Edward Sylvester Morse

“ On general principles, too, the proposition, that those individuals best adapted to their surroundings survive, need only be stated to be accepted by a reasonable mind. In truth, to deny it would be to deny, as Alphonse de Candolle says, that a round stone would roll down-hill faster and farther than a flat one. Indeed, this eminent botanist affirms that natural selection is neither a theory nor an hypothesis, but the explanation of a necessary fact. The constant physical changes in the past and present condition of the world are incontrovertibly established. ”

“ Their honor involved as soon as their name had been attached to a supposed new species, and any deviation from the type oftentimes persistently overlooked, what wonder, when every local variety received a new name and that name stamped upon a supposed valid creation—what wonder, I repeat, that whole groups of animals have been so thoroughly scourged by such work that few have the courage to engage in the task of revision? ”

“ Whatever may be said of the existence in nature, of other groups, there can be no question that species have the most definite existence, and it would seem then that nothing more need be proved for the theory of descent as opposed to the theory of special creation, than the establishment of the fact that species assume the characters of new species, or disappear altogether with a change of surroundings. ”

“ Unless we recognize the differences among men, and we recognize the identity of these differences with the differences which exist among animals, we are not true to our subject, and, whatever be the origin of these differences, they are of some account; and if it ever is proved that all men have a common origin, then it will be at the same time proved that all monkeys have a common origin, and it will by the same evidence be proved that man and monkeys cannot have a different origin. ”

“ To him who is still capable of believing that the human race was created by miracle in a single day, with all its attributes, physical and psychical, compounded and proportioned, just as they now are, the present inquiry is of course devoid of significance. ”

“ Agassiz, in his keen grasp of things, readily saw this, and, since the races of men revealed differences just as specific in their characters as the animals immediately below them, he was forced to admit the plurality of origin of the human race. ”

“ It seems, then, that the prime question resolves itself into whether each species as a whole has something inherent which prompts it to vary irrespective of its environments, or whether a correlation can be established between the variation of species and certain physical conditions inducing these variations, and here let me add that of all groups of animals from species through genera to higher divisions, that group of individuals recognized as a species has the most tangible existence. ”

“ Now comes the theoretical part of natural selection, namely, that the varieties which survive are those which are more in harmony with the environments of the time. These propositions, with minor ones, form the theory of Darwin. Lamarck and others had recognized the gradual enhancement of varieties into species, but had not struck the key-note of natural selection, though Wells in the beginning of the century had clearly recognized it in a pertinent example. ”

“ When the study of heredity reveals the fact that even the nature of vagabondage is perpetuated; when the surprising revelations of Margaret, mother of criminals, from whose loins nearly a thousand criminals have thus far been traced, are considered, common-sense will ultimately recognize that the imprisonment of a criminal for ten or twenty years is not simply to punish him or relieve the public of his lawless acts, but to restrain him from perpetuating his kind. ”

“ No child is fed artificially.
On the other hand, it is interesting to note that the Japanese eat unripe fruit to an inordinate extent. The moment fruit shows the slightest signs of being soft as an evidence of ripeness, it is considered by them as unfit to eat. It is astonishing to see them eat hard, green peaches—clinching them in the fist, as a country boy does a hard apple, and biting off each mouthful with a loud snap. They eat their pears in the same way; cucumbers are eaten in a more unripe condition than with us even ”

“ In conclusion, it is gratifying to know that more solid progress has been made in medicine and surgery than in any other branch of Western science, and that the old Chinese system, with its grotesque absurdities, is doomed. ”

“ Should it be urged that the present tendency toward reducing species be taken as an evidence that species had not before been properly defined, then it offers a stronger argument still in favor of the fact that species are even more variable than had before been supposed, leaving the greater possibility of larger numbers of these ultimately surviving. Again, the assumption that the limitation of specific variation had not been properly indicated, shows how reprehensible has been the work of some of those who have burdened our literature with their bad species. ”

“ So much is claimed for birthplace that, in the way of history, it may not be amiss to call attention to the fact that the first clear premonition of the theory of natural selection came from this country. ”

“ We have in the meagre fauna of the caves convincing proof of the gradual undoing of parts—so to speak—on the withdrawal of influences favorable to them; even so exquisite a structure as the eye as a result of selection almost inconceivable, yet not only becoming rudimentary, but almost disappearing, by the withdrawal of those influences which were in part conducive to its building up. ”

