perhaps be led to regard these laws as illus-
trations of a still more general mechanical principle, — the continu-
ity of motion ; but those men of science who see most reason to
believe that all the phenomena of nature are phenomena of motion,
reducible to mechanical principles, are the ones who are most
emphatic in their assertion that, while it is folly to dispute these
principles, they know no evidence that they are necessary or
absolute. Our confidence in them is reasonable and judicious ;
but we know no reason why they must hold good.

"All the phenomena in nature," says Berkeley, "are produced
by motion. Mechanical laws of nature or motion direct us how
to act, and teach us what to expect. Nor are we concerned at
all about the forces, neither can we know or measure them,

THE MECHANISM OF NATURE 297

otherwise than by their effects, that is to say, the motions ; which
motions, only, and not the forces, are indeed in the bodies.
Bodies are moved to and from each other, and this is performed
according to different laws. The natural or mechanical philoso-
pher endeavors to discover these laws by experiment and reason-
ing. But what is said of forces residing in bodies, whether
attracting or repelling, is to be regarded only as a mathematical
hypothesis, and not as anything really residing in nature." 1

Of Newton's laws, we are told in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica,"
article Mechanics, "These laws are to be considered "as deductions
from observation and experiment, and in no sense as having any
a priori foundation."

Jevons tells Us (" Principles of Science," p. 739): "I demur to
the assumption that there is any necessary truth even in such
fundamental laws of nature as the Indestructibility of Matter, the
Conservation of Energy, or the Laws of Motion. With the
statement of every law we ought properly to join an estimate of
the number of instances in which it has been observed to hold
good, and the probability \_i.e. the reasonableness of the expecta-
tion] thence calculated, that it will hold true in the next case.
No finite number of instances can warrant us in expecting with
certainty that the next event will be of like nature."

Many who admit that since our knowledge of matter and
motion is based on observation and experiment it has no more
value than experience gives, hold, nevertheless, that there are
certain necessary truths or axioms ; although the word axiom does
not by derivation mean a necessary truth, but one that is worthy
of confidence. So far as nature is believed to give evidence of a
necessary law of causation, this opinion may be properly consid-
ered here, and we must ask what we mean by the assertion that
this law is necessary. Philosophers may, if they see fit, define
cause as "that which produceth a thing and maketh it to be what
it is " ; but it is one thing to define a word, and quite another
to find in nature any corresponding reality. The discovery of a
definition of "Mermaid" in the dictionary is no evidence that mer-
maids exist in nature; although it may be evidence that they

K'Siris," 234.

298 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

exist, or have existed, in human minds ; nor is proof that a thing
exists in all human minds proof that it exists in nature outside
human minds.

The " law of causation " seems to consist of two elements.
Our whole history as living beings gives new strength continually
to our confidence that, when event A, which we call a cause,
exists, event B, which we call its effect, may be expected ; and
that in the absence of A, B will not be found. The belief also
prevails that B cannot occur without A, and that it must occur
with A.

It does not seem difficult to consider these elements separately;
and whatever may be our opinion of their separation in fact, the
analysis may help us to examine the subject.

Every rational action is based upon our confidence that each
event is, in course of nature, a sign of others that may be ex-
pected. This confidence gathers strength with every moment of
our lives, and is so ingrained in our language, that we speak of
the sign as if it were, in very truth, the thing signified. When
we hear a pattering sound on the roof, we do not restrict our-
selves to fact, and say we hear a sound. We say we hear it
rain. I have tried to show that life itself, not onlyj the conscious,
rational life of man and of the higher animals, but the life of
every animal and every plant, is response. A living being is a
being which when affected by A makes preparations to meet B.
The rhizopod which flows around and ingests small particles of
food, while it retracts its pseudopodia when violently jarred, re-
sponds to the law of causation as much as the sailor who corrects
his chronometer by observations on the satellites of Jupiter. Re-
sponse to this law is admitted to be entirely organic in the lower
living things, and to a great extent organic in all. As man has
by nature structural adjustments to many of these relations be-
tween phenomena, the law of causation seems, to this extent,
embodied in his organization as part of his nature, and we have
already seen that, while the value of our confidence in this order
is measured by our experience, its intensity is not. There is no
constant ratio between the intensity with which a burnt child
dreads the fire and the number of times it has been burned. In
this sense the law of causation seems to be necessary, inasmuch

THE MECHANISM OF NATURE 299

as we could not ignore it in our actions if we would without
suffering the consequences ; although belief in universal causation
does not seem to be necessary, for we find men who think they
are quite able to believe in luck or chance, as in the fall of dice,
and others who hold that our own rational actions are no part
of the order of nature.

It is clear, however, that, as living beings, we are compelled,
by our nature, to respond to the law of causation or take the
consequences, and that in this sense the law is necessary to man
as man just as food and drink are necessary; but as it by no
means follows that we are to have food and drink, or that a man
may not starve himself, so it may not follow that, because confidence
in causation is organic and natural, the external relations to which
we respond are fixed or necessary.

The responses to causation which are part of our nature as
living men are continually verified and amplified and perfected and
corrected by new experience with every hour of our existence,
until old age is inclined to suspect that experience has nothing
new to offer; but the support which individual experience gives
to this law is as nothing in comparison with that which we find
in the annals of scientific progress, — in the systematic observa-
tions and controlled experiments which make up that organized
and orderly summary of the experience of generation after gener-
ation which is now the common stock of all educated men.

" A single book tells us more than Methuselah could have
learned, had he spent every waking hour of his thousand years
in learning. When apparent disorders are found to be only the
recurrent pulses of a slow-working order, and the wonder of the
year becomes the commonplace of a century; when repeated and
minute examination never reveals a break in the chain of causes
and effects ; and the whole edifice of practical life is built on our
faith in its continuity, — the belief that the chain has never been
broken and will never be broken becomes one of the strongest
and most justifiable of human convictions." *

To admit that response to causation is part of our human
constitution is one thing, but it is quite another matter to assert
that we know why one event must, or even that it must, be

1 Huxley, "Hume," p. 153.

300 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

associated with another. This second element in the " law of
causation" would never have obtained a moment's credence if it
were not brought before our minds in intimate relation with the
great natural truth of the other element.

" There are," says Herschel, " truths so large, so general, so
all pervading, that they make a part of all our experience, mix
with our whole intellectual being, and imbue all our judgments,
erroneous as well as correct; in this sense, at least, that we
never err so far as to place ourselves in conscious opposition to
them.

" Distorted and perverted as such truths may be in their
enunciation, by their mixture with extraneous error, we find them
still outstanding, redeeming by their presence and ever conse-
crating that error." 1

Such a truth I take the law of causation to be.

All writers on the principles of science agree that man has
as yet discovered nothing except a little of the order of nature,
and that the reason why events occur in one order rather than
another, or even why they occur in any order, is a mystery to
which nature gives us no answer; for even if natural selection
should show that we should have been different if the selective
standard had been different, and that this order is no more than
might have been expected from our history, this is no reason
why the things we expect should be the things that come about.

We can say no more about the relation between events and
our expectations than that these things appear together, but that
nature does not tell us why. If this is true, is it not clear that
we are in no position to say of any event that it cannot come
about in the absence of any other event, although we may
have the utmost practical confidence that it will not come about?

We cannot well do without the word cause, and Mill has
called attention to the obvious fact that the scientific method of
investigating cause is independent of metaphysical analysis of what
cause means; although exact reasoning about nature is impossible
unless this distinction is sharply drawn. A recent writer on
logic tells us: "A very simple analysis of 'cause* is sufficient
for the purposes of scientific inquiry. What we call a cause is

1 Sir J. Herschel, " Essays," p. 270.

THE MECHANISM OF NATURE 301

not merely antecedent or prior in time to what we call its effect;
it is so related to the effect that if it or its equivalent event had
not happened, the effect would not have happened. Anything in
the absence of which a phenomenon would not have come to pass
is a cause in the ordinary sense."

No one can object to this analysis of the ordinary sense of
the word cause, if not only this word but all the words I have
put in italics are used in the ordinary sense; but when using
words in this sense, we say one event . would not have happened
in the absence of another, we mean only that belief that it might
so happen seems inconsistent with what we chance to know of
the past, and with those responses which we make in virtue of
our nature. There may be no practical difference between cer-
tainty and this expectation, if it is shared by all persons in whom
we have confidence, if every experiment which has tested it has
verified it, if it is associated in our minds with other events re-
garding which we have the same confidence, and if our organic
responses are so firmly adjusted to this association that we fail
to discover any way to change them without disaster. Thus put,
the analysis of the word cause is seen to have no bearing, either
positively or negatively, upon the existence of a necessary law
of causation; but it seems to me to be all science warrants, for
our ability to believe in the order of nature changes daily with
our knowledge and experience, and our organic responses change
slowly through selection.

Perception of the truth that our knowledge of the world around
us is knowledge of the order of events, and that we know no reason
why events should be orderly except that the fact is so, is, in effect,,
an admission that all our knowledge of nature is sensible know-
ledge. Whether they agree with Berkeley that objects of sense,
or, as he prefers to call them, ideas, are all that exist, most thought-
ful men of science agree that they are all we know the exist-
ence of.

" Ideas which are observed to be connected together are," as
Berkeley points out, " vulgarly considered under the relation of
cause and effect, whereas, in strict and philosophic truth, they are
only related as the sign and the thing signified" (13).

302 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

"It seems evident," says he, "that an idea can be only like
another idea, and that in our ideas, or immediate objects of sense,
there is nothing of Power, Causality, or Agency included" (12).
" How, then, can you tell," he asks, " whether such unknown cause
acts arbitrarily or necessarily ? I see the effects or appearances,
and I know that effects must have a cause, but I neither see nor
know that their connection with that cause is necessary. What-
ever this may be, I am sure I see no such necessary connec-
tion" (so).1

To return to our automatic clock. We do know, as a matter
of fact, that, once put in place and started, it may be expected to
keep on going, without farther attention, until in course of nature
something occurs to stop it. Some tell us, therefore, that while
the mechanism of nature may need a starter, it is self-sustaining
after it is once started. What meaning these reasoners attach to
the word self-sustaining, I am unable to conjecture, unless they
mean independent of human users ; but their logic seems to have
imposed upon no less shrewd a thinker than Bacon, who tells us
that "notwithstanding God hath rested and ceased from creating
since the first Sabbath, yet, nevertheless, he doth accomplish and
fulfil his divine will in all things, great and small, as fully and
exactly by Providence, as he would by miracle and new creation,
though his working be not immediate and direct, but by compass,
not violating nature, which is his own law upon the creature."

