A STUDY OF LOWER LIFE. 



455 



forms the basis of all nervous acts. That in 

 itself it constitutes the essence of all the intel- 

 lectual acts of man is, however, a conclusion by 

 no means involved in the preceding statement. 

 That the " physical " act involved in the execu- 

 tion of any movement — such an act being exem- 

 plified by the change which nerve-tissue under- 

 goes even in the act of thinking — is connected 

 and associated with another action, the " men- 

 tal " act, cannot be doubted, if it be admitted at 

 all that we possess a rational cognizance of our- 

 selves and our actions. And that the " mental " 

 act in the higher animal may represent the actual 

 source, origin, and cause, of the physical act, is 

 also, as far as human intelligence can assure us, 

 an undoubted fact. Hence we are forced to 

 conclude that, however this mental act has 

 originated in man, it has really come to assume 

 a place, dominion, and power, in the constitution 

 and working of his nervous system which are ut- 

 terly unrepresented in any lower forms. If man 

 may be proved or believed to be hereditarily the 

 " slave of antecedent circumstances," it must 

 also be admitted that a new power has been de- 

 veloped out of the action upon his nervous sys- 

 tem of these same circumstances, this power 

 being represented by the formation of the con- 

 scious self-knowing Ego or Mind. That hered- 

 itary influences and inherited constitution pos- 

 sess a large share in moulding the mind, as they 

 undoubtedly operate in producing a certain con- 

 formation of body, is but a reasonable belief. 

 And the formation of the character of the child, 

 and through the development of the latter that of 

 the adult mind also, must accordingly depend to 

 a certain extent upon influences for which nei- 

 ther is in any way responsible, and over which, 

 in the first instance, neither can have any con- 

 trol. That automatic acts derived from and 

 moulded upon preceding acts of like character 

 make up the chief part of human existence in a 

 savage state is a statement of readily-proved 

 kind, since man in his primitive condition can 

 hardly be supposed to speculate much concern- 

 ing himself, but has his acts directed and con- 

 trolled to a greater or less extent by outward 

 circumstances and by the exigencies which his 

 physical surroundings induce. But as in man's 

 physical development, so in his mental nature, 

 new features appear ; and, explain it how we 

 may, we are forced to recognize that out of the 

 mere instinct and pure automatism of his earlier 

 state have been developed that fuller knowledge 

 and command of self which bring with them the 

 moral sense and all the noble conceptions of his 



race : a progress of mental development this, 

 imitated by the mental advance of man as he 

 emerges from the savage to the civilized state, 

 and typified in a closer fashion still by the 

 growth and progress of the infant's mind, from 

 the indefinite mists of unconsciousness to the 

 clearer light of a rational intelligence. The 

 development of the child's intellect in this view 

 presents us with a panoramic picture of the 

 stages through which we may conceive the miud 

 of man to have passed in its progress from the 

 condition of a hydra-like automaton to the high- 

 er phase in which be obtains a knowledge of 

 himself. And it seems to me that only through 

 the ideas involved in some such theory of the 

 origin of man's mental powers can we reasonably 

 explain the possession by lower animals of many 

 qualities and traits of character which we are too 

 apt to regard as peculiar to man. The- com- 

 munity of instincts in man and lower animals, in 

 fact, affords a powerful argument in favor of the 

 idea that the higher intellect of humanity has 

 originated through the progressive development 

 of lower instincts. 



Our survey of the relations and origin of 

 nervous acts has led us far afield into the domain 

 of metaphysics, and has in some measure alien- 

 ated us from our more sober study of the com- 

 monplace hydra. We have, however, noted that 

 our polyp forms a text for the illustration of 

 some points highly interesting to humanity at 

 large, and in what remains to be told of its life- 

 history we shall find exemplified several other 

 features of a highly-interesting if not of a most 

 remarkable kind. 



Of these latter features, probably the most 

 notable relate to the various modes in which the 

 hydra may reproduce its kind. We have al- 

 ready observed how the animal makes provision 

 for the wants of its own existence, and how it 

 repairs the local and continually-occurring death 

 of its parts by the reception and digestion of 

 food, and by the circulation from cell to cell of 

 the products of nutrition. Such a view of the 

 polyp's organization, however, presents us after 

 all with a one-sided aspect ; and, like most par- 

 tial and incomplete surveys of things, our ideas 

 of the polyp's life-history are apt to become 

 erroneous and liable to misconstruction. Every 

 living being, in addition to the duty imposed upon 

 it of repairing its individual loss of substance, 

 has to bear a share in the reparation of the in- 

 juries and losses which death is the means of in- 

 flicting on its species or race. Through the pro- 

 cesses of reproduction and development, new 



