Rufus Osgood Mason

“ He sees, however, that the series is not ended, for reason assures him that even for the material universe there is, somewhere beyond, an architect whose skill and wisdom he is only commencing to appreciate, but still more, when he beholds the gradual unfolding of the world of soul, with its instinct, consciousness, intelligence, memory, reason, feeling, and aspiration, and considers the possibilities which still may lie enfolded there, is he lost in admiration and wonder at the great centre-soul, the author of all these attributes. ”

“ And, great as have been the triumphs of science hitherto—great as has been the light which the grand thought of evolution has thrown upon the whole plan and system of the universe—nothing hitherto accomplished could compare in grandeur with the physical demonstration of a higher mode of life and action than that attainable with our present organization and present limitations ”

“ In the faithful dog, who at a word from his master collects the stray flock in the stormy Highlands, or brings in the helpless and perishing traveler from the snowy Alps; who shields his child playmate from the passing danger, or rescues him from threatening death; who, himself hungry, guards food for others; who with quick perception notes and shares his master's varying moods, and who metes out justice for the weak against the strong, we behold in humble guise a dawning soul, with which no truly noble soul need wish to ignore kinship. ”

“ In this view Science need not despair, and has no right to give over its efforts nor neglect its opportunities to obtain appreciable evidence, however slight it may at first appear, of a future life—one which the doctrine of evolution demands should be a higher development, one of greater possibilities than this. The aspiration after such a life is as much a development of the soul as is intelligence, or reason, or a desire to know causes, and there is the same reason to believe that it has its foundation in a corresponding reality. ”

“ Again, ages elapsed in gradual changes, until at length man, the crowning excellence, appeared—an upright form, a powerful brain, a soul capable of tracing causes, and even seeking to find out the First Cause. ”

“ Is there, then, reason, in harmony with science, to expect an existence under more favorable circumstances for a knowledge and appreciation of this originating soul whom science itself demands?
As interpreted by the doctrine of evolution, we find man, as he now exists, with his physical organization and advanced psychical being, the product of a long series of developments. ”

“ Science, then, so far from excluding God from the universe, demands him as an ever-active power; but, as man can only know him through his works, and as the universe is yet comparatively unknown to him even in his highest condition, and must remain so while he is confined to earth, it follows that our knowledge, and even our conceptions of him, must be limited and imperfect, and our appreciation of him correspondingly so. ”

“ The desire to seek for causes is one of the developments of the human mind, increasing in direct ratio with the increase of intelligence. Brute intelligence exhibits no such desire. The savage mind does not rise far into that sphere of intelligence which demands causes; it is only as a higher reasoning power dawns that analysis commences, and causes are sought after; and the higher the intelligence and stronger the power of reason, the more imperative the demand for causes, and the more perfect the comprehension of them. ”

“ The nervous system, which is the part most important to our present purpose, is of the most simple kind; it consists of a single ganglion, situated between the two orifices of the body, with each of which it has lines of nerve-communication, and also with the various envelopes which mainly constitute the animal. ”

“ We have seen the lowly creature, endowed with its single nerve-centre, and its radiating nerve-filaments, expressing all its relations to the outer world by simple reflex action; and, if, as we should expect, the order of appearance in Nature corresponded with the order of development, for untold ages all over the silent, ocean-clothed earth, no higher form of life, and no higher expression of soul, was present. ”

“ The time is past in which the feeblest artificial works found upon the surface of a single planet, even to the flint-hewn weapons of an unknown race, must have assigned for them a competent originator, and yet man himself, with his complex organization, the long line of organisms of which he is chief, the planet on which he dwells, the system to which it belongs, and the whole vast system of systems sweeping in unimagined circles through space, all be supposed to exist, and have no architect and no supporter. ”

“ Birds also possess in a remarkable degree the impulse, akin to that of insects, for preparing elaborate habitations; but unlike the insect races they add a certain degree of intelligence to their work, varying it in form and material according to locality and surroundings, and even finishing for their own use that which others had left incomplete and abandoned. In proportion as instinct ceases to predominate, the work becomes less uniform ”

“ The parents of the three unvaccinated children had a fourth child who had been successfully vaccinated at school, and for which she received a severe beating at the hands of her father. This child, although sleeping in the same room with those who were sick and dying of the disease, entirely escaped.
No more striking examples of protection afforded by vaccination could exist than that furnished by placing infants on the first day of their vaccination in a small-pox hospital, filled with patients in every stage of the disease. ”

“ The advance in the nervous system is correspondingly great; instead of the irregularly-situated ganglia hitherto met with, we find them arranged in pairs, to serve the purposes of the more symmetrical body; but a still more marked and important advance is found in the fact that each organ of special sense (sight, hearing, etc.) is furnished with a separate nerve-centre or ganglion; all of which, being brought together in the head of the animal, constitute what is known as the cephalic ganglia, or sensorium, an incipient brain. ”

