Creative Evolution

[51] This view of adaptation has been noted by M.F. Marin in a remarkable article on the origin of species, "L'Origine des espèces" (Revue scientifique, Nov. 1901, p. 580).

[52] De Saporta and Marion, L'Évolution des cryptogames, 1881, p. 37.

[53] On fixation and parasitism in general, see the work of Houssay, La Forme et la vie, Paris, 1900, pp. 721-807.

[54] Cope, op. cit. p. 76.

[55] Just as the plant, in certain cases, recovers the faculty of moving actively which slumbers in it, so the animal, in exceptional circumstances, can replace itself in the conditions of the vegetative life and develop in itself an equivalent of the chlorophyllian function. It appears, indeed, from recent experiments of Maria von Linden, that the chrysalides and the caterpillars of certain lepidoptera, under the influence of light, fix the carbon of the carbonic acid contained in the atmosphere (M. von Linden, "L'Assimilation de l'acide carbonique par les chrysalides de Lépidoptères," C.R. de la Soc. de biologie, 1905, pp. 692 ff.).

[56]Archives de physiologie, 1892.

[57] De Manacéine, "Quelques observations expérimentales sur l'influence de l'insomnie absolue" (Arch. ital. de biologie, t. xxi., 1894, pp. 322 ff.). Recently, analogous observations have been made on a man who died of inanition after a fast of thirty-five days. See, on this subject, in the Année biologique of 1898, p. 338, the résumé of an article (in Russian) by Tarakevitch and Stchasny.

[58] Cuvier said: "The nervous system is, at bottom, the whole animal; the other systems are there only to serve it." ("Sur un nouveau rapprochement à établir entre les classes qui composent le regne animal," Arch. du Muséum d'histoire naturelle, Paris, 1812, pp. 73-84.) Of course, it would be necessary to apply a great many restrictions to this formula—for example, to allow for the cases of degradation and retrogression in which the nervous system passes into the background. And, moreover, with the nervous system must be included the sensorial apparatus on the one hand and the motor on the other, between which it acts as intermediary. Cf. Foster, art. "Physiology," in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Edinburgh, 1885, p. 17.

[59] See, on these different points, the work of Gaudry, Essai de paléontologie philosophique, Paris, 1896, pp. 14-16 and 78-79.

[60] See, on this subject, Shaler, The Individual, New York, 1900, pp. 118-125.

[61] This point is disputed by M. René Quinton, who regards the carnivorous and ruminant mammals, as well as certain birds, as subsequent to man (R. Quinton, L'Eau de mer milieu organique, Paris, 1904, p. 435). We may say here that our general conclusions, although very different from M. Quinton's, are not irreconcilable with them; for if evolution has really been such as we represent it, the vertebrates must have made an effort to maintain themselves in the most favorable conditions of activity—the very conditions, indeed, which life had chosen in the beginning.

[62] M. Paul Lacombe has laid great stress on the important influence that great inventions have exercised on the evolution of humanity (P. Lacombe, De l'histoire considérée comme science, Paris, 1894. See, in particular, pp. 168-247).

[63] Bouvier, "La Nidification des abeilles à l'air libre" (C.R. de l'Ac. des sciences, 7 mai 1906).

[64] Plato, Phaedrus, 265 E.

[65] We shall return to these points in the next chapter.

[66] We shall return to this point in chapter iii., p. 259.

[67]Matière et mémoire, chap. i.

[68] See the two works of Darwin, Climbing Plants and The Fertilization of Orchids by Insects.

[69] Buttel-Reepen, "Die phylogenetische Entstehung des Bienenstaates" (Biol. Centralblatt, xxiii. 1903), p. 108 in particular.

[70] Fabre, Souvenirs entomologiques, 3e série, Paris, 1890, pp. 1-69.

[71] Fabre, Souvenirs entomologiques, 1re série, Paris, 3e édition, Paris, 1894, pp. 93 ff.

[72] Fabre, Nouveaux souvenirs entomologiques, Paris, 1882, pp. 14 ff.

[73] Peckham, Wasps, Solitary and Social, Westminster, 1905, pp. 28 ff.

[74] See, in particular, among recent works, Bethe, "Dürfen wir den Ameisen und Bienen psychische Qualitäten zuschreiben?" (Arch. f. d. ges. Physiologie, 1898), and Forel, "Un Aperçu de psychologie comparée" (Année psychologique, 1895).

[75]Matière et mémoire, chaps. ii. and iii.

[76] "Le Paralogisme psycho-physiologique" (Revue de métaphysique, Nov. 1904).

[77] A geologist whom we have already had occasion to cite, N.S. Shaler, well says that "when we come to man, it seems as if we find the ancient subjection of mind to body abolished, and the intellectual parts develop with an extraordinary rapidity, the structure of the body remaining identical in essentials" (Shaler, The Interpretation of Nature, Boston, 1899, p. 187).