to do by this—suppose us to show no persistence in _any_ of the forms
of being into which our life may pass, what kind of life would be
realizable under such conditions of eternal volatility? Could life
ever have risen above the stage of the _Amœba_ if the _Amœba_ had not
the instinct to maintain itself on earth? Can Man ever hope to rise to
anything higher without a strong element of continuity, of fixity, of
‘fighting it out on these lines’ in his feeling about the form of life
in which he actually finds himself? It is through the thousand ties of
duty and service, love and joy, which we form with the visible world
around us that we realize the highest life of which we are at present
capable. A light-minded readiness to snap those ties would imply an
incapacity for forming them. Here, as always, we find that Nature tells
us nothing to any good purpose unless we look at her as an organic
whole. One cannot live by any isolated principle or factor, however
great and true.
APPENDIX D
ST. FRANCIS THE POET
No one can read St. Francis’s one poem, the _Canticle of the Sun_,
without feeling that had poetry claimed and won him in time, his might
have been one of the greatest and sweetest of Italian voices. The story
of its composition has a touching beauty. Towards the end of his life,
when in the deepest dejection over the failure of his Order to live
the life of joyful humility, unworldliness, and poverty to which he
had pledged it, he came, blind and ill, to S. Clare’s Convent at St.
Damien, on his way to Rieti, where his malady was to be treated. In
this darkest hour of his life the untroubled faith and loving sympathy
of his old friend brought consolation and peace to his torn spirit. She
made him, it is said, a cell of reeds in the convent garden, where he
could be free to come and go as he wished. “Little by little,” writes
Paul Sabatier in his Vie de S. François, “the man of ancient days
revived in him, and at times the Sisters heard the echo of strange
chants, which mingled with the murmuring of the pines and olives, and
which seemed to come from the cell of reeds.” One day, after a long
conversation with Clare, he had sat down at the monastery table for
refection. Scarcely had he begun to eat when he fell into a kind of
trance. “Praise be to God!” he cried, on coming to himself. He had
completed the _Canticle of the Sun_.
It is said that for a week afterwards he forgot his breviary, and
passed his days in repeating to himself the strophes of his wonderful
poem—a work in which, for all its religious ardour, the note of
asceticism is little apparent; unless one sees it in his usual quaint
adoption of the things of creation into a religious community! I append
a literal translation, omitting two later verses composed for special
occasions and not belonging to the first pure inspiration. It is
written in unrhymed irregular stanzas:—
CANTICLE OF THE SUN
Most high, all-powerful, good Lord,
thine are praises, glory, honour and all benediction.
To Thee alone, Most high, they are due,
and no man is worthy to name Thee.
Have praise, Lord, with all Thy creatures,
especially Brother my Lord the Sun.
He gives the day, and by him Thou showest light,
and he is beautiful and radiant, with great splendour.
Of Thee, Most High, he is the symbol.
Have praise, Lord, for Sister Moon and for the Stars;
in the sky Thou hast formed them, bright, precious and beautiful.
Have praise, Lord, for Brother Wind,
and for the Air and the Clouds, and for the clear sky, and for
every kind of weather,
by which Thou givest sustenance to all Thy creatures.
Have praise, Lord, for Sister Water
who is so serviceable and humble and precious and chaste.
Have praise, Lord, for Brother Fire,
by whom Thou dost illuminate the night.
He is handsome and gay, bold and strong.
Have praise, Lord, for Sister our Mother, the Earth,
who nourishes and takes care of us,
and brings forth divers fruits with coloured flowers,
and the grass.
Praise ye and bless the Lord and render thanks to Him,
and serve Him with great humility!
APPENDIX E
ISABELLA AND CLAUDIO
The ethics of sex-relations has always formed a crucial question in
ethical systems. Let me recall a remarkable debate upon it which
took place recently between a champion of the Spencerian system, Dr.
Saleeby, and Mr. W. S. Lilly, who represented, of course, the view of
Catholic orthodoxy.
Mr. Lilly, in an article on Shakespere’s Religion contributed to
the _Fortnightly Review_ for June, 1904, was led to dwell on “the
strikingly Catholic ethos of the play Measure for Measure, informed
as it is by the idea, quite alien from the Protestant mind, of the
surpassing excellence and sacrosanct character of virginal chastity.”
Hazlitt, whom Mr. Lilly takes to represent the typical Protestant view,
had declared himself “not greatly enamoured” of Isabella’s inflexible
purity, and had expressed his want of “confidence in the virtue that is
sublimely good at another’s expense.” Mr. Lilly added that Spencer’s
teaching would have countenanced Hazlitt’s judgment and enjoined upon
Isabella compliance with Angelo’s desire. Dr. Saleeby having denounced
this as an “outrageous” perversion of Spencer’s meaning, Mr. Lilly
vindicates himself in a letter to the _Fortnightly_ as follows:—
“I pointed, in a letter appearing in your July number, to Mr.
Spencer’s express declaration, in the _Data of Ethics_, that the
elements out of which the conceptions of right and wrong are
framed are pleasures and pains, and that ‘conduct is considered
by us as good or bad, according as its aggregate results to self
or others, or both, are pleasurable or painful.’ I concluded,
therefore, that if we are to go by Mr. Spencer’s ‘scientific
ethics,’ Isabella ought to have been willing to make the sacrifice
of her virginity in order to prevent the disagreeable feeling
which would be caused to herself through the loss of a beloved
brother, to Claudio through the process of decapitation, and to
Angelo through disappointed desire, and thus to have procured, as
‘aggregate results,’ a great balance of pleasure over pain to all
concerned” (_Fortnightly Review_, September, 1906).
Dr. Saleeby’s answer to this is the obvious one that the Spencerian
ethics do not contemplate immediate personal pleasures and pains, but
rather ultimate utility to the race at large, and that “Isabella’s
virtue, if merely by example alone, would make for the strengthening
of the society in which she found herself.” Mr. Lilly then practically
surrenders his first position—he admits that Spencer’s “scientific
ethics” are intended to have little or no concern with the immediate
sensations of Isabella, Claudio, and Angelo, but he turns to confront
Dr. Saleeby and Spencer from a new and much stronger position. What
claim, he asks, have “scientific ethics” on the individual? Ultimate
utility for the race might (if one could estimate it correctly) be
taken as giving us the _what_ of moral action, but can it ever give
us the _why_? Isabella was not thinking of “ultimate utility” in
her refusal, but of the laws that Sophocles wrote of so memorably,
“unwritten and invincible laws which ever live, and no man knows their
birthplace.” She was not thinking of the effect of her example—her
action would have been, and ought to have been, just the same though
she had had the most complete assurance that none but Angelo and
herself would ever know the reason for Claudio’s pardon. The motive
which constrained her was derived from the system of ethics which
Spencer’s was constructed to replace. This new system has never
succeeded in supplying an answer to the demand of the individual man or
woman, ‘What is the advantage of the race to me that I should sacrifice
the least of my inclinations for its sake?’ But till that piercing
question is answered, all hedonistic systems, however elaborate and
perfect their fabric, are building on “wood, hay, stubble.” Touch their
foundations with the pitiless edge of that question, and in a moment
they are in the dust. So far, in effect, Mr. Lilly.