“ But, again, improved surroundings—the dry earth, with forest, field, and flower, the brighter sunlight and the purer air, demanded new organs to appropriate and new senses to enjoy; and a race appeared with improved organs of sense to receive impressions from this better outer world, improved modes of action, and above all in place, and superior to all in function, an organ of intelligence was added. The old methods of soul-manifestation continue; both reflex and instinctive action find their appropriate place in the higher organization ”

“ Locke, the vibratory theory Hartley, and chemistry the elder Mill, so geology and the doctrine of evolution have been potent in influencing the methods and results obtained in psychology by Bain and Herbert Spencer. And as each advance in psychology has had reference to the methods in physical science which have preceded it, so do we find that the doctrine of evolution, which in its general aspect at least has given direction to the scientific thought of the present generation, has also been the doctrine which has thrown most light upon the constitution and action of mind. ”

“ What is true of causes in general is true in a still greater degree of remote causes, and of a first cause; and hence that which we should expect to occur is found to be the fact, namely, that the scientific men of the present time, the well-developed and well-cultivated minds in all departments of learning, but especially in physical science, are the ones most fully established in an intelligent belief in an adequate first cause. ”

“ In observing the nervous organization of the centipede as the representative of a dawning instinct and its appropriate manifesting organ, the sensorium, it was found that reflex action, characteristic of acephalous animals, did not cease when the head and its special ganglia appeared, but that a large share of its actions was still purely reflex in character, even those prompted by its small and imperfect sensorium being but little raised above the reflex and into the region of instinctive actions ”

“ According to the eminent authority before referred to, as instinct is the aggregate experience of the race, accumulated and impressed upon the nervous system by innumerable repetitions, inherited by each individual of the race and available all at once, so intelligence is the aggregate individual experience and is available only as acquired, though the facility for acquiring it varies according to the nervous organization. ”

“ How the insect comes by this impulse to do, is one of those seemingly simple questions which, in reality, includes the whole; it is the ever-recurring question regarding each new faculty as it makes its appearance in the series, and demands a few words in reference to the main theories involved. The term instinct is not to be taken, in its popular sense, as referring to all the actions performed by animals in distinction from those performed by man, but must be limited to those automatic actions which are performed without teaching or individual experience. ”

“ A small minority only of the intelligent refuse to acquiesce in the verdict, and comparatively few among the ignorant now refuse to test its benefits. In Europe, notably in England and Germany, the same can not be said. It is among the German population that even here the greatest prejudice exists, and in England there is at the present time a controversy going on, growing out of efforts to extend and enforce a compulsory vaccination law, which opens up all the old issues and affords opportunity for sending broadcast statements of the most sensational and mischievous character. ”

“ He explores its depths, and calls up before him the generations which peopled it ages on ages past. The microscope brings before him the world of the infinitely small, and the telescope reveals the worlds of space. ”

“ Up to the point which their organization permits, they possess and exercise faculties akin to those of man. But it is in the degree and perfection to which these faculties attain that the superiority of man is evident; and here the difference is vast indeed. The intellectual superiority of an ordinary man over the most sagacious animal, which nevertheless can scarcely be taught the simplest relation of numbers, is too vast to be readily comprehended ”

“ With so many points in regard to the functions of the material body only recently understood, and even now but imperfectly known, is it strange that our psychical relations should be even less perfectly comprehended? ”

“ One of these improvements is the more perfect communication established between the diffrent parts composing the brain; the great "transverse commissure" connecting the two hemispheres is much better developed than in any of the preceding races, also the fibres connecting the cerebrum with the sensorium upon which it lies; the "convolutions," only indicated by slight depressions even in monkeys and apes, become conspicuous in the human brain, giving it the appearance of being gathered up in deep folds ”

“ Both instinct and intelligence may exist in the same individual, but generally, in proportion as actions governed by intelligence become numerous, those governed by instinct decrease in number and importance. ”

“ So, in judging of works compared with which the mightiest works of man are as mole-hills, whose beauty it is the highest exercise of his genius feebly to copy and represent, whose method and arrangement it is the life-work of the most exalted intellects to discover, and whose extent, either in time or space, he still gropes to find the unit of, we assign for cause a corresponding soul ”

“ To note all the improvements in the physical organ of mind in man, and point out the vast psychical advances which are found in him, compared with the best of the races beneath him, would far exceed our limits. ”

“ All the virus now used is eighth-day lymph taken from healthy calves carefully selected and kept in the country under the supervision of the inspector, exclusively for this purpose.
No very special advantage is claimed at present for this over properly selected humanized lymph; if, however, any difference is observable in the results, it is in favor of the bovine lymph, as affording fewer cases of troublesome inflammation.
One advantage is decided: it has tended to diminish a prejudice, and so remove in some degree an objection to vaccination. ”

“ Carpenter, as shown in the mantis, an insect allied to the crickets, which performs its accustomed and very peculiar actions not only when the head is removed, but the segments of the body perform each its accustomed part, and no other, when the body itself is divided. So also a certain kind of water-beetle, after the sensorium is removed, remains motionless so long as it rests upon a dry surface ”