While Bacon took all knowledge for his patrimony, he failed
to enjoy his birthright, for he was quite unable to profit by his
acquaintance with true scientific men like Harvey, and when he
speaks of violating or not violating nature, he exhibits superficial
and erroneous notions of science, for nothing that is can be a vio-
lation of nature, since nature is neither more nor less than that
which is. If that is miraculous which is not accounted for by
natural law, all nature is miraculous; for natural laws tell us only
what is, not why it is.

Some modern students unquestionably think as Bacon does.
They have been told so often that the spread of mechanical con-
ceptions of nature must necessarily end by pushing the Creator out

1 Berkeley, " Theory of Vision Vindicated and Explained."

THE MECHANISM OF NATURE 303

of creation that they have come to believe this; although every
great teacher of the principles of science tells them their infe-
rence is worthless. We fail, on analysis, to discover any a priori
foundation for the law of conservation of energy, the law of the
indestructibility of matter, the law of the continuity of motion, the
law of natural causation, or any necessary or tmiversal law of
nature. If we pass by, for the present, what animal automatism
or human automatism would mean if it were established, all the
meaning we are able to find in the automatic clock, or in the
automatism of nature, for the meaning of the word automaton, as
distinguished from instruments and structures, is an orderly mecha-
nism which is worthy of confidence and independent of human
users, and useful to them who know how to use it.

Unless sane men doubt whether the mechanism of nature is
orderly and worthy of confidence and independent for the most
part of human users, and useful to them who know how to use
it, no philosopher has as yet found in physical science any basis
for a philosophy of nature which is not the common property of
all rational beings. I fail to see why any should dread the exten-
sion of mechanical conceptions of nature. If life is response to
the order of nature, he who dreads or fears natural knowledge
seems unworthy of the conscious life of manhood, and better fitted
for that of a turnip or a clam. These things have the benefit of
response to mechanical principles without seeming to know anything
about it ; and he whom these principles oppress like a nightmare might
be more at ease if he were a turnip. He might then have all
the benefit of mechanical principles without the horror of physical
science which seems as subjective as the horrors of delirium tremens.
The sufferer should have our pity, but I cannot put myself in
his place, for nothing seems clearer than that the natural common
sense of man would preserve him from all horror of mechanics
if he were left alone; that it would, on the contrary, assure him
that each new discovery in this field is added proof of his sanity
and of the value of his common sense.

If any believe they have evidence of a power outside nature,
to which both its origin and its maintenance from day to day are
due, physical science tells them nothing inconsistent with this be-
lief. If failure to find any sustaining virtue in matter and motion

304 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

is evidence of an external sustaining power, physical science affords
this evidence; but no one who admits this can hope to escape
calumny; although it seems clear that the man of science is right,
and that theologians must some time admit he is right, and thank
him for standing by the truth in evil report and in good report;
for refusing to admit that he knows the laws of physical nature
in any way except as observed order.

Stoutly and steadfastly has he refused to assert that he knows
any event must happen because some other event has happened.
He maintains that he knows nothing of causes as necessary ante-
cedents ; nothing of effects as necessary consequents. He has
never ceased from declaring his repudiation of Pindar's concep-
tion of natural law as the Ruler of the Mortals and the Immortals ;
or as the ruler of anything else, even the fall of a stone or a
sparrow to the ground.

With all the emphasis he can command does he affirm that
they who charge him with belief that nature is governed by fixed
or necessary mechanical principles are totally ignorant of the
methods and accomplishments of science.

If any still fail to understand him, the failure must be due to
the limitations of language, or to ignorance, or to natural incapacity ;
for he must bear in mind, with Aristotle, that reasoning does not
appeal to all, but only to those whose minds are prepared, as
ground is prepared for seed.

The belief that the establishment of scientific conceptions of
nature shows that, after the first creative act, the Creator has
remained subject, like a human legislator, to his own laws, is based
upon utter misapprehension of science, and upon absurd and irra-
tional notions of natural law.

All the student of physical science is able to discover in any
automaton, artificial or natural, as distinguished from instruments
and structures, is that its movements are orderly, and that confi-
dence in them is reasonable and judicious. This seems to be what
the word automaton means, and all it means; unless it means that
our confidence in the usefulness of automata, like our confidence,
in the usefulness of structures and instruments, is reasonable and
judicious.

This thesis is the subject of the next section.

THE MECHANISM OF NATURE 305

No one who does not answer in the negative the absurd ques-
tion whether life is worth living — a question which is answered
affirmatively by every act of scientific inquiry — can ask with any
serious doubt of the answer, whether the attributes of living things
are useful.

" The opinion which disdaineth our life is ridiculous : For in fine
it is our being. It is our all in all. It is against nature, we should
disprise, and carelessly set ourselves at naught: It is a particular
infirmitie, and which is not scene in any other creature, to hate
and disdaine himself." 1

In Romanes's words, " wherever we tap organic nature it seems
to flow with purpose." The whole history of zoology is a history
of the discovery of the adjustment of the acts of living things to
the order of nature.

The discovery of the chain of physical causation which joins
this order of nature to these adjustments, by means of natural
selection, tells us nothing except that these adjustments are no
more than might have been expected; and I cannot put myself
in the place of those who think this discovery shows that the fit-
ness of living beings is not real fitness.

He who admits that cats are part of nature, and that skill in
catching mice is important to the race of cats, must admit that
nature is, so far, useful to itself ; nor, while the standpoint of the
mouse must not be forgotten, do I see how proof that cats are
part of the order of physical nature would alter the case, for this
would only prove that physical nature is, so far, useful to itself.
Proof that cats are automatic and mechanical, from beginning to
end, would show that their whole history has been orderly and
what might have been expected, but it would not disprove any-
thing we now know about them, nor tell us whether their actions
are necessary or unnecessary, for the discovery that a natural
event may be counted on with confidence tells us nothing about
its origin and nothing about its existence except what we know
already.

When we say nature is orderly, we mean each event may be
a sign which leads us to expect other events with confidence.
When we say the attributes of living things are useful to them, we

1 Montaigne, " A Custom of the He of Cea."

306 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

mean that they are so constituted that the stimulus of one event
initiates changes which are so adjusted to other events as to lead
to survival in the struggle for existence. As this adjustment may
be perfected and improved without discoverable limit, and as all
natural knowledge may be put to use, has not our belief that nature
is useful the same basis as our confidence in the stability of nature ?

If man were a pure intellect, our conviction that nature is orderly
might mean no more than that events are signs with a significance ;
but since man is not only a rational being but a living thing, each
event is not only a sign which tells us what to expect, but a
warning to tell us what, on peril of consequences, we should
prepare for.

Our warrant for confidence in the stability of nature seems to
me to be the continuity of life ; and if we admit that life is worth
living, we must also admit that the evidence that the order of
nature is useful is identical with the evidence that there is order
in nature.

If the artificial production of living beings out of inorganic
matter should ever prove that their fitness is "deducible" from
the physical properties of living matter, this would not mean that
their fitness is imaginary, but only that the properties of certain
forms of matter are useful to these forms of matter.

Some tell us, however, that the passage from the properties of
matter to the phenomena of life is unthinkable; but they who
infer that this passage is therefore impossible, must remember that
the passage from the properties of the stone I hold in my hand
to the fall of the stone would be equally unthinkable if I had no
experience of gravitation, for I find in nature no reason why it
should fall except my confidence that it will ; and the only test of
the objective value of this confidence is that which experience
gives.

No great brilliancy or nimbleness of wit is called for to see that
the discovery that things do take place in order is no reason why
they should, or even why they should take place at all. They
who hold that, while mind is free, matter is bond, seem to mean
no more than that they know no reason why their mental events
must take place in order; but unless they can show some reason

THE MECHANISM OF NATURE 307

why material events must take place in order, I do not see what
reason they have for thinking matter is any more bond than mind.

Many authors have quoted with approval Tyndall's eloquent
statement of his conviction that the passage from motion to mind
is unthinkable, for his reasoning seems to be impregnable.

"The passage from the physics of the brain to the correspond-
ing facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite
thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simul-
taneously, we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently
any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a
process of reasoning, from one phenomenon to the other. They
appear together, but we do not know why. Were our minds and
senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable us
to see and feel the very molecules of the brain ; were we capable
of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electri-
cal discharges, if such there be ; and were we intimately acquainted
with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be
as far as ever from the solution of the problem : How are these
physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness ? The
chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain
intellectually impassable."

While this statement of the case seems to me to be impreg-
nable, it does not seem to have any relevancy or any particular
significance, unless Professor Tyndall or others can show that we
have some organ or some rudiment of an organ which gives us
some other reason why an unsupported stone should fall than
the fact that it does fall. I do not see what new light the expan-
sion and strengthening and illumination of our minds and senses
could be expected to throw on the matter; for the illumination of
the molecules of the brain or those of any other body, until they
appeared like cannon-balls rolling in a ten-acre lot, would not tell
why a collision between two of them should change the rate or
direction of their motion. We could only say, as we say now, that
our implicit confidence that they will conform to Newton's laws
is reasonable and judicious because in all human experience it has
never been disappointed. If Professor Tyndall should assert that
this implicit confidence is itself a passage from one physical phe-
nomenon to another, and that this passage is so far thinkable, a

308 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

little reflection will show that the passage from physical phenomena
to psychical events is thinkable in exactly the same way, since all
plain practical folks think it every day and every moment of their
lives. As we use words, a mountain is physical, and to see a moun-
tain is a state of mind. Is not our confidence that if Professor
Tyndall were where the Alps could be seen, he might see them if
he had his eyesight, as reasonable and as implicit as our confi-
dence that a collision between two molecules will change their
motion ? If we can be said to pass by a process of reasoning
from the motion of two molecules before impact to their motion
afterwards, we can be said to pass, in the same way, from a physi-
cal burn to a psychical pain ; for we have no reason to doubt
and every reason to expect that a burn will hurt. Tyndall's asser-
tion that the passage from the physics of the brain to the facts
of consciousness is unthinkable, that they appear together, but that
nature does not tell us why, might be a contribution to human
wisdom if we were able to discover in nature any reason why
physical phenomena themselves appear together except the fact
that they do.

