Transmission

“ There is a dependence of transmission, and transmission may occur in many wide and fundamentally differing ways. At a stroke you see the whole question and series of questions take on a new aspect. If the chemist makes life-jelly he may have made not something to produce or to release but something to transmit life. ”

“ The matter is not duplicated because the transmitter strips down the object within it as it transmits.
"Now the question that has been raised by some scientists about the transmission of animate objects is whether the 'soul' or 'life force' can be transmitted. ”

“ Also there are other physical messages from place to place; there is the transmission of material bodies, the transmission of sound, the transmission of waves and ripples on the surface of water, the transmission of nerve excitation through the body, and innumerable other forms which enter into habitual experience. The transmission of light is only one form among many.
Furthermore local time does not concern one material particle only. The same definition of simultaneity holds throughout the whole space of a consentient set in the Newtonian group. ”

“ On the other hand, we see that if, along with the transmission of generic and specific structures, there tend to be transmitted modifications arising in a certain way, there is a strong a priori probability that there tend to be transmitted modifications arising in all ways. ”

“ A second law, which likewise belongs to the series of progressive transmissions, may be called the law of established or habitual transmission. It manifests itself in this, that qualities acquired by an organism during its individual life are the more certainly transmitted to its descendants the longer the causes of that change have been in action, and that this change becomes the more certainly the property of all subsequent generations the longer the cause of change acts upon these latter also. ”

“ We thus learn, and the fact is an important one, that transmission and development are distinct powers. Occasionally these two powers seem to be antagonistic, or incapable of combination in the same individual; for several cases have been recorded in which the son has not directly inherited a character from his father, or directly transmitted it to his son, but has received it by transmission through his non-affected mother, and transmitted it through his non-affected daughter. ”

“ The transmission hypothesis sins further by reason of its transcending the legitimate grounds of psychology. It assumes an independent world of consciousness which cannot be brought within the range of experience. Now even if it be granted that such a world does exist, it still falls outside the subject-matter of psychology. For psychology as we pointed out deals with facts of consciousness, with experiences and their relations. ”

“ My dear Romanes,—I have read your two articles in 'Nature,' and nothing can be clearer or more interesting, though I had gathered your conclusions clearly from your other papers. It seems to me that unless you can show that your muslin (in your simile) is rather coarse, the transmission may be considered as passing in any direction from cell or unit of structure to cell or unit; and in this case the transmission would be as in Dionæa, but more easily effected in certain lines or directions than in others. It is splendid work, and I hope you are getting on well in all respects. ”

“ I will give in brief, one American example (to be found at length in S. P. R. Proceedings XVIII.) of well-recorded telepathic transmission. The incident thus transferred is trivial and even ludicrous; the fact of the transference was absolutely useless. But the case is not only none the worse for this; it is all the better. When we are trying to prove that such transmission exists, we want to keep clear, if we can, of emotional complications. ”

“ In short, we may say that the hereditary transmission, whether of individual peculiarities of anatomical structure and of temperament, or of liability to such and such a morbid condition and the same holds good for certain bodily aptitudes—is a very frequent, though not constant, phenomenon in animals and in man. ”

“ So the soul and the brain are independent of one another.
“Consequently, souls can be exchanged with one another without the brains being exchanged....
“Experiments in Transmission.
“Thought is the electricity of which our brains are the batteries or the accumulators—I do not know yet; but what is certain, is that the transmission of the mental fluid takes place in a manner analogous to that of the electric fluid. ”

“ It is on our familiarity with modes of transmission such as these, and with the exact analyses of them which the science of mathematical physics has been able to make, that our predilection for filling space with an aethereal transmitting medium, constituting a universal connexion between material bodies, largely depends; perhaps ultimately it depends most of all, like all our physical conceptions, on the intimate knowledge that we can ourselves exert mechanical effect on outside bodies only through the agencies of our limbs and sinews. ”

“ The transmission hypothesis is all the more unacceptable as the terms in which it is expressed are contradictory, and the analogy on which it is based is essentially illegitimate. Consciousness is supposed to be different in nature from the physical world and existing independently, the psychophysical threshold alone regulating the volume of the stream of consciousness to be poured over into the material world. ”

“ It gives us a key to unlock many close-shut doors. When we try to learn something (as we are now about to do) concerning the problem of the transmission, through the succession of germ-cells, of the characters that mark out men—the problem of heredity—we find a conspicuous and very interesting use for it. ”

“ Finally, it may be urged, that the invocation of an extra-mundane world helps matters little, as it does not show the modus operandi of the interdependence of mental and physical phenomena, inasmuch as the rising or falling of a physical threshold does not in the least explain or show how a stream of consciousness is made possible to vary in volume and intensity. Without explaining the proposition that mental processes vary as physical processes, the transmission hypothesis only assumes an additional world of disembodied consciousness and thus gratuitously multiplies entities. ”

“ The consequent Adaptations are to be regarded as gradual, but steadily progressive, changes in the organisation, which are striven after during the individual life of the organism, preserved by transmission in a series of generations, and further developed by means of natural selection. What has been gained by the ancestor becomes the heritage of the descendant. Adaptation and Transmission are thus alternately effective, the former representing the modifying, the latter the conservative 264principle.... ”