“ Wyman says, in regard to a microcephalic skull from Mauritius, that, "taking together the high temporal ridges, the union of the temporals with the frontals, the projection of the jaws, the narrow and retreating forehead, the small capacity, and the form and proportions of the nasal openings, the general resemblance to that of an ape is most striking, and seems to justify Vogt's expression of a man-ape, it being understood that the skull we are describing is not a natural, but an anomalous formation." ”

“ Their digestive system unspecialized, their food various, their life the price of ceaseless vigilance, no wonder that their inquisitiveness and wakefulness were stimulated and developed, which is the condition of progressive intelligence"—adding that "the race has not been to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." ”

“ Men, instead of being paid to remove it, actually pay for it!
The Japanese having no cattle or sheep, but few horses, no pigs, and but few fowls at the most, depend entirely upon the sewage of towns for the fertilizing material of their farms. No one at home can form any idea of the perfect manner of this work. Even in as large a city as Tokio, with its million inhabitants, this service is performed with a neatness and thoroughness which surpasses belief. ”

“ We are to trace evil and corrupt passions to their source. The dreadful outrages which shock us from time to time in the public prints are not instigated by an evil spirit, but are outbursts of the same savage nature which found more frequent expression years ago, and which are still present with the lower races of to-day. ”

“ He finds a coincidence between the immunity from certain diseases and the black color of the skin, though why this is so he does not attempt to explain. He thinks that, through the successive survival of dark skins, the dark variety of the human race has become fixed. Referring to the man's selective action regarding domesticated animals, he says: "But what is here done by art seems to be done with equal efficacy, though more slowly, by Nature, in the formation of varieties of mankind fitted for the country which they inhabit." ”

“ In the human race it is longer than in any other mammal, and much longer in civilized man than in the savage.
In the orang-outang the infant does not begin to walk till it is a month old, and in performing this act it holds to various objects for support, as in the human infant. Previous to that time it reposes on its back, and becomes absorbed in gazing at its hands and feet. Now, still lower down among the monkeys, at the age of one month the young are fully matured so far as walking and prehension are concerned. ”

“ If the pupil has any of these operculated snails alive, he will observe that they do not come to the surface to breathe air. Instead of a lung, they have a cavity containing an organ, or part, called the gill, by means of which the snail is capable of getting from the water what the air-breathing snail gets from the air, namely, oxygen. It will be seen that the head of the snail is shaped differently in the snails having an operculum, the mouth being at the end of a sort of proboscis or rostrum. ”

“ In this year of Centennial reviews, one might naturally fall into an attempt to sketch the growth of science and the work accomplished within the last hundred years, but that would not only be too vast a field, but would on the whole be unprofitable, since time-boundaries, like the surveyor's lines bordering a State, have no definite existence in Nature. ”

“ Rigidly adhering to the inductive method, science is prepared to show that man did not appear suddenly and free from those animal proclivities and passions which make him a sinful creature, but that he has risen from a lowly origin, and his passions and desires, but feebly repressed, may be as surely traced to ancestral traits, as the aberrant muscles in his structure may be recognized in some degraded progenitor. ”

“ Not only does the bird secure a certain immunity from danger, in the shape of predatory birds like the hawk, but it finds itself in the midst of a plentiful supply of insect-life, which has in turn been lured from the wilderness, and which has developed with frightful rapidity, owing to the dense crops which man raises, and which were not always to be destroyed by every forest fire or persistent drought. ”

“ This great depth of soil above the shells might have been brought in by man, as the Japanese are famous for the manner in which they level the ground and fill in depressions. The thickness of soil above a deposit is always an untrustworthy guide in estimating the age of such a deposit: as, for example, the deposits about Salem, Massachusetts, containing precisely the same kinds of pottery and bone-implements, and presumably of the same age, will have in one place a thickness of two feet of soil above, and in the sterile pastures a thin layer of a few inches. ”

“ Packard, in the same work, under the head of "Origin of Genera and Species," says, "The number of so called species tends to be reduced as our specimens and information increase." The genera also "are as artificial creations as species and varieties. The work of the systematic biologist often amounts to but little more than putting Nature in a strait-jacket."
An application of the influence of temperature is here proper, as explaining, on a rational ground, the persistence of peculiar arctic forms of animals and plants on the summits of Mount Washington and other high peaks. ”

