THE FUNCTION OF CONSCIOUSNESS. 511 



conscious stage is evidently the most susceptible to 

 the stimuli of the environment, and the process of 

 catagenesis is one of degeneracy to less and less sensi- 

 tive and to more and more mechanical conditions. 

 The resemblance of the lowest grade of organic activ- 

 ities to physical mechanical energy is so great that it 

 is almost universally supposed by evolutionists to be 

 of purely mechanical origin, but I have endeavored to 

 show that they are of totally different origin, and that 

 the only explanation of their characteristics is the hy- 

 pothesis of catagenesis. 



In accordance with this view, the automatic "in- 

 voluntary" movements of the heart, intestines, repro- 

 ductive systems, etc., were organized in primitive and 

 simple animals in successive states of consciousness, 

 which stimulated "voluntary" movements, which ulti- 

 mately became rhythmic; whose results varied with 

 the machinery already existing and the material at 

 hand for use. It is not inconceivable that circulation 

 may have been established by the suffering produced 

 by an overloaded stomach demanding distribution of 

 its contents. The structure of the Infusoria offers the 

 structural conditions of such a process. A want of 

 propulsion in a stomach or body-sack occupied with 

 its own functions would lead to a painful clogging of 

 the flow of its products, and the "voluntary" contrac- 

 tility of the body or tube-wall being thus stimulated, 

 would at some point originate the pulsation necessary 

 to relieve the tension. Thus might have originated 

 the "contractile vesicle " or contractile tube of some 

 protozoa ; its ultimate product being the mammalian 

 heart. So with reproduction. Perhaps an excess of 

 assimilation in well-fed individuals of the first animals 

 led to the discovery that self-division constituted a re- 