" Modern science," says Huxley, with an insight more profound
than Tyndall's, "admits that there are two worlds to be considered,
the one physical and the other psychical, and that though there is
a most intimate relation and intercommunication between the two,
the bridge from one to the other has yet to be found ; that their
phenomena run, not in one series, but along parallel lines." 1

The reduction of the phenomena of life to those mechanical
principles which hold good in the inorganic world would unques-
tionably show that these two worlds are in fact different aspects
of one and the same world. If such a discovery should ever be
made, we might well hope for untold practical benefits to man-
kind, like those which have followed every great advance in know-
ledge, but I cannot see how it could possibly show that man is
anything else than man, or mind anything but mind ; for when
we say we are able to pass from one physical event to another
physical event, all we mean is that one of these events is the sign
which leads us to look for the other with confidence. We most

1 " Pseudo-Scientific Realism," p. 62.

THE MECHANISM OF NATURE 309

assuredly know no reason why they should stand in this relation,
and we can only say of them that they occur together, but that
nature does not tell us why.

They who assert that the production of living beings out of
inorganic matter would show that matter is the efficient cause of
mind, totally mistake the nature of scientific evidence ; for we may
say of physical events that while they run on lines that are so far
parallel that one may be the sign which leads us to expect others,
the bridge which joins them has never been found in nature.

As matters are at present we have the same sort of reason
for confidence that certain psychical events will follow certain
physical events and that certain physical events will follow cer-
tain psychical ones; that the sensation of vision will follow the
opening of our eyes, and that a quickened pulse will follow
anger; that we have for confidence in the physical order of
nature.

Even the fantastical desire to show we can do as we like by
some capricious action, is no more than a shrewd witness might
have expected; and psychical events are as orderly as physical
events. Surely no one supposes that while physical matters are
orderly, psychical matters are given over to chance.

" For what is meant by liberty, when applied to voluntary
actions ? We cannot surely mean that actions have so little con-
nection with motives, inclinations, and circumstances that one
doth not follow with a certain degree of uniformity from the
other, and that one affords no inference by which we can con-
clude the existence of the other. For these are plain and
acknowledged matters of fact." l

If any one assert that while he -acts from motives, like a
rational being, and in the way he might reasonably be expected
to act, he is nevertheless free to do as he likes, because there
is no necessary connection between his actions and his motives,
he must remember that, while no one disputes his freedom, we
know no necessary connection between physical phenomena, and
that, if the stone I drop from my hand were to assert that it is
free to do as it likes, I should have to admit that, for all I know
to the contrary, this assertion may be true ; for all I know of the

1 Hume, as quoted by Huxley.

310 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

matter is that all stones thus placed have done as I expected,
and that I have not the slightest reason to suppose that any
stone will act differently, or to believe that it either is or is not
free to do as it likes.

The reason why the animistic belief that everything is alive, which
once prevailed among all men, has passed out of the modern mind
is not that it has been proved untrue, but that we find no evidence
of its truth, and no value in its practical application.

I do find evidence that I am free, and while my reason has little
value in open market, its value to me is great.

Every one who is called upon to develop and perfect the
nature of a child takes its ability to do as it likes for granted,
and tries to find out why it likes to do what it does, and to sub-
stitute wise and prudent motives for superficial or pernicious
ones; and the method by which a crafty schemer manipulates
his fellow-men for his. own ends is essentially the same.

We know we are free to do as we like ; and we also know
there are reasons why we like to do as we do.

The reduction of all the phenomena of life to mechanical
principles would show that our likings and dislikings are what
they might have been expected to be.

It is hard to see why one who admits that the nature which
tells us some actions are pleasant and others painful, some wise
and others foolish, some right and others wrong, is natural,
should dread the prevalence of mechanical explanations of
human nature; for it seems clear that they would not alter or do
away with any one thing that we know now. No one who be-
lieves duty and moral responsibility are natural would find any
reason for changing his belief on proof that our nature is what
it might have been expected to be.

The opinion that there is any incompatibility between natural
law and liberty has arisen out of the belief that so far as nature
is reducible to laws it is necessary ; and the clear recognition of
the truth that a natural law is simply a generalized statement of
our confidence that nature is orderly, should show that this
opinion is idle ; for while the antithesis to necessary may be
arbitrary, the antithesis to order is disorder.

THE MECHANISM OF NATURE 311

In the famous argument by which Butler shows that the
assertion that nature is necessary is no answer to the question
whether it is intended, he supposes that a fatalist and one who
believes himself a free agent are disputing together.

The reasoning, while conclusive, is hard to follow ; but if we
substitute for fatalist, or one who believes whatever is is neces-
sary, the word naturalist, or one who believes whatever is is
orderly, and for the word necessary the word orderly, the argu-
ment becomes so simple that it seems like a parody.

" Suppose," he would say if this change were made, " that one
who was a naturalist and one who kept to his natural sense of
things, and believed himself a free agent, were disputing together,
and vindicating their respective opinions, and they should happen
to instance a house ; they would agree that it was built by an archi-
tect. Their difference concerning order and freedom would occa-
sion no difference of judgment concerning this ; but only concerning
another matter, — whether the architect built it as might have been
expected or not \_necessarily or freely, in the original.]

"When it is said by a naturalist that the whole constitution of
nature, the actions of men, everything, and every mode and circum-
stance of everything is orderly, and could not reasonably have been
expected to have been otherwise, it is to be observed that this
order doth not exclude deliberation, choice, preference, and acting
from certain principles, and to certain ends; because all this is a
matter of undoubted experience acknowledged by all, and what
every man may every moment be conscious of. Hence it follows
that order, alone and of itself, is in no sort an account of the con-
stitution of nature, and how things came to be and to continue as
they are ; but only an account of this circumstance relating to their
origin and continuance, that they could not reasonably have been
expected to have been otherwise than they are and have been. The
assertion that everything is in order of nature is not an answer to
the question whether the world came into being as it is by an
intelligent Agent forming it thus, or not; but to quite another
question, — whether it came into being as it is in that way and
manner which we call orderly, or in that way and manner which we
call . . . ?" In the original the last word is freely, as contrasted
with necessarily ; but while I have substituted orderly for necessarily,

312 THE FOUNDATION'S OF ZOOLOGY

the substitution of disorderly for freely would make the reasoning
so simple as to be almost ludicrous ; yet I am not able to find any
antithesis to order except disorder.

Nor can I discover what bearing proof that our actions are what
might have been expected of us has on the question whether we are
free to do as we choose, unless we choose to do and succeed in doing
utterly inconsequent and irrational things.

Since the discovery that the phenomena of nature do take place
in order does not show why they take place in order, or even
why they should take place at all, is it not plain that the discovery
of the order of nature has no bearing on the origin or on the
reality of anything in nature ?

Is it not equally clear that the reduction of all the phenomena
of nature, including those of life and mind, to mechanical princi-
ples, would not disprove the reality or the value of any one thing
we discover in our nature?

Many will, no doubt, receive with incredulity the assertion that
the ultimate establishment of mechanical conceptions of life has
no bearing, either positively or negatively, upon the validity of
such beliefs as the doctrine of immortality, for example. The
opinion that life may be deducible from the properties of protoplasm
has, by almost universal consent, been held to involve the admission
that the destruction of the living organism is, of necessity, the anni-
hilation of life. Yet it seems clear that this deduction is utterly
baseless and unscientific ; for if the views I have set forth in this
lecture — views held by many thoughtful men of science ; views in
no way original with me — are accepted, and if it be admitted that
we find in nature no reason why events should occur together except
the fact that they do, is it not clear that we can give no reason
why life and protoplasm should be associated except the fact that
they are ? And is it not equally clear that this is no reason why
they may not exist separately?

Berkeley tells us it is to all intents and purposes atheistical
"to make man a necessary agent"; but they who agree with
him that while ideas which are observed to be connected are,
vulgarly considered under the relation of cause and effect, they are,
in strict and philosophic truth, known to be related only as the

THE MECHANISM OF NATURE 313

sign and the thing signified, will fail to see how proof that man
is mechanical and automatic could show that he is a necessary
agent; for science knows no necessity except the logical necessity
for stopping where the evidence stops.

I fail to see why any one should find, in the extension of me-
chanical conceptions of nature, any evidence " that right deductions
from true principles should ever end in consequences which cannot
be maintained or made consistent."

So far as the word necessity means anything to us, as living
beings, it is synonymous with the blindness of ignorance. The
crab that finds and uses a house does nothing that might not
have been expected ; and since natural responses often mislead and
prove injurious or even destructive, actions that are due to nature
are commonly said to be blind or necessary; but our own con-
scious experience does not change our nature ; for it only " unravels
our prejudices and mistakes, untwisting the closest connections, dis-
tinguishing things that are different, instead of confused and per-
plexed, giving us distinct views, gradually correcting our judgment,
and reducing it to a philosophical exactness."

Since this is so, does not each new discovery in the province
of zoology give added meaning to the declaration that it is the
truth that shall make us free ?

LECTURE XIII

LOUIS AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY

"Those highly magnifie Him, whose judicious inquiry into His Acts, and deliberate
research into His Creatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admiration." — BROWNE,
" Religio Medici."

LECTURE XIII

LOUIS AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY

WHETHER the Origin of Species has or has not any bearing on
the argument from design, it clearly has very obvious and positive
bearing on certain arguments that have been thought to prove de-
sign ; although belief that nature gives evidence of intention may be
held by those who doubt whether it affords any proof of contriv-
ance — of any use of instruments — that is not itself a part of the
order of nature. While every phase of the teleological argument
which our faculties permit has, no doubt, been considered by shrewd
thinkers long ago, the work of Wallace and Darwin has brought
clearly and distinctly before all the question whether it is contrivance

— the use of means or instruments, and the overcoming of difficulties

— or nature itself, which the teleologists believe to prove design. So
far as the limitations of human speech are adequate to put it into
words, the peculiar teleological problem of the nineteenth century
seems to be whether we must prove contrivance, or interference with/
nature, in order to show intention ; for it is now clear to us, as it/
never has been before, that, even if it be not impossible, it is very
difficult to show the occurrence of any planning or contriving that
is not itself a part of the orderly course of nature, admitting of a
mechanical explanation; nor does it seem judicious or clear sighted
to base natttral theology upon anything else than nature.

These two elements, the argument from contrivance, and the
argument from intention, are sometimes distinguished by the writers
on natural theology, although none of them, so far as I can discover,
keeps the distinction clearly and constantly in mind. In fact, most
of them seem to me to so entangle these two points of view as to
show that they fail to attach any importance to the distinction
between them ; although two great thinkers, George Berkeley and

317

3 1 8 THE FOUNDATIONS ' OF ZOOLOGY

Louis Agassiz, base their reasoning upon nature itself, rather than
upon evidence of contrivance in nature.

