John Wesley Powell

“ In animals units, extensions, speeds, persistences and the consciousness of many particles are organized. While every particle in the universe has consciousness and choice and hence judgment, it is only in animals that we find judgments organized as concepts. Only animals have reason. ”

“ A host of scientific men following Darwin and accepting the doctrine of the survival of the fittest have found it to be inadequate as a single theory of evolution. There are other laws, especially one expounded by Lamarck. I myself have set forth a new doctrine of evolution as that of culture, and in a subsequent chapter of this work I shall set forth the doctrine of evolution in which I shall attempt to prove that the fundamental law of evolution is the law of affinity by which bodies are incorporated, and hence that evolution is primarily telic. ”

“ If it were permitted to hold the doctrine which has been entertained by some great minds that every particle of matter has judgment, the question would be solved and affinity would be conscious choice. ”

“ The animal, like the plant, has heredity, and its ancestors are the causes of its activity from which it cannot wholly escape. Its self-activity is therefore only within the compass of its hereditary activity; but while it has hereditary activity it is also subject to environmental actions, which are also causes from which it cannot escape. But as it chooses its environment within degrees of freedom, the environment is not wholly inexorable. Thus if food does not come to the animal the animal may go to the food. ”

“ The eye is an organ of the conceiving apparatus, but it has ancillary organs of digestion, circulation, motility, and probably of reproduction. The animal itself is an organ in a society of animals. Society is the culmination of a hierarchy of organs of lower grade, and every organ in every grade of the hierarchy has ancillary organs. ”

“ Thus we have the digestive apparatus, the circulatory apparatus, the motor apparatus, the generative apparatus and the conceiving or thinking apparatus. These apparatuses are completely concomitant with one another; so that every organ of the body, whatever function it may perform, must also perform the other four functions in an ancillary manner. When we are considering an organ we are compelled to consider a dominant function with four ancillary functions; or it may be stated in another way: an organ cannot act but in a cooperative way with other organs. ”

“ The government of the human body in all its hierarchy of bodies is strictly analogous to the government of a nation where the governing body of the nation is not cognizant of all which the individuals do, but it receives intelligence about the way they do in respect to those things which it attempts to control and it controls the individual only in those actions which are necessary to the welfare of the body politic. Thus the cognition and volition of the controlling body is but partial. There is local consciousness and local self-government. ”

“ Every particle of matter has speed, which cannot be increased or diminished, but the particles of inanimate matter seem mutually to direct one another’s paths except in the case of incorporation, when they seem to be directed by affinity, the nature of which is not fully explained. The animal has a new power by which it determines its own path as a body; thus it can direct its own course. The animal is encompassed by an environment out of which it cannot pass but within which it can move as it chooses. ”

“ The human body is a hierarchy of conscious bodies. In this hierarchy the lower members are controlled by the higher members. The lowest members are ultimate particles and the highest member is the cortical body. Now the cortical body controls all the others in the hierarchy and it ought to receive intelligence from all the others, for the consciousness of the particle is transmitted to the cortex, and the will of the cortex is transmitted to the cortical body, but only those which require regulation by it. ”

“ Thus the animal dies in part that it may live as an individual, and if it ceases to die in part it ceases to live, and when it ceases to live through death, it dies altogether and returns to the inorganic world. In other words we may say that in the plant phytons are dropped and renewed, but in the higher animals, organs which are homologous to phytons are not dropped and renewed, with minor exceptions, although molecules of the organ are discarded and coincidently new molecules take their place. ”

“ Judgments grow into concepts as judgment is added to judgment by experience. Thus a body of judgments is formed concerning every object in the environment which grows by increments of judgments. These concepts, which are the creation of the animal, constitute the fifth principle which we have to consider. We have therefore metabolism, reconstruction, motility, expression and conception with which to deal in the consideration of animal bodies. ”

“ That muscles are in pairs is an anatomical fact, and that the one contracts while the other relaxes is a physiological fact, and that the mind somehow controls this muscular activity at will is a psychologic fact, and the whole thing is rendered simple and clear by the doctrine that anabolism in one muscle and catabolism in its opponent are each under the control of mind. But the mind of the cortex does not consciously choose the association of the several particles involved in metabolism. ”

“ By metabolism, therefore, we mean something higher than assimilation by a discrete degree of relativity.
So the animal grows not only by molecular additions to its substance, through which its size is increased, and whereby structural material is added, but the structure of the animal itself is constantly undergoing a change. Throughout the whole animal body a reconstruction is forever in progress; and this continues even after growth ceases as long as life lasts. This is the new principle of form, which is reconstruction. ”

“ Metabolism is controlled by the central mind in some manner or other. Believing this we must infer that the particles of the muscles are conscious as units in a hierarchy of organs which at the other pole is the cortical consciousness. Here we first reach the facts the explanation of which seems to require the hypothesis that consciousness primarily inheres in the ultimate particle. If this hypothesis is accepted, we have the fundamental doctrine of psychology.
Science has demonstrated that motion cannot be created or destroyed. Mind, therefore, cannot create motion but only direct it. ”

