Einier on Growth and Inheritance 429 



re may be enabled to estimate the value of his 'idea of 

 the individual in the animal kingdom/ as portrayed in 

 his address delivered at the Fifth Congress of German 

 Naturalists. 



It is but too probable that very many of those naturalists 

 were not in the habit of frequenting any place of worship, 

 and thus a discourse smacking so strongly of the language of 

 the conventicle may have had enough charm of novelty for 

 them to enable them to sit it out. 



The discourse is, indeed, brim-full of unction, and begins 

 with a solemnity distant but ' one step ' from the sublime : — 



* Man loves to isolate himself from Nature. 



' He is reluctant to confess his kinship with beings which he 

 thinks beneath him. 



* He alone will be lord, alone wise ; he the crown of creation. 

 ' But who gives him the right to assume this pre-eminence % 



' How small is his power ! 



' Man the mighty is powerless against the infinitesimal organisms 

 which seek to enter his blood and destroy him. 



'A wave kills him, while the ocean is teeming with life that mocks 

 his sovereignty,' etc., etc. 



We can only speak for ourselves, and we only claim to be 

 one of the crowd — the man in the next street, — but we are 

 quite sure we do not love to ' isolate ourselves.' Nor are we 

 in the least ashamed of what we have in common with the 

 beasts and birds, insects and creeping things about us. 

 Nevertheless we are firmly convinced that we possess an 

 intellectual power which such things have not. Nor do we 

 see how the chance of our being poisoned by a parasite, or 

 knocked down by a wave, in the least militates against our 

 mental superiority to the parasite or to any living thing 

 which may be within the wave which buffets us. 



He then proceeds to carry out his purpose, which, he tells 

 us,^ is ' to attack the apparent independence of the animal 



1 P. 415. 



