Andrew Wilson

“ Again, the laws and ideas of development stand out in bold relief as supplying the key to the enigma. Adopt the theory that "things are now just as they always were," and what can we say of rudimentary teeth, save that Nature is a blunderer at best, and that she exhibits a lavish waste of power in supplying animals with useless structures? But choose the hypothesis of development, and we may see in the embryo-teeth the representatives of teeth which in the ancestors of our whales served all the purposes of such organs. ”

“ But the full meaning of most problems which life-science presents to view is hardly gained by a merely cursory inspection of what may be called the normal side of things. The by-paths of development—more frequently, perhaps, than its beaten tracks—reveal guiding clews and traces of the manner in which the progress in question has come to pass. So, also, the side-avenues of biology open up new phases of, it may be, the main question at issue, and may reveal, as in the present instance, an interesting reverse to the aspects we at first deem of sole and paramount importance. ”

“ Plants, on the other hand, are specially constructive and elaborative in their feeding. They build up from the non-living matters around them—carbonic acid, water, ammonia, and minerals—the tissues of their living bodies. They "transubstantiate" this nonliving matter into living tissue; and the verdant tints of spring, the full glory of the summer's blossom, or the mellow ruddiness of autumn's fruits, represents, each in its way, the result at once of the plant's constructive chemistry and of the elaboration into living matter of the inorganic materials of air and soil around. ”

“ And no less clearly and forcibly may we trace the truly natural place of degeneration in our own physical history: since, as physiology teaches and daily experience declares, not an action is wrought or a thought conceived without the presence of change and decay of tissue a process this which, limited in early life by progressive growth and by development, at last comes in our latter days to assume the reins of government, and in time to dissipate our energy and substance into the nothingness of physical and corporate extinction. ”

“ The scalpel of the anatomist can nowhere discover in the full-grown brain an organ of veneration, or of hope, or of language, or of destructiveness, or of any other mental feature: nor can his microscope detect in nature's wondrous process of fashioning the brain any reason for the belief that the organ of mind is a collection of parts each devoted to the exercise of a special quality of mind. The arrangement which appears so clear on the phrenologist's bust is nowhere represented in the brain itself. ”

“ And in the adoption of a scheme of development, and in face of the facts laid before us, it is hard to see any grounds whereon the special-creation theory can be maintained, or the theory of progressive development and evolution denied. For if evolution is the law of the horse's history, it must logically follow that it represents the scheme of nature throughout: since the uniformity of nature, in which we are bound to believe, and to which we are bound to appeal, would utterly negative the idea that evolution should hold good for the horse, and be inapplicable to any other living thing. ”

“ The extent of human knowledge, and the duration of human existence, are together inadequate to enable us to discern the progress of this world's order after the fashion whereby, from a lofty elevation, we may trace every winding of a stream. But the probabilities of the case are as overwhelmingly for progressive development, as the direct evidence at hand—exemplified by the horse's pedigree—tells against special and independent creation having been the way of the First Cause in the making of the world and its living things. ”

“ A fundamental axiom of modern biology declares that in the development of a living being we may discern a panoramic unfolding, more or less complete, of its descent. "Development repeats descent" is an aphorism which cultured biology has everywhere writ large over its portals. Rejecting this view of what development teaches, the phases through which animals and plants pass in the course of their progress from the germ to the adult stage present themselves to view as simply meaningless facts and useless freaks and vagaries of Nature. ”

“ Carpenter, who remarks that, "when the adult type has once been completely attained, every subsequent change is one rather of degeneration than of development, of retrogression rather than of advance."
Degeneration is thus an invariable concomitant of life. So far from being in any way an abnormal phase of living action, it is seen to be as natural a process for living beings to retrogress—wholly, as we have seen in some cases, or partly, in others—as it is for them to develop and advance. And what is thus undoubtedly true of the individual man or other animal is no less so of the race. ”

“ His guide to character is in reality the face, not the brain-pan. The dress, manners, and deportment of his clients, and not the gray matter of the cerebrum, form the real basis of his observations. If any one may be found to doubt how accurately one's character may be mapped out from its outward manifestations, let him endeavor to study for a while the acts and deportment of those with whose "mind's construction" he may be even slightly acquainted, and he will speedily discover numerous clews to the mental disposition in common acts and traits which previously had passed utterly unnoticed. ”

“ Nay, stranger still is it to discern that the full flush of life's vigor is accompanied by degenerative changes as typical as those which mark life's decline. For every tissue wastes as it works; and cells degenerate, die, and are cast off from every surface and tissue of our frames as the natural result of living and being. "Generally speaking," says a writer, in discussing the degeneration of human tissues, "those parts which live most slowly are those of which the duration is the greatest, and in which there is consequently the least frequent change. ”

“ High authority in matters biological may be found for the statement that degeneration is really a result of progress, that it is dependent on high development, and that, while it simplifies the living being, "it produces the same effect as differentiation, for it leads to variety in form." Thus there is a kind of evolution and progress inseparable even from degeneration itself. For the retrogression may in itself lead to variety and change, and in due time such variety may be the starting-point of new and higher developments. ”