Agassiz's Essay on Classification, the last of the notable works
on natural theology, was published in 1857, as part of his "Contribu-
tions to the Natural History of the United States."

The writer was a man of transcendent genius for scientific dis-
covery, with intense earnestness and enthusiasm for the pursuit of
truth, and rare eloquence and literary skill. If any man was devoted
to the cause of truth and determined to accept it whatever it might
prove to be, that man was Agassiz; for while his impulses were
notably devout and reverential, he proved, -on many occasions,
that he was fearless and independent in the search for truth. It
is no disparagement to Buckland, and Bell, and Chalmers, and the
other authors of the Bridgewater Treatises to assert that Agassiz
far surpassed them all in acquaintance with the methods which
lead to success in the interpretation of nature, and in ability to
treat the problems of natural theology from the standpoint of the
zoologist.

He handles the subject in a far more comprehensive way than
any of these writers, for he does not hesitate to assert that their
attempts to find evidence of design in the contrivances of living
bodies is unscientific and wrong in principle.

" The argument for the existence of an intelligent Creator," he
tells us, " is generally drawn from the adaptation of means to ends,
upon which the Bridgewater Treatises, for example, have been
based. But this does not appear to me to cover the whole ground,
for we can conceive that the natural action of objects upon each
other should result in a final fitness of the universe, and thus pro-
duce a harmonious whole ; nor does the argument derived from the
connection of organs and functions seem to me more satisfactory,
for beyond certain limits it is not even true."

He therefore attempts to put natural theology upon a much-
broader basis; for he finds reason to believe that the facts which
are studied by the naturalist — the phenomena of geological succes-
sion and geographical distribution, of embryology and anatomy, of
systematic botany and zoology ; in a word, all the data of the natural
sciences — are a language in which the Creator tells us the story
of creation for our delight and instruction, and advantage; and

LOUIS AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY 319

that when we use such phrases as the "language of nature,"
and the "interpretation of nature," our words are not figurative, but
literal.

It is not because we find contrivances in nature, but because
the order of nature is one consistent and harmonious whole, that
he holds it to be intended.

" In their respective great types, the phenomena of animal life
correspond to one another, whether we compare their rank as de-
termined by structural complication with the phases of their growth,
or with their succession in past geological ages ; whether we com-
pare this succession with their embryonic growth, or all these
different relations with each other and with the geographical dis-
tribution of animals upon earth. The same series everywhere !
The connection, however, between the facts, it is easily seen, is
only intellectual, and implies, therefore, the agency of Intellect as
its first cause."

He holds that this truth is most clearly shown by those system-
atic affinities which make out of the individual animals and plants
a consistent and harmonious whole, a realm of nature; and he
calls his work an Essay on Classification.

"The division of animals according to branch, class, order,
family, genius, and species, by which we express the results of
our investigation into the relations of the animal kingdom, and
which constitute the first question respecting the systems of Natural
History which we have to consider, seems to me to deserve the
consideration of all thoughtful minds. Are these divisions artificial
or natural? Are they the devices of the human mind to classify
and arrange our knowledge in such a manner as to bring it more
readily within our grasp and facilitate further investigation, or
have they been instituted by the Divine Intelligence as categories
of his mode of thinking? Have we perhaps thus far been only
the unconscious interpreters of a Divine conception, in our attempts
to expound nature? and when, in our pride of philosophy, we
thought we were inventing systems of science, and classifying
creation by the force of our own reason, have we followed only,
and reproduced, in our imperfect expressions, the plan whose
foundations in the dawn of creation, and the development of which,
we are laboriously studying, — thinking as we arrange our frag-

320 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

rnentary knowledge, that we are anew introducing order into
chaos ? Is this order the result of the exertion of human skill
and ingenuity, or is it inherent in the objects themselves, so that
the intelligent student of Natural History is led unconsciously,
by the study of the animal kingdom itself, to those conclusions,
the great divisions under which he arranges animals being indeed
but the headings to the chapters of the great book which he is
reading ? "

There may still be, here and there, a writer on " logic " who
holds that since zoology is a " classificatory " science, the work of
the naturalist is like that of one who arranges and tickets books
in a library for ease of reference ; but the modern student of science
reads such assertions with a sad smile that one should be so igno-
rant; for he is as fully convinced as Agassiz that the realm of
living nature is a consistent and harmonious whole, and that the
work of the naturalist is to discover and not to create ; for he bases
all his work upon the conviction that " animals are linked together
as closely by their mode of development, by their relative standing
in their respective classes, by the order in which they have made
their appearance upon earth, by their geographical distribution,
and generally by their connection with the world in which they
live, as by their anatomy."

Since all now admit the validity of this basis for the argument
of Agassiz, why has the work of this man of great genius been
without perceptible influence on modern thought; while the work
of much less able men, like Paley, was for many years an im-
portant educational influence ?

Why do not modern naturalists agree with Agassiz, that " all
organized beings exhibit in themselves all these categories of
structure and of existence upon which a natural system is founded,
in such a manner that, in tracing it, the human mind is only trans-
lating into human language the Divine thoughts expressed in
nature in living realities " ?

Agassiz holds that " in one word, all these facts in their natural
connection proclaim aloud the One God, whom man may know,
adore, and love ; and Natural History must, in good time, become
the analysis of the thoughts of the Creator of the Universe, as
manifested in the animal and vegetable kingdoms."

LOUIS AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY $21

The modern naturalist knows that while the best powers of
the best minds may find endless pleasure and profitable employ-
ment in the study of those relations which bind the living world
together into one coherent whole, these relations include far more
than man can ever hope to master ; more in delicacy and perfec-
tion than his microscope can ever reveal; more in intricacy and
complexity than his senses can follow; more in extent of space
and time than the utmost range of his powers ; far more of the
network of physical causation than his intellect can grasp.

If he also knows that his work is beneficial to himself and to
all mankind; that his place among men is one of usefulness; that
the study of living things and their ways and works is good and
pleasant and instructive, — why does he hesitate to believe, with
Agassiz, that all this is intended, and that it proves that nature
is a language ?

" If the power of thinking connectedly is the privilege of
cultivated minds only ; if the power of combining different thoughts,
and of drawing from them new thoughts, is a still rarer privilege
of a few superior minds ; if the ability to trace simultaneously
several trains of thought is such an extraordinary gift, that the
few cases in which evidence of this kind has been presented have
become a matter of historical record (Caesar dictating several let-
ters at the same time) ; if- all this is only possible to the highest
intellectual powers, — shall we by any false argumentation allow our-
selves to deny the intervention of a supreme intellect in calling
into existence combinations in nature by the side of which all
human conceptions are child's play ? "

It is a well-known fact that modern naturalists have refused
to admit the cogency of Agassiz's reasoning, and all must feel
an interest in the reason why; for it may be that this is due to
some error in the method by which Agassiz undertook to prove
his thesis, rather than to any weakness in the thesis itself.

In order to prove that natural history is a language which we
learn and listen to, to our entertainment and profit and instruction,
he holds it essential to prove that it is nothing but a language;
that the relations between living things and the world about them,
being ideal relations, cannot possibly be physical ones also ; that
our " laws of biology " are not " necessary " but " arbitrary."

322 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

The whole aim and purpose of the Essay on Classification is
to prove that all the general laws of natural science are "cate-
gories of thought," by an attempt to show that they are nothing
but categories of thought, and that no physical explanation of
them is possible.

In 1859, or less than two years after the publication of the
Essay on Classification, the appearance of the "Origin of Species"
brought about a revolution in our conceptions of natural history,
for it made clear the mechanical explanation of some of the
general laws of which Agassiz had told us no such explanation
is possible. It is because the work of Wallace and Darwin has
convinced naturalists that species have arisen, in course of nature,
through influences that are still at work, that many modern stu-
dents have refused to follow Agassiz in the assertion that the
laws of their science are "arbitrary," for they hold that these
laws are neither arbitrary nor necessary, but natural.

As Agassiz used, as the basis of his thesis that nature is a
language, the assertion that the laws of living nature are not
mechanical, many of the working naturalists of our day, know-
ing, in part at least, the physical explanation of these laws, have
refused to share his conviction that nature is a language; for it
is the fate of beliefs which are upheld by fallacious reasoning to
suffer from the mistakes of their supporters. It is clear, how-
ever, that error on the part of the advocate of an opinion is no
proof of error in the opinion itself. The intuitions which told
Agassiz that nature is a language, which we learn to our delight
and profit and instruction, may have been sound and trustworthy
and fruitful in results, even if the reasons he gives for this con-
viction are at fault.

An illustration may make this clear. As the same thought
may be expressed in various ways in different languages, and
as even in the same language the same sounds or letters may
have many meanings, it is clear that there is no "necessary"
connection between words and the things they signify ; for we
might call black white, and white black, without confusion, if all
who use our language were agreed upon the meaning of these
words. As the relation between words and the things they signify
is not "necessary," it has seemed to some that it is " arbitrary ";

LOUIS AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY 323

but one of the results of the publication of the " Origin of Species "
has been to awaken new interest in the science of philology, and
to promote the progress of this science. We now know that,
far from being arbitrary, words and phrases and grammatical
forms contain in themselves a record of their history; a record
which often shows how they have come to be used as they are.
Nothing compels me to use one word rather than another, or
even to write at all ; yet it has been found, by statistical methods,
that choice of words by an author is as mechanical and orderly
as the chest measurements on page 157; for it is found that if
the proportion in which common words are used be computed
from a hundred pages of an author, this same proportion will be
closely adhered to in all his works. His use of words is not
necessary, for he is free to write and to speak as he chooses, and
may justly, as well as legally, be held responsible for his words ;
but his choice conforms to a statistical type, and is as mechanical
as the sizes and velocities of the planets in their orbits. I make
my sentences long and complicated, or short and simple, as I
think best for the reader, for no particular length is necessary ;
yet a tabulation will show that, while some are short and some
long, there is, for each writer, a mean or average sentence-length,
and that sentences which exceed this length in any specified
degree are exactly equal in frequency to those which fall short
of the average in the same degree.

Does any one think for an instant that language is any the
less valuable now than it was before this discovery was made ?
No one ever dreams that the conversation of the wise is any less
entertaining, or less instructive, or less profitable now than it was
before men studied philology.

