242 
But there is much in the history of the 
development of animals that seems to lead 
to the belief that eventually modifications 
may be due in part to acts of representatives 
of the phylum to which they belong. It is 
difficult to believe that some structural 
features are simply the result of natural se- 
lection operating on chance variations. An 
application of the doctrine of chances to 
some such cases appears to be adverse to 
the conception that they represent the in- 
fluence of natural selection unaided. 
A feature characteristic of most cave an- 
imals of widely diverse groups and classes 
is the atrophy of the eyes, and it seems to 
be most logical to attribute this to disuse of 
those organs in remote progenitors, and to 
assume that the atrophy may have resulted 
from a failure of nourishment by the nutri- 
ent fluid of the organs on account of the 
loss of functional activity rather than to se- 
lection by nature of forms with successively 
diminishing eyes. The presence of eyes in 
most cases certainly would scarcely be an 
element of disadvantage to animals, and it 
may be allowable to invoke some other 
agency than chance selection. We may be 
justified in postulating that the continuous 
disuse of the organs would in time react on 
the nutrition of the parts affected, and 
finally atrophy or disappearance would re- 
sult. Like explanation would be applicable 
to the innumerable cases of atrophy of parts 
known to the naturalist. 
But if cessation of nutrition culminates 
in final atrophy, increased nutrition of parts 
may result in hypertrophy and increased 
nutrition may be the concomitant of in- 
ereased activity of parts. The exercise of 
such parts continued for many generations 
may react on the organization and the prog- 
eny at length be affected thereby. Of 
such cases Cope adduced many examples. 
The feet of the horse line furnish il- 
lustrations. The existing horse has the 
median toes and hoofs greatly hypertro- 
SCIENCE. 
[N. S. Von. VI. No. 137. 
phied and the lateral ones atrophied, but 
the remote ancestors had feet of nearly the 
same general pattern as the rhinoceroses 
and tapirs. Atrophy of the lateral digits 
has progressed inversely to hypertrophy of 
the middle ones. An analogous line of de- 
velopment culminating in feet superficially 
much like those of the horse was followed 
by another quite remote family of hoofed 
mammals, the Prototheriids of South Amer- 
ica. 
The idea of acceleration and retardation 
were associated by Cope with the idea that 
the course of evolution was determined 
from the beginning of things, and that life, 
to use his own words, is ‘ energy directed by 
sensibility or by a mechanism wiich has origi- 
nated under the direction of sensibility.’ He 
maintained that ‘consciousness as well as 
life preceded organism,’ and he called this 
conception ‘the hypothesis of archzesthet- 
ism.’ This idea I refer to especially be- 
cause it was broached in his vice-presiden- 
tial address, delivered at the meeting of the 
American Association for the Advancement 
of Science in Philadelphia in 1884.% 
I am myself unable to comprehend con- 
sciousness except as a product or result of 
organization, and those who wish to learn 
more about Cope’s views respecting the ques- 
tion must refer to one of his many papers. 
Whatever may be thought of Cope’s 
philosophical views, his presentation of 
them is always interesting and some of 
them are illustrated with a wealth of facts 
that renders his communications valuable as 
repertories of well digested information. His 
first special paper, on ‘The Origin of Genera,’ 
published as early as 1868, is especially 
noteworthy for the mass of morphological 
data contained in it and for the apt man- 
ner in which they are tabulated. 
VIII. 
I venture to conclude with some reflec- 
* Origin of Fittest, p. 425. 