“ The recent occupation of America by the white race renders it difficult to determine how recent the shell-heaps along the coast may be, since the savages when first encountered were living in much the same condition as their ancestors had lived, just as to-day there still exist in some parts of the world veritable Stone-age savages. In Japan, however, where historians have chronicled with remarkable fidelity the minute details of their history, we get, as it were, some standard for time in estimating the age of the Omori deposits. ”

“ If we now look upon the definition of a species, as given by a gentleman foremost in the ranks as a describer of species, we find it formulated as follows: A species represents "a primary established law, stamped with a persistent form (a type) pertaining solely to itself, with the power of successively reproducing the same form, and none other;" ”

“ According to the theory of evolution, which has the merit of being based upon, and not inconsistent with, the observed analogies and processes of Nature, he must have gone through a period, when he was passing out of the animal into the human state, when he was not yet provided with tools of any sort, and when he lived the life of a brute. ”

“ If exposure of the head to the direct rays of the sun is the inducing cause of sunstroke, then here, in latitude 35°, we should expect numerous cases, while, if over-eating and overdrinking—in other words, intemperate habits—are the inducing causes, then we can understand the immunity of the Japanese from this malady: for a more temperate and frugal people do not exist on the face of the globe. ”

“ Whatever tends to show modification in the markings, color, size, food, or change in the variety of habits manifested by animals, furnishes just so many indications of the unstable character of what had before been considered stable, and gives an infinitely wider field for those unconscious selections whose operations are coincident with every change in the physical features of the earth. ”

“ The misery of the systematist has already made itself apparent in synonyms for a well-known class of monuments—namely, the dolmens. To make the matter more perplexing, structures of quite a different form, and possibly intended for a different purpose, are called by the same name.
A dolmen, generally speaking, consists of an arrangement of stones, few or many in number, supporting one or more stones in such a way as to inclose a cavity beneath. These supporting stones may form the four walls of a chamber, which may or may not be covered by a mound of earth. ”

“ Agassiz was bitterly assailed by the Church for the bold attitude he assumed regarding the plurality of origin of the human race, though now that science will show that after all man has originated from a common centre, it seems no better satisfied. The facts bearing on man's lowly origin have been fully contributed by American students, and, as all intelligent men understand the bearing of these facts on the question, it is only necessary to allude to them here. ”

“ Leidy affirms his belief that very slight modifications of these essential conditions of life were sufficient to produce the vast variety of living beings upon the globe. The theory of derivation based upon the principles of natural selection demands the following admissions: that species vary, that peculiarities are transmitted or inherited, that a greater number of individuals perish than survive, and that the physical features of the earth are now and have been constantly changing, and that precisely the same conditions never recur. ”

“ Cope shows in this case that "the survival of the fittest has been the survival of the most intelligent, and natural selection proves to be, in its highest animal phase, intelligent selection."
Prof. Fiske has in a clearer way shown that when variations in intelligence became more important than variations in physical structure, then they were seized upon, to the relative exclusion of the latter.
It is intelligent strength, other things being equal, that conquers the savage, and the gradual selection of the best and biggest brains is not seen alone in man. ”

“ William Charles Wells, born in this country, at Charleston, South Carolina, in 1757, in a paper read before the Royal Society, in 1813, first substantially originated the theory to account for the black skin of the negro. He limits his application to races of men and certain peculiarities of color, correlated with an immunity from certain diseases; in proof of it he cites domesticated animals, and the selection by man in precisely the same line of argument urged by Darwin. ”

“ If man has really been derived from an ancestor in common with the ape, we must expect to show—1. That in his earlier stages he recalls certain persistent characters in the apes; 2. That the more ancient man will reveal more ape-like features than the present existing man; and, 3. That certain characteristics pertaining to early men still persist in the inferior races of men.
Prof. Wyman [6] points out certain resemblances between the limbs of the human embryo and the permanent condition of the limbs of lower animals. ”

“ Eye-diseases of various kinds are prevalent, and near-sightedness seems very common, judging from the number of people who wear glasses. Weakness of vision must in some measure be attributed to the poor light the people provide themselves with. A dim candle, or, at most, a tiny wick resting on the edge of a vessel of vegetable oil of feeble illuminating power, and this inclosed in a paper lantern, is the almost universal lamp of the Japanese ”