Before we go on to deal with these conflicting views of the ethical
problem in Measure for Measure, let us take a parallel presentation in
literature of the same problem, in which the implied judgment of the
dramatist appears entirely different. Maeterlinck, in his Monna Vanna,
shows us a beautiful and high-souled woman, the loving and faithful
wife of the commandant of the city of Pisa. The city is beleaguered
by foes, its power of defence is at an end, an assault is imminent,
and the inhabitants will be exposed to all the havoc and outrage which
attended warfare in the days when the conceptions so much prized by Mr.
Lilly held undisputed sway. The captain of the besieging Florentine
forces, a great soldier of fortune named Prinzivalle, had been an
ancient playmate of Monna Vanna, and, unknown to her, had been her
ardent lover. Being entreated for mercy, he sends an ultimatum. Let
Monna Vanna spend a night in his tent, and he will provision the city
and withdraw his army next day. Amid the indignation and distraction
which the cruel dilemma causes in the household of the prince, Monna
Vanna’s resolve shapes and hardens itself. She decides to sacrifice
herself for the city. But Prinzivalle finds her a woman of marble.
Her soul is so high-strung with heroic devotion that she regards her
body as little as a cast-off rag—she is become as incapable of fear
or shrinking as she is of base desire. His passion is chilled by the
icy completeness of her self-surrender, while all that is noble in him
responds to her nobility, and the city is saved without the terrible
sacrifice which she was ready to perform.
Such is the tale of Monna Vanna, so far as it concerns our present
discussion. In reading it, it is impossible not to feel that she was
right, just as in reading Measure for Measure it is impossible not to
feel that Isabella was right. What has a system of natural ethics, a
system based on the conception of life and nature put forward in this
book, to say upon the searching ethical question involved in these two
great dramas? It is not an easy nor a pleasant question to subject to
philosophic analysis, but it is a very important and critical one.
In the first place neither science nor sense will, I think, agree with
Mr. Lilly’s estimate of “the surpassing excellence and sacrosanct
character of virginal chastity.” Virginity, _in itself_ and apart
from all qualifying circumstances, is the reverse of excellent and
admirable. It means death, not life; it violates nature. What is really
sound doctrine in this connexion is not the sanctity and excellence
of virginity, but the deep degradation of making sexual relations a
subject of barter. Wherever this prevails, whatever the church and the
law may or may not have had to do with the transaction, the beauty and
romance of life is blighted and destroyed. There is no conquest of
culture which should be guarded more devotedly than the dignity and
sweetness which are brought into the relations of man and woman by
love, as the great poets have understood that word, love moving in its
guarded circle of mutual trust and intimacy. A life is well lost in
defence of this most sacred treasure of the spirit.
Isabella and Monna Vanna both felt this truth in the depths of their
nature as all good women do. Yet absolute laws of action can rarely,
if ever, be laid down to cover every individual case. One can conceive
either of them deciding as Monna Vanna actually did. But in the realm
of high tragedy which we are now dealing with, where principles and
actions have a simplicity and integrity rarely found in common life,
it must be felt that neither of them could have taken up life again as
if nothing had happened. Had they recognized that there were higher
reasons stringent enough to compel them to tread the way to that
sacrifice, they would, I think, like the Roman Lucretia, have solemnly
marked it with their life-blood as an expiation, and as a warning, were
it only to Prinzivalle or Angelo, that such a thing must not be done
save at the most terrible cost that man can pay. For Isabella, then,
the problem would practically resolve itself into the question whether
she should surrender her own life for that of a single worthless
relative. There was no moral obligation on her to do that. Had she
loved him so intensely as to go willingly to her doom for his sake, no
one could have blamed her; no one could blame her if she refused, and
bade him summon up his manhood to die for his own sin.
But in Monna Vanna’s case it was not a single life that was at stake,
but the life and honour of a multitude of men and women with whose
protection, moreover, she was, in part, charged by the high position
she held in their midst. If right and wrong are to be interpreted as
Mr. Lilly would interpret them, solely with regard to the arbitrary
commands of a supernatural Power, then the _extent_ to which a given
action may influence life can hardly be a matter of any moment. On the
other hand, in Spencer’s scheme, with its criterion of the greatest
ultimate pleasure of the greatest number, hardly anything else can
matter except precisely this question of the extent or area affected
by our action. In the scheme of natural ethics which I am trying
to commend, and which, if I am right, grows logically out of the
conception of a living universe, the element of _extent_ has its due
place in determining action, but none in fixing the character of the
action. And this, it may be observed, is just what the good sense of
humanity has practically arrived at in its daily judgments and doings.
No ordinary man would be required by any ethical law to lay down his
life as a substitute for another who had no claim on him. But for a
community, or a man such as a sovran, who for the time represents a
community and embodies its interests, it would be thought base not to
die if occasion demanded it. And so Monna Vanna might rightly feel
herself constrained to do for her city what Isabella was in no way
required to do for a brother, but the quality of the action would
remain in each case the same, and the tragedy could have ended nobly
only in the one stern way.
On the general question of the ordering of sex-relations, it needs no
argument to show that the conditions fixed by nature forbid them, in
the interests of life, to be casual and fleeting. On the other hand
to require that, when these relations have once been entered into, no
vices, no cruelty, no variance of any kind on either side would justify
the dissolution of the connexion and the formation of a new one, is
surely a superstitious exaggeration of a principle in itself right and
sound. Probably the law and practice in England at the present day
are as good a rough approximation to a sound marriage system as man
has yet devised; with, however, this large qualification, that cases
of divorce when they come before the law should be heard _in camera_.
The Anglo-Saxon has not yet got rid of all his superstitions, and his
belief in salvation by publicity is distinctly one of them.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Metabolism: see p. 27.
[2] J. Reinke. Die Welt als Tat, p. 173. The term ‘development’
(_Entwicklung_) includes both what we commonly understand by that term
(as, the transformation of an embryo into a complete animal) and also
what we call Evolution, the development of one species into another.
[3] See p. 24.
[4] Sylva Sylvarum, Century VI.
[5] Zoonomia, Vol. II, p. 247, third edition, 1801. Darwin is here
adopting David Hume’s conjecture, which is worked out in some detail in
the Zoonomia, the conclusion being that probably “one and the same kind
of living filaments is and has been the cause of all organic life” (p.
244). He attributed evolution to internal forces impressed on living
matter by the Creator.
[6] He taught that nature had produced a multitude of disconnected
parts which afterwards combined and recombined at random until the
appropriate parts had come together and remained stable.
[7]
Αἰὼν πάντα φέρει. δολιχὸς χρόνος οἶδεν ἀμείβειν
Οὔνομα καὶ μορφὴν καὶ φύσιν ἠδὲ τύχην.
Jac. Anth., II, 20.
[8] “It has lately become the fashion, at least among the younger
school of biologists, to attach small value to natural selection, if
not, indeed, to regard it as a superseded formula.” (A. Weismann, The
Evolution Theory, Engl. trans., II, 391.)
[9] Text Book of Botany, p. 3. English translation by Dr. H. C. Porter,
1898. In the fifth German edition, which served as the basis of a
revised English translation (1903), another passage (taking note of De
Vries’ Mutations Theory) is substituted for the above quoted, but the
essential meaning is the same.
