Picture - Cosmic Polymath

190 DESIGN IN NATURE
If the sense organs mislead and deceive, it is because they are in certain instances abnormal or diseased. The
eye may give false information by its being colour-blind, by its being astigmatic, by its being myopic or pres-
byopic, &c. Similarly the ear may distort facts by its being deaf, by its being exposed to noises in the head or
subject to musical spectra, by its being plugged with wax, by the closing or partial closing of the Eustachian tube,
by disease of the bones, &c.
In like manner the nose, mouth, and palate may abrogate their functions because of a severe catarrh in the
head, and the sensibility of the skin may be heightened or lowered as the result of certain skin disorders.
These abnormal results must be corrected if the sense organs are to be taken as reliable guides. The normal
and abnormal conditions referred to are to be placed in different categories. There is no excuse for mixing the
two and constructing a theory on the latter.
The history of the sense organs affords an all-sufficient reply to Mr. Balfour's ingenious speculations.
At the dawn of creation even the simplest organisms were endowed with powers which assured their life,
growth, and continuance. At the outset they had no experience to guide them, and, as they could not take care
of themselves, they must have been cared for. As time advanced, more complex organisms succeeded the simpler
ones ; these were provided with organs of various kinds—the higher being furnished with sense organs. The sense
organs were connected with special nervous arrangements, and these nervous arrangements culminated in brains
of greater or less magnitude and power. The sense organs and the brain and its manifestations (intellectual
faculties) became blended and identified ; they also interacted ; the sense organs became the handmaidens of
the brain, which is the most inscrutable and wonderful of living substances. Mind and matter were united to
each other. The sense organs were specialised hving"-' structures, and they discharged special functions ; the
structures preceded the functions. The sense organs were conferred upon animals to guide and not to mislead
them. If the senses do not enable us fully to reahse the peculiarities of ultimate matter, it is because they are
not sufficiently educated. If they do not convey all the knowledge desiderated and which we could wish, it does
not follow that the information communicated is not accurate information so far as it goes. To admit defects in
the organs of sense is to throw away the weapons by which we hope to conquer ignorance and reach the highest
goals in science.
It caimot be doubted that the organs of sense were originally conferred upon the higher animals and man
for their guidance and to impart a knowledge of things external. They are the gateways through which every-
thing outside of ourselves enters the great nervous emporium, the brain. A man minus his sense organs would
be absolutely helpless ; a man with highly developed sense organs is armed at every point, and master of the
situation. He knows and can maintain his place in nature.
One of the chief stumbling-blocks in modern zoology and physiology concerns the order of nature. Some there
are who assert that the organs—even the organs of sense—are produced by a felt need on the part of the animal
in other words, that function precedes and is the cause of structure. This means that an animal, by wilhng and
voluntary effort, can compel its organs— organs of sense and otherwise—to be born and grow. Nothing can
be more delusive. We have proof to the contrary in our own persons. No individual, however anxious or
determined, can, by willing, add to or take from his original structures. These structures make him what he
is, independently of himself and in spite of himself.
The history of animals is a history of their organs. The organs are increased as we rise in the scale of
being, but, in every instance, they are means to ends ; they represent division of labour and increased
capacity and accuracy. They represent arrangements which enable us to deal with and interpret extraneous
matter in the aggregate and to a great extent in detail. While the organs are forming they are practically
of no value ; this is specially the case in the embryo and foetus—a circumstance which precludes the opera-
tion of natural selection in any form. Natural selection, it is claimed, utihses if it does not produce variations
from the utihtarian point of view, to meet demands set up by environment or extraneous conditions. Natural
selection, however, as I have already explained, could, allowing it to be a reahty, only act upon structures
already in existence. Neither evolution nor natural selection could, unaided, produce the organs, and least of all
the sense organs.
If we are ever to attain to an accurate and extensive knowledge of things without, and, in certain cases, within,
ourselves, it seems to me self-evident that we must cultivate to the utmost, not only our sense organs but also the
brain of which they are, strictly speaking, accessories and extensions. No mere process of abstract reasoning will
ever satisfactorily explain the riddles of the universe. The cosmos cannot be accounted for by an effort of the
inner consciousness ; the philosopher, physicist, chemist, physiologist and psychologist must all work together
and to a given end if satisfactory progress is to be made in the higher learning and in science.