192 UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO STUDIES 



When we look at the higher animals, we see that freedom resides 

 in the controlling and releasing mechanism of the sensory-motor 

 nervous system, and that the more complex it is the more power of 

 choice in action the animals have, and hence the more indeterminism 

 or freedom. The stomach, lungs and heart give a certain independ- 

 ence to the animal by cleansing, repairing and protecting the nervous 

 elements, but above all they supply the system with power and thus 

 make its decisions and selections effective. We judge from this that 

 evolution means the development, hand in hand, of automatic and 

 voluntary activity. Wherever we turn in the animal kingdom, we 

 find the essentials of life to be energy and guidance : the energy being 

 guided with greater variety and precision as the nerves become more 

 numerous and intricate. 



Energy, then, is the supreme essential in evolution. Where does it 

 come from? It comes from food. The supreme function of vege- 

 tables turns out to be the storing of solar energy. Directly or indirectly 

 all animal energy comes from this source. The chemistry of this 

 process is, and may remain, a secret. No order of plants or animals 

 stores energy for others, but it falls out that others use the energy 

 they store. Each species acts only for itself, and this produces the 

 clash and discord of the struggle of life. . 



On our planet, life has followed, it is true, certain chemical lines, 

 but in other worlds, life may have assumed entirely different forms, 

 of which we cannot even conceive. Probably life has resulted from 

 the clash of psychic and material forces in the planets surrounding all 

 the myriad suns of the universe. Life requires only a slow accumula- 

 tion and a sudden release of energy, and it may exist even before any 

 solid matter occurs, as in our nebula before the condensation of 

 matter. 



Reality, as seen by our intelligence and expressed in our languages, 

 can be seen as one or as many. Throughout the whole realm of life, 

 there seems to us to be a balancing of associative and individual tend- 

 encies. Thus some attribute the higher organisms to a gradual assem- 

 bling of cells which agree to work together like ants in a colony, while 

 others regard the cells as a result of dissociation. But from the 



