From the Unconscious to the Conscious 



slight resisting power, rests on a similarly weak 

 portion of the astragalus and is liable to continual 

 shocks. The consequence of such shocks must cause 

 the malleable parts of the bones to take the form 

 corresponding to the direction in which the weight 

 acts; a protuberance above and a depression below 

 will be formed. This is exactly what has resulted 

 in the tibia and the astragalus. From the tertiary 

 period up to our own day we can follow the formation 

 of this articulation: first, as in the Periptychus 

 rhabdodon of Mexico, a flat astragalus; then a slight 

 concavity more and more accentuated into an actual 

 socket (Poebrotherium labiatum of Colorado), and 

 finally a protuberance penetrating into a concavity 

 of the tibia completes the articulation appears in 

 the Prothippus sejunctus, the ancestor of the present 

 horse. (Quoted by Delage and Goldsmith.) 



Cope, however, does not confine himself to mechanical 

 concepts. He admits in evolution a kind of ' energy 

 of growth ' not well defined, which he calls ' bathmism,' * 

 an energy which would appear to be transmitted by the 

 germinal cells, and would constitute that true vital 

 dynamism which alone can enable us to understand 

 how * function makes the organ.' 



Dantec, on the other hand, who also maintains the 

 Lamarckian doctrine, adheres to pure mechanism. He 

 bases evolution on what he calls * functional assimilation.' 

 According to this system, living matter, instead of being 

 used up and destroyed by functioning, as was taught 



1 From the Greek /3a0/oioj=a step or threshold. 'It is here left open 

 whether there is any form of force which may be especially designated 

 as 'vital.' Many of the animal functions are known to be physical and 

 chemical, and if there is any one which appears to be less explicable by 

 reference to these forces than the others, it is that of nutrition. Probably 

 in this instance, force has been so metamorphosed through the influence 

 of the originative or conscious force in evolution, that it is a distinct 

 species in the category of forces. Assuming it to be such, I have given 

 it the name of Bathmism.' E. D. Cope, Meth. f Creation, p. 26, 

 [Translator's note.] 



14 