As I understand Agassiz, it is not because natural history is
a language, that he holds it to be intended; but because it is
delightful to listen to the language of nature, and because it
abounds in beneficial instruction for mankind.

Is it not because this is true that the man of science holds his
pursuit to be both the first and highest of duties and the greatest
of all pleasures ?

"And if," says Agassiz, "this is indeed so, do we not find in this
adaptability of the human intellect to the facts of creation, by

324 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

which we become instinctively, and, as I have said, unconsciously,
the translators of the thoughts of God, the most conclusive proof
of our affinity with the Divine Mind ? and is not this intellectual
and spiritual connection with the Almighty worthy our deepest
consideration ?

"If there is any truth in the belief that man is made in the
image of God, it is surely not amiss for the philosopher to en-
deavor, by the study of his own mental operations, to approximate
the workings of the Divine Reason, learning, from the nature of
his own mind, better to understand the Infinite Intellect from
which it is derived. Such a suggestion may, at first sight, appear
irreverent. But, which is the truly humble ? He who, penetrating
into the secrets of creation, arranges them under a formula which
he proudly calls his scientific system ? or he who, in the same
pursuit, recognizes his glorious affinity with the Creator, and, in
deepest gratitude for so sublime a birthright, strives to be the
faithful interpreter of that Divine Intellect with whom he is per-
mitted, nay, with whom he is intended, according to the laws of
his being, to enter into communion ? "

I find no reference to Berkeley in the Essay on Classification,
although the Swiss naturalist would have found much to interest
him in the works of the Irish bishop; for they have much in
common, and the study of Berkeley might have taught Agassiz
that there is no necessary antagonism between mechanical concep-
tions of nature and belief that nature is intended; for Berkeley holds
that "all the phenomena in nature are produced by motion."

While something like that of Agassiz, Berkeley's reasoning com-
pares with it much as Agassiz's reasoning itself compares with
that of Paley and the authors of Bridgewater Treatises.

Berkeley neither reasons like Paley from the contrivances in
living beings, nor like Agassiz from the relations of living things to
each other and to the world about them, but from nature in itself,
telling us that " setting aside all help of astronomy and natural
phylosophy, all contemplation of the contrivance, order, and adjust-
ment of things," there is a teleological argument which is "inde-
pendent of research into the sciences."

Even Berkeley himself is hot always consistent, however; for

LOUIS AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY 325

after giving, in the second dialogue between Hylas and Philonous,
his reasons for believing that " the Supreme, unlimited Agent useth
no tool or instrument at all," and after pointing out that we
cannot " suppose that an all-perfect Spirit should need an instru- *
ment, or, not needing it, make use of it," he tells us in " Siris,"
(151-161) that "the mind presiding in the world" does use instru-
ments, and that the fitness of nature for the needs of man is
evidence of contrivance, or the use of means for the attainment
of ends ; for he holds that the mechanism of nature is " necessary
to assist the governed " ; and he tells us it is maintained in order
that intelligent beings may exist, although one must ask whether
proof that nature is useful is proof that it is necessary.

"Without a regular course," says Berkeley, "nature could never
be understood; mankind must be always at a loss, not knowing
what to expect, or how to govern themselves, or direct their actions
for the obtaining of any end." As a matter of fact, we do have
practical confidence in the stability of the order of nature, and
we do not find ourselves at a loss except through ignorance, al-
though we do not know whether we shall be alive an hour hence.
We know what we expect, although nothing is more certain than
that we never know whether what we expect will happen. We
do govern ourselves, and we have, in the past, been able to direct
our actions for the attainment of ends, so that on the whole our
ends have been attained when we have made no mistakes ; for
whether the mechanism of nature is necessary or not, our confi-
dence in its stability has not, so far, disappointed any expectations
that were reasonable and well founded.

It is not even necessary that we should know the value of re-
sponse to the order of nature in order to bring about beneficial
ends, for many of our most important responses take place in
unconsciousness. The value of our circulation did not begin with
Harvey; nor need one know anything about the chemistry of
respiration or nutrition in order to profit by it.

"Unconscious activity," says Holmes, "is the rule with the
actions most important to life. The lout who lies stretched on
the tavern-bench, with just mental activity enough to keep his
pipe from going out, is the unconscious tenant of a laboratory
where such combinations are constantly being made as never Wohler

326 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

or Berthelot could put together ; where such fabrics are woven,
such colors dyed, such a commerce carried on with the elements
and forces of the outer universe, that the industries of all the fac-
tories and trading establishments in the world are mere indolence
and awkwardness and unproductiveness compared with the mi-
raculous activities of which his lazy bulk is the unheeding centre."

" We wish to remember something in the course of conversation.
No effort of the will can reach it ; but we say, ' Wait a little, and
it will come to me,' and go on talking. Presently, perhaps some
minutes later, the idea we are in search of comes all at once into
the mind, delivered like a prepaid bundle, laid at the door of con-
sciousness like a foundling in a basket."

" There are thoughts that never emerge into consciousness which
yet make their influence felt among the perceptible mental cur-
rents, just as the unseen planets sway the movements of those
which are watched and mapped by the astronomers. Old prej-
udices, that are ashamed to confess themselves, nudge our talking
thoughts to utter their magisterial veto. The more we examine
the mechanism of thought, the more we shall see that the automatic
unconscious action of the mind enters largely into all its processes.
Our definite ideas are stepping-stones; how we get from one to
the other we do not know ; something carries us, we do not take
the step.

"It is not strange that remembered ideas should often take
advantage of the crowd of thoughts, and smuggle themselves in as
original. Honest thinkers are always stealing unconsciously from
each other. Our minds are full of waifs and estrays which we
think are our own. Innocent plagiarism turns up everywhere.
Our best musical critic tells me a few notes from the air of ' Shoo
Fly ' are borrowed from a movement in one of the magnificent
harmonies of Beethoven." l

While it is as a metaphysician that Berkeley is best known in
our day, no one can read any of his works without discovering that
their purpose is practical and not speculative. The avowed object
of " Siris " is to show why tar water must be a " catholicon " ; but the
whole aim of his other works is to show that immediately and in
itself natural knowledge is a language by which we are instructed ;

1 Holmes, " Mechanism in Thought and Morals."

LOUIS AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY 327

and that no one who is convinced that natural knowledge is useful
need ask whether nature is intended, with any doubt of the answer.

He holds, indeed, that we cannot be sure that nature is a lan-
guage unless we are convinced that it is nothing but a language;
for while his idealistic philosophy is only a means to an end, he
holds it essential for the attainment of this end ; although the
modern zoologist must ask whether he is right, or whether, on the
contrary, one who does not know what the relation between mind
and matter is may not agree with him that nature is a language.

Berkeley's teleological argument is set forth in all his writings ;
but it is, perhaps, less complicated by metaphysics in the fourth
dialogue with Alciphron than anywhere else.

Alciphron asserts that no evidence which is not as conclusive
as that which proves the existence of his fellow-men will convince
him of the existence of a God.

He says: "Nothing so much convinces me of the existence of
another person as his speaking to me. It is my hearing you talk
that, in strict and philosophical truth, is to me the best argument
for your being. And this is a peculiar argument, inapplicable to
your purpose ; for you will not, I suppose, pretend that God speaks
to man in the same clear and sensible manner as one man doth
to another?

" What I mean, is not the sound of speech merely as such, but
the arbitrary use of sensible signs, which have no similitude or
necessary connection with the things signified ; so as by the appo-
site management of them to suggest and exhibit to my mind an
endless variety of things differing in nature, time, and place ; thereby
informing me, entertaining me, and directing me how to act, not
only with regard to things near and present, but also with regard
to things distant and future. No matter whether these sounds are
pronounced or written ; whether they enter by the eye or ear ; they
have the same use, and are equally proofs of an intelligent, thinking,
designing cause."

" But if it should appear that God really speaks to men, would
this content you ? " asks Euphranor.

" I am for admitting no inward speech, no holy instincts or sug-
gestions of light and spirit," answers Alciphron. "All that, you
must know, passeth with men of sense for nothing. If you do not

328 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

make it plain to me that God speaks to me by outward sensible
signs, of such sort and in such manner as I have denned, you do
nothing."

Euphranor now asks Alciphron to consider natural knowledge.
He points out, in effect, that what we call the laws of nature are
no more than generalizations, based on experience, and that we
fail to find in nature any a priori demonstration of any one of
them, any evidence that they are necessary, any reason why they
must hold good. He shows that all natural knowledge is know-
ledge of appearances or phenomena, or ideas, as he prefers to call
them ; and that, while the events that make up the order of nature
are vulgarly considered under the relation of cause and effect,
they are, in strict and philosophic truth, only known to be related
as the sign and the thing signified. He shows, in a word, that,
so far at least as we are concerned with them or know anything
about them, " natural phenomena are only natural appearances."

Men of science have themselves learned to reflect upon natural
knowledge since Berkeley's day; and as they are now practically
of his way of thinking on this matter, it is no longer necessary to
review, in detail, his demonstration that, behind phenomena, we
discover in nature nothing except the farther truth that all natural
knowledge is useful and instructive and pleasant to learn — a truth
which the modern man of science should be the last to question.

Berkeley points out that, these things being admitted, it follows
according to Alciphron's definition, that nature is a language ; al-
though we learn the language of nature so easily and gradually
that we are unconscious of the act.

" If we have all been practising this language, ever since our
first entrance into the world, it doth not seem to me at all strange
that men should not be aware they had learned a language begun
so early and practised so constantly. And if we also consider
that it is the same throughout the world, and not, like other lan-
guages, differing in different places, it will not seem unaccoun-
table that men should mistake the connection between the proper
objects of sight and the things signified by them to be founded
in necessary relation or likeness."

If Berkeley had been a modern zoologist, he would, no doubt,
have made this assertion still stronger; by pointing out that the

LOUIS AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY 329

whole history of life is a history of the acquisition of the lan-
guage of nature; for each stimulus to a vital act is a sign with a
significance; and we have seen, page 63, that a living thing is
a being which, when affected by a stimulus, prepares itself for
the significance, of which, in course of nature, it is the sign.
Berkeley himself saw clearly, and he tells us in many places,
that it is not necessary that the language of nature be intelli-
gently apprehended in order to be instructive, for human speech
is often used to warn or to excite or to please, rather than to
call up mental images ; and one may be sure that all living things
respond to the language of nature to their advantage, without
knowing whether they consciously apprehend the benefit of re-
sponse or not.

