Metamorphosis

“ Does it contain no suggestion that man, representing the highest pinnacle of created life upon the globe, must undergo a final metamorphosis, as supremely more marvelous and more spiritual, as man is greater in physical conformation, and far removed in mental construction from the humble worm that at the call of nature straightway leaves the ground, and soars upon the gleeful air? ”

“ In all, the organs vary with the features of the place tenanted. At death, or metamorphosis, these creatures, enjoying the ultimate life—immortality—and cognizant of all secrets but the one, act all things and pass everywhere by mere volition:—indwelling, not the stars, which to us seem the sole palpabilities, and for the accommodation of which we blindly deem space created—but that space itself—that infinity of which the truly substantive vastness swallows up the star-shadows—blotting them out as non-entities from the perception of the angels. ”

“ There was perpetual metamorphosis and rich transformation; many became one, one many; the universe was a single thing, charged with stimulating emotional shocks as each scrap of interpretation passed in and across the mind.... ”

“ There are, moreover, an endless number of facts which prove the independence of the individual stages of development—I refer to the multitudinous phenomena presented by metamorphosis itself. The existence of that form of development which we designate as metamorphosis is alone sufficient to prove incontestably that the single stages are able to change independently of one another to a most remarkable extent. ”

“ In the generation by metamorphosis forms are created as if by the impression of a seal, or, as if they were adjusted in a mould; in truth the whole material is transformed. But an animal which is created by epigenesis attracts, prepares, elaborates, and makes use of the material, all at the same time; the processes of formation and growth are simultaneous. ”

“ Here on the surface and there deeply embedded in the ground are things that have been transmuted in substance—changed from flesh to stone, from wood to flint. Living bodies on all sides exemplify metamorphosis in ways marvelous enough to the instructed, and to the primitive man quite incomprehensible. And this protean character which so many things around him exhibit, and which familiarize him with the notion that there are two or more interchangeable states of existence, is again impressed on him by such phenomena as shadows, reflections, and echoes. ”

“ An attempt to assign the causes of Evolution would manifestly be absurd if that agency to which the metamorphosis in general and in detail is due, could either come into existence or cease to exist. The succession of phenomena would in such case be altogether arbitrary, and deductive Science impossible. ”

“ Metamorphosis is the universal law, exemplified throughout the Heavens and on the Earth: especially throughout the organic world; and above all in the animal division of it. No creature, save the simplest and most minute, commences its existence in a form like that which it eventually assumes; and in most cases the unlikeness is great—so great that kinship between the first and the last forms would be incredible were it not daily demonstrated in every poultry-yard and every garden. ”

“ His idea of metamorphosis is almost synonymous with the theory of development. This is clear, among other things, from the 91 following passage:—“The triumph of physiological metamorphosis manifests itself where the whole separates and transforms itself into families, the families into genera, the genera into species, and then again into other varieties down to the individual. This operation of nature goes on ad infinitum; she cannot rest inactive, but neither can she keep and preserve all that she has produced. ”

“ The essential features of metamorphosis, as exhibited in the great class we are writing of, appear to be the separation in time of growth and development, and the limitation of the reproductive processes to a short period at the end of the individual life. ”

“ To metamorphosis he only allowed a logical value, as explaining the natural classification; the only real, existent metamorphosis he saw in the development of the individual from its embryonic stage. Still more distinctly did he contravene the general tendency of scientific explanation. “It is held the triumph of science to recognize in the general process of the earth the same categories as are exhibited in the processes of isolated bodies. This is, however, an application of categories from a field where the conditions are finite to a sphere in which the circumstances are infinite.” ”

“ There are two bodies—the rudimental and the complete; corresponding with the two conditions of the worm and the butterfly. What we call “death,” is but the painful metamorphosis. Our present incarnation is progressive, preparatory, temporary. Our future is perfected, ultimate, immortal. The ultimate life is the full design. ”

“ It would be easy to show at even greater length that the medicine-man has everywhere the power of metamorphosis. He can assume the shapes of all beasts, birds, fishes, insects, and inorganic matters, and he can subdue other people to the same enchantment. This belief obviously rests on the lack of recognised distinction between man and the rest of the world, which we have so frequently insisted on as a characteristic of savage and barbarous thought. Examples of accredited metamorphosis are so common everywhere, and so well known, that it would be waste of space to give a long account of them. ”

“ During this evolution, or, should one say, metamorphosis, in the perception of art, the tendency must necessarily be to smooth out the irregular and unsymmetrical contours of Nature and bring the design down to as nearly geometrical as possible. ”

“ The metamorphosis, or substitution, which in such cases we find in nature, is of itself the very highest evidence that the indirect method was the best, if we admit the idea of a Creator, because it was the method chosen by a being of infinite perfections for reasons which we may not be able to discover, but which we must presume to have existed, if we concede that hypothesis of attributes which "design" in this case necessarily implies. ”

“ For if in any manner we can stimulate this instinct, new passages are opened for us into nature, the mind flows into and through things hardest and highest, and the metamorphosis is possible. ”

“ The product will appear as in infinite metamorphosis.
(From the stand-point of reflection, as continually on the leap from fluid to solid, without ever reaching, however, the required form.—Organizations that do not live in the grosser element, at least live on the deep ground of the aërial sea—many pass over, by metamorphoses, from one element into another; and what does the animal, whose vital functions almost all consist in contractions, appear to be, other than such a leap?) ”