[10] Leitfaden in das Studium der experimentellen Biologie der
Wassertiere, p. 67. The subject is ably treated by Keyserling, Das
Gefüge der Welt, p. 190.
[11] For instance, the development of an embryo in the womb takes place
in strict accordance with physico-chemical laws. But withdraw the
element which we call _life_ and how different a set of processes would
at once supervene! Yet the physical energies in the embryo would remain
in amount exactly what they were before.
[12] See Weismann, The Evolution Theory, II, 358.
[13] For my own part, I may say I have a difficulty in conceiving the
Divine under the human and limited category of intelligent personality.
[14] Das Gefüge der Welt, Hermann Graf v. Keyserling, 1906.
[15] See Appendix A.
[16] See Jagadis Chunder Bose, Response in the Living and the
Non-Living, _passim_. The following passage sums up the results of
many delicate experiments in the response to electrical stimulus.
“We have seen,” writes the Indian physicist, “that the criterion by
which vital response is differentiated is its abolition by the action
of certain reagents—the so-called poisons. We find, however, that
‘poisons’ also abolish the response in plants and metals. Just as
animal tissues pass from a state of responsiveness while living to
a state of irresponsiveness when killed by poisons, so also we find
metals transformed from a responsive to an irresponsive condition by
the action of similar poisonous reagents” (p. 188).
[17] At a meeting of the British Association in 1905, Professor H.
A. Miers, in a lecture on ‘The Growth of a Crystal,’ is reported to
have said, The most wonderful feature of crystals was the manner
in which they grew, just as though they were living things. Two
features deserved special attention. The first was the remarkable
power crystals possessed of healing themselves when mutilated. If a
growing crystal were removed from a solution, broken at one of its
corners, and re-immersed in the solution, it would continue to grow,
and as it grew would restore the missing part, and become once more a
completely symmetrical figure. This power of continuing to grow was
possessed by a crystal even after countless ages, so soon as it was
immersed into the appropriate solution. In this sense the crystal was
immortal, for it never lost its vitality, or power of growing. The
other remarkable feature was the growth of crystals in over-saturated
solutions. In solutions only slightly over-saturated, no spontaneous
generation of crystals was possible. It was true that a solution only
slightly over-saturated would often begin to crystallize, apparently
spontaneously, when exposed to the air, but this was because there were
minute crystal fragments of the dissolved substance floating about in
the air which got into the solution with the dust and so inoculated
the solution with crystal germs, just as the human body might be
inoculated with disease by a disease germ. If these germs were kept
out, the solution would not crystallize until it was very strongly
over-saturated, and then, at a certain strength, it would suddenly
begin to crystallize spontaneously and with great rapidity.—_Times_,
August 5, 1907.
[18] The Nature and Origin of Life (Eng. trans.), p. 250.
[19] It is not to be assumed, however, that these substances are merely
passive objects in the process. The life which is in them has doubtless
as much to do with the result as the life which is in the plant. This
is a side of the question which calls for further investigation.
[20] It is however suggested by Professor E. Ray Lankester, in his
article, ‘Protozoa,’ in the Encyclopædia Britannica, that the most
primitive forms of organic life did not possess chlorophyll but fed on
albuminoids, etc., which constituted the earliest steps in their own
evolution.
[21] In Beddard’s Animal Coloration note is taken of the green fur of
the sloth as a most uncommon if not unique phenomenon. It has been
ascertained that the sloth has grooved or fluted hairs, which form the
habitat of a minute green fungus to which the colour is due.
[22] Or starch, which easily decomposes into sugar, and which is
composed of the same elements.
[23] Ray Lankester, _op. cit._
[24] Verworn, General Physiology, pp. 102, 478: “Physiological
chemistry has shown that between the two kinds of substance very
essential chemical differences exist, which prove that living substance
experiences in dying pronounced chemical changes. A widespread
difference between the two consists in their reaction. The reaction
of living substance is almost without exception alkaline or neutral,
and with death changes usually to acid.... Physiological chemistry has
shown similar changes in death in great number. All these facts prove
that in the death of living cell-substance certain chemical compounds
undergo transformations; hence substances exist in it which are not to
be found in dead cell-substance.”
[25] In 1892. An English translation of Bütschli’s work on Microscopic
Foams and Protoplasm, by E. A. Minchin, appeared in 1894. The nucleus
is really a form of protoplasm, chiefly differentiated from the
‘cytoplasm,’ or protoplasm of the cell, by containing a large amount of
phosphorus.
[26] The Cell in Development and Inheritance, 2nd edition, p. 9.
[27] By J. A. and M. R. Thomson, 1904.
[28] The Evolution Theory, II, p. 391.
[29] _Ibid._, I, p. 368.
[30] _Ibid._, I, p. 404.
[31] The Evolution Theory, I, p. 353.
[32] _Ibid._, II, p. 52.
[33] But note the transition stage exemplified in the natural history
of crystals (_vide_ p. 22).
[34] “It has been Weismann’s great service to place the keystone
between the work of the evolutionists and that of the cytologists, and
thus to bring the cell-theory and the evolution-theory into organic
connexion” (E. B. Wilson, The Cell, p. 13).
[35] Prof. Wilson’s work on the cell (see note on p. 33) may be
referred to for a comprehensive and detailed statement of all that is
known at present on this subject.
[36] According to Wilson (_op. cit._) this was guessed by Haeckel in
1866, and confirmed in 1884-5 by the almost simultaneous discoveries of
O. Hertwig, Strasburger, Kölliker, and Weismann.
[37] Sixteen have been counted in the human cell. A grasshopper has
twelve, a lily twenty-four. The number is almost always an even one,
but as with everything in Nature there are exceptions to the rule.
[38] The process briefly described above is that of ‘mitotic’ division
(μίτος, a thread, from the appearance of the chromosomes). Amitotic
division, in which the cell and nucleus simply divide in two without
the formation of chromosomes, also occurs under certain conditions, but
is usually an abnormal or degenerative process (cf. Wilson, The Cell,
pp. 116-119).
[39] “Every animal appears as a sum of vital entities, each of
which bears within itself the complete character of life” (Virchow,
Cellular-pathologie, p. 12, 1858).
[40] Weismann, The Evolution Theory, I, 251.
[41] It is cast out into the cytoplasm—the substance surrounding the
nucleus—where it degenerates (see Wilson, The Cell, p. 147).
[42] _Amœbæ._ See p. 30.
[43] The Evolution Theory, I, 265.
[44] The Cell, p. 178.
[45] Scientific Papers and Addresses, II, pp. 862-3.
[46] English trans., 2nd edition (1903), p. 159.
[47] The Cell, p. 434.
[48] Against this view might be quoted the fact that the unfertilized
eggs sometimes laid by the workers (imperfect females) of bee and ant
communities always develop into drones.
[49] Pp. 262-3. The bird was examined by Prof. Max Weber, of Amsterdam,
and Mr. Beddard refers to the _Zoologischer Anzeiger_ for 1890, p. 508,
for Weber’s account of the case.
