Charles Morris

“ There are no good ends ever gained without certain unpleasant drawbacks. The end here to be gained is life—abounding, immeasurable life. To reach this result, no organic force can be spared, and if some have to scratch and squirm, still it will be found here, as in all Nature's economies, that the evil is small, the good attained great. She works by law alone, and a law of Nature is never laid aside because it happens to tread on some crippled creature's corns. Law is immutable, and will inevitably crush every laggard who is not strong enough or quick enough to get out of its path. ”

“ What we call death is only, in another sense, the spring-tide of life. The leaves fall and rot, the grass decays, but not to return to the inorganic world. They are dished up as food for new waving fields and flaunting leaves. In the chemical balance of Nature part of this nutriment bears down its side of the scale into the lifeless world, yielding force to lift the nutriment in the other scale back again into the circle of life. ”

“ Its dead body is but a vast nursery of life. The long, lithe, twisting and clinging parasites, that have drunk its blood while alive, are replaced by flat lichens, umbrella-like fungi, and luxuriant mosses, which feast on its decaying trunk; while borers, chiselers, and miners do their part in transforming the great dead mass. again into living forms.
And when it drops into a heap of decaying vegetable flesh, what new hosts of life batten upon it! And when the earth takes back the ruins of the dead giant beneath her generous breast, it is not to keep them there. ”

“ Thus is the fallen tree transformed into multitudinous life, bursting above the soil in new generations of beauty, until scarce a shred remains that does not live again. And creeping rootlets of trees hunt these last fragments underground, and crawling, flexible worms eagerly swallow the earth itself, and digest from it the stray crumbs of the old tree that are mixed throughout the soil.
Nor have we yet got to the bottom of this cycle of vegetable life. There are worlds, solar systems of life beneath all this, dwelling far below the reach of the eyesight of man. ”

“ But these are only the nobility, those who sit above the salt. The commonalty are more greedy and less particular. They bore in and saw in and dig in. Leaf and flower and fruit, branch and stem and root, each has its epicures. Some take a mean advantage by laying their eggs in the heart of rosy apple or luscious pear, so that their babes may revel in a perfect mountain of provender. There they lie, odd little white worms, like the chap who wished that Lake Superior was all ice-cream, and he plunged into its midst and condemned to eat his way out. ”

“ As we have seen a host of plants growing out of the ruins of the dead tree, so we now perceive a host of animals growing out of the ruin of their dead predecessor. What is not otherwise devoured serves as a receptacle for the eggs of insects, and it soon swarms with grubs and maggots, destined eventually to sail in winged lightness in the air, without a hint in their aërial grace that their floating life had this unpleasant source. ”

“ When we find men in all nations and in all ages pressing sharply on the means of subsistence, the loss by famine quickly replaced by new food for famine, the ravages of war and pestilence rapidly obliterated by new-growing populations, and apparently nothing but the pressure of sheer want and misery able to limit human fecundity, we may well question if this is to be the continued destiny of mankind, and if there is no possible limit to population within this sharp boundary of distress. ”

“ It is not alone the battle of the great upon the small, the strong upon the weak. The small as well make their harvest upon the bodies of the great. As minute plants feed upon great trees, so do the midges upon the giants of the animal world.
Insects are not content with preying upon one another—spiders dragging their nets through the air for unwary flies, ant-lions digging sand-craters for curious ants, ichneumon-flies nestling their young in the bodies of fat caterpillars—but they prey as persistently upon the world of giant animals. ”

“ Life is an incessant battle—a battle for food, and a battle for safety. The total quantity of food is limited. The powers of organic increase are unlimited. Thus a fight for food becomes necessary; a conflict in which no quarter is asked and none given. ”

“ If the numbers of mankind become thus checked, while wealth continues to grow, and culture, with its advanced needs, becomes a general possession, the standard of desire must rise, until absolute want may no longer mean, as now, physical misery and starvation, but may mean the deprivation of what would now be considered luxuries beyond the reach of the poor. In such a case the population of the earth could never sink, as now, to press upon the sharp edge of absolute destitution. ”

“ We think it will be found to be a general rule that persons constantly exercised in mental labor have few or no children; those of less active minds have larger families; while the largest families belong to those who do not trouble themselves to think at all.
There is abundant reason to believe, then, that such a physiological check to population really exists; and, in its operation, it is not difficult to perceive a rich promise for the future of the human race. For it is in no sense, in its superior phase, a starvation check. ”

“ Man's adaptations to the conditions of nature are necessarily limited. Thus it might be supposed that a perfect animal would be adapted to traverse the water and the air, as well as the land. But such an adaptation would require extra organs, extra weight, and extra consumption of force in their support. Man, on the contrary, has become adapted to the highest field of life, and escaped an adaptation to inferior fields which would prove a disadvantage in the struggle for existence with land-animals. ”

“ Nature is in no readier mood to waste animal than vegetable food. It also must do its duty in widening out the circle of life. Animals prey on animals. Alive and dead they are eaten and re-eaten. Animal, like vegetable life, is turned again and again into new life, until every atom of it has had all its vitality squeezed out, and has fallen, bit by bit, back into the inorganic world. ”

“ But is the human form the true culmination of the development of matter? Has Nature really reached in man her acme in this direction? A deductive philosopher would perhaps answer this question in the affirmative, on the theory that Nature would not stop short of the most completely developed physical form, as the starting-point of mental evolution. He might claim that a perfect soul could only arise in a perfect body, and that, as Nature is striving toward perfection, she must lay all her foundations at the highest possible point. ”

