ON CATAGENESIS. 4,29 



of heat to protect against depression of temperature ; tlie liglit to 

 direct the sexes to each other ; the electricity as a defense against 

 enemies — display unmistakably the same utility. We must not 

 only believe that these functions of animals were originally used 

 by them under stimulus, for their benefit, but, if life preceded 

 organism, that the molar mechanism which does the work has 

 developed as the result of the animal's exertions under stimuli. 

 This will especially apply to the mechanism for the production of 

 motion and sound. Heat, light, chemism, and electricity doubt- 

 less result from molecular aptitudes inherent in the constitution 

 of protoplasm. But the first and last production of even these 

 phenomena is dependent on the motions of the animal in obtain- 

 ing and assimilating nutrition. For without nutrition all energy 

 would speedily cease. Now the motion required for the obtain- 

 ing of nutrition has its origin in the sensation of hunger. So, 

 even for the first stej)s necessary to the production of inorganic 

 forces in animals, we are brought back to a primitive conscious- 

 ness. 



To regard consciousness as the primitive condition of energy, 

 contemplates an order of evolution in large degree the reverse of 

 the one which is ordinarily entertained. The usual view is, that 

 life is a derivative from inorganic energies as a result of high or 

 complex molecular organization, and that consciousness (= sen- 

 sibility) is the ultimate outcome of the nervous or equivalent 

 energy possessed by living bodies. The failure of the attempts 

 to demonstrate spontaneous generation will prove, if continued, 

 fatal to this theory. Nevertheless the order can not be absolutely 

 reversed. Such a proceeding is negatived by the facts of the 

 necessary dependence of the animal kingdom on the vegetable, 

 and the vegetable on the inorganic, for nutrition, and consequently 

 for existence. So the animal organism could not have existed 

 prior to the vegetable, nor the vegetable prior to the mineral. 

 The explanation is found in the wide application of the ^^ doctrine 

 of the unspecialized," * so clearly demonstrated by paleontology. 

 From this point of view creation consists in specialization, an ex- 

 pression which describes the specific action of the general princi- 

 ple described by Spencer as the conversion of the homogeneous 

 into the heterogeneous. To be more explicit, it consists of the 



* The term specialized, introduced into biology by Prof. Dana, has been used in 

 connection with energy in creation by the author, "Penn Monthly," 1875, p. 569. 