[50] The now famous Mendelian Law of Inheritance, first discovered in
1865 by Mendel, an Augustinian monk and Abbott of Brünn, and completely
ignored till the year 1900, when it was rediscovered by De Vries and
others, is also strongly confirmatory of Weismann’s analysis of the
principle of heredity. According to this law it is possible, as it
were, to isolate any particular characteristic of a species or even
(if heritable) of an individual, and by a definite system of crossing
to attach this characteristic _alone_ to any other variety capable
of crossing with the first. This means that inheritance is governed
by separable units of formative energy. These units are Weismann’s
determinants. The discovery of the methods of turning this principle
to practical account is obviously of great importance for agriculture
and stockbreeding. The law has some inexplicable limitations which are
now closely engaging the attention of biologists. It is impossible to
enter upon the subject more fully here, but a good account of it will
be found in Lock’s Recent Progress in the Study of Variation, and in a
brochure, An Address on Mendelian Heredity, by W. Bateson, reprinted
from _Brain_, pt. cxiv, 1906.
[51] The actual stimulus which prompts the division is probably to be
found in the disturbance of equilibrium which arises when the cell is
taking in more nutriment than its digestive system can deal with. This,
of course, does not explain why it should divide instead of dying of
indigestion.
[52] See Strasburger, _loc. cit._
[53] The Evolution Theory, I, 402-3.
[54] The subject of degenerated and lost organs is very fully treated
by M. Edmond Perrier in his Traité de Zoologie, pp. 325 _sqq._ It may
be noted that animals which are _fixed_ usually lack eyes, even in
light. In the depths of the sea, where total darkness reigns except
for the phosphorescence emitted by certain animals, it is found that
some creatures have completely lost their organs of sight, while others
have them extraordinarily developed. Those which have lost them are the
walkers (_Crustaceæ_); those which show an exceptional development are
the swimmers. This goes to show that the needs of the animal, rather
than the external conditions, are the determining cause.
Cave fishes are all extremely sensitive to light, which affects them
disagreeably, even when the optic nerve is wholly destroyed. See Armand
Viré, La Faune Actuelle des Cavernes, _Revue des Idées_, March 15,
1905, and La Faune Souterraine de France, 1900.
[55] A. R. Wallace, Darwinism, chapters III. and XV.
[56] Origin of Species, chapter II.
[57] Sexual selection—the competition of males and females for their
mates—is merely a form of natural selection, and need not be specially
dealt with here.
[58] Origin of Species, chapter V.
[59] See Eimer, Organic Evolution (Eng. trans.), pp. 173-184, for a
full discussion of the question from the Lamarckian standpoint.
[60] ‘Right-handedness and Left-brainedness’ by D. J. Cunningham: the
Huxley Lecture for 1902. Printed in the _Journal of the Anthropological
Institute_, Vol. XXXII, pp. 273-95. I may refer also to a brochure
by Dr. Geo. Sigerson, F.R.U.I., Consideration of the Structural and
Acquisitional Elements in Dextral Pre-eminence, Dublin, 1884. Dr.
Sigerson believes that primitive man was ambidextrous, and that
‘dexterity’ is a case of specialization of function, and has supported
this view by a novel and interesting line of pathological observation.
[61] _Op. cit._, p. 285.
[62] _Ibid._, pp. 284-5.
[63] _Journal of Anatomy and Physiology_, Vol. XXXVI, p. 401. ‘On the
relative weights of the right and left sides of the body in the foetus.’
[64] Origin of Species, chap. VI.
[65] ‘The Inadequacy of Natural Selection,’ Herbert Spencer.
_Contemporary Review_, February and March, 1893.
‘Prof. Weismann’s Theories,’ Herbert Spencer. _Contemporary Review_,
May, 1893.
‘The All-Sufficiency of Natural Selection,’ Aug. Weismann.
_Contemporary Review_, September, 1893.
‘A Rejoinder to Prof. Weismann,’ Herbert Spencer. _Contemporary
Review_, December, 1893.
The Romanes Lecture for 1894, by Aug. Weismann (Frowde).
[66] ‘Lamarck et le Transformisme actuel’: Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle,
Centenaire; Vol. Commemoratif, 1903, p. 508. M. Perrier adds that
the metaphysical alternative “est, en effet, à quoi le professeur A.
Weismann, de Fribourg, a été conduit.” This, I think, can only be M.
Perrier’s way of saying that he finds Weismann unintelligible, for
Weismann’s ostensible object is certainly to steer between the Scylla
of Lamarckism and the Charybdis of ‘metaphysics.’ With what success he
attempts this feat we shall see.
[67] The Evolution Theory, II, p. 78.
[68] II, p. 330 _sqq._
[69] The Evolution Theory, II., 346.
[70] See p. 83.
[71] The Evolution Theory, II, 264.
[72] I take this from J. T. Cunningham’s Sexual Dimorphism, p. 16.
[73] Useless structures and organs are regarded by Weismann, and I
think with justice, as in some degree unfavourable. They make demands
on the organism for nourishment, and are thus in the position of
non-productive members of a working family.
[74] _Op. cit._, p. 73. See Appendix B.
[75] Wallace, Darwinism, p. 24.
[76] Animal Coloration, p. 252.
[77] Poulton, The Colours of Animals, p. 238.
[78] _Ibid._, p. 237.
[79] See p. 7, note 2.
[80] Eng. trans. revised from fifth German edition, 1903, p. 3.
[81] Mechanisch-physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre. 1884.
[82] See especially Organic Evolution, pp. 52, 3.
[83] Organic Evolution, pp. 225, 433. Eimer is a believer in the
inheritance of acquired characteristics; hence Oken’s conception,
_taken literally_, offers him a ready method of disposing of the
ant-problem dealt with on p. 85, _sqq._
[84] Organic Evolution, p. 268.
[85] See Eimer, Organic Evolution, p. 135 _sqq._
[86] p. 62.
[87] “It is,” writes Wilson, “becoming more and more clearly apparent
... that Schwann went too far in denying the influence of the totality
of the organism upon the local activities of the cells. It would
of course be absurd to maintain that the whole can consist of more
than the sum of its parts. Yet, as far as growth and development are
concerned, it has now been clearly demonstrated that only in a limited
sense can the cells be regarded as co-operating units. They are rather
local centres of a formative power pervading the growing mass as a
whole” (The Cell, pp. 58, 9).
What Prof. Wilson, absorbed like most scientists in the consideration
of ponderable and visible masses, assumes to be “absurd” is of course
the very thing which he is proving to be a fact The whole can be not
merely the “sum” but the synthesis of its parts.
[88] Die Welt als That., chap. XXIV.
[89] _Loc. cit._
[90] Kräfte zweiter Hand. The primary forces are the chemical and
mechanical forces, the secondary are those which control and guide
these for certain ends.
[91] Pp. 9, 10. The italics are Prof. Henslow’s.
[92] This statement taken literally is, of course, quite too sweeping.
Professor Henslow clearly means here by “variations” those alone which
are important enough to have selection-value, favourable or otherwise.
Insignificant variations are always occurring.
[93] Henslow, Origin, etc., p. 102.
[94] _Ibid._, p. 80.
[95] _Ibid._, p. 40.
[96] A. R. Wallace, Darwinism (1890), p. 427.
