May 7, 1897.] 



SCIENCE. 



715 



those in the teeth of the Amblypoda, Cory- 

 phodon and Uintatherium. 



PHILOSOPHY. 



Cope's contributions to philosophy began 

 in 1868, with the remarkable essay upon 

 the " Origin of Genera,' and, continuing 

 steadUy in a series of papers which in col- 

 lected form fill three octavo volumes, they 

 cover both the data and the factors of evo- 

 lution, psychology, ethics and metaphysics. 

 Unpublished manuscripts, prepared in con- 

 nection with his last work, ' The Primary 

 Factors of Organic Evolution,' contain 

 also his views upon many sociological and 

 theological problems. It is singular that 

 at the age of 28 he adopted the Lamarckian 

 theory under cover of a misconception of a 

 part of Darwin's theory, for he states the 

 latter in part as follows : " This is, in brief, 

 that the will of the animal, applied to its 

 body, in the search for the means of subsist- 

 ence and protection from injuries, gradu- 

 ally produces those features