“ IN passing through the open galleries of that busy ant-hill called a city, with its endless ebb and flow of human beings, intent on their various pursuits of business or pleasure, and succeeding each other in a seemingly endless procession of busy life, there is apt to rise forcibly before our minds the vital questions of human fecundity, and of the ability of the earth to sustain its increasing multitude of human inhabitants. ”

“ And they shall be eaten—and their eaters eaten; and thus the organic world, which grew up by this devouring process from the smallest plant to man, slowly drops back by form after form through the lower world of animals and plants, until every grain of vitality is sucked out of it, and it falls at last, utterly juiceless and lifeless, into the mineral world from which it came. ”

“ The protection that is gained by concealment is a retrograde form. The animals that advance most rapidly are those that are least protected, either by powers of concealment, of flight, or of muscular vigor.
For what does development mean, in its true sense, but extended experience of nature? The greater and more varied the experiences attained by any animal, the best suited it is to cope with nature. And if this variety of experiences extend through the life of a species, it becomes adapted to escape from more varied descriptions of peril and to obtain food in greater variety and quantity. ”

“ In the development of man alone has Nature pursued her most elevated path, increasing his susceptibility to exterior influence, his power of gaining sensible experience of nature, to the utmost possible degree. This is probably the true explanation of the naked condition of the human skin. His mode of life has rendered the fullest perception of nature desirable, and adaptation has consequently taken this direction, removing from his exterior surface everything opposing the utmost sensibility, and, for the same reason, hindering any undue thickening or induration of the outer skin. ”

“ For man has gained new muscles, in his use of the forms and forces of the inorganic world, and has commenced a new process of adaptation, which has already enabled him to extend his kingdom from the tropic to the frigid zone, and which promises to make him to some extent master of the fields of water and air. And his mental experience of wider and wider conditions of nature has produced a new form of physical adaptation—that signified in clothing and habitation. ”

“ And so it may be paid back again and again, until it is all lost in this successive wear and tear, and the mineral world gets its own again.
This is Nature's thrifty housekeeping. Not an ounce of force is wasted. All the possible life in organic material is worked out of it ere it can escape. And even those vegetable forms that have avoided this process by being turned into stone have but temporarily locked up their forces, which flow out eventually in the form of light and heat, to invigorate, vivify, and gladden the world of living beings. ”

“ The head of the animal, then, seems necessarily to be just as we find it, the seat of the special senses and of the brain; while the relative location of these sense-organs and of the mouth, the position and elevation of the head, and the narrowness and flexibility of the neck, appear to be all necessary adaptations for the most complete protection of the whole organism. ”

“ It builds its theories out of facts, not its facts out of theories, and follows Nature upward from her roots, not downward from her branches. What, then, do the facts of Nature say as to the question of animal evolution? Is man truly the paragon of animals? ”

“ Animals seek to devour them. They can only escape by inclosing themselves in a rigid armor, or by becoming unfitted for animal food.
This leads us to the most significant adaptation in plants. Their life duration is limited, and they must have powers of reproduction, the best adapted in this respect crowding out the less adapted. Obviously the seed-bearers are best fitted for survival; and of these, those bearing the most seeds, and having the best facilities for dispersing them.
But the fixed plant can not, of itself, spread its seeds beyond its own locality. ”

“ They climb to the air and the sunlight again in grasses and ferns and airy little plants. They blossom into flowers, eye-gladdening, honey-yielding, color-mad clumps of bloom, from which not alone the bee drinks sweets. ”

“ In the human form, then, we find all the advantages possessed by the mammalia as a class, together with certain important features of development not possessed by any other mammalian animal. Perhaps the most important of these is the fact that in man gravitation is overcome with a less expenditure of muscular force than in any other land animal. The whole weight of the body stands vertically above the organs of support. The muscles which in other animals act as ropes and levers of support are only called upon in man to preserve his vertical position. ”

“ As the type of animal form is the stomach, so the type of plant form is the mouth. It has not yet developed into the formation of a central stomach, nor has it attained powers of digestion. It builds up protoplasm by successive steps of chemical integration. It is a laboratory for the production of chemical synthesis—not of chemical analysis, as in animals.
Thus the food-taking requisite is provided for in the production of numerous leaf and root mouths, extending themselves into the two great reservoirs of food. But defense must be provided for as well. Plants are attacked by various foes. ”

“ Consequently, the animal is superior to the plant through this possession of muscular and sense organs. It is also superior in being able to employ the energy derived from its food, not in the building up of chemical compounds, but in the force of motion and sensation.
Nor can the animal be wholly protected by armor. Some portion of it must be exposed to danger. At least those flexible limbs which aid it in food-getting are in frequent peril, and need some form of protection. The loss of them can not well be made useful to the animal, as the loss of its exposed portions is to the plants. ”

“ It is all one to Nature. She is determined that there shall be no waste, that none of her laborious efforts to build the organic out of the inorganic world shall be for naught, and that the utmost abundance and most endless variety of life shall flow into being out of the bosom of the inanimate. ”

“ Not only is the division of labor of the animal organs within him—the nervous, muscular, and osseous systems—complete, but his exterior sensibility to the impress of force is the most delicate of that of all animals. This is perhaps not the case in the organs of special sense, though the position of the human nose, with its nostrils directly overhanging the mouth, seems a superior adaptation to its duty in the perception of odors. ”

“ The relative positions of eyes and mouth being thus fixed, those of the smell and taste organs follow. Odorous emanations arise from the food significant of its character. The animal becoming most conscious of them has the best chance to escape danger. These odors naturally rise upward. The nose, as the organ of smell, is therefore best situated just above the mouth, and overhanging it, the performance of its function, as the organ of respiration, causing the respired air to sweep the lips and draw in the odors arising from the food. ”