Luck, or Cunning, as the Main Means of Organic Modification Part 19

There is design, or cunning, but it is a cunning not despotically fas.h.i.+oning us from without as a potter fas.h.i.+ons his clay, but inhering democratically within the body which is its highest outcome, as life inheres within an animal or plant.

All animals and plants are corporations, or forms of democracy, and may be studied by the light of these, as democracies, not infrequently, by that of animals and plants. The solution of the difficult problem of reflex action, for example, is thus facilitated, by supposing it to be departmental in character; that is to say, by supposing it to be action of which the department that attends to it is alone cognisant, and which is not referred to the central government so long as things go normally. As long, therefore, as this is the case, the central government is unconscious of what is going on, but its being thus unconscious is no argument that the department is unconscious also.

I know that contradiction in terms lurks within much that I have said, but the texture of the world is a warp and woof of contradiction in terms; of continuity in discontinuity, and discontinuity in continuity; of unity in diversity, and of diversity in unity. As in the development of a fugue, where, when the subject and counter subject have been enounced, there must henceforth be nothing new, and yet all must be new, so throughout organic life-- which is as a fugue developed to great length from a very simple subject--everything is linked on to and grows out of that which comes next to it in order--errors and omissions excepted. It crosses and thwarts what comes next to it with difference that involves resemblance, and resemblance that involves difference, and there is no juxtaposition of things that differ too widely by omission of necessary links, or too sudden departure from recognised methods of procedure.

To conclude; bodily form may be almost regarded as idea and memory in a solidified state--as an acc.u.mulation of things each one of them so tenuous as to be practically without material substance. It is as a million pounds formed by acc.u.mulated millionths of farthings; more compendiously it arises normally from, and through, action.

Action arises normally from, and through, opinion. Opinion, from, and through, hypothesis. "Hypothesis," as the derivation of the word itself shows, is singularly near akin to "underlying, and only in part knowable, substratum;" and what is this but "G.o.d" translated from the language of Moses into that of Mr. Herbert Spencer? The conception of G.o.d is like nature--it returns to us in another shape, no matter how often we may expel it. Vulgarised as it has been by Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, and others who shall be nameless, it has been like every other corruptio optimi--pessimum: used as a hieroglyph by the help of which we may better acknowledge the height and depth of our own ignorance, and at the same time express our sense that there is an unseen world with which we in some mysterious way come into contact, though the writs of our thoughts do not run within it--used in this way, the idea and the word have been found enduringly convenient. The theory that luck is the main means of organic modification is the most absolute denial of G.o.d which it is possible for the human mind to conceive--while the view that G.o.d is in all His creatures, He in them and they in Him, is only expressed in other words by declaring that the main means of organic modification is, not luck, but cunning.

Footnotes:

{17a} "Nature," Nov. 12, 1885.

{20a} "Hist. Nat. Gen.," tom. ii. p. 411, 1859.

{23a} "Selections, &c." Trubner & Co., 1884. [Out of print.]

{29a} "Selections, &c., and Remarks on Romanes' 'Mental Intelligence in Animals,'" Trubner & Co., 1884. pp. 228, 229. [Out of print.]

{35a} Quoted by M. Vianna De Lima in his "Expose Sommaire," &c., p.

6. Paris, Delagrave, 1886.

{40a} I have given the pa.s.sage in full on p. 254a of my "Selections," &c. [Now out of print.] I observe that Canon Kingsley felt exactly the same difficulty that I had felt myself, and saw also how alone it could be met. He makes the wood-wren say, "Something told him his mother had done it before him, and he was flesh of her flesh, life of her life, and had inherited her instinct (as we call hereditary memory, to avoid the trouble of finding out what it is and how it comes)." --Fraser, June, 1867. Canon Kingsley felt he must insist on the continued personality of the two generations before he could talk about inherited memory. On the other hand, though he does indeed speak of this as almost a synonym for instinct, he seems not to have realised how right he was, and implies that we should find some fuller and more satisfactory explanation behind this, only that we are too lazy to look for it.

{44a} 26 Sept., 1877. "Unconscious Memory." ch. ii.

{52a} This chapter is taken almost entirely from my book, "Selections, &c.. and Remarks on Romanes' 'Mental Evolution in Animals.'" Trubner, 1884. [Now out of print.]

{52b} "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 113. Kegan Paul, Nov., 1883.

{52c} Ibid. p. 115.

{52d} Ibid. p. 116.

{53a} "Mental Evolution in Animals." p. 131. Kegan Paul, Nov., 1883.

{54a} Vol. I, 3rd ed., 1874, p. 141, and Problem I. 21.

{54b} "Mental Evolution in Animals," pp. 177, 178. Nov., 1883.

{55a} "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 192.

{55b} Ibid. p. 195.

{55c} Ibid. p. 296. Nov., 1883.

{56a} "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 33. Nov., 1883.

{56b} Ibid., p. 116.

{56c} Ibid., p. 178.

{59a} "Evolution Old and New," pp. 357, 358.

{60a} "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 159. Kegan Paul & Co., 1883.

{61a} "Zoonomia," vol. i. p. 484.

{61b} "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 297. Kegan Paul & Co., 1883.

{61c} Ibid., p. 201. Kegan Paul & Co., 1883.

{62a} "Mental Evolution in Animals," p. 301. November, 1883.

{62b} Origin of Species," ed. i. p. 209.

{62c} Ibid., ed. vi., 1876. p. 206.

{62d} "Formation of Vegetable Mould," etc., p. 98.

{62e} Quoted by Mr. Romanes as written in the last year of Mr.

Darwin's life.

{63a} Macmillan, 1883.

{66a} "Nature," August 5, 1886.

{67a} London, H. K. Lewis, 1886.

{70a} "Charles Darwin." Longmans, 1885.

{70b} Lectures at the London Inst.i.tution, Feb., 1886.

{70c} "Charles Darwin." Leipzig. 1885.

{72a} See Professor Hering's "Zur Lehre von der Beziehung zwischen Leib und Seele. Mittheilung uber Fechner's psychophysisches Gesetz."

{73a} Quoted by M. Vianna De Lima in his "Expose Sommaire des Theories Transformistes de Lamarck, Darwin, et Haeckel." Paris, 1886, p. 23.

{81a} "Origin of Species," ed. i., p. 6; see also p. 43.

{83a} "I think it can be shown that there is such a power at work in 'Natural Selection' (the t.i.tle of my book)."--"Proceedings of the Linnean Society for 1858," vol. iii., p. 51.

{86a} "On Naval Timber and Arboriculture," 1831, pp. 384, 385. See also "Evolution Old and New," pp. 320, 321.

{87a} "Origin of Species," p. 49, ed. vi.

{92a} "Origin of Species," ed. i., pp. 188, 189.