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COLLATERAL READINGS SUGGESTED.

Darwin's Origin of Species, Descent of Man, and Animals and Plants under Domestication; Haeckel's History of Creation; Lyell's Principles of Geology; Mivart's On the Genesis of Species, and Man and Apes; Cope's Origin of the Fittest; Wallace's Darwinism; Romanes' Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution, and Darwinism; Huxley's On the Origin of Species, Manual of the Anatomy of Vertebrated Animals, and Manual of the Anatomy of Invertebrated Animals; Carpenter's Nature and Man; Powell's Our Heredity from God; Kemper's Animal Life as Affected by the Natural Conditions of Existence; Schmidt's The Mammalia in their Relation to Primeval Times; Henslow's The Origin of Floral Structures; Nicholson's The Ancient Life-history of the Earth.

THE ORIGIN OF STRUCTURAL VARIATIONS.

BY EDWARD D. COPE, PH. D.

I. PRELIMINARY.

If we view the phenomena of organic life from the standpoint of the physicist, the first question that naturally arises in the mind is as to the kind of energy of which it is an exhibition. Ordinary observation shows that organic bodies perform molar movements, and that many of them give out heat. A smaller num ber exhibit emanations of light and electricity. Very little consideration is sufficient to show that they include among their functions chemical reactions, a conviction which is abundantly sustained by researches into the physiology of both animals and plants. The phenomena of growth are also evidently exhibitions of energy. The term energy is used to express the motion of matter, and the building of an embryo to maturity is evidently accomplished by the movement of matter in certain definite directions. The energy which accomplishes this feat is, however, none of those which characterize inorganic matter, some of which have just been mentioned, but, judging from its phenomena, is of a widely different character. If we further take a broad view of the general process of progressive evolution, which is accomplished by successive modifications of this growth-energy, we see further reason for distinguishing it widely from the inorganic energies.

In considering the dynamics of organic evolution, it will be convenient to commence by considering the claims of Natural Selection to include the energy which underlies the process. That Natural Selection cannot be the cause of the origin of new characters, or varia

tion, was asserted by Darwin; and this opinion is supported by the following weighty considerations: (1) A selection cannot be the cause of those alternatives from which it selects. The alternatives must be presented before the selection can commence.

(2) Since the number of variations possible to organisms is very great, the probability of the admirably adaptive structures which characterize the latter having arisen by chance is extremely small.

(3) In order that a variation of structure shall survive, it is necessary that it shall appear simultaneously in two individuals of opposite sex. But if the chance of its appearing in one individual is very small, the chance of its appearing in two individual's is very much smaller. But even this concurrence of chances would not be sufficient to secure its survival, since it would be immediately bred out by the immensely preponderant number of individuals which should not possess the variation.

(4) Finally, the characters which define the organic types, so far as they are disclosed by paleontology, have commenced as minute buds or rudiments, of no value whatsoever in the struggle for existence. Natural Selection can only effect the survival of characters when they have attained some functional value.

In order to secure the survival of a new character, that is, of a new type of organism, it is necessary that the variation should appear in a large number of individuals coincidentally and successively. It is exceedingly probable that that is what has occurred in past geologic ages. We are thus led to look for a cause which affects equally many individuals at the same time, and continuously. Such causes are found in the changing physical conditions that have succeeded each other in the past history of our planet, and the changes of organic function necessarily produced thereby.

II. BATHMOGENESIS.

It is customary to distinguish broadly between inorganic and organic energies, as those which are displayed by non-living and living bodies. This classification is Origin of species, Dd. 1872, p. 65.

inexact, since, as already remarked, nearly all of the inorganic energies are exhibited by living beings. A division which appears to be, with our present knowledge, much more fundamental, is into the energies which tend away from, and those which tend toward, the phenomena of life. In other words, those which are not necessarily phenomena of life, and those which are necessarily such. And the phenomena of life here referred to are the phenomena of growth and evolution, as distinguished from all others. I have termed these classes the Anagenetic, which are exclusively vital, and the Catagenetic, which are physical and chemical. The Anagenetic class tends to upward progress in the organic sense; that is, toward the increasing control of its environment by the organism, and toward the origin and development of consciousness and mind. The Catagenetic energies tend to the creation of a stable equilibrium of matter, in which molar motion is not produced from within, and sensation is impossible. In popular language the one class of energies tends to life; the other to death.

That the Catagenetic energies, whether physical or chemical, tend away from life is clear enough. Thus molar motion, unless continuously supplied, or directed by a living source, speedily ceases, being converted by friction into heat, which is dissipated. And were we to suppose a case where friction is non-existent, motion would remain molar, and no phenomena of organic life would result, and sensation could not arise. The same is true of molecular movements under the same conditions. Chemical reactions, which are fundamental in world-building, result in the production of solids and the radiations of heat. The most familiar example, that of oxidation, presents us with the case. of a gas becoming a liquid or a solid with the evolution of heat. The endothermic reaction, where matter undergoes a change of molecular aggregation the reverse of that just mentioned, with the absorption of heat, as in the case of several hydrogen compounds, is rare in nature, where free from organic complications, and is generally soon reversed by further reactions. Finally cosmic creation involves the perpetual

2 The Monist, Chicago, 1893, p. 630,

radiation of heat into space, and the gradual reduction of all forms of matter to the solid state.

In the anagenetic energies, on the other hand, we have a process of building machines, which not only resist the action of catagenesis, but which press the catagenetic energies into their service. In the assimilation of inorganic substances they elevate them into higher, that is more complex compounds, and raise the types of energy to their own level. In the development of molar movements they enable their organisms to escape many of the destructive effects of catagenetic energy, by enabling them to change their environment; and this is especially true in so far as sensation or consciousness is present to them. The anagenetic energy transforms the face of nature by its power of assimilating and recompounding inorganic matter, and by its capacity for multiplying its individuals. In spite of the mechanical destructibility of its physical basis (protoplasm), and the ease with which its mechanisms are destroyed, it successfully resists, controls, and remodels the catagenetic energies for its purposes.

The anagenetic power of assimilation of the inorganic substances is chiefly seen in the vegetable kingdom. Atmospheric air, water and inorganic salts furnish it with the materials of its physical basis. Then from its own protoplasm it elaborates by a catagenetic retrograde metamorphosis, the non-nitrogenous substances, as wood (cellulose), waxes, and oils, and the nitrogenous alkaloids, and it may take up inorganic substances and deposit them without alteration in its cells. Many of the compounds elaborated by plants and animals have been manufactured of latter time by chemists. The discovery that the living organism is not necessary for the production of these substances has led to the hasty conclusion that the supposed distinction between "organic" and "inorganic" energy does not exist. But the elaboration of these substances is not accomplished by anagenetic or "vital" energy, but by a process of running down of the higher compound protoplasm, which is catagenesis. No truly anagenetic process has yet been imitated by man.

All forms of functioning of organs, except assimila

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