Character (biology)

“ With the development of modern anatomy, physiology and psychology, the time is ripe for men boldly to say that applying the principle of causation in a practical manner leaves no doubt that mind and character are organic, are functions of the organism and do not exist independently of it. ”

“ But what the common run of us needs, when we go a-wooing nature, is not more poetry, but a scientific course in biology. How a little study in comparative anatomy, for instance, would reveal to us the fearful and wonderful in the make-up of all animal forms! And the fearful and wonderful have a meaning and a beauty which we ought to realize. ”

“ Here is not yet the place to show how almost all the characteristic qualities of living [12] beings, from the preservation of the species to the highest intellectual accomplishments, are conditioned by this special peculiarity. Suffice it to say that because of this quality all those processes which are repeated frequently in any given living organism, assume spontaneously, that is, from physiologic reasons, a character distinguishing them essentially from those which appear only in isolated instances, or sporadically. ”

“ In studying the biography, if I may so express myself, of an individual animal, we have to acquaint ourselves with the circumstances in which nature has placed it,—its adaptation to these, both in structure and instinct,—the points of resemblance which it presents to the individuals of other races and families, and the laws which determine its terms of development, vigorous existence, and decay. ”

“ It is the organism, with the brain, its supreme representative, which constitutes the real personality; comprising in itself the remains of all that we have been and the possibilities of all that we shall be. The whole individual character is there inscribed, with its active and passive aptitudes, its sympathies and antipathies, its genius, its talent or its stupidity, its virtues and its vices, its torpor or its activity. ”

“ From this point, however, we shall probably see that, while all other forms of animal life changed again and again, man's physical character became fixed and almost immutable, advance taking place only in his mental and moral characteristics, with which are united modifications of the brain, as well as of the head and face, parts that are immediately connected with the brain and the medium of the most refined emotions. ”

“ The two great distinctions which mark the intellects of our species, seem to consist in the difference of character, which is established by those who excel in the exercise of their perceptions and consequent recollection, and those who cultivate and discipline the energies of thought. ”

“ The human brain, however, consists, as I have said, of a bundle or compound of all the faculties of all other animals, and from the greater developement of one or more of these, in the infinite varieties of combination, result all the peculiarities of individual character. ”

“ The psychic life and the mental activity of human beings is conditioned by three factors. The first, heredity, denotes the accumulation of experiences and consequent structural modifications acquired by the race during the process of its adjustment to its environment; the manifestation of the result of this experience in behaviour is called instinct. The second is the result of the habits and acquirements of the individual from the moment of conception to the end of his existence: this, together with the first, produces what we call character. ”

“ Take, for instance, the immense difference in capacity and in character found within the limits of the human race.
In all plants and in all animals the characteristic qualities of species may vary, but within comparatively narrow limits; so also with man, so far as his outer form, his instincts and his animal passions are concerned. ”

“ All along, in the course of this discussion, I have from time to time shown that there are certain limitations to the application of the doctrines and methods of biology to sociology, and that in every case such limitation is the result of the introduction of some new principle characteristic of humanity as distinguished from animality, of reason as distinguished from instinct, of spirit as distinguished from matter. ”

“ We may find phenomena comparable to individuality and character, to the mind’s feeling and willing, in the unitary existence of every plant and animal organism, in the peculiar determination of its instinct of life and in the many special branches into which this instinct ceaselessly unfolds. ”

“ Those who have studied the ways of the feathered creatures, as thou hast done, know that there are fine distinctions of character, and beautiful adaptations of that mysterious instinct which is the gift of their kind Creator, that the careless and indifferent observer has never discovered or even suspected. ”

“ In biology, the soul is revealed to us as a binding-principle, that obstructs dissolution of the organism, and a persistent type that maintains its identity amid an incessant flux of matter and flow of energy. ”

“ This indwelling second self, more and more conceived as the real self which uses the body for its purposes, is, with the advance of intelligence, still further divested of its definite characters; and, coming in mediæval days to be spoken of as "animal spirits," ends in later days in being called a vital principle. ”

“ The farther down we go, the more completely is every trace of the individual character lost in the common character of the species, and the physiognomy of the species alone remains. We know the physiological character of the species, and from that we know exactly what is to be expected from the individual ”

“ But if we have once recognized this as an established truth, why should we apply it to organisms at every stage of development except the .highest, namely the human, where the organic form reveals and serves the self-conscious spirit? ”

“ But in the meantime I should wish to point out that we ought, above all, to be clear as to what we really mean by the expression ‘acquired character.’ An organism cannot acquire anything unless it already possesses the predisposition to acquire it: acquired characters are therefore no more than local or sometimes general variations which arise under the stimulus provided by certain external influences. ”

“ Would we not have to attribute to each constituent of this living substance the properties which we now attribute to the whole?--that is, the properties which we attribute to masses of protoplasmic units, such as plants, or birds, or human beings?
We look at ourselves and we feel sure that we have a separate and real existence, that we are rationally conscious and are endowed with choice and free will. We can say almost as much for an intelligent bird or dog. ”

“ We should have less right, or perhaps none, if this theory of life were really of a purely “biological” nature, built up entirely from the expert knowledge and data which the biologist alone possesses. ”

“ The philosophy of biology, however, may, in conclusion, be found to point out to us that the subject of degeneration, while treating of a powerful factor in modifying the living form, yet possesses a favorable aspect in relation to progress and evolution. ”

