rather than with Weismann. It is evident to me that consciousness is one of the most important, if not the most important factor in organic evolution. The highly specialized organs of the special senses appear to me to be positive evidence of this. The successive steps in the selection, through the evolution of such organs as the eye and ear demonstrate that they could have been of value to the animal only because of the consciousness behind these, and for which they became available in higher and still higher degrees as they became more highly specialized. What is true of the organs of special sense is true of the whole body. Consciousness is usually assumed to be a unit. Careful analysis dispels this idea, and demonstrates that it is a complex instead. That general feeling of well being which is at the basis of a conception of self,--the socalled coenæsthesia-represents, in itself, myriads of minor conditions of sensation fused into one. It is an established fact that all, or nearly all, conditions of growth are conditions of comfort, and all, or nearly all, conditions of dissolution are conditions of discomfort, or pain. As this coenæsthesia was being built up it must have been the inner power of selection that held together advantageous changes, and so constructed the organism. From the simplest protoplasm up to man, the successive steps of selection must have been steps of comfort or advantage seized upon and maintained by this complex growing consciousness. The absorption of food was evidently the earliest effort of the organism. Do we know, or can we conceive of such absorption divested of desire? I cannot, with the lecturer, see the intensely radical difference between what is known as inanimate and animate nature. My mind being constructed as it is, I am compelled to believe, with Emerson, that "Line in nature is not found, Unit and universe are round." The basic law of all science, the law of continuity, compels us to hold, with Darwin, "natura non facit per saltum." Protoplasm is colloidal. Colloids and crystals are much unlike, but even they have their connecting links. Protoplasm is a reticulated colloid. The reticulations of protoplasm forcibly remind the chemist of the chains of atoms, with some of their higher complex molecules. In biology the law is, no egg without an egg In crystallography the law is, no crystal without a crystal. The growth of crystals often simulates the growth of ferns, as every one has seen on the window pane in winter. Where there is so much in common, so far as appearance goes, there must be, fundamentally, some sort of resemblance in the laws that govern them. While it is certain that the crystal possesses no intelligence such as we know, and while it is equally certain that we have no evidence that goes to prove the absence of intelligence, all analogy, and the law of continuity itself, on which all science is built, lead us strongly to infer that they must have something closely akin to that which we know as consciousness. Natural selection, in building up the crystal, may have its subjective aspect here, as well as in the higher biological phenomena. If this is so, it follows that the least part which consciousness can take in all evolution must be one-half, while the mechanical aspect can but cover the other half. With reference to the question of 'final' causes, evolutionists should be extremely cautious either in their assertions or denials. I hold that function precedes organism, however. If this position be true, it implies the possibility of the existence of purpose and design in evolution. DR. COPE in reply: I agree with the position of the evolution philosophy that the doctrine of Final Causes is inadmissible. There may possibly be a limited and relative design indicated by the fact that organisms seek to adapt themselves to their environment through a natural selection, but of Ultimate and Final Causes we have no proof. As to Weismann's theory, I prefer to hold that the germ plasm is acted upon by impressions from without, in much the same way as impressions are fixed upon brain matter, and which, recalled under consciousness, give rise to the phenomena of memory. In the same way, substantially, impressions are made upon the germ. plasm, ineffaceably, and these are reproduced through the embryonic process at birth. The effects of these external influences are two-fold-first, upon the parent, and secondly, upon the germ plasm. I call this diplogenesis. Only the strong and vivid impressions are effective. |