“ The most familiar examples of metamorphosis are the abrupt changes which occur at the end of the larval history of the frog and of many insects. In both these cases there is a sudden and great change of environment; there is a sudden demand for new organs which would have been quite useless in the old environment, and organs which were of use in the, old environment and are of no use in the new have to be eliminated. The two examples we have chosen have the advantage of showing us the two methods by which the crisis in the life-history is met. ”

“ In order to be in this sense an instrument of the spirit active in nature, levity must be capable of yet another metamorphosis into an activity which controls the other three, so that through their action, definitely shaped organic structures may come into being. ”

“ As the belief in metamorphosis,and in beasts which are rational and loquacious, is world wide, and is the natural result of the ideas of "primary myth-makers," or savages, Sir George Cox's theory, that such notions are all to be traced to forgetfulness of the meaning of words denoting natural phenomena, is too narrow, and is too devoid of evidence. ”

“ After a certain duration the primitive world is demolished and its fragments used up in making a better; and {264}this process is repeated, until at length a final world, with man for its crown and finish, makes its appearance. It is needless to trace the process of retrogressive metamorphosis by which, through the agency of the Messiah, the steps of the process of evolution here sketched are retraced. ”

“ To a naturalist, metamorphosis is simply growth; and in that sense the different stages of development in animals that undergo their successive changes within the egg are as much metamorphoses as the successive phases of life in those animals that complete their development after they are hatched. ”

“ Among the North American Indians any stone which has a resemblance to the human or animal figure is explained as an example of metamorphosis. Three stones among the Aricaras were a girl, her lover, and her dog, who fled from home because the course of true love did not run smooth, and who were petrified. ”

“ It is evident that, if some well-authenticated facts could have been adduced to establish one complete step in the process of transformation, such as the appearance, in individuals descending from a common stock, of a sense or organ entirely new, and a complete disappearance of some other enjoyed by their progenitors, time alone might then be supposed sufficient to bring about any amount of metamorphosis. ”

“ Various classes of facts unite to prove117 that the law of metamorphosis which holds among the physical forces, holds equally between them and the mental forces. Those modes of the unknowable which we call motion, light, heat, chemical affinity, etc., are alike transferable into each other, and into those modes of the unknowable which we distinguish as sensation, emotion, and thought ”

“ It seems to be a general fact that a structure which in metamorphosis disappears completely may easily be omitted altogether in embryonic development, while one which is modified into something else continues to pass more or less through its original larval condition. ”

“ In most cases the shifting of the environment is a very gradual process, and the morphological changes in connexion with each step of it are but slight. In some cases, however, jumps are made, and whenever such jumps occur we get the morphological phenomenon termed metamorphosis. ”

“ When this accumulation of slight changes continues, the effect of adaptation goes so far in time as to produce new organs by progressive modification, or to cause actual organs to become useless and rudimentary, and finally disappear, owing to regressive metamorphosis. ”

“ It seems to me that this physical metamorphosis is no false image of what has been the result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though nowise brilliant, thought to-night. It has become luminous, and its clear rays, penetrating the abyss of the remote past, have brought within our ken some stages of the evolution of the earth. And in the shifting "without haste, but without rest"75 of the land and sea, as in the endless variation of the forms assumed by living beings, we have observed nothing but the natural product of the forces originally possessed by the substance of the universe. ”

“ M. Junod seems to me to overrate the conscious artistic purpose in the narrators of these tales: the native mind is quite ready to assume that animals think and act in much the same way as human beings, and this attitude makes it easy to forget the outward distinctions when they appear as actors in a story. No doubt this haziness of view is increased by the popular conception of metamorphosis as a possible occurrence in everyday life. ”

“ At their root lies the belief in Transformation. Flowers, fruit, and other vegetables, eggs, fishes, spiders, worms, and even stones, are all capable of becoming human beings. They only await absorption in the shape of food, or in some other appropriate manner, into the body of a woman, to enable the metamorphosis to be accomplished. ”

“ But in the loneliest wilderness happeneth the second metamorphosis: here the spirit becometh a lion; ”

“ Clodd they enshrine in many instances the mysticism and the superstitions of the peasantry. How can one account, for instance, for the Greek word psyche, meaning butterfly, and also soul, except by the knowledge that butterflies were regarded by the ancients as creatures into which the soul was metamorphosised? ”

“ The God of Nature did his Soul inspire,
Or Earth, but new divided from the Sky,
And, pliant, still, retain'd th' Ætherial Energy:
Which wise Prometheus temper'd into Paste,
And mixt with living Streams the Godlike Image cast.
Thus, while the mute Creation downward bend
Their Sight, and to their earthly Mother tend,
Man looks aloft; and with erected Eyes
Beholds his own hereditary Skies.
From such rude Principles our Form began;
And Earth was metamorphos'd into Man. ”

“ Our actual transformation, which is the final word in science, is in full accord with the theory of reincarnation. What is transformation except the idea that living things transform themselves, progressing one into another? Nature presents herself to us under the aspect of a spark, elaborately perfecting without ceasing to create, to attain an ideal which will be the millennium. Whatever Nature does for the body she does for the soul. ”

“ After their death they became flowers. Such myths of metamorphoses, as has been shown, are an universal growth of savage fancy, and spring from the want of a sense of difference between men and things. ”

“ If this earth were at once the soul's cradle and her tomb, why should that cradle have been hung amid the stars, and that tomb illumined by their eternal light? If, indeed, a child of the clay, was not this earth, with all its plains, forests, mountains, and seas, capacious enough for the dreams of that creature whose course was finally to be extinguished in the darkness of its bosom? ”