C. Lloyd Morgan

“ And now we may note that selection involves intelligence—involves the play of appetence and choice. Hence it is that, when we come to consider the evolution of human-folk, the principle of elimination is so profoundly modified by the principle of selection. Not only are the weaker eliminated by the inexorable pressure of competition, but we select the more fortunate individuals and heap upon them our favours. This enables us also to soften the rigour of the blinder law; to let the full stress of competitive elimination fall upon the worthless, the idle, the profligate, and the vicious ”

“ A dog, for example, is lying asleep upon the mat, and hears an unfamiliar step in the porch without. There can be no question that this suggests the construct man. But from the very nature of the case, this must be vague and indefinite. So, too, when a chamois, bounding across the snow-fields, stops suddenly when he scents the distant footprints of the mountaineer, the construct that he forms cannot be in any way particularized—no more particularized than is to me the sheep that I hear bleating in the meadow behind yonder wall. ”

“ It is just as absurd to say that kinetic manifestations would have been the same in the absence of metakinesis, as to say that the metakinetic manifestations, the thoughts and emotions, would have been the same in the absence of kinesis. It is just as absurd to say that the physical series would have been the same in the absence of mind, as to say that the mental series would have been the same in the absence of bodily organization. For on this view consciousness is no mere by-product of neural processes, but is simply one aspect of them. ”

“ I am well aware that there are many people who cannot bring themselves to believe in, or even to listen without impatience to, the view that the world we see around us is a world of phenomena. It is absurd, they say, to tell us that yonder tulip, as an object, is in any sense dependent on our perception of it. There it is, and there it would have been had man never been created. Can one conceive that the new species of fossil, which was only yesterday disentombed from the strata in which it has lain buried for long ages, is dependent on man's observation for its qualities as an object? ”

“ The grandeur of Alpine scenery, the charm of a winding river, the pleasing undulations of a flowing landscape,—no one can say that these were evolved for the sake of their beauty. The fact of their being beautiful is, therefore, no proof that the blue gentian, or the red admiral, or the robin redbreast were evolved for the sake of, or by means of, the beauty that they possess. Again, one leading feature in the beauty of flowers is their symmetry. The beauty is, so to speak, kaleidoscopic beauty. ”

“ We can think about the self as distinct from its conscious states and the bodily organization; but they are no more separable in experience than the rose is separable from its colour or its scent. Such isolation is impossible to the brute. An animal is conscious of itself as suffering, but the consciousness is perceptual. There is no separation of the self as an entity distinct from the suffering which is a mere accident thereof; no conception of a self which may suffer or not suffer, may act or may not act, may be connected with the body or may sever that connection. ”

“ We must not let our conviction of its truth and justice blind us to the fact that natural selection is a logical inference rather than a matter of direct observation. A hundred are born, and two survive; the ninety-eight are eliminated in the struggle for existence; we may therefore infer that the two escaped elimination in virtue of their possession of certain advantageous characters. There is no flaw in the logic that has thus convinced the world that natural selection is a factor in evolution. ”

“ Sensations and perceptions are the roots from which spring the sturdy trunk of action, the expanded leaves of knowledge, and the fair blossoms of art. The leaves and the flowers are the terminal products along certain lines of development; but the function of the leaves is to minister to the growth of the wood, and the function of the flowers is to minister to the continuance and well-being of the race. So, too, in human affairs. Knowledge and art are justified by their influence on conduct; truth and beauty must ever [413] guide us towards right living ”

“ An army of tens of thousands of busy living cells is at work beneath that velvet surface, building the bony antlers, preparing for the battles of autumn. Each minute cell knows its work, and does it for the general good—so perfectly is the body knit into an organic whole. ”

