THE PASSING OF THE PHANTOMS
OTHER VOLUMES IN THE
TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW SERIES
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By J. B. S. Haldane
ICARUS, OR THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE
By Bertrand Russell, F.R.S.
THE MONGOL IN OUR MIDST
By F. G. Crookshank, M.D.
New Light on Man and the Great Apes
_Fully Illustrated_
WIRELESS POSSIBILITIES
By Prof. A. M. Low
Wireless in war, crime, business and
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TANTALUS, OR THE FUTURE OF MAN
By F. C. S. Schiller
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He will destroy himself unless....
NARCISSUS, AN ANATOMY OF CLOTHES
By Gerald Heard. _Illustrated_
CALLINICUS, A DEFENCE OF CHEMICAL WARFARE
By J. B. S. Haldane
LYSISTRATA, OR WOMAN AND THE FUTURE
By Anthony M. Ludovici
PERSEUS, OR OF DRAGONS
By H. F. Scott Stokes, M.A.
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
THE PASSING OF THE
PHANTOMS
A STUDY OF EVOLUTIONARY
PSYCHOLOGY AND MORALS
BY
C. J. PATTEN, M.A., M.D., Sc.D., F.R.A.I.
_Professor of Anatomy, Sheffield University,
Examiner in Anatomy in the
University of Wales, etc., etc._
[Illustration]
New York
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 Fifth Avenue
COPYRIGHT, 1925
By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
_All rights Reserved_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA
To
W. J. N. V.
PREFACE
In this little book the author recounts, first hand, a number of
instances--out of many more known to him--illustrating the evolution
of the mental and moral faculties in lower animals. Animal behaviour
is a study which at all times gives much pleasure and amusement; but
its supreme importance and interest is found in the fact that it places
in our hands the master-key which unlocks the secrets regarding the
Evolution of Human Morality.
C. J. PATTEN.
_The University, Sheffield._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE REALITY OF EVOLUTION 1
II. EVIDENCES OF THE EVOLUTION OF MENTAL POWERS 31
III. EVIDENCES OF THE EVOLUTION OF THE MORAL SENSE 53
IV. THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN MORALITY 67
THE PASSING OF THE
PHANTOMS
CHAPTER I
THE REALITY OF EVOLUTION
The widening of the horizon of biological knowledge within recent years
has been remarkable and has cast a flood of light on the question of
‘Man’s Place in Nature.’ At the present day well-informed persons
have abandoned the idea of a ‘miraculous’ or special creation of man,
yet it is curious to note with what tenacity tradition adheres, and
how speculative theories and poetical imaginations to a large extent
still prejudice the mind to shut out pure reasoning and rational
philosophical thinking. While it has become very general now-a-days
to accept the idea of evolution as that method by which man came to
inhabit this planet, one still asks do most of us thoroughly grasp the
principles of the doctrine which we profess to accept? While many of
us do, still it would appear that there are others who vaguely accept
the doctrine because it is becoming more fashionable to do so every
day. That is to say man, a highly gregarious animal, is carried away to
follow the strong leaders of the flock. But to get a clear conception
of the wonders of organic descent one must insist that it is not enough
to listen only to lectures: we must be students of Nature, endowed
with a wholesome amount of scepticism, and not content ourselves with
accepting _en masse_ the evidence of others without verifying for
ourselves as far as we can the revelations made in the study of the
biological sciences.