“ Unless, therefore, one may logically maintain that total ignorance of the brain-pan is compatible with an accurate understanding of its contents and mysteries, the successful practice of phrenology must be shown to depend on other data and other circumstances than are supplied by anatomy and physiology—these sciences admittedly supplying the foundation of all that is or can be known regarding the brain, its conformation, structure, and functions. Empirical science—science falsely so called—will not hesitate to assert its ability to accurately solve the deepest problems of character and mind. ”

“ So familiar is this belief to people of professedly higher culture than the country-man, that the transformation just alluded to has to all, save a few thinking persons and zoölogists, become a matter of the most commonplace kind. When some quarrymen, engaged in splitting up the rocks, have succeeded in dislodging some huge mass of stone, there may sometimes be seen to hop from among the débris a lively toad or frog, which comes to be regarded by the excavators with feelings akin to those of superstitious wonder and amazement. ”

“ On the contrary, the principle of likeness or "homology" teaches us that the most unwonted and curious structures in animal existence are for the most part modifications of common organs, or at any rate of parts which are represented under varying forms and guises in other animals. By aid of such a principle we discover that the fore-limb of a horse, the wing of a bird, and the paddle of a whale are essentially similar in fundamental structure, and in turn agree in all necessary details with the arm of man. ”

“ IT can not be gainsaid that a survey of the fields of life around us impresses one with the idea that the general tendencies of living nature gravitate toward progression and improvement, and are modeled on lines which, as Von Baer long ago remarked, lead from the general or simple toward the definite special and complex. This much is admitted on all hands, and the ordinary courses of life substantiate the aphorism that progress from low grades and humble ways is the law of the organic universe that hems us in on every side, and of which, indeed, we ourselves form part. ”

“ In truth, life at large must now be regarded as existing between two great tendencies—the one progressive and advancing, the other retrogressive and degenerating. Such a view of matters may serve to explain many things in living histories which have hitherto been regarded as somewhat occult and difficult of solution; while we may likewise discover that the coexistence of progress and retrogression is a fact perfectly compatible with the lucid opinions and teachings concerning the origin of living things which we owe to the genius of Darwin and his disciples. ”

“ A person of a thoroughly skeptical turn of mind might possibly demand to know the exact reasons for the assumption that the splint-bones of the horse are in reality the rudiments of the fingers we have represented them to be, and might further demand proof positive of their nature. Fortunately, geology and the science of fossils together come to our aid, with as brilliant a demonstration of the steps and stages of the degradation of the horse's fingers as the most sanguine evolutionist could hope to see. ”

“ Tissues and organs degenerate in individual animals, as animal frames retrogress in their entirety. Cells retrograde and fibers degenerate in our bodies, just as the sea-squirt's frame exhibits, as a whole a universal, physiological backsliding. Nor may many of our diseases alone be esteemed mere examples of degeneration affecting our tissues. The termination and decline of life itself and the age that really "melts in unperceived decay" are, in reality, examples of natural degeneration also. The decline of existence is largely a retrogression of structure. ”

“ Differences of opinion certainly exist as to the share which the internal constitution of the living being plays in the drama of life and progress. It seems, however, most reasonable to conclude that two parties exist to this, as to every other bargain; and, regarding the animal or plant as plastic in its nature, we may assume such plasticity to be modified on the one hand by outside forces, and on the other by internal actions proper to the organism as a living thing. Examples of such tendencies of life are freely scattered everywhere in Nature's domain. ”

“ The brain thus viewed is a storehouse of faculties and qualities, each faculty possessing a dominion and sphere of its own among the cerebral substance, and having its confines as rigidly defined as are the boundaries of certain actual provinces in the East, the status of which has afforded matter for serious comment of late among the nations at large. Thus, if phrenology be credited with materializing mind in the grossest possible fashion, its votaries have themselves and their science to thank for the aspersion. ”

“ The category of life's extension includes, in fact, many possibilities which at first sight might appear of most unlikely kind; and, among these possibilities, that of extreme degeneration is by no means the least notable as an element in inducing the material variety of life we behold in the animal and plant worlds of to-day. The list of causes which lead to the degeneration of living beings includes, however, other fashions of producing retrogression than by fixation and parasitic habits, and operates in different ways upon organisms of varied structure and social or biological rank. ”

“ A manual of natural history, of no ancient date, lies before me as I write, and when I turn to the section which treats of the whales, I find an illustration of a Greenland whale, which is represented as lying high and dry on the beach, but which, despite its stranded state, appears in the act of vigorously puffing streams of water from the blowholes on the top of its head. ”

“ It is this truest of relationships which may reasonably enough explain, not merely why the sense-organs arise from the skin-surface, but also why the brain grows outward to meet with the structure to which it is so near akin. ”

“ When, however, the idea that the universe both of living and non-living matter had an ordered past dawned upon the minds of scientists, the necessity for tracing that past was forced upon them as a bounden duty. With no written history to guide them, the scientific searchers were forced to read the "sermons in stones" which Nature had delivered ages ago. Without clear and unmistaken records to point the way, they had to seek for clews and traces to nature's meaning in the structure and development of animals and plants ”