xxiv STUDIES IN THE EVOLUTION OF ANIMALS 



Science is being studied with such minuteness that the help of the 

 imagination is largely needed, not only to understand the pheno- 

 mena yourself, but to make them clear to the imagination of other 

 people. But note this : the grey matter of the human brain is a 

 very treacherous informer. It invents a lot of things which it 

 preaches unhesitatingly as truths, and then, after-generations have 

 the task of sifting the whole, and re-classifying the supposed 

 phenomena into truths, sub-truths, and lies ! 



In the course of these pages I have mentioned that the colora- 

 tion of the skin of animals may have been greatly influenced by the 

 electricity of the brain-cells. You might naturally ask What has 

 electricity to do with the colouring of animals ? But just think of 

 it, and tell me where electricity does not come in. The modern 

 view of electricity is that you cannot touch anything, you cannot 

 move anything, you yourself cannot move, or cannot think, or 

 will, without the evolution of electricity. If I blow on my hand, 

 the impression on my skin is electrical, and is conveyed through 

 my nerves to my brain, and there either develops thought, or both 

 thought and action. 



One should have heard Professor Oliver Lodge on the evening 

 of the ist June ISQ4, 1 at the Royal Institution, and have seen him 

 make experiments to illustrate the Hertz waves, in order to realise 

 how completely the nerve-centres of animals are in the grip of 

 their surroundings, taking of course the visceral impressions as 

 part of the surroundings. Just as one Leyden jar in action influ- 

 ences another wholly disconnected with it, except through the 

 means of the ether, but attuned to it, and sets it in motion ; just 

 as one tuning fork in vibration sets another in action which is in 

 unison with it ; just as one magnet influences another near it, so 

 everything light, heat, magnetism, electricity, gravity, etc., act on 



1 Lecture printed in Nature of 7th June 1894, p. 133. 



