222 FROM FISH TO PHILOSOPHER 



Since the publication of the Origin of Species the ever- 

 increasing evidences afforded by the sciences of life have 

 only served to emphasize the unitarianism of nature— 

 the fact that the cosmos is a 'imiverse' and not a 'diverse/ 

 Many years ago the British physicist, John Tyndall, 

 speaking of matter versus life, said in his famous Belfast 

 Address (1874), 'Let us reverently, but honestly, look 

 the question in the face. Divorced from matter, where 

 is life? Whatever our faith may say, our knowledge 

 shows them to be indissolubly joined/ We can para- 

 phrase him and ask, 'Divorced from matter, where is 

 consciousness? Whatever our faith may say, our knowl- 

 edge shows them to be indissolubly joined/ Tyndall, only 

 fifteen years after the publication of the Origin^ saw that 

 The doctrine of evolution derives man, in his totahty, 

 from the interaction of organism and environment 

 through coimtless ages past. The Human Understand- 

 ing ... is itself a result of the play between organism 

 and environm^it through cosmic ranges of time.' 



The intrinsic responsivity of protoplasm and the primi- 

 tive nerve net could have evolved in many other direc- 

 tions of 'awareness,' as indeed it did in the starfish, clam, 

 worm, crab, lobster, scorpion, centipede, spider, butter- 

 fly, ant, and bee. But in the vertebrates it happened that 

 evolution followed another course because their ances- 

 tors radiated from the sea into the unstable waters of 

 the Cambrian-Ordovician continents; becoming encased 

 in armor, they evolved jaws and fins and legs, and a 

 kidney that afforded them a stable internal environ- 

 ment in which to live and in which the brain could func- 

 tion at the highest integrative level. Psyche and soma 

 have come up the long road of vertebrate evolution to- 

 gether, seeking the free and independent life, seeking 

 always to minimize life's disquietudes. 



All that remains in man of the ancient armor of the 

 ostracoderms is represented by his teeth, nails, hair, and 

 skin. However, through the ostracoderms and the verte- 