[97] Marie v. Chauvin, ‘Ueber die Verwandlungsfähigkeit des
mexikanischen Axolotl.’ _Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Zoologie_,
XLI, p. 385. See also The Cambridge Natural History, _sub voce_.
[98] Haeckel, History of Creation (English trans.), I, p. 150.
[99] See also pp. 15, 16.
[100] J. H. Newman.
[101] See Principles of Sociology, Part II.
[102] See Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, s.v., φημή, νέος.
[103] _Deus_ descends from a root meaning ‘to shine,’ hence the Day,
the Sun, God; θεός is referred by Curtius to a root θες, to desire,
pray—God is “der Angeflehte.”
[104] Are there many Englishmen who would understand the following
sentence which I lately came across in a St. Louis paper? “This graft
was one of the scrap-head variety, and it was hard therefore to get the
boodlers good.”
[105] The ‘wheel’ is really a spiral—the line of all natural growth.
[106] See p. 111.
[107] Origin of Species, chapter VI.
[108] Mechanisch-Physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre, p. 150.
[109] Weismann, The Evolution Theory, I, p. 162.
[110] _Ibid._, I, p. 177.
[111] So the cogwheels of a machine designed for some useful purpose
will lacerate the hand of a man who gets in their way.
[112] See p. 85.
[113] Darwinism and the Problems of Life, 1904. Eng. transl. by J.
McCabe, 1905, pp. 354 _sqq._
[114] Orthogenesis der Schmetterlinge (1897). The passage will be found
in Kellogg’s Darwinism To-day, p. 285. Instances of ‘regression,’ etc.,
are given by Kellogg, _op. cit._, p. 227.
[115] When Heracleitus wrote “The One arises from the All and the
All from the One” (Frag. LIX. Bywater) he was stating with his usual
pregnant brevity a position of deep significance for modern scientific
thought.
[116] It must be borne in mind that strict physical continuity does not
exist in nature. Sir Oliver Lodge has somewhere remarked that science
is entirely at a loss to explain how it comes that when one picks up a
stick by one end the rest of the stick comes up with it.
[117] General Physiology, p. 550.
[118] Published by Bell & Son, 1907.
[119] Darwinism To-day, p. 377, quoting H. F. Osborn’s The Unknown
Factors of Evolution. Osborn, like the writer (see p. 90), holds
Spencer and Weismann to be mutually destructive. “If acquired
variations are transmitted there must be therefore some unknown
principle in heredity; if they are not transmitted there must be some
unknown factor in evolution.”
[120] Mechanisch-Physiologische Theorie der Abstammungslehre. See
especially pp. 132, and 340 _sqq._
[121] Darwinism To-day, p. 278.
[122] p. 49.
[123]
Ζεύς ἐστιν αἰθὴρ, Ζεὺς δὲ γῆ, Ζεὺς δ’ οὐρανὸς,
Ζεύς τοι τὰ πάντα, χὥτι τῶνδ' ὑπέρτερον.
Frag., 295.
[124] Walt Whitman, ‘The Answerer.’
[125] Data of Ethics, 29.
[126] See Appendix C.
[127] _Oxford and Cambridge Review_, June, 1907. _Sic_ also Bishop
Berkeley, Alciphron, Dial. VII, 19, “A man is said to be free, so far
forth as he can do what he will.” Berkeley’s analysis of this statement
is substantially the same as that in the text.
[128] Herbert Spencer, translating these physical terms into their
psychic equivalents, declares that the illusion of Free Will “consists
in supposing that at each moment the _ego_ is something more than
the aggregate of feelings and ideas, actual and nascent, which then
exists” (Psychology, I, p. 500). The pivot of the doctrine is the word
_aggregate_. We have seen that the most primitive living organism is
something more than that. _Cf._ p. 119 _note_.
[129] Of course they are only relatively lower—there are no essentially
‘low’ motives in life at all.
[130] The Will to Believe—‘The Dilemma of Determinism,’ p. 145 _sqq._
[131] Pragmatism, pp. 287-8. Compare Bishop Berkeley. “To me it
seems, that if we begin from Things particular and concrete, and
thence proceed to general Notions and Conclusions, there will be no
Difficulty in this Matter. But if we begin with Generalities, and lay
our Foundation in abstract Ideas, we shall find ourselves entangled
and lost in a Labyrinth of our own making.” Alciphron, Dial. vii. 20.
Berkeley had fully apprehended the Determinist position; see vii. 16.
[132] p. 129, 5th edition, 1878. There is an evident fallacy in Mill’s
position. The Deity who could make a hell and sentence men to it for
not worshipping him could not also have created the conscience which
would resist him. The authorship of the moral sense and of hell are not
to be combined in our conception of the divine. But Mill, of course, in
this flash of rhetoric, was merely taking popular religious conceptions
as he found them.
[133] p. 298.
[134] Plato, in that great dialogue, the Phaedo, has a noteworthy
passage on those who when once betrayed by Reason are apt to fall into
unbelief or superstition, just as those who, when they have found bad
faith among men, may fall into cynicism:—
“Would it not, Phaedo,” said Socrates, “be a lamentable condition, when
a certain thesis is true, firm, and intelligible, if a man supporting
something of the kind should find arguments which seemed true at one
time to be false at another, and in the end, instead of blaming himself
or his own want of skill, should, in his ill-temper, make haste to
shuffle off the blame from his own shoulders to Reason itself, and
spend the rest of his life in hating and slandering it, being deprived
of the truth and science of things?”
“By Zeus,” said I, “it would be lamentable.”
“Let us take heed then, before all else, that we never admit into our
minds the idea that there can be no soundness in reasonings, but rather
believe that we ourselves are not yet sound, and study manfully and
with a will how to be so” (§ xxxix).
[135] Every mental acquisition, such as the knowledge of a new
language, results in a definite alteration in a certain locality of
the brain. The human brain, as an instrument of thought and knowledge,
is, in fact, built up by a long series of purposeful efforts beginning
in early infancy. These efforts do not, of course, originate in the
matter of the brain itself, nor can the different nerves, which bring
it messages from the outside world, carry with them anything of the
nature of conscious purpose and will. These arise from Personality. I
may refer for a full and very interesting treatment of this subject to
Dr. W. H. Thomson’s work, Brain and Personality (1907).
[136] In the Phaedo, xliii.
[137] Microcosmus, Bk. II, Chaps. II and V.
[138]
Man, and man only
Can do the impossible;
He can Distinguish,
Choose, and give Judgment;
He to the moment lends
Power to endure.
[139] This includes the nourishment and protection of its young while
helpless.
[140] This word is, I believe, used by Prof. Haeckel to describe his
system of philosophy. I am very imperfectly acquainted with that
system, and therefore think it well to note here that the term must not
be taken with any special implications which Haeckel may have attached
to it.
[141] See pp. 17-20.
[142] Deontology, I, p. 32.
[143] Examination of Hamilton, pp. 586 _sqq._
[144] Data of Ethics, §20.
[145] “I conceive it to be the business of moral science to deduce,
from the laws of life and the conditions of existence, what kinds of
action necessarily tend to produce happiness, and what kinds to produce
unhappiness” (Data of Ethics, §21). Happiness is always taken by
Spencer as equivalent to pleasurable feeling.
