44 THE BIOCOSMOS GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



Mr. Darwin's thoughts on the human in- 

 fluence over Natural Selection in plants and 

 inferior animals have called up the applica- 

 tion of the same principle to man himself. 

 Can he take a conscious part in making his 

 own body, or cause it to evolve along certain 

 transcended lines, as the breeder does the 

 sheep or cow or pigeon? A famous attempt 

 in this direction was Mr. Galton's Eugenics 

 or stirpiculture. Certain communistic socie- 

 ties have had the same end in view, for in- 

 stance the Oneida. Can man tap afresh the 

 fountain of his body's plasticity, now almost 

 sealed, and start it to flowing again, but in 

 obedience to his will? Doubtless, such a work 

 will be more difficult than that peculiar con- 

 trol over the vegetal life-stuff in producing 

 new forms, which has been attained by Mr. 

 Burbank in California. There seems, how- 

 ever, to have been no culmination of plant- 

 life in a fixed form, like that of animal life 

 in man. 



We come back to consider the rigidity of 

 the animal shape, which rigidity, it is said, 

 has gradually increased from the marsupials 

 up to the human being, that is, through the 

 whole line of placentate vertebrates. But 

 just in this cessation of outer evolution there 

 rises the inner evolution; corresponding to 

 the decrease of plasticity in the Physis. is 



