174 



ANDREWS. 



of reasoning and radical difficulties. Understanding of sexual 

 selection and of the correlation of parts and powers in organ- 

 isms has also been much helped for me by the new set of facts, 

 as to selection of environment by the substance as such, and as 

 to interrelation of substance organs in creating the organism, as 

 well as in expressing the substance's protoplastic functional life. 



Reproduction is most helpful in race-history of the sub- 

 stance not alone by multiplying the race organs, but by per- 

 mitting the death of adult phases, for thus it recurrently sets 

 the substance free from trammels and limitations imposed 

 upon it by that secondary machinery of the patent organism 

 its more intimate life and functions have created, which must 

 limit its evolutionary progress as well as its continuance. 



The offered standpoint is a most fruitful one; yet it is not 

 an easy thing at once to assume it, and for a time the mental 

 foothold must feel slippery. Man is so used to regard as 

 property of the animal, all structure and function within its 

 limits. Belonging to a standpoint of early and almost inevit- 

 able interpretation, and involving natural egotism of the unit, 

 such mental custom is deep-rooted and difficult to overcome. 

 A living being seems to be so patently master of its parts and 

 powers, and these so clearly necessary to and for its existence; 

 then too, -^ and here lies the root difficulty, — the coincidence 

 of the external limits of the mass and of the animal, binds one 

 to think of them as one and the same thing; the grosser 

 structural subdivisions of the mass are plainly correlated with 

 powers and functions of the animal we see. The simple, 

 unconscious anthropomorphism of all our mental processes 

 make this so natural a first standpoint, for how could the early 

 self-conscious being escape a full and strong acceptance of 

 himself as possessor and master of his parts and powers, — a 

 belief that his directive influence in many ways, meant com- 

 plete control. These things being true for himself, then the 

 parts and powers of every other animal must as surely express 

 a like self-ownership and a kindred coherence of meaning for 

 it as unit. 



Even the discovery of gross reflex actions, though a great 

 shock to this primitive standpoint, has not displaced us from 