[146] Reason in Science, p. 252.
[147] See Data of Ethics, p. 36. It has been proved by exact
physiological experiment that happiness promotes healthy vital action
in the living organism, and that sorrow and pain depress it. But of
course human life is not conducted solely on the physiological plane.
[148] _Sic_, Fr. Slater, S.J., in the _Irish Ecclesiastical Record_,
February, 1905. “If such a sum [£l] could be stolen without grave sin,
its amount would prove too great a temptation for the virtue of large
numbers of people who wish to save their souls, but make little of
venial sins” (p. 109). But Fr. Ojetti is much more liberal to persons
of the class described, and gives them up to £4 (p. 100).
[149] I may draw attention in this connexion to a striking and valuable
study of the effect of American democracy on Jewish immigrants
published in the _Times_ of January 4, 1908. As regards Catholicism, it
appears from a comparison of the statistics of emigration from Ireland
with those of Catholicism in the U.S.A. that about 50 per cent of the
Irish Catholics abandon their religion in the New World. The Irish
are also shown by the criminal statistics of the States as well as by
the observation of students of the criminal classes like Mr. Josiah
Flynt, to furnish a far greater proportion of criminals in that country
than obtains in the case of any other nationality contributing to its
population. Yet they also give to American life some of its very best
elements, and they are notoriously the most crimeless of people at
home. The degradation of character commonly produced by Christianizing
the Hindu is so uniformly attested by residents in India that it
cannot be discredited. See, in this reference, an article entitled
‘The Failure of Christian Missions in India,’ by Dr. Josiah Oldfield,
_Hibbert Journal_, April, 1903. Of course it may be said that the
original error lies in the identification of ritual and observance with
religion and morality.
[150] See Appendix D.
[151] “Per l’ asprezza della penitenza e continuo piagnere, era
diventato quasi cieco, e poco vedea.”—Fioretti, III. He had “wholly
shattered his body,” says Thomas of Celano (Second Life of St. F., Ch.
CLX.).
[152] A discussion of the subject, with special reference to the
rapid decay of the Franciscan Order, will be found in Mr. G. G.
Coulton’s paper ‘The Failure of the Friars,’ in the _Hibbert Journal_
for January, 1907. See also criticisms on this paper by two English
Franciscans, Friar Cuthbert and Friar Stanilaus, in the same journal
for April, 1907, and Mr. Coulton’s rejoinder, July, 1907.
[153] When the ascetic ideal is regarded as admirable in a saint, it
naturally leads to still more lamentable perversions by being practised
by persons who have never withdrawn themselves from ordinary social
relations. Thus a Catholic priest has lately given as an instance of
the “spiritual tendency and unworldliness of the Irish peasant” the
case of a farmer’s wife, the mother of a large family, who, by a long
course of secret austerities, brought herself “to an untimely grave,
and, no doubt,” adds the reverend author, “a martyr’s crown.” To keep
herself in health and do her duty to her husband and children would,
it appears, have been “worldliness.” Such cases, we are told, are not
uncommon. (Scenes and Sketches in an Irish Parish, by the Rev. J.
Guinan, C.C., 4th ed., 1906, p. 87.)
[154] The Teaching of Epictetus, by T. W. Rolleston, p. 36.
Dissertations, III, xxii.
[155]
Suns that have set return as bright,
But we, when sets our little light,
Sleep on through one eternal night.—Catullus, V.
[156] The Nature and Origin of Life, by Felix Le Dantec, p. 22 (Engl.
trans., 1907).
[157] The Evolution of Matter.
[158] Of course the question remains, What compressed the spring? If
Matter and Motion are continually wasting, it follows that they must
at some time have been originated, and that the power which originated
them is not dependent on them.
[159] The Teaching of Epictetus, p. 103. Dissertations, II, v, 24, etc.
[160] See pp. 186, 187.
[161] See, _e.g._, the opening of the Phædrus.
[162] For a discussion of this subject I may refer the reader to an
article by the writer in the _Hibbert Journal_ for April, 1906: ‘The
Resurrection: A Layman’s Dialogue.’
[163] ὥσπερ ζῷον ἓν ὅλον. Poetics, XXIII, 1. He is speaking
of the design of a narrative poem.
[164] What is Art?, by Leo Tolstoy. English translation by Aylmer
Maude, pp. 44-5.
[165] What is Art?, chap. v.
[166] I do not mean to exclude the possibility that man may have first
learned his _capacity_ for art by making signs intended for quite other
purposes, such as identification of tribehood, etc.
[167] What is Art?, p. 153.
[168] Fifteen Sermons, III.
[169] What is Art?, p. 146.
[170] _Ibid._, p. 148.
[171] What is Art?, p. 163.
[172] _Ibid._, p. 161. How wide of the mark all this is becomes clear
when we think, for instance, of the sympathetic treatment of the
Trojans in Homer, or the nobility of feeling about the Moors which
runs through The Cid. A great art may glorify battle, but cant and
fanaticism are hateful to it.
[173] What is Art?, p. 166.
[174] _Ibid._, p. 167.
[175] As, of course, it never can be in Time.
[176] It is very hard to understand why, when Athens was producing
some of the greatest art of the world and the profoundest philosophic
thought, the attempt to develop a philosophy of the arts should not
have succeeded better than it did. Plato felt instinctively that he
had entangled himself in a chain of false logic, and he appeals to
Art to vindicate its truth, if it can. He would yield himself to its
“enchantment” only too gladly were it not “a sin to betray what seems
to us the cause of truth.” But it never occurs to him that what the
painter is really copying is not the carpenter’s bed, but the heavenly.
Aristotle, on the other hand, well knew that there is something
creative about art. Witness his famous saying that “Poetry is both a
more philosophic and a higher thing than History, since Poetry looks at
things in a universal, History only in a particular aspect” (Poetics,
IX, 3). He was, however, still too much under the control of the
popular view of Art as Imitation to be able to see the full scope of
his own principle. Thus, he excluded Architecture from the realm of Art
because it did not imitate anything in nature.
[177]
ἀλλὰ Σὺ καὶ τὰ περισσὰ ἐπίστασαι ἄρτια θεῖναι,
καὶ κοσμεῖς τὰ ἄκοσμα, καὶ οὐ φίλα Σοι φίλα ἐστίν.
[178] Preface to Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads.
[179] “I have not been afraid of the charge of obscurity,” says Walt
Whitman, “in either of my two volumes, because human thought, poetry
or melody, must leave dim escapes and outlets—must possess a certain
fluid, aerial character, akin to Space itself, obscure to those of
little or no imagination, but indispensable to the highest purposes.
Poetic style, when address’d to the Soul, is less definite form,
outline, sculpture, and becomes vista, music, half-tints, and even less
than half-tints. True, it may be architecture; but again it may be the
forest wild-wood, or the best effects thereof, at twilight, the waving
oaks and cedars in the wind, and the impalpable odour” (Preface to Two
Rivulets, p. 13).
Let me set beside this a passage from that singularly beautiful book,
Kakasu Okakura’s Ideals of the East: “Shakaku in the fifth century lays
down six canons of pictorial art, in which the idea of the depicting
of Nature falls into a third place, subservient to two other main
principles. The first of these is ‘the Life-movement of the Spirit
through the Rhythm of Things.’ For art is to him the great Mood of
the Universe, moving hither and thither amidst those harmonic laws of
matter which are Rhythm” (p. 52).