“ Mind directs the motion of the body by directing the motion of the organs of locomotion, and these are directed by the device of opposing muscles—the one being contracted and the other relaxed. So the choice of the animal is delegated to the choice of the organ, and the choice of the organ is delegated to the choice of the muscles. ”

“ The animal is composed of organs and these organs develop as they are exercised under the stimulus of mind, for while they are cooperative one part of a system may be developed at the expense of another, so that one organ in a congeries of organs may have great development while another organ in the same congeries may be neglected and ultimately in a series of generations may become atrophied. ”

“ In the early history of mankind, when language was chiefly oral speech, the ear was rapidly developed in vicarious functions, especially in the function of conveying the properties of mind observed in other human beings, for by this organ men learn that other human beings have ideas and emotions like their own. ”

“ In plants, male and female germs, as particles, conjugate or choose one another. In the higher animals male and female bodies conjugate as bodies. This conjugation is accomplished by the mutual choice of the individuals as bodies, and the mutual choice of the individuals as bodies involves the consciousness of both, and this consciousness must have expression, and this expression is language. Hence reproduction in animals is dependent upon the mutual choice of animals, which choice is expressed in language in some form or other. ”

“ Out of the blood all of the tissues are wrought, each in its kind, and every tissue is a kind of its own, and there are kinds of kinds, so that the animal organism is a chemical laboratory engaged during the existence of the animal in building up more complex substances and tearing them down into more specialized substances, and this is metabolism, or zoochemistry. ”

“ As this self-directed molar motion appears in the animal it enlarges its theater of action, being able to seek a new theater in which its self-activity may be employed. Thus the animal, no longer confined by a narrow environment, is able to invade a new region and exercise itself there. The animal can go from one environment to another in search of new conditions, changing the environment by its activities and taking advantage of the new environment by receiving the effect which the new environment produces. ”

“ The affinity which is involved in metabolism must be the choice of the particles themselves, in obedience to commands issued by the organism of unicellular particles of which the body is composed, these ultimately acting in obedience to the command of the cortical consciousness. ”

“ These ganglia are grouped in the hierarchy of nervous organs by intervening fibrous nerves until they reach the master ganglion of the brain, which is the cortex. There is a peculiarity of the nervous system in the relation between the cells of the ganglia and the fibers of the connecting nerves, in that the fascicles of fibers are not structurally continuous with the ganglionic cells. Thus when a feeling starts in the end organ and is produced by its activity, it is carried along the fibers through the hierarchy of ganglia to the central cortex ”

“ Affinity is often expressed as choice and many chemists have held this doctrine.
Next we have to consider how molar motion in the individual is self-directed. We have seen that molar motion is accomplished by compound organs. These organs are found in pairs, so that one acts against the other. We have seen, too, that the mind can accelerate metabolism and the mind can direct the motion of the animal. ”

“ For the sense of hearing there are two organs for gathering the impulses which are propagated through the atmosphere, but in each there are many nerve organs. They are also connected with the cortex by their fibers. The semicircular canals seem in man to convey only feelings, but in aquatic animals it is probable that they are true sense organs, and convey sense impressions brought to them through the medium of the water. The ear is the primordial or fundamental sense by which time is conveyed to the cortex. ”

“ The sense of stress or pressure seems to be in or immediately under the skin; the sense of duration or time is the sense of hearing, and the sense of ideation is the sense of seeing. The homologies of mouth and nose, skin, muscle, ear and eye, are yet imperfectly known; though much research has been bestowed upon them they are difficult to understand. ”

“ In animals we clearly find a fifth property which we cannot ignore, and which ultimately we shall find to be strangely like affinity. This property of the animate body permits it to form judgments about the nature of environments, and then it may form judgments about the good and evil of these environments in relation to itself. ”

“ When the animal dies decay supervenes as a chemical process. The metabolic organs, therefore, are the organs of digestion which prepare the food for the blood, the organs of secretion which furnish material to aid digestion, and the organs of excretion. The science of the chemistry of animate substances is yet in its infancy and the kinds appearing in the animate realm are at the present stage of research vicariously represented by forms. ”

“ Now all of the metabolic, circulatory, motor, and reproductive organs are themselves organs for the initiation of impulses to the nervous system, and the ganglia of this nervous system, especially the cortex, are organs for the initiation of impulses that are conducted by the fibrous nerves to the metabolic, circulatory, motor, and reproductive organs. ”

“ Thus these two terms refer to the same thing, the one when it is considered as a process of an organism, the other considering it as an organism. Reason is a function of animal organism. Every particle has consciousness, only animals have reason. ”

“ The lower forms of plants multiply by subdivision, but in the higher plants they multiply by sexual conjugation, the different sex organs being produced in the same plant or in different plants. In these higher plants the conjugation is adventitious in that the pollen must be carried by the wind or by insects or other agencies from the male to the female plant. But the higher animals have the power of choosing their mates, so that the continuance in generations is controlled by volition. ”