“ If it be objected that every hypothesis is extra-experiential, it may be pointed out that a hypothesis must be framed in terms that can be drawn within the circle of experience, it must use a vera causa, an agent that is observable in nature. But, as we have already shown, the transmission hypothesis lacks this essential requirement. Its agent, disembodied consciousness, is not a vera causa, nor can it ever be drawn into the circle of experience. ”

“ The system of telodynamic transmission would no doubt have developed to a much greater extent than it has done but for the advent of electrical transmission, which made practicable the transmission of power to distances utterly beyond the possibilities of any mechanical system. ”

“ We have, however, to deal with the transmission of parts which are variable and this necessitates the assumption that just as many independent and variable parts exist in the germ-plasm as are present in the fully formed organism. ”

“ Where we find cross combinations associated with variations so numerous and of such a character that accidental coincidence is manifestly incompetent to explain them, we know that they must be due to mixture, and it then becomes necessary to observe within what limits the effects of mixture are discernible.
61. In so far as mixture operates, it exactly inverts the results of the simpler form of transmission, its effect being to produce convergence instead of divergence. ”

“ On this hypothesis, hereditary transmission is the result of the victory of particular molecules contained in the impregnated germ. Adaptation to conditions is the result of the favouring of the multiplication of those molecules whose organizing tendencies are most in harmony with such conditions. In this view of the matter, conditions are not actively productive, but are passively permissive; they do not cause variation in any given direction, but they permit and favour a tendency in that direction which already exists. ”

“ During the last half-century the study of cells has led to a great increase of knowledge respecting all bodily functions, whether in health or disease. We now look to it as perhaps the most hopeful source of new light upon the important question of hereditary transmission. ”

“ The frequent traversing of a given pathway by similar impulses finally results in an automatic occurrence of the transmission, or, in other words, the action becomes habitual. Education consists largely in establishing such routes through the nervous tissue. ”

“ It is often sufficient for the inheritance of some peculiar character, that one parent alone should possess it, as in most cases in which the rarer anomalies have been transmitted. But the power of transmission is extremely variable. ”

“ By modifications I mean those changes which are in some way wrought in the body-structure, and by variations those differences which are of germinal origin. That variation of germinal origin is a fact in organic nature is admitted on all hands, and that some variations are adaptive is also unquestioned. Transmissionists contend that modification in a particular direction in one generation is, through the transmission of the change in some way from the bodily tissues to the germinal cells, a source of variation in the same direction in the next generation. ”

“ Our main justification at the present time for discussing theories which aim at some solution is that they may indicate the lines on which experiment and observation may be usefully directed. Thus, it is not known how far the results depend on the state of health of the parties to the experiments, on their occupations and state of consciousness at the time; whether blood-relationship or familiar intimacy between agent and percipient is conducive to success; or whether the transmission is in any way affected by the introduction of more than one agent. ”

“ By keeping steadily in mind that the transmission thru the earth is in every respect identical to that thru a straight wire, one will gain a clear understanding of the phenomena and will be able to judge correctly the merits of a new scheme. Without wishing to detract from the value of any plan that has been put forward I may say that they are devoid of novelty. So for instance in Fig. ”

“ In animals there are special media of communication between the sources of dynamic power, and the parts upon which the force is exercised: and again, a return communication exists, which conveys impressions to the source of power, and to use a simple comparison, a system of telegraphing is in incessant and watchful operation. ”

“ But if so, the action is independent of a medium of communication; for the material medium, if it were needed, should lie between the agent and the patient in such a manner as to link them together, and fill by its material continuity the gap by which they are separated; and if this were the case, the medium could not be set in motion, as its contact with the agent would exclude distance, and consequently the possibility of any direction from the agent to the medium itself. ”

“ Lastly, it is to be remarked that there ultimately arise in the higher social organisms, as in the higher individual organisms, main channels of distribution still more distinguished by their perfect structures, their comparative straightness, and the absence of those small branches which the minor channels perpetually give off. And in railways we also see, for the first time in the social organism, a system of double channels conveying currents in opposite directions, as do the arteries and veins of a well-developed animal. ”

“ Man doth not live by bread alone, to absorb it and to evacuate it.
What is the breath of life? My dear, it is the strange current of interchange that flows between men and men, and men and women, and men and things. A constant current of interflow, a constant vibrating interchange. That is the breath of life.
And this interflow, this electric vibration is polarized. There is a positive and a negative polarity. This is a law of life, of vitalism.
Only ideas are final, finite, static, and single.
All life-interchange is a polarized communication. A circuit. ”

“ It is no doubt true that in the experience of any individual there must be the two aspects of fresh teleological initiative and of already systematised habitual and quasi-mechanical repetition of useful reactions already established, and further, that intercourse between different individuals is only possible through the medium of such a system of established habits. As we have already seen, what we call our body is simply a name for such a set of habitual reactions through which intercommunication between members of human societies is rendered possible. ”

“ Adaptation, or transmutation is, on the other hand, essentially the consequence of material influences, which the substance of the organism experiences from the material surrounding it,—in the widest sense of the word from the160 conditions of life. The external influences of the latter are communicated to the individual parts of the body by the molecular processes of nutrition. In every act of Adaptation the individual molecular motion of the protoplasm, peculiar to each part, disturbs and modifies the whole individual, or part of it, by mechanical, physical, or chemical influences. ”