"It may also be worth while," says Berkeley, "to observe that
signs, being little considered in themselves, or for their own sake,
but only in their relative capacity, and for the sake of those
things whereof they are signs, it comes to pass that the mind
overlooks them, so as to carry its attention immediately on to the
thing signified. Thus, for example, in reading we run over the
characters with the slightest regard, and pass on to the meaning.
Hence it is frequent for men to say they see words, and notions,
and things in reading a book; whereas in strictness. they see only
the characters which suggest words, notions, and things. And by
parity of reason, may we not suppose that men, not resting in,
but overlooking the immediate and proper objects of sight, as in
their own nature of small moment, carry their attention onward
to the very things signified, and talk as if they saw the secondary
objects, which, in truth and strictness, are not seen, but only
suggested and apprehended by means of the proper objects of
sight, which alone are seen."

" But, to cut short this chicane," says Alciphron, " I propound
it fairly to your own conscience, whether you really think God
Himself speaks every day and in every place to the eyes of all
men."

"This is really and in truth my opinion," answers Euphranor,
" and it should be yours too, if you are consistent with yourself
and abide by your own definition of language. Since you can-
not deny that the great Mover and Author of nature constantly

330 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

explaineth Himself to the eyes of men by the sensible interven-
tion of arbitrary signs, which have no similitude or necessary
connection with the things signified ; so as, by compounding and
composing them, to suggest and exhibit an endless variety of
objects, differing in nature, time, and place ; thereby informing
and directing men how to act with respect to things distant and
future as well as near and present.

"In consequence, I say, of your own sentiments and conces-
sions, you have as much reason to think the Universal Agent
or God speaks to your eyes, as you can have for thinking any
particular person speaks to your ears.

" You, it seems, stare to find God is not far from every one of
us ; and that in Him we live, and move, and have our being. You,
who in the beginning of this morning's conference, thought it
strange God should leave Himself without a witness, do now
think it strange the witness should be so full and clear."

The modern philologist knows that the relation between words
and the things they signify is orderly and natural ; for he studies,
by scientific methods, the natural laws shown by the life and
growth of language; but I am as unable to see why one must
know that the relation between natural signs and their signifi-
cance is "arbitrary," before he admits the reality of the language
of nature, as I am to see how the scientific study of language
shows that discourse with the wise is not useful and instructive
and entertaining.

In fact, Berkeley, who here asserts that the relation is "arbi-
trary," tells us, in " Siris " that it is "necessary." I am quite
unable to see how or why his reasoning should seem more con-
vincing to an idealist than to one who is "of a vulgar cast," and
simple enough to take things as he finds them.

Berkeley, the idealist, says nature is nothing but a language,
but I fail to see how his reasoning turns on this, "nothing but."

Berkeley, the realist, tells us the language of nature " is neces-
sary to assist the governed " ; but if we are sure nature is useful,
why should we care whether it, or any part of it, is necessary,
or unnecessary ?

The eternal paradox about necessity and freedom has no mean-
ing to the humble-minded zoologist, who admits his accountability,

LOUIS AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY 331

even if he knows nothing about absolute necessity, nothing about
arbitrary liberty; and is quite content to leave to Milton's fiends
the discussion of " Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute."
This itself seems to me a great gain, and a prodigious conserva-
tion of energy, worth no little hard work.

May not one who is convinced with Berkeley that nature is a
language, find reason to doubt whether he has correctly and fully
understood what he has heard, or whether he will be able to under-
stand what he may still hear ?

While the Darwinian, like every other thoughtful student,
admits that the adjustments of living things to the external world
are useful, he asks whether, quite apart from all question of pur-
pose or intention, these beneficial adjustments may not themselves
be part of the mechanism of nature. He asks whether man may
not have survived because he fits nature, and whether another line
might not have survived if nature had been different.

As he knows no reason in the nature of things why all should
not come to an end this instant, he is unable to discover any assur-
ance of stability in nature itself; and if he is to find any such
assurance anywhere, how is he helped by the assertion that "in
the government of the world physical agents, or mechanical, or
secondary causes, or instruments, are necessary," either to assist
the governed or for anything else ?

May not the Darwinian ask whether our confidence in the
stability of nature may not be equivalent to, and whether it can
ever exceed, our confidence in the continuity of life?

"That a thing should be really perceived by my senses, and
at the same time not really exist, is to me a plain contradiction,"
says Berkeley, "since I cannot prescind or abstract, even in
thought, the existence of a sensible thing from its being perceived.
I might as well doubt of my own being as of the being of those
things I see and feel."

" If a man should give me arguments that I do not see,"
says Holmes, quoting from Johnson, "though I could not answer
them, should I believe I do not see ? "

May not one who cannot doubt the reality of the things he
sees and feels, ask whether all the things he sees and feels tell
him what to expect, or how to govern himself and direct his

332 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

actions for the attainment of ends ? May not some of the things
we see and feel be illusions ? He who is giddy feels the world
turn round. One who has lost his legs may suffer from cold feet.
We see the sun rise in the morning and run his course through
the sky until the evening. From the windows of the moving
train we see the ranks of corn circle round the middle distance.
The skilful dramatist makes us feel all the emotions and impulses
a real tragedy would excite.

While all the things we see and feel are, no doubt, equally
real, they are not all real in the same way; for while it is true
that we cannot doubt the evidence of our senses, familiar experi-
ence teaches that our senses are often deceptive, since their evi-
dence stands in need of continual correction ; for delusion and
hallucination and error are, unfortunately, as real as truth.

The most practical and important question which rational living
beings can ask is how we may distinguish truth from error, in
order that we may think wisely, and be sure about our actions,
and rightly order our lives; and the greatest service of Charles
Darwin to the intellectual life of mankind is that he has led us
to ask whether we may not some time find a mechanical explana-
tion of that rational judgment which is innate in intelligent human
beings; whether this may not itself be part of the physical
order of nature; whether language itself, even the most rational
discourse, may not be a natural phenomenon, which lies entirely
within the limits of physical causation; whether proof that nature
is a language is proof that this language is supernatural.

He asks whether those judgments which we call errors may
not be the ones which lead us into danger and tend to our physi-
cal destruction, and whether it may not be because a judgment has
proved beneficial in the struggle for existence that we call it true.

On the other hand, he does not forget that hallucinations,
even those of the insane, are themselves truths of nature, which,
wisely interpreted, may help the physician to minister to a mind
diseased. He therefore asks whether hallucinations are not use-
ful in the same way that all natural knowledge is useful ; whether
illusions and errors are not truths misunderstood ; whether they
are exceptions to the rule that all natural knowledge is useful
and instructive to all who hear aright the language of nature.

LOUIS AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY 333

If future discovery should demonstrate that Darwin is right, — if
the value of our rational minds should prove mechanical and no
more than might have been expected from our structure and history,
— how could this prove that their value is not real value? While
individuals survive or fall in the struggle for existence, this struggle
produces nothing, for natural selection, like all natural laws, is a
generalization from experience, and not an efficient cause.

While no one can doubt his senses, we do continually doubt or
question the value of our sensations; for if the Lamarckian holds
that knowledge is produced by experience, the Darwinian asks
whether what we call the evidence of our senses is anything more
than a stimulus in the presence of which knowledge arises in the
mind; anything more than the condition or occasion of knowledge.

" We know a thing when we understand it ; and we understand
it when we can interpret, or tell what it signifies. Strictly, the
sense knows nothing. We perceive, indeed, sounds by hearing and
characters by sight. After the same manner, the phenomena of
nature are alike visible to all ; but all have not alike learned the
connection of natural things, or understand what they signify, or
know how to vaticinate by them. There is no question, saith
Socrates, concerning that which is agreeable to each person; but
concerning what will in time to come be agreeable, of which all
men are not equal judges. He who foreknoweth what will be in
every kind is the wisest- According to Socrates you and the cook
may judge of the dish on the table equally well, but while the dish
is making, the cook can better foretell what will ensue from this
or that manner of composing it. Nor is this manner of reasoning
confined only to morals and politics; but extends also to the natural
sciences.

" As the natural connexion of signs with the things signified
is regular and constant, it forms a sort of rational discourse.
Therefore the phenomena of nature, which strike on the senses,
and are understood by the mind, do form not only a magnificent
spectacle, but also a most coherent, entertaining, and instructive
Discourse; and to effect this, they are conducted, adjusted, and
ranged by the greatest wisdom. This Language or Discourse is
studied with different attention and interpreted with different
degrees of skill. But so far as men have studied and remarked

334 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

its rules, and can interpret right, they may be said to be knowing
in nature." l

I see no incompatibility between Darwin's view of fitness and
belief that nature is a language and that mechanical principles "may
be very naturally explained, and have a very proper and obvious
use assigned to them when they are considered only as marks or
signs for our information " ; although I cannot see how this proves
that they are necessary for this purpose, or that this is their only
or chief use; for if natural selection casts doubt on the opinion that
the language of nature is an instrument, I fail to see how it shows
that nature is not a language.

Since the zoologist must ask whether the realistic teleology of
Berkeley's " Siris " furnishes any evidence of the use of instruments
which is not itself instrumental or mechanical, is it not exposed
to all the difficulty which we find in all instrumental teleology ?
It is, assuredly, very different from that earlier teleology which is
said to be so independent of "any laborious research into the
sciences" that we are told one need only open his eyes to see it.

"In vain do we extend our view into the heavens and pry
into the entrails of the earth, in vain do we consult the writings
of learned men, and trace the dark footsteps of antiquity — we
need only draw the curtain of words to behold the fairest tree
of knowledge, whose fruit is excellent, and within the reach of
our hand.

"That, setting aside all help of astronomy and natural philos-
ophy, all contemplation of the contrivance, order, and adjustment
of things, an infinite mind should be necessarily [logically] inferred
from the bare existence of the sensible world, is an advantage to
those only who have made this easy reflection : that the sensible
world is " instructive, and entertaining, and delightful.

May not one who, being no philosopher, has no opinion, either
positive or negative, about any physical universe except that which
he perceives, or has perceived, or might perceive if he had time
and opportunity, by means of his senses, make this " easy reflec-
tion " just as easily as one who believes nature is necessary, either
to assist the governed or for any other purpose ?