I introduce these few sentences at the outset because I wish to
point out what a very strong attitude of mind in favour of the
[Sidenote: _Evolution a reality_]
reality of human evolution is fostered by those of us who have
had the opportunities of making a special study of biology, more
particularly when this includes a detailed knowledge of human anatomy
and embryology. But it might be asked: Why then do our medical brethren
who study anatomy in detail not act more fervently as propagandists of
the theme of evolution? As a matter of fact, I have seldom met with
a medical student who at the end of his anatomical course has not,
at least in an unprejudiced and general way, accepted evolutionary
principles; but, even if such fail to occupy a foremost place in
his mind, it is not surprising considering the strongly utilitarian
view he takes of the study in question. The medical student, and he
who teaches the subject of anatomy from this utilitarian standpoint
alone, obtain but a limited view of the great principles of human
structure. This is brought home to us at once by taking one or two
familiar examples. The medical student seldom stops to consider the
significance of the presence of the mammary gland in the male. To
him its presence is probably a matter of little import. But in the
[Sidenote: _Evidence of Evolution from vestigial Sex-organs_]
mind of the anatomist the question at once arises: Why is the organ
there at all, if it be useless? And he finds by further examination
in an early stage of the intra-uterine development of the individual
that the gland is already present when the external sex-organs are
indistinguishable, and when it would be impossible to say which sex
the individual would ultimately assume. The logical conclusion arrived
at, then, is that this gland is only suppressed, in one sex, so that
the male has incorporated in its body structural features, more fully
developed and functional in the female, a distinction merely of degree
but not of kind. _Vice versa_, an examination of the female generative
organs reveals to us the fact that the male homologues have not
vanished, but are merely suppressed. This short chain of reasoning from
objective biological evidence regarding the presence of structures
which can be examined without even resorting to dissection has a most
important bearing on the whole question of the evolution of sex from
an ancestral hermaphrodite stock. And, indeed, we find on comparing
our human embryo in certain very early stages with some lower forms
of life which are hermaphrodite, that a marked similarity can be
made out. The evolutionary history of the mammary glands is highly
interesting, and deserves short notice as shedding light on the reality
of evolution. Sir Arthur Keith in his delightful work _Human Embryology
and Morphology_ (4th ed., 1921) says that “it is a remarkable fact that
although the milk glands do not come into use until adult life, and
although they must be regarded as among the later evolved structures of
vertebrate animals, yet they are _the first of all the glands arising
from the epidermis to appear during development of the embryo_. In
the human embryo of the 6th week, or in the corresponding stage of a
pig or of any other mammal, the primary mammary ridge or milk line――a
mere surface thickening of the ectoderm――is seen extending along the
body wall on either side from axilla to groin. Breslau[1] regards
these primary ridges as representatives of the brooding organs of
the ancestors of mammals, from which structures he supposed that the
mammary glands were evolved. In a large number of human beings (15%)
one or more supernumerary nipples are to be found between the axilla
and the groin, indicating the wide distribution of ancestral glands.
The mammary ridge appears in both sexes alike, but this may not mean
that both sexes of ancestral mammals were concerned in brooding or
gave milk. The male is the father of girls as well as of boys; it is
therefore necessary to provide both father and mother with a complete
sexual outfit if each sex is to provide equal shares to the making
of their progeny. In females the breasts undergo a great development
at puberty while in males they retain their infantile form.” Many
other instances could easily be cited of the presence of structures
which afford us incontestable evidence of the evolution of the human
body from ancestors not necessarily of human form. Suffice it to
draw attention to certain muscles which in _Herbivores_ and other
Orders are well developed and functional but are only vestigial in
man, and to other muscles present in certain groups of lower animals,
[Sidenote: _Evidence of Evolution from atavistic myology_]
which, though long-since disappeared from the later human ancestry,
nevertheless occasionally, by the strong strain of heredity, make their
appearance again in human beings of the present day. The study of Human
Embryology is most convincing, and carries with it incontrovertible
proofs of evolution. We find that it is only at the later stages of
development within the uterus that the human being is recognizable
as such, when it is known as a foetus. In common with other higher
animals, man _in utero_ repeats the stages of his ancestral-tree from
the very lowest to the highest forms of animal life, due allowance
[Sidenote: _Evidences of Evolution from Human Ontogeny_]
being made for a blurred and transient picture owing to adaptative
modifications which have arisen during countless ages and are purely
secondary in character. Nor can it be argued that the process by which
development proceeds is simply a mechanical one, built on a uniform
plan or design of Nature. For, if it were, to take a simple example
out of hundreds, one might ask why, just at the termination of foetal
life, the digits of the limb are so specialized in different mammals?
All arise alike; but compare the hoof of the horse, the flipper of
the seal, the functionless and atrophied thumb of most quadrupeds, and
so on, with the hand of man. There is no moulding within the uterus to
produce these patterns mechanically. We are led to consider that, while
we inherit through our non-human ancestors many features (more or less
portrayed in our living non-human cousins), we also have had impressed
upon us, demonstrable only at the termination of our embryological
career, the features of our immediate predecessors, namely our own
parents, and these features hall-mark us as the individual proper to
which we belong, that is to say into which we have evolved. Even these
few instances which I have cited regarding the study of human structure
will, I think, suffice to remind us how intimately bound up become
the thoughts of the anatomist with the evolution of his own body.
Material for investigation is before him daily, and he cannot――even
though he wished it――get away from the fact which may be expressed in
Darwin’s words: “Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible
stamp of his lowly origin.” But here no thoughtful anatomist can stop.