“ It is as difficult philosophically to conceive that they can as it is practically to conceive that they do not. And since, whether they do or do not, the world we live in is phenomenal; since it is to phenomena that we have to adapt our conduct; since it is with phenomena that all our thoughts and emotions have reference; since the world we construct in mental symbolism is the world in which we live and move and have our being; it is not only convenient, but logically justifiable, to call this world of phenomena the really existing world for us human-folk and other sentient organisms. ”

“ I fear our knowledge of organic nature is not at present so full and exact as to justify us in excluding an hypothesis because we are not able to give an adequate answer to the question—How are these effects produced? Of course, if it can be shown that no modus operandi is possible, there is an end of the matter. But who shall dare thus to limit the possibilities of organic nature? And, if possible, then that natural selection in which the neo-Darwinians place their sole trust would certainly develop so advantageous a mode of influence. ”

“ But are they much more absurd than the views of those who, on the evidence which we at present possess, attribute all the varied activities of ant-life to instinct? Take the case of the ecitons, or military ants, or the harvesting ants, or the ants that keep draught-bugs as beasts of burden: have we sufficient evidence to enable us to affirm that these activities are purely instinctive and not habitual? That they are to a large extent innate, few are likely to deny; but then our own habitual acts have a basis that is, to a very large extent, innate. ”

“ In speaking of humming-birds, the Duke of Argyll says that "a crest of topaz is no better in the struggle for existence than a crest of sapphire. A frill ending in spangles of the emerald is no better in the battle of life than a frill ending in spangles of the ruby." ”

“ Volition is the faculty of the forked way. There are two possibilities—fulfilment in action or inhibition. I can write or I can cease writing; I can strike or I can forbear. And my poor little wounded terrier, whose gashed side I was sewing up, clumsily, perhaps, but with all the gentleness and tenderness I could command, could close his teeth on my hand or could restrain the action. ”

“ If it does not reach this value, Natural Selection, watch she never so carefully, can make no use of it. Elimination need not, however, be to the death; exclusion from any share in continuing the species is sufficient. To breed or not to breed, that is the question. Any advantage affecting this essential life-function will at once catch the eye of a vigilant natural selection. But it must be of sufficient magnitude for the machinery of natural selection to deal with. That machinery is the elimination of a certain proportion of the individuals which are born. ”

“ We pick to pieces all the phenomena of nature, all the qualities and relationships of objects, the activities and functions of animals, the mental phenomena of which we are conscious in ourselves. We isolate the qualities, relationships, feelings; and we name the isolates we obtain. Hence arises all our science, all our higher thought. In the terms which we apply to our isolates consists the richness of our language. ”

“ The nucleus is the essence of the cell. And the doctrine of cellular continuity emphasizes the fact that the nuclei of all the cells of the body are derived by a process of divisional growth from the first segmentation-nucleus which results from the union of the nuclei of the ovum and the sperm. In this sense, then, however late the germinal cells appear as such, they are in direct continuity with the germinal cell from which they, in common with all the cells of the organism, derive their origin. In this sense there is a true continuity of germ-cells. ”

“ One artist will introduce into his canvas effects which, to the eye of another, will at once strike a jarring note of incongruity. To some minds the institution of slavery presents no incongruity. There are not wanting men for whom the degrading moral and physical conditions under which many of our poor are forced to live and work present little or no incongruity. ”

“ When we look through the window and see an object such as a house before us, we do not habitually localize the sensation in a certain part of the retina, but we refer the object to a particular position more or less distant in the world around us. This projection of the object outwards in a right line from the eyes is really a marvellous process, though the wonder of it is lost in its familiarity. It is the outcome of the experience of hundreds of generations. And the experience is not gained through vision alone, but through this in combination with other senses and activities. ”

“ I assume, then, that, granting the theory of evolution, the early stages of the process of construction—discrimination, localization, and outward projection—are the same in kind throughout the whole range of animal life, wherever we are justified in surmising that psychical processes occur, and the power of registration and revival in memory has been established. As will be gathered, however, from what I have already said, I hold that the nature of the constructs produced is and must be for us human-folk, since we are human-folk, to a large extent a matter of speculation. ”

