510 PRIMARY FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION. 



haps, the history of the entire vegetable kingdom. 

 From their ability to manufacture protoplasm from 

 inorganic substances, plants do not need to move 

 about in search of food, so that they require no con- 

 sciousness of conditions to guide their movements. 

 They become fixed, and their entire organization be- 

 comes monopolized by the functions of nutrition and 

 reproduction. Movements rarely occur, and when 

 present are confined to those of one part of the struc- 

 ture or another. They are mostly rhythmic or rotary, 

 and very seldom exhibit the quality of impromptu de- 

 sign. The satisfactory explanation of those that ex- 

 hibit general design, as the adaptation for transporta- 

 tion often seen in seeds, may be chance coincidence 

 and natural selection. 



The ascending scale of development of intelligence 

 observed among animals is strong evidence in support 

 of the hypothesis here outlined. There can be no 

 doubt that in the long run the most intelligent have 

 survived. They have survived because they were 

 capable of the most successful designed acts, thus 

 directing their movements to the most useful ends. 

 These movements ultimately modified their structure 

 usefully, to the perfecting of mechanisms in every way 

 important to their possessors. This much having been 

 established as to the cause of anagenesis, let us look 

 more closely into the history of catagenesis. 



Movements of organic beings on frequent repeti- 

 tion become automatic, reflex, and finally, as it is 

 termed, organic. This means the running down of 

 energy through various grades, beginning with the 

 highest or conscious stage, and ending with the purely 

 reflex, which is as unconscious of changes in the en- 

 vironment as is any one of the physical energies. The 



