130 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLV. No. 1154 



which become more involved, supplemented 

 and beclouded as the passing ot the 

 ages complicates the process of higher evo- 

 lution, and produces expressions which, in 

 terms of existing life alone, would be diffi- 

 cultly intelligible. The study of the mean- 

 ing of existing life without the light of its 

 vast history leads nowhere. 



It is safe to say, I think, that living 

 beings at the start, animated nature what- 

 ever its composition, had an equal chance 

 for progress and improvement. How soon 

 that chance became forfeit we can not say, 

 but it is obvious that life was not long be- 

 gun and its greater stocks established 

 when their courses throughout existence 

 were set and determined. Nothing is more 

 obvious in chronology than nature's delib- 

 erate failures, nothing more clear in pale- 

 ontology than her set purposes. 



The vast subkingdom of the MoUusca 

 started well with bodily independence, 

 fully equipped with locomotive powers, an 

 excellent innervation, but they sold their 

 birthright for ease and content. They soon 

 became dependent upon the movements of 

 the waters and waited for the waves to 

 bring them food. Compact in their pro- 

 tection and adaptation, these types of life 

 have come crowding down through the ages 

 in inexpressible variety. They and their 

 allied phyla in the great subkingdom to 

 which they belong have, it would seem, 

 struggled now and again to regain their 

 primitive independence and maintain it, 

 but the early condemnation of the law has 

 overawed them and out of them all has 

 come, and can come nothing better. They 

 had their chance. That chance was missed ; 

 for untold millions of years they have 

 failed to improve. They still cumber the 

 earth and teach the lesson of an incurable 

 heritage. You who are students of ancient 

 life know how great is the multitude of 

 lessons like this. 



None of the observations of the compe- 

 tent have afforded any evidence that the 

 lines of development through such groups 

 of lowly animals have led to anything of 

 promise or of excellence. The ages have 

 roUed away and left them still with us, 

 progressed, arrested or degenerate within 

 their own narrow limitations, as the case 

 may be. There is no evidence to indicate 

 that these great groups from which nothing 

 can be expected were deprived of their 

 equality of opportunity as contrasted with 

 the other great subkingdoms of the anne- 

 lids and the articulates from one or the 

 other of which, or from one and the other 

 in succession, our own line has been derived. 



The lesson then is this, that dependent 

 conditions of life, however we may see them, 

 throughout untamed nature or in our own 

 communities, are not primitive, are not in 

 the essence of things, but they are set back 

 so far in the history of life that they are 

 now or seem to be unavoidable and un- 

 conquerable. 



These evidences I have discussed before 

 this society on previous occasions. The 

 field of observation and of inference as 

 well, is greatly to be enlarged and well 

 justifies the appeals that have been made 

 on its behalf, but so much at least is indi- 

 cated: that here and in analogous cases 

 parasitic existence in whatever group in 

 nature, and with whatever expression in 

 the natural assemblage or the community 

 group, involves the essential abandonment 

 of normal direct upright living and the 

 benefactors thereby are types of life which 

 nature has east out and aside as hopeless. 



It is probably yet to be determined, at 

 least there is no record I can find, that 

 even in the passing of the ages nature has 

 ever set up again upon its feet an organism 

 or group of organisms once fallen into this 

 dejected mode of life. 



It is well the state should recognize this 