[Sidenote: _Mental Evolution_]
With the material for the study of the development of the Brain in
front of him, from the extremely simple membranous tubular condition
of that organ to the adult form, when the scheme of its complexity
seems an almost hopeless task to unravel; with the application of his
knowledge of function supplementary to his knowledge of structure, he
is carried onward ever more and more to consider as far as he can push
his biological data, the physical basis of mental manifestations which
go to form the phenomena grouped under habits, out of which the conduct
or ethical aspect of the individual, relative to his fellow-creature,
springs. As the processes of mental development are very imperfectly
[Sidenote: _Outline of the Evolution of the Human Brain_]
realized, I may here indicate very briefly the outlines along which
the Brain develops, pointing out at the same time its correlation
during phases of its development with the permanent, that is, the
adult condition of the brains in several other animals. The expression
‘thin-skinned,’ often applied to persons who might be judged as
mentally over sensitive, is not inappropriate when we bear in mind that
[Sidenote: _Brain and Skin_]
the Brain and Spinal cord, in fact the whole nervous system, originates
from the skin-layer of the embryo; and, indeed, in the lower forms of
Invertebrate animals the beginning of a nervous system is diffused
over the skin-layer, in which are found indications of sensation. In
such forms, for instance as the jelly-fishes, the brain-skin layer does
not differentiate or split off into its two component parts; but in
higher forms we find development proceeding in this wise; an elongated
groove appears on the surface of a circumscribed area of an oval-shaped
vesicle. The area is known as the embryonic shield, because it is on
it that the embryo is afterwards laid down. But when the groove first
appears there is, so to speak, but little else of an embryo, except
that part which is now differentiating itself into the form of this
groove. In other words, a very early indication of the appearance of
the embryo is represented by its groove-shaped nervous system. But to
continue. The surface-groove is soon converted into a simple straight
tube, which, seeking a deeper situation, becomes surrounded by other
tissue and cut off from the general surface-layer. Its wall then is
extremely thin, comparable to a very fine membranous film, and the
cellular elements of which it is composed are comparatively simple in
shape, such as are found in many other parts of the permanent body.
[Sidenote: _Vesicular stage of the Human Brain_]
Very rapidly, however, the front portion of the tube dilates into
three bulbs which are separated only by surface constrictions, so that
their spacious cavities are continuous. These bulbs or vesicles are,
in fact, the whole of the primitive Human Brain, out of which all
other subdivisions of the organ are derived. Microscopical examination
reveals to us here, and also in the lower portion of the tube (the
latter forming the spinal cord), very thin membranous walls. However,
with high magnifications of the microscope, the cellular elements
are seen to be evolving speedily from simple to more complicated
shapes. They give out branching processes which minutely interlace
with those of neighbouring cells. These cells become very complicated
in the ultimate analysis of their minute protoplasmic structure
before the wall of the brain undergoes much thickening. They serve
the purposes of allowing stimuli to pass from one cell to another,
which, shooting along the innumerable branchings, can set up changes
in the cellular elements, sometimes over a considerable area of the
Brain. However, as long as the wall remains thin the cell-machinery
remains, comparatively speaking, very limited in its action. In the
lower forms of fishes, whose brains developmentally correspond more or
less with the conditions of the early Human Brain, the higher mental
manifestations, such as _memory_, _thought_, and so on, are feebly, if
at all, capable of being called forth. If we now examine the fore-brain
of a Human Foetus somewhat advanced, say at the stage when the organ
is structurally comparable to the brain of an adult rabbit, we find
that the walls have greatly thickened, giving the organ the appearance
of being solid with a small hollow core. A very thin section of this
wall shows vast numbers of complicated branching cells――what myriads,
therefore, can the entire thickness of the wall accommodate! A step
further and we behold in the Brain of the new-born babe a highly
elaborate organ with immensely thickened walls stocked with cells which
form the psychic machinery, and too intricate in their structure to
call for special description here. And while now, from the structural
point of view, we may regard the Human Brain as almost completed in
its marvellous complexity, we are nevertheless struck with the great
hiatus existing between the mental powers in parent and babe. It is
true that many faculties of the Brain (which we would have as abstract
in nature) manifest themselves at an extraordinarily early period,
and that they seem to be the results of past experiences of the Human
[Sidenote: _The Brain of the babe and the Evolution of Mental
Faculties_]
Race, which, having accrued, have been passed on by heredity to the
offspring; yet others, and even the same faculties under different
conditions, are put into action by experiences founded mainly on
the child’s own observations and experiments. Regarding experiences
inherited, Herbert Spencer points out that “an infant in arms, when