[180] I may refer in passing to the researches of A. C. Haddon and
Henry Balfour, who have made it seem at least highly probable that all
decorative forms originated in the copying of natural objects.
[181] F. C. Penrose showed in 1851 that all the quasi-horizontal lines
in the Parthenon are really arcs of circles, that the ‘entasis’ or
swelling of every pillar is the true arc of an hyperbola, and that
there is not a true right-angle nor a strictly vertical column in the
building. All good Greek buildings are similarly full of “curves,
leaning faces, irregular spacings, and other optical refinements”
(Investig. of the Princs. of Athenian Architecture). This principle,
called by Ruskin ‘life’ (Seven Lamps) and by some ‘symmetrophobia,’ was
most daringly applied in mediæval building. A very striking and well
illustrated series of articles on the subject was contributed by Mr. W.
H. Goodyear to the _Architectural Record_, Vol. VI, 1896-7.
[182] I am indebted in connexion with these remarks on Gothic
architecture to a very interesting paper by Mr. L. March Phillipps in
the _Contemporary Review_ for September, 1907.
[183] For example, when molecules first grouped themselves (supposing
that was how it came about) into the form which resulted in living
protoplasm, their action was one of a chemico-physical nature, but the
response is not expressible in purely chemico-physical terms. Similarly
when sensation first appeared in protoplasm.
[184] Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Drittes Buch, _Die
Platonische Idee das Objekt der Kunst_.
[185] Camille Mauclair, French Impressionists. “Light,” writes M.
Mauclair, “becomes the sole subject of the picture; the interest of
the object upon which it plays is secondary. Painting thus conceived
becomes a purely optic art” (p. 32). “The principal person in a
picture,” said Manet, “is the light” (p. 42).
[186] No one who has seen “Le Penseur,” by Rodin, will doubt that
plastic art can render Thought. But literature alone could tell us what
he is thinking.
INDEX
_When a subject is treated on more than one consecutive page, reference
is usually made to the first page only._
Action and Reaction, 264
Adaptability, 13, 63
Adaptation, in nature, how regarded by Paley, 3;
argument from imperfect adaptations, 4, 14, 136, 143, 152;
how conceived by evolution theory, 10, 12;
Lamarck’s theory of, 68;
Weismann’s theory, 93 _sqq._;
Darwin’s explanation, 72;
directive theory, 115 _sqq._;
effects of new environment, 123 _sqq._
See Co-adaptation
Æschylus, 159
_Amblystoma_, 40 (illustration facing), 125
_Amœba_, 30, 47, 143
Amphimixis, 39, 98
_Anabæna_, 141
_Anableps_, 100, 112
Ants, 78, 85, 89, 111, 154
Apperception and Free-will, 172
Arch, effect of, in architecture, 258
Aristotle, 247 _note_
Art, 158;
and Beauty, 237, 251;
origin of, 239;
question of subject in, 244, 268;
an expression of life, 246, 250;
Greek and Hottentot ideals of, 253;
classification of the arts, 254;
art in structure, 256;
in ornament, 259;
artistic effect of use and service, 260.
See Music, Dancing, Literature, etc.
Asceticism, 214 _sqq._, 218 _note_
Axolotl, 125
_Azolla_ fern, 141
Bacon, F., 6
Becoming, the universe a, 20, 186;
Deity conceived as ‘becoming,’ 5
Beddard, F. E., 24 _note_, 58, 106
Bentham, J., 200
Berkeley, Bp., 165 _note_, 176 _note_
Bifocal eyes in fish, 99
Bisexuality, significance of, in _Mollusca_, 101
Bose, J. C., 21 _note_
Brain-structure and Will, 178, 184
Brown-Séquard, 78
Butler, Bp., 241
Bütschli, O., 30
Butterflies, protective colouring of, 15, 83, 98, 106, 113, 127
Catullus, 222
Cave-animals, 71, 72 _note_, 78
Cell, the, 29, 38;
division of, 40 _sqq._;
germ and sperm
cells, 45, 51;
fusion of, in reproduction, 53
Chaffinch, case of hermaphrodite, 58
Chlorophyll, 24;
in animals, 26
Christ, 205;
martyrdom of, 232
Chromatin, 39 _sqq._
Cleanthes, 247
Co-adaptation, 70, 80, 98, 138
Competition, 58, 105
Conjugation, 47
Conscience, 211
Co-operation among animals, 104, _Appendix B_;
among species, 138
Crabs, hermit, 141;
Molucca, 280
Crystallization, 22 _note_, 156
Dancing, 270
Darwin, Erasmus, 6, 281
Darwin, Francis, 7, 33, 72, 87, 138
Death, significance of, for the spirit, 190, 235
Deity, the end, not beginning of nature, 5;
personality of, 14, 17;
immanent or transcendent? 155;
defined by Æschylus, 159;
an infinite, not related to phenomena, 162;
how approached by man, 159, 162, _Appendix A_
Determinants, 44;
competition among, 98;
significance of, in evolution, 68, 96
Determinism, doctrine of, 163 _sqq._
Development contrasted with growth, 32
Dice, of nature loaded, 92, 102
Dominants. See Reinke
Drama, 272
Dualism, 195
Duty, sense of, not created by pleasures and pains, 203;
effects of, compared with those of self-indulgence, 212
Ego, the, 157, 207, _Appendix A_
Eimer, G., 77 _note_, 110, 113 _note_, 137, 143, 152
Elk, the Irish, 70
Energy, how obtained by plants, 25;
developed by synthesis, 27, 147;
vital and mechanical, how distinguished, 144, 146, 148;
supposed effects of the equal distribution of, 222
Epictetus, 218, 226
Ethics, how affected by determinism, 162-3;
ethical development a condition of Free-will, 171;
the problem of evil, 199, 207;
utilitarian systems of, 201;
goal of ethical action, 203 _sqq._;
sanction of ethical action, 234;
ethics epitomized, 234;
ethics of sex relations, _Appendix E_
Evolution, change in point of view produced by, 7, 8, 16, 17;
produced competition, 104;
unknown factors in, 149;
evolution and involution, 186, 228.
