Picture - Cosmic Polymath

INTRODUCTION xxv
cules being so arranged that they admit of being easily separated and appropriated. Life selects and rejects at
discretion both matter and force, and living things are superior to their surroundings. They are not the slaves of
euArironment, and all the changes and modifications which occur in them, at every stage of their histories, primarily
origmate in themselves according to fixed laws. Environment, while it is indirectly associated with modifications
up to a point, cannot be credited with the modifications, any more than it can be credited with the production of
structures and organs. As a matter of fact, plants and animals are very little amenable to environment ; they are
not moved by dead substances acting simply as stimuli, and are not irritable in the modern sense. They, as a rule,
feel, but feeling and irritability are essentially different things, the one being natural, the other unnatural, that is,
abnormal. Plants and animals are entities, and represent creations in time and space. They have their incomings
and outgoings, their rise and fall ; their habitat is provided, their food assured, and quite an extraordinary degree
of permanence guaranteed to leading types. Nothing is left to the fates ; not only are the essential factors of
plants and animals provided for in the great scheme of nature, but trivial details are arranged and boundaries thrown
up which restrict modifications and variations to comparatively narrow dimensions. In no case is endless modification
permitted. Boundaries and limits are set to the changes and movements which occur in the inanimate and
animate kingdoms, and everything that is is amenable to law and order, and virtually to the same law and order.
There can be but one Creator, Regulator, and Upholder.
I am wholly opposed to the theory of irritabiUty, and its ally, extraneous stimulation, as applied to plants and
animals. All my researches go to prove that plants and animals are masters within their own domain, and that
they select, subjugate, and utiUse matter in every form, whether that be solid, liquid, or gaseous. It is more reason-
able to believe that living things inaugurate and regulate their own movements than that their movements are
inaugurated and regulated by dead matter outside of themselves. While living things must be credited with sensi-
tiveness, sensitiveness must not be confounded with irritability. Neither is responsiveness to external stimuh any
proof of irritability of constitution in plants and animals. Finally, it does not follow that because plants and
animals respond, within limits, to external stimulation, the external stimulation or outside influence is identical
with the internal impulse which, imder normal conditions, initiates and determines all the movements and functions
of plants and animals. It is an error to suppose that plants and animals must, of necessity, be possessed of irritable
constitutions, and be jogged into activity by externalities. Such views ignore the powers and potentiahties of life,
and regard plants and animals as mere automata, which they certainly are not.
Plants and animals never lose their identity, or abrogate their powers. Chmate and other external conditions
only affect them up to a certain point. That there inheres in plants and animals a power of endurance, a power
of resistance, and a power of initiation and adaptation is proved in various ways. Plants and animals of various
orders protect themselves by developing structures calculated to ward off inimical influences. Thus plants which
in temperate climates, where evaporation is moderate, have smooth stems and thin leaves, develop rough stems
and thick fleshy leaves in tropical climates where evaporation is excessive and moisture has to be conserved and water
stored. They also, in many cases, alter their shape and position and diminish or altogether dispense with leaves ;
developing scales, prickles, hairs, &c., and exuding gums, waxes, and protecting varnishes. They hkewise, in not
a few instances, develop protecting epidermic cells and ligneous and other tissues.
In the case of invasion by insects and grubs, plants throw up defensive works, as happens in the formation of
briar and other galls. They protect themselves from poison wounds by exuding callous substances to prevent
absorption of the materies morhi. Similar remarks may be made of animals. The skin of the European is white,
thin, and dry ; that of the negro dark, thick, and oleaginous, and adapted to high temperatures. Animals in the
Arctic region have their skins protected by an abundance of fur. In tropical climates, animals have fine coats of
hair or are hairless and thick-skinned, as witness the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus. The fact that plants
and animals adapt themselves to their surroundings for their own protection and comfort lends no countenance to
the doctrine that they are a prey to circumstances, and wholly at the mercy of external conditions and environment.
The time has now come when, it appears to me, the subject of environment, irritability, and external stimulation
must be reconsidered. Environment undoubtedly exercises a certain influence on the structural peculiarities and
movements of plants and animals, but the influence is of an indirect and limited character, and all changes of
structure, and all movements resulting therefrom, begin and terminate in the plants and animals themselves.
In other words, environment does not act as a cause in the strict and proper acceptation of that term, and it
does not, however great the time allowed, alter plants and animals beyond recognition. Mr. Charles Darwin in part
reahsed this fact. In his " Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection " he says (p. 11) : " We clearly see that
the nature of the conditions is subordinate in importance in comparison with the nature of the organism in
determining each particular form of variation." He, however, modifies and virtually alters his opinion in other
passages, for he adds (p. 46) :
" Changed conditions of life are of the highest importance in causing variabihty, both by
acting directly on the organisation, and indirectly by affecting the reproductive system. . . . Variations of all kinds
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