The same Berkeley who was led into the philosophy of evolution

1 Berkeley, "Siris," 253, 254.

LOUIS AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY 335

in his old age by his wish to find in nature some reason why tar
water must be a universal panacea, seems to have made this easy
reflection just as easily as the young idealist of the dialogues
with Hylas. May we not therefore ask whether one need be an
idealist to find evidence that nature is a language? May not
this evidence be just as clear to one who is no philosopher as if
he were an idealist, or a realist, or a nominalist, or a materialist,
or a monist, or an evolutionist, or a disciple of any other school
in the great college of scholastic philosophy ?

"It is for me a sufficient reason not to believe the existence
of anything, if I see no reason for believing it," says Berkeley;
and a student of science who is "of a vulgar cast" and simple
enough to believe his own senses and leave things as he finds
them, may find as much reason as an idealist for refusing to
believe that nature is necessary ; nor need he be at all disturbed
if some should call him an agnostic.

As I understand Berkeley, it is not because nature is orderly,
but because the order of nature is useful, and instructive, and
full of delights for living things, that he holds it to be a language.
Even if the Darwinian asks whether the order of nature may not
be mechanical, and explicable by physical science, I fail to see
why he should challenge Berkeley's belief that it is intended,
unless he doubts whether response to the order of nature is
useful and profitable and delightful.

Does any man of science doubt whether the words "language
of nature" and "interpretation of nature" are used with clear,
intelligible meaning ? Is not the question whether nature is a
language which we learn to our delight and profit and instruction
quite a different matter from the question whether the language
of nature is necessary or unnecessary?

May not one who does not know what the relation between
mind and matter is, one who is unable to find his way through
the perplexities which schoolmen and metaphysicians and theolo-
gians and other "philosophers" have thrown around the question
whether the language of nature is necessary or not, still find a
plain and easy answer to the simpler question whether nature is
a language by which we are entertained and instructed ?

The student of science should be the last to doubt this possi-

336 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

bility even for an instant; for he asserts that it is because exact
science does help one to walk with sure feet where others grope
and stumble, that the promotion of natural knowledge is the first
and highest of duties. How can one who knows that natural
knowledge does correct our judgment and help us to avoid the
dangers that beset and destroy the ignorant, ask whether nature
is a language profitable to direct ?

" I sometimes feel," says Holmes, " as if I should like to found
a school to teach the ignorance of what people do not want to
know."

If we are sure nature is useful, need any one care to ask
whether it is necessary or arbitrary ? " What have you to do
with liberty and necessity ? or what more than to hold your tongue
about it?" asks Johnson of Boswell.

"The attitude of Modern Science is erect, her aspect serene,
her determination inexorable, her onward movement unflinching,
because she believes herself, in the order of Providence, the true
successor of those men of old who brought down the light of
heaven to men. Humility may be taken for granted as existing
in every sane human being; but it may be that it most truly
manifests itself to-day in the readiness with which we bow to new
truths as they come from the scholars, the teachers, to whom the
inspiration of the Almighty giveth understanding." 1

Paley sometimes argues that even if the finder of the watch
were without knowledge of watchmakers, or other human con-
trivers, proof of design is to be found in the adjustment between
its movements and those of the earth ; while it is equally clear
that, in other passages, he bases his argument on the analogy
between the mechanism of nature and the works of human
mechanics. After comparing the eye with a telescope, he asks :
"What could a mathematical instrument maker have done more
to show his knowledge of his principles, his application of that
knowledge, his suiting of his means to his ends ? " On the other
hand, his opening passage, in which his thesis is developed,
makes no reference to human contrivers. " Suppose I found
a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the

1 Holmes, " Mechanism in Thought and Morals."

LOUIS AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY 337

watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the
answer which I had before given. Yet why should not this
answer serve for the watch, as well as for the stone ? Why is it
not as admissible in the second case as in the first? For this
reason, and for no other ; viz. that when we come to inspect the
watch we perceive (what we could not discover in the stone)
that its several parts are framed and put together for a purpose,
e.g. that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion,
and that motion so regulated as to point out the , hour of the
day."

Whether it is or is not possible to prove intention without
proving contrivance, I do not believe one can read a dozen pages
of Paley or of any other English writer on natural theology,
without finding that they fail to draw any such distinction; and
while the question what they believed may have only an histori-
cal interest, it is important to note that the point of view has
changed.

We have seen that, like Paley, even Berkeley is not always
consistent; but as his earlier works are by far the clearest and
at the same time the most profound of all the writings on natural
theology, I have tried to set forth his reasoning in the clearest
way I can command in the space at my disposal; although I
hope no one who does not know Berkeley at first hand will be
contented with my summary; for his beautiful essays and dia-
logues are no small part of our birthright in English literature.

In my opinion, however, the modern zoologist who studies
Berkeley must also ask whether natural selection, so far as it
accounts for living things and their works and ways, does not,
in the same measure, account for language; both that which men
use among themselves, and that which we find in nature.

The teleologist of our day is brought face to face with the
question, What if we should some time find that we know no
contrivances and no contrivers, except those that are part of the
chain of natural causation ? Unless he can show that this never
can be proved, by proving its reverse, is it not clear that he must
abandon his search for intention, or seek it elsewhere than in
the contrivance of nature ?

Is it not, when all is said, illogical to seek a supernatural basis

338 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY

for natural theology? If we are to find a basis for teleology
anywhere, must we not seek it in nature rather than outside
nature ?

No one supposes that the scientific study of philology, and the
proof that the life and growth of language are natural, has any
bearing upon the reality or the value of language. He who fears
that the discovery of mechanical explanations of the order of
nature would destroy the proof that nature is a language, seems
no more reasonable than one who, having enjoyed and profited by
good books, should assert that these books have lost their use and
their power to please and to instruct, through the discovery that
they are made by machinery in printing-offices.

As modern zoologists find no reason to believe the laws of their
science are any less mechanical than those of physics and chem-
istry, Agassiz's conviction that natural history is a language has
failed to commend itself to them — because he holds it essential to
assert that these laws are nothing but categories of thought, and
because he holds that things physical cannot also be ideal.

As the modern man of science, while convinced that nature is
orderly, does not know whether it is "arbitrary" or "necessary,"
he has failed to be convinced by Berkeley, who holds that, since
a language must be arbitrary in order to be a language, none who
do not admit that nature is arbitrary can hold it to be a language ;
although he himself asserts, in another place, that it is necessary.

It is no new thing in history for beliefs to suffer because their
supporters have held to be essential certain opinions as to matters
of fact which have proved erroneous.

"Every man is not a proper Champion for Truth, nor fit to
take up the Gauntlet in the cause of Verity: many, from the
ignorance of these maxims, and an inconsiderate Zeal unto Truth,
have too rashly charged the Troops of Error, and remain as
Trophies unto the enemies of Truth. A man may be in as just
possession of Truth as of a City, and yet be forced to surrender."1

Science tells us that the things that take place in nature are
neither less nor more than one who knows the data has every rea-
son to expect. With this the work of science ends; and here I
must end my work on the Principles of Science ; for these prin-

1 Browne, " Religio Medici," 7.

LOUIS AGASSIZ AND GEORGE BERKELEY 339

ciples fail to tell us why the things we expect should be the things
that come about.

The question why the things we expect should be the things /
that come about is the one that concerns the natural theologian ; \
for it is the same as the question, What is the Cause of Nature ? '

To this all must seek an answer for themselves; for each has
at his command all the data within the reach of any student of
science.

As for myself, I hope, with all my getting, to get understand-
ing; for "the heart of him that hath understanding seeketh
knowledge. The merchandise of it is better than the merchan-
dise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold. She is more
precious than rubies; and all the things thou canst desire are not
to be compared unto her. Her ways are ways of pleasantness,
and all her paths are peace.

For you who have, at this time, for my encouragement, called yourselves my
students, I have written this book which has been my own so long that I should
part from it with regret, did I not hope that, as you study the great works to which
I have directed you, you may still call me teacher.

I have treated subjects which I should not dare to handle if the thoughts were
my own ; but the book contains little which you will not find far better presented by
abler pens, although I hope that the words of one whose standpoint is the same as
your own may help you to find the meaning of older writers.

If you are indeed my students, you are not afraid of hard work, so in this day of
light literature, when even learning must be made easy, you must be my readers,
and you must do double duty ; for I take the liberty of a teacher with his pupils,
and ask that, after you have read the book, you will some day read it again ; since
I hope that what may seem obscure, may, on review, be found consistent and
intelligible.

BRIGHTSIDE, March 25, 1898.

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY BIOLOGICAL SERIES.

DESIGNED FOR INDEPENDENT READING AND AS TEXT-BOOKS

FOR LECTURE AND LABORATORY COURSES

OF INSTRUCTION.

EDITED BY

HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN,

De Costa Professor of Zoology in Columbia University.

VOL. L FROM THE GREEKS TO DARWIN.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE EVOLUTION IDEA.

By HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN, Sc.D.
Cloth. 8vo. 259 pages. Illustrated. Price, $2.00.

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

" Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn has rendered
an important service by the preparation of a concise
history of the growth of the idea of Evolution. The
chief contributions of the different thinkers from
Thales to Darwin are brought into clear perspective,
and a just estimate of the methods and results of each
one is reached. The work is extremely well done,
and it has an added value of great importance in the
fact that the author is a trained biologist. Dr. Os-
born is himself one of the authorities in the science
of Evolution, to which he has made important con-
tributions. He is therefore in a position to estimate
the value of scientific theories more justly than would
be possible to one who approached the subject from
the standpoint of metaphysics or that of literature."
— President DAVID STARR JORDAN,

in The Dial, Chicago.

" A somewhat new and very interesting field of in-
quiry is opened in this work, which is devoted to
demonstrating that the doctrine of Evolution, far
from being a child of the middle of the nineteenth
century, of sudden birth and phenomenally rapid
growth, as it is by many supposed to be, has really
been in men's minds for ages. It appears in the
germ in the earliest Greek philosophy; in vigorous
childhood in the works of Aristotle ; in adolescence
at the closing period of the last century; and reaches
full-grown manhood in our own age of scientific
thought and indefatigable research."

— New Science Review.

" This is a timely book. For it is time that both
the special student and general public should know
that the doctrine of Evolution has cropped out of the
surface of human thought from the period of the
Greek philosophers, and that it did not originate
with Darwin, and that natural selection is not a
synonym of Evolution. . . . The book should be

widely read, not only by science teachers, by biologi-
cal students, but we hope that historians, students of
social science, and theologians will acquaint them-
selves with this clear, candid, and catholic statement
of the origin and early history of a theory, which not
only explains the origin of life-forms, but has trans-
formed the methods of the historian, placed philoso-
phy on a higher plane, and immeasurably widened
our views of nature and of the Infinite Power work-
ing in and through the universe."

