THE PHANTOMS BEHIND US 



its exceptional men, its men of genius and power, 

 and these have often been Hke sports or the sudden 

 result of mutations — a man like Lincoln springing 

 from the humblest parentage. No such extreme 

 variations are seen in any of the lower orders. In- 

 deed, in one's lifetime one sees but very slight varia- 

 tion in any of the wild or domestic creatures, less 

 in the wild than in the domestic because they are 

 less under the injfluence of that most variable of ani- 

 mals, man. And man's variations are mainly men- 

 tal and not physical. The higher we go in the scale 

 of powers, the greater the variation and hence the 

 more rapid the evolution. Probably man's body has 

 not changed radically in vast cycles of time, but 

 his mind has developed enormously since the dawn 

 of history. 



IV 



Biologists are coming more and more to recognize 

 some unknown factor in evolution, probably some 

 unknowable factor. The four factors of Osborn — 

 heredity, ontogeny, environment, selection — play 

 upon and modify endlessly the new form when it is 

 started, but what about the original start? Whence 

 comes this inborn momentum, this evolutionary 

 send-off? What or who set the whole grand process 

 going? 



Bergson sees an internal psychological principle 

 of development, hence the name of his book, ** Crea- 

 tive Evolution." Osborn uses the word *' directed." 



217 