old enough to gaze at objects around with some vague recognition,
smiles in response to the laughing face and soft caressing voice of
its mother. Let there come someone who, with an angry face, speaks to
it in harsh tones. The smile disappears, the features contract into an
expression of pain, and, beginning to cry, it turns away its head, and
makes such movements of escape as are possible. What is the meaning of
these facts? Why does not the frown make it smile, and the mother’s
laugh make it weep? There is but one answer. Already in its developing
brain there is coming into play the structure through which one cluster
of visual and auditory impressions excites pleasurable feelings, and
the structure through which another cluster of visual and auditory
impressions excites painful feelings. The infant knows no more about
the relation existing between a ferocious expression of face, and the
evils which may follow perception of it, than the young bird just out
of its nest knows of the possible pain and death which may be inflicted
by a man coming towards it; and as certainly, in the one case as in
the other, the alarm felt is due to a partially established nervous
[Sidenote: _Inherited Experiences of mental manifestations_]
structure. Why does this partially established nervous structure
betray its presence thus early in the human being? Simply because in
the past experiences of the human race smiles and gentle tones in
those around have been the habitual accompaniments of pleasurable
feelings; while pains of many kinds, immediate and more or less remote,
have been continually associated with the impressions received from
knit brows, and set teeth, and grating voice. Much deeper down than
the history of the human race must we go to find the beginnings of
these connections. The appearances and sounds which excite in the
infant a vague dread indicate danger; and do so because they are the
physiological accompaniments of destructive action, some of them common
to man and inferior mammals, and consequently understood by inferior
mammals as every puppy shows us. What we call the natural language of
anger is due to a partial contraction of those muscles which actual
combat would call into play; and all marks of irritation down to
that passing shade over the brow which accompanies slight annoyance
are incipient stages of these same contractions. Conversely with the
natural language of pleasure, and of that state of mind which we call
[Sidenote: _Physiological interpretation of Anger and Pleasure_]
amicable feeling this too, has a physiological interpretation.” Let us
now examine the same faculties, viz. _sorrow_ and _joy_ under different
conditions, and see how the Brain machinery is called forth into
action. The child trips over the door-mat and falls in its eagerness
to reach the sweetmeat held up in the parent’s hand at the other end
of the room. The fall occasions pain, but only in a slight degree,
not sufficient to warrant the burst of screams and sobs which follow.
The experiment is repeated, and the child comes down again, this time
more easily still, but the cries become worse and more prolonged.
And, if the experiment is again repeated and the child falls, its
sorrow instead of abating seems to increase. Why is this? It seems
contrary to the more familiar cases of children who, after several
upsets of an easy kind, i.e. involving little or no pain, become used
to the mishap and get up smiling. But the particular child of whom we
speak has made an important observation as it treads its ways hastily
across the floor, and as it falls it continues in piteous sobs, to
[Sidenote: _The unfolding of the mental Faculties of Sorrow and Joy_]
observe――what? _the sweetmeat_. And it is in the great disappointment
involved in the loss of time in securing the coveted tit-bit, coupled
with sensation of pain, here only slightly felt but no doubt involving
an unpleasant inherited sensation, that such an outburst of the
mental manifestation――_Sorrow_――is now unfolded. In a short time the
child tries the experiment of raising his feet higher in passing over
the door-mat, and now, finding that in so doing he no longer comes
tumbling down and consequently can scamper across the room without
interruption to obtain the sweet, the mental manifestation of――_Joy_ is
more and more unfolded and the outbursts of laughter, as the experiment
is repeated, become more marked. And further, regarding this part of
the subject, it may be said that while there is reason to believe that
the basis of Memory is to a large extent the outcome of inherited
experiences, still it undergoes rapid expansion as the child proceeds
to build up its own vocabulary by associating sounds with ideas, and by
showing a most earnest desire to reproduce those sounds as seen in the
impatient and imperfect way in which they are blurted out, the parent
often being at a loss to know what they mean.
[1] _The Mammary Apparatus of the Mammalia_, with Introduction by Prof.
J. P. Hill, London, 1920.
I need dwell no further on the support of the truths of Evolution: it
is clear that physically and mentally we undergo a gradual process
of development from the simple to the complex organism. The evidences
to be derived from the living forms of animal life around us need not
here detain us. Let us just bear in mind that none of those now living
[Sidenote: _Phylogeny or Stem-Evolution_]
could closely represent in form our ancestors, as it is sometimes
stated. Their kinship could only be that of a cousin: the ape a closer
cousin than the cat; the cat a closer cousin than the jelly-fish.