“ Hamerton, in his comments on this anecdote, "we always commit one of two mistakes—either we conclude that the beasts have great knowledge because they are so clever, or else we fancy that they must be stupid because they are so ignorant." "The main difficulty in conceiving the mental states of animals," says the same observer, "is that the moment we think of them as human, we are lost." Yes, but the pity of it is that we cannot think of them in any other terms than those of human consciousness. The only world of constructs that we know is the world constructed by man. ”

“ It is not too much to say that, without fosterage and protection, the higher forms of evolution would be impossible. If you are to have a highly evolved form, you must allow time for its evolution from the egg; and that development may go on without let or hindrance, you must supply the organism with food and lighten the labour of self-defence. Most of the higher organisms are slow in coming to maturity, passing through stages when they are helpless and, if left to themselves, would inevitably fall a prey to enemies. ”

“ An eject is a more or less modified image of myself, that I see mirrored, as in a glass darkly, in the human-folk around me. Into every human brother I breathe the spirit of this eject, and he becomes henceforth to me a living soul. Or, if this mode of presentation does not meet with approval, I will say that an eject is that metakinetic unity I infer as identically associated with the organic and kinetic unity of my brother's living body. ”

“ Do what you will, you cannot get rid of the mental factor in phenomena.
It is possible that my use of the word "construct," my saying that the object is a thing which each of us constructs at the suggestion of certain sense-stimuli, may lead some to suppose that the process is in some sense an arbitrary one. This, however, would be a misconception. The process under normal conditions is just as inevitable as is, under normal conditions, the fall of a stone to the ground. The law of construction for human-folk is as much a law of nature as the law of gravitation. ”

“ There is no reason whatever why the bee and the ant, in their branch of life, should not have attained as high a development of structure and intelligence as the elephant or the dog in their branch of life. I do not say that they have. As it is difficult to compare their structure, in complexity and efficiency, with that of vertebrates, so is it difficult to compare their intelligence. The mere matter of size may have necessitated the condensation of intelligence into instinct in a far higher degree than was required [358] in the big-brained mammals. ”

“ I regard the introduction of aerial respiration in animal life as a new departure. Organisms which had hitherto been water-breathers became air-breathers. But I do not imagine that there was any breach of continuity in respiration. The tadpole begins life as a water-breather only; the frog into which he develops is an air-breather; but there is no breach of continuity between the one state and the other. So, too, the little child dwells in the perceptual sphere; the man into whom he develops is capable of conceptual thought; but there is no breach of continuity in the mental life of the child. ”

“ That dogs, monkeys, and other mammalia have powers of imitation needs no illustration. And when we remember that it is only the imitation of strange and unusual actions that arrests our attention, while the imitation of normal activities is likely to pass unnoticed, we may, I think, fairly surmise that imitation is by no means an unimportant factor in the acquisition and development of habits. And where the young animal is surrounded during the early plastic and imitative period of life by its own kith and kin, imitation will undoubtedly have a conservative tendency. ”

“ In the higher phases of human conduct, then, the activities are subject to the law of the ideas of which they are the outcome—the law of elimination through incongruity.
I have said that natural selection has little or nothing to do with these higher phases of conduct. But has not human selection through preferential mating? I believe that it has; and I trust that it will have a still greater influence in the future. It is one of the noblest privileges of woman, for with her mainly lies the choice, that she may aid in raising humanity to a higher level. ”

“ Those who, like Professor Mivart, [FS] say that we can eliminate the percipient factor, and that the external world without it is just the same as it is with it, are content to reduce the human mind, in the matter of perception, to the level of a piece of looking-glass.
There are some people who seek to get behind phenomena by an appeal to evolution. It will not do nowadays, they say, to make the human mind a starting-point in these considerations; for the human mind is the product of evolution, and throughout that evolution has been step by step moulded to the external world. ”