EDWARD DRINKER COPE 331 



generic, of family or higher rank, in a concise diagnosis. Before 

 Cope's time, this method had rarely been applied to extinct ani- 

 mals; even at the present day it does not prevail so widely as it 

 ought to do. Cope, however, made all his definitions as precise 

 as the variously imperfect materials would allow; and he naturally 

 waxed wroth in his reviews of some contemporary literature 

 which contained new names with nothing but an artist's drawing 

 to justify their introduction into scientific terminology." 



The consideration of Professor Cope's philosophical writings 

 naturally belongs here. He was never satisfied with the study of 

 morphological details or simple taxonomy. As Gill says: "He 

 aspired to know how animals came into existence; why they varied 

 as they did, and what laws determined their being. His was an 

 eminently philosophical mind, but at the same time with a decided 

 tendency to metaphysical speculation." 



And so in 1869, at tne verv outset of his career he published a 

 remarkable essay of 80 pages, On the Origin of Genera, in 

 which he contended that while a large proportion of specific 

 characters are adaptive, few generic characters are so, and the 

 latter evolve separately by the force of "acceleration or retarda- 

 tion" of one of several plans or types of development preordained 

 by the Creator. He did not agree with Darwin that natural selec- 

 tion was a sufficient factor for differentiation but returned to the 

 Lamarckian principle of the effect of the use and disuse to explain 

 variations; but he went further than Lamarck in that he denied 

 that animals are passive subjects. With Hyatt, Ryder, and 

 Packard he became one of the pioneers in the Neo-Lamarckian 

 school of thought. 



In 1874, in a letter to his father, Cope wrote : 



"There are three forms of evolution doctrines: (i) That non- 

 vital force evolves life; (2) that internal consciousness is the source 

 of non-vital force and life; (3) that external or supernatural force, 

 applied from without, maintains development. My studies have 

 led me to the second position. The third is Professor McCosh's; 

 the first that of the materialists." 



His progressive thoughts on evolution and other metaphysical 

 problems may be found in such papers as "On the Hypothesis 