See Adaptation, species
Fisher, M., 270
Francis of Assisi, 215, _Appendix D_
Free-will, position stated, 164 _sqq._;
reason in action, 166;
Spencer on, 166 _note_;
conditions of, 169;
moral bias of, 169 _sqq._;
limitations of, 171 _sqq._;
how evolved, 174;
can it be reconciled with Monism? 175;
will and brain, 177 _sqq._
Germinal Selection, 93, 96
Goethe, 6, 31, 185, 267
Goodyear, W. H., 258 _note_
Gravity, action of, on plants, 62, 145
Guinan, Rev. J., 218 _note_
Günther, C., 142, 152
Haeckel, E., 39 _note_, 124, 126, 196, 239
Henslow, G., 123
Heracleitus, 146 _note_, 278
Hermaphroditism, 58, 101
Hugo, V., 273
Hume, D., 6 _note_
_Hydra_, 26
Ids, 44
Immortality, 189, 225, 283
Imperfections in nature, 4, 14, 143, 152
Impressionist school, 266
Intelligence in nature, 14, 16, 130, 157
Irish, the, in the U.S.A., 212 _note_
Isabella and Claudio, problem of, _Appendix E_
James, W., on Free-will, 176
Kakasu Okakura, 250 _note_
_Kallima paralecta_, 83, 129
Kellogg, V. L., 144 _note_, 149
Keyserling, H. v., 13 _note_, 17
Knight, W., 239
Kramskoy, 243
Kropotkin, P., 104, _Appendix B_
Lamarck, J. B., 6, 68;
arguments against his theory, 75, 112, 202;
Lamarckism the only alternative to ‘metaphysics,’ 91
Language, evolution of, 133
Lankester, Ray, 24 _note_
Le Bon, G., 223
Le Dantec, F., 22, 222
_Lepus Huxleyi_, 126
Life, universality of, 21;
characteristics of organic, 23;
mechanical conception of, 35, 92, 97;
continually being produced, 37;
innate capabilities of, 109;
final cause of, 206, 208;
the individual and the cosmic, 226;
the goal of nature, 114, 246;
polarity of, 253
Literature, 271
Lodge, O., 147 _note_
Lotze, H., 185, 196
Maeterlinck, M., 290
Manet, E., 266 _note_
Man, the growing-point of life, 154
Martyrdoms, significance of, for ethics, 230, 233;
of Socrates, 230;
of Christ, 232
Matter, its nature unknown, 178;
transmitter of consciousness, 188;
relation with consciousness not fortuitous, 192;
known only through life, 224
Mauclair, C., 266 _note_
Mendel, Abbott, 58 _note_
Metabolism, 27
Metaphysics, physics rooted in, 110
Miers, H. A., 22
Mill, J. S., 164, 177, 201
Mind, 137, 167.
See Spirit, Intelligence
Mitosis, 42 _note_
Monism, 17 _sqq._;
compatible with Free-will, 176;
dualism and, 195
Moorhead, T. G., 83
Morlon, 243
Movement, in music, 262, 264;
in literature, 272
Music, 261 _sqq._, 272
Mysticism, 150
Nägeli, C. v., 39, 110, 140, 149
Natural Selection, a ‘superseded formula,’ 7 _note_;
meaning of, 72;
originates nothing, 75;
a pillar of Weismann’s theory, 103;
effect, not cause, of evolution, 104;
a real though not the main force, 105, 109;
in relation to mimetic markings, 106 _sqq._;
and to mutual aid among species, 138
Neuter insects. See Ants
_Noctiluca_, 47
Nucleus, of cell, 30, 39.
Ojetti, Fr., 210 _note_
Oken, L., 110, 137
Oldfield, J., 213 _note_
Osborn, H. F., 149 _note_
‘Ought,’ Bentham on the word, 201;
contents of the word, 209
Oysters, bisexuality in, 101
Paley, W., his analogy of the watch, 1 _sqq._;
on the annular ligament, 8;
his conception of an ‘Esperanto’ universe, 136
_Pandorina_, 49, 61, 156
_Papilio meriones_, 107
Parthenogenesis, 55
Penrose, F. C., 257 _note_
Perrier, E., 72 _note_, 91
Personality, 157, 166, 207, 211, _Appendix A_
Pianola, analogy of, 183
‘Pig-philosophy,’ 221
Plato, 6, 170, 182 _note_, 185, 195, 227, 244, 246
Poetry, 158.
See Literature
Porto Santo rabbit, 126
Potato, response to mutilation, 117
Poulton, E. B., 107
Proteid, 23, 28
Protoplasm, the substance of life, 27;
structure of, 30;
distinguished from minerals, 37;
response in, 61, 112, 113, 117, 119 _note_, 144;
a synthesis of molecules, 147
Reinke, J., on the _X_ factor in life, 1, 63, 117;
his theory of dominants, 120, 175
Religion, 159, 212, 277
Reproduction, 39, 46;
in multicellular organisms, 48;
sexual, 51
Response, 61, 112, 115.
See, Life, Protoplasm
Rhythm, 254, 262
Right-handedness, 81
Rolleston, Geo., 54
Ruskin, J., 258 _note_
Saleeby, C. W., 288
Sanction, ethical, 214, 220, 226 _sqq._, 234
Santayana, G., 181, 204
Schopenhauer, A., 110, 196, 265
Selection. See Natural Selection, Germinal Selection
Sex, determination of, 57;
ethical problems connected with, _Appendix E_
Sigerson, G., 81 _note_
Sins, mortal and venial, 210 _note_
Slater, Fr., 210 _note_
Sloth, green fur of, 24 _note_
Snails, bisexuality in, 101
Species, fixity of, 43, 66;
mutability of, 67;
origin of, not modification of structure by use, ch. IV.;
not chance variations, ch. V.;
due to directive or psychic factor, ch. VI.;
species an organic whole, 49, 138, 147.
See Adaptation, Evolution
Spencer, H., controversy with Weismann, 87, 149 _note_;
on social institutions, 131;
on Free-will, 166 _note_;
his ethical system, 202, _App. C & E_
Spinoza, B., 196
Spirit, the human, how accounted for, 151, 175;
relations to Matter, 178;
death not a disintegration of, 190
Socrates, 227, 230
Stoicism, ethical formula of, 194;
conception of Asceticism, 217;
what Stoicism lacked, 227
Strasburger, E., 11, 54, 109
Synthesis, principle of, in nature, 119 _note_, 137, 142, 146, 157
Tennyson, A., 170, 219
Thomson, W. H., 184
Tolstoy, L., on Art, 236 _sqq._
Tree, response of roots and shoots to mutilation in, 119
Uexküll, J. v., 13
Unity of nature, 17, 157
Useless structures, 103 _note_
Utilitarian school of ethics, 200, 229, _Appendices C & E_
Variations, in reproduction cells, 73, 75;
do chance variations afford basis for selection? 92, 94 _sqq._
Verworn, Max, 27 _note_, 148
_Viola_, 140
Virchow, R., 45 _note_
Viré, A., 72 _note_
_Volvox_, 49
Wagner, R., 272
Wallace, A. R., 105, 125 _note_, 175
Watch, Paley’s analogy of, 1 _sqq._
Weed, in New Zealand, destroyed by willows, 105
Weismann, A., 7 _note_, 34, 48, 61, 63;
controversy with Spencer, 87;
his alternative to Lamarckism, 93;
his determinants equivalent to Reinke’s dominants, 122
Whale, evolution of, 67
Whitman, Walt, 160, 196, 237, 250 _note_
Whole, the, its demands on the individual, 220;
what it gives to the individual, 225;
the universe a, 17;
a whole more than the sum of its parts, 119 _note_;
consciousness, etc., of the, 157
Wilson, E. B., 33, 38 _notes_, 41, 50, 55, 119 _note_
Wöhler, 24
Wordsworth, W., 249
_X_ factor in life, 1;
directive character of, 63, 113, 116, 128.
See Adaptation, Intelligence, Language
Zola, E., 248
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End of Project Gutenberg's Parallel Paths, by Thomas William Rolleston