These creatures are in themselves modified from the common ancestral
stocks (vast numbers of which have long since become extinct), from
[Sidenote: _Cousinship with all living beings_]
which their cousinship has diverged. A study of ancestral stocks
would take us too far a-field in this treatise, so we must be content
to accept the statement that pre-natal evolution or the evolution
of one’s own being, and stem-evolution or evolution of the race are
closely intertwined. But since I have asked you to give your support
to Organic evolution, largely on the evidences derived from a study
of pre-natal development, one question will probably suggest itself,
namely, what is the nature of this extraordinary persistent force of
heredity which acts on the egg of a Human Being, which Human Being
has for thousands of years lost to a great extent his resemblance to
unhuman-like ancestors. The early stages of pre-natal development,
were these mechanical in nature, would be more easily understood,
because the embryos of many animals are then almost indistinguishable,
and might, so to speak, be cast in the same form of mould. But, with
regard to the later stages, where the mechanical notion is quite
impossible to entertain, we ask how does heredity act in evolving a
generalized fore-limbed-embryo into the special form of its parent?
It is true that aberrant types do arise, but these are so exceedingly
rare[2] that their occurrence does not seem to affect the question. We
ask if an embryo, say of a dog, is during its stages of development
recapitulating its genealogical tree, why is it not sometimes born
unlike a dog, and like some more or less remote vertebrate ancestor?
For, after all, when due reflection is made with regard to the
wonderful transformations in later embryonic existence which go on,
it is remarkable with what surety the offspring reaches the goal
and structurally is born an exact miniature of its parents. This
marvellous hereditary conservation which permits of _like begetting_
[Sidenote: _The Force of Heredity in Ontogeny_]
_like_ seems to depend upon _long-associated habits of the cellular
elements of the embryo itself_. This is made more clear when we
remember that, as Sir Francis Darwin[3] has put it, the characteristic
of habit is, _par excellence_, a capacity acquired by repetition of
reacting to a fraction of the original environment. Thus, when a
series of actions are compelled to follow each other by applying a
series of stimuli, the actions become organically tied together, or
associated, and follow each other automatically even when the whole
series of stimuli are not acting. And further light is thrown on the
subject when we take into consideration the fact that stimuli (here
represented by a series of stages of cell-division and growth, each
stage apparently serving as a stimulus to the next) are not momentary
in effect, but leave a trace of themselves on the organism constituting
thereby the physical basis of the phenomena grouped under _memory_ in
[Sidenote: _Physical basis of Memory_]
its widest sense. Indeed, there is reason to believe that _memory_
has its place in the morphological or structural as well as in the
temporary reactions of living things. And finally, with regard to the
memory-faculty in connection with the development of the Human Embryo
from its initial stage as a simple egg into the perfect organism,
in referring to the wonderful series of ancestor-like changes which
take place and which resemble those that arose in the long process of
stem-evolution, here Sir Francis Darwin draws a striking analogy in
saying: “This is precisely paralleled by our own experience of memory,
for it often happens that we cannot reproduce the last-learned verse of
the poem without repeating the earlier part: each verse is suggested
by the previous one and acts as a stimulus for the next. The blurred
and imperfect character of the ontogenetic version of the phylogenetic
series may at least remind us of the tendency to abbreviate by omission
what we have learnt by heart.” It is a matter of profound interest to
[Sidenote: _The Existence of Memory in plants_]
know that the basis of _memory_ by association exists in very low forms
of animal as well as in plant organisms. In the latter this factor
has been illustrated by the power of movement, which power, though
acting to stimuli, can be seen to take place in the absence of such.
That a simple form of associated action implies consciousness, as we
understand that phenomenon, is a point I am unable to enter upon; and
yet it is impossible to know whether or not plants or the simplest
[Sidenote: _Psychic element pervades organic Nature_]
forms of animal-life are conscious; “but it is consistent with the
doctrine of continuity that in all living things there is something
psychic, and, if we accept this point of view, we must believe that in
plants there exists a faint copy of what we know as consciousness in
ourselves” (Sir Francis Darwin).
[2] Such must be distinguished from the _monsters_ of medical science,
which include many forms of arrest of development, and plural fusions.
One genuine aberrant form of kitten has come under my notice, in which
the face was long and pointed and the eyes open at birth.
[3] _Presidential Address._ Brit. Assoc. Dublin, 1908.