— Professor A. S. PACKARD,

in Science, New York.

"This is an attempt to determine the history of
Evolution, its development and that of its elements,
and the indebtedness of modern to earlier investi-
gators. The book is a valuable contribution; it will
do a great deal of good in disseminating more accu-
rate ideas of the accomplishments of the present as
compared with the past, and in broadening the views
of such as have confined themselves too closely to
the recent or to specialties. ... As a whole the
book is admirable. The author has been more im-
partial than any of those who have in part anticipated
him in the same line of work." — The Nation.

" But whether the thread be broken or continuous,
the history of thought upon this all-important subject
is of the deepest interest, and Professor Osborn's
work will be welcomed by all who take an intelligent
interest in Evolution. Up to the present, the pre-
Darwinian evolutionists have been for the most part
considered singly, the claims of particular naturalists
being urged often with too warm an enthusiasm.
Professor Osborn has undertaken a more compre-
hensive work, and with well-balanced judgment
assigns a place to each writer."

— Professor EDWARD B. POULTON,

in Nature, London.

FIRST EDITION PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1894.

VOL. n. AMPHIOXUS AND THE ANCESTRY OF
THE VERTEBRATES.

By ARTHUR WILLEY, Sc.D., Balf our Student of the University of Cambridge.
316 pages. 135 Illustrations. Price, $2.50.

" This important monograph will be welcomed by
all students of zoology as a valuable accession to the
literature of the theory of descent. More than this,
the volume bears internal evidence throughout of
painstaking care in bringing together, in exceedingly
readable form, all the essential details of the structure
and metamorphosis of Amphioxus as worked out by
anatomists and embryologists since the time of Pallas,
its discoverer. The interesting history of the changes
it undergoes during metamorphosis, especially its sin-
gular symmetry, is clearly described and ingenious
explanations of the phenomena are suggested. Most
important, perhaps, are the carefully suggested homol-
ogies of the organs of Amphioxiis with those of the
embryos of the Vertebrates above it in rank, especially
those of the Marsipobranchs and Selachians. Though
the comparisons with the organisms next below Am-
phioxus, such as Ascidians, Balanoglossus, Cepha-
lodiscus, Rhabdopleura, and the Echinoderms,
will be found no less interesting. In short, the book
may be commended to students already somewhat
familiar with zoological facts and principles, as an
important one to read. They may thus be brought
to appreciate to what an extent the theory of descent
is indebted to the patient labors of the zoologists of

the last forty years fora secure foundation in observed
facts, seen in their correlations, according to the com-
parative method. . . . The present work contains
everything that should be known about Amphioxus,
besides a great deal that is advantageous to know
about the Tunicata, Balanoglossus, and some other
types which come into structural relations with Am-
phioxus."

— Professor JOHN A. RYDER,

in The American Naturalist, Philadelphia.

" The observations on Amphioxus made before the
second half of the present century, amongst which
those of Johannes M uller take a foremost place, showed
that this remarkable animal bears certain resemblances
to Vertebrates ; and since then its interest in this re-
spect has gradually become more apparent. ... A
consecutive history of the more recent observations
was, therefore, greatly needed by those whose oppor-
tunities did not permit them to follow out the matter
for themselves, and who will welcome a book written
in an extremely lucid style by a naturalist who can
speak with authority on the subject."

— Professor W. NEWTON PARKER,

in Nature, London.

VOL. m. FISHES, LIVING AND FOSSIL.

AN INTRODUCTORY STUDY.

By BASHFORD DEAN, Ph.D., Adjunct Professor of Zoology, Columbia University.
300 pages. 344 Illustrations. Price, $2.50.

This work has been prepared to meet the need of the general student for a concise knowledge of the living
and extinct Fishes. It covers the recent advances in the comparative anatomy, embryology, and palaeontology
of the five larger groups of Lampreys, Sharks, Chimaeroids, Teleostomes, and Dipnoans — the aim being to
furnish a well-marked ground plan of Ichthyology. The figures are mainly original and designed to aid in prac-
tical work as well as to illustrate the contrasts in the development of the principal organs through the five groups.

" The intense specialization which prevails in
zoology at the present day can lead to no other result
than this, that a well-educated zoologist who becomes
a student of one group is in a few years quite left
behind by the student of other groups. Books,
therefore, like those of Mr. Dean are necessary for
zoologists at large."

— The Athenteunt, London.

" Dr. Bashford Dean is known to zoologists, first,
as the author of exhaustive and critical articles in the
publications of the United States Fish Commission,
on the systems of oyster culture pursued in Europe,
and, secondly, as an embryologist who has lately been
doing good work on the development of various Ga-
noid fishes and the comparison that may be instituted
with Teleostei. His recent addition to the well-known
' Columbia University Biological Series,' now being
brought out by The Macmillan Company, under the
editorship of Professor H. F. Osborn, is an interesting
volume upon fishes, in which considerable prominence
is given to the fossil forms, and the whole subject is
presented to us from the point of view of the evolu-
tionist. This is the characteristic feature of the book.
From the very first page of the introduction to the
last page in the volume, preceding the index, which
is a table of the supposed descent of the groups of
fishes, the book is full of the spirit and the language
of evolution." — Professor W. A. HERDMAN,

in Nature, London.

"The length to which this review has extended
must be evidence of the importance of Dr. Dean's

work. The suggestions here offered may be of use
for another edition. That another may be called for,
we may hope. For the work as it is, and for the care
and thought bestowed on it, our thanks are due."
— THEODORE GILL,

in Science, New York.

" L'ouvrage de M. Bashford Dean nous parait fait
avec soin; les illustrations sont excellentes et tres
nombreuses, et il nitrite le meilleur accueil de la part
des zoologistes."

— CH. BRONGNIART,

in Le Revue Scientifique, Paris.

" For the first time in the history of Ichthyology,
students are now provided with an elementary hand-
book affording a general view of the whole subject. . . .
The last sixty pages of the volume are devoted to
a list of derivations of proper names, a copious bibli-
ography, and a series of illustrated tabular statements
of the anatomical characters of the great groups of
fishes. These sections bear signs of having been
prepared most carefully and laboriously, and form an
admirable appendix for purposes of reference. There
will be much difference of opinion among specialists
as to the value of some of the tables and the judgment
pronounced by the author; but we have detected a
very small proportion of errors for so bold an enter-
prise, and students of the lower Vertebrata are much
indebted to Dr. Dean for an invaluable compendium."
— ARTHUR SMITH WOODWARD,

in Natural Science, London.

VOL. IV. THE CELL IN DEVELOPMENT AND
INHERITANCE.

By EDMUND B. WILSON, Ph.D.,

Professor of Invertebrate Zoology, Cohimbia University.

371 pages. 142 Illustrations. Price, $3.00.

[EXTRACTS FROM PREFACE AND INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.]

" This volume is the outcome of a course of lec-
tures, delivered at Columbia University in the winter
of 1892-1893, in which I endeavored to give to an
audience of general university students some account
of recent advances in cellular biology, and more espe-
cially to trace the steps by which the problems of
evolution have been reduced to problems of the cell.
It was my first intention to publish these lectures in
a simple and general form, in the hope of showing to
wider circles how the varied and apparently hetero-
geneous cell-researches of the past twenty years have
grown together in a coherent group, at the heart of
which are a few elementary phenomena, and how
these phenomena, easily intelligible to those having
no special knowledge of the subject, are related to
the problems of development. . . . The rapid ad-
vance of discovery in the meantime has made it
seem desirable to amplify the original plan of the
work, in order to render it useful to students as well
as to more general readers. . . . This book does
not, however, aim to be a treatise on general his-
tology."

" The theory of evolution originally grew out of
the study of natural history, and it took definite
shape long before the ultimate structure of living
bodies was in any degree comprehended. . . . The
study of microscopical anatomy, in which the cell-
theory was based, lay in a different field. . . . Only
within a few years has the ground been cleared for
that close alliance of the evolutionists and the cytolo-
gists which forms so striking a feature of the contem-
porary biology. . . ."

" The opening chapter is devoted to a general
sketch of cell-structure, and the second to the phe-
nomena of cell-division. The following three chap-
ters deal with the germ-cells, — the third with their
structure and mode of origin, the fourth with their
union in fertilization, the fifth with the phenomena
of maturation. . . . The sixth chapter contains a
critical discussion of cell-organization. ... In the
seventh chapter the cell is considered with reference
to its more fundamental chemical and physiological
properties. . . ."

IN PREPARATION.

VOL. VI. THE PROTOZOA.

By GARY N. CALKINS, Ph.D.

The object of this volume is to set forth the main characteristics of the Protozoa without undertaking an
exhaustive description. It is intended for students and for general readers who wish to know what the Pro-
tozoa are, and what their relations are to current biological problems. In the first few chapters of the book
the Protozoa are treated as a phylum of the animal kingdom. A short historical sketch leading up to the present
systems of classification is followed by a general description of the group, touching upon some of the more
special subjects, such as mode of life, motion, excretion, respiration, reproduction, colony-formation, encyst-
ment, etc., and this is followed by more general subjects dealing with the Protozoa in relation to man and
other animals; e.g. their sanitary aspects, parasitism, symbiosis, etc.

In the remainder of the book, with the exception of the last chapter, the Protozoa are considered from the
cytological standpoint. Their relation to various cell-theories, physiological and morphological, which have
been gradually evolved with the growth of cellular biology, is briefly discussed together with some special
problems particularly appertaining to Protozoan cell-organization, such as the origin and morphological signifi-
cance of mitosis, chromosomes, archoplasm, centrosomes, etc. While from the physiological standpoint the
questions of animals and plants, of conjugation, copulation and the origin of sex, of the chemical and physical
relations of cytoplasm, nucleus and environment, and of the so-called psychic phenomena are considered in the
light of recent observations and experiments.

In the final chapter the Protozoa are dealt with from the standpoint of phytogeny. Theories as to the
origin of life, spontaneous generation, and the relations of the classes of Protozoa to one another are con-
sidered, and the volume ends with a discussion of the various views regarding the origin of the Metazoa from
the Protozoa.

VOL.VH. AN INTRODUCTION TO COMPARATIVE

NEUROLOGY.

By OLIVER S. STRONG, Ph.D.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 66 Fifth Avenue, New York.

3