“ But during social evolution characters that are unfolding more and more loving and lovable traits have so largely subordinated Natural Selection as to permit the helpless, the old, the sick, and the unfit, to live, thus strengthening those highest attributes of the greatest minds, viz.: intelligent sympathy, pity and love. ”

“ To answer such questions we must revert to the definition of life. The distinction between individual in its biological sense, and individual in its more general sense, must consist in the manifestation of Life, properly so called. ”

“ The influence of biology upon thought in general consists essentially in diminishing the importance of the individual and developing the realisation of the species, as if it were a kind of super-individual, a modifying and immortal super-individual, maintaining itself against the outer universe by the birth and death of its constituent individuals. ”

“ The author, as a biologist of fame, is more than entitled to such expression of his own views as he has cared to give. I quote with admiration, not necessarily with agreement, a few passages from the part dealing with the relation between mind and matter, and especially with the wide and revolutionary difference between man and animal caused by either the evolution or the incoming of free and conscious Choice. ”

“ Though the mind in early infancy may be destitute of positive ideas, it seems to be evident, nevertheless, that our Species has been gifted with Intellectual Faculties, and with Moral Sentiments and Sympathies, which are in the strictest sense innate.18 Of this conclusion a striking confirmation is derivable, from the extraordinary sameness which, on a close examination, will be found to prevail in the characters, sentiments, and sympathies of the various branches of the Human Species. ”

“ The instruction I drew from these occurrences was that, without knowledge of the structure and functions of a living organism, and its relations to the natural objects to which it is adapted and which influence its conditions, the best intentions may inflict only suffering when pleasure is meant to be given; and that this holds as true in the case of human beings as in that of rabbits. ”

“ Such a method of evolution and growth is not possible in the vegetable or animal kingdom, where instinct is the only means for the transmission of acquired knowledge. It is this feature that differentiates man from all other created beings. ”

“ This is the very essence of personality, but it involves the probable unity of all animal and vegetable life, as being, in reality, nothing but one single creature, of which the component members are but, as it were, blood corpuscles or individual cells; life being a sort of leaven, which, if once introduced into the world, will leaven it altogether ”

“ Such progress is promoted by the high biological value of greater definiteness of thought. Immature man in the necessary practical life—which may be called the biological life—has many definite perceptions and judgments and well-adjusted actions; outside that life, in the region of superstitious observance, he is not a rational, but an imaginative animal. ”

“ In such an organism—and this is where it differs from an animal organism, and why we have to use the word moral—the parts are conscious: they know themselves in their position as parts of the whole, and they therefore know the whole of which they are parts. ”

“ Not only are they still in the strictest sense the biological head-quarters: they are also the standard or central type by which we must explain all the rest of nature, both in man and beast, in plant and animal. ”

“ The three great classes of facts on which the whole argument rests, viewing man as an animal and omitting all reference to his intellect, are the resemblances of his bodily structure to that of the other mammals, the similarity between his embryonic development and theirs, and the rudiments. I reserve for separate discussion the counter-proof which may be derived from the nature of the human mind, and the special adaptation of the human structure to become the temporary residence and instrument of a spiritual and immortal being. ”

“ F. Franzolini’s interesting monograph on animal psychology from the point of view of science (“Intelligenza delle Bestie,” Udine, 1899) .
364The great and cautious Darwin said that the senses, intuitions, emotions, and faculties, such as love, memory, attention, curiosity, imitation, reason, of which man boasts, may be found in an incipient, or even, sometimes, in a well-developed condition in the lower animals. “Man, with all his noble qualities, his God-like intellect, still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. ”

“ It is of importance further to observe that at this stage of mental evolution the individual—whether an animal or an infant—so far realizes its own individuality as to be informed by the logic of recepts that it is one of a kind. ”

“ The psychological ideal which has prevailed to a large extent in education has, in the old phrenology, and in the recent studies in physiological psychology, sometimes given place to a biological ideal. ”

“ This organism itself is a product of its history; it is what it has become; it is a part of the history of the human race; it is also specially individualized by the particular personal conditions which have distinguished him from his fellow-men. Thus resembling all men in general characters, he will in general feel as they feel, think as they think; and differing from all men in special characters, he will have personal differences of feeling and shades of feeling, thought and combinations of thought.... ”

“ But since our purpose here is to state, as far as possible in the space at our disposal, the facts which are of particular importance in relation to the human subject, we shall only glance at the rest of living creatures. ”

“ Finally we can conclude with a high degree of certainty that the psychical faculties—of knowing, feeling, and willing—have increased in intensity, and also in their relative importance for the life of the individual organism. ”

“ But throughout the animal kingdom, until we reach its highest development in man, the guidance of consciousness, important as it is, seems to be almost wholly subservient to a biological end, that of the preservation of the race, and for the race of the individual. Practical utility is the touchstone of animal intelligence, and of the whole range of feeling and emotion in beings still under examination in the stern school of natural selection. ”

“ He considers soul as the vital energy or vivifying principle common to all organized bodies; but distinguishes in it three species. Thus, in plants there is a vegetative, in animals a vegetative and a sentient, in man a vegetative, a sentient, and a rational soul. The functions of nutrition and generation in plants and animals he attributes to the vegetative soul; sense, voluntary motion, appetite, and passion, to the sentient soul; the exercise of the intellectual faculties, to the rational soul.
His ideas of anatomy and physiology were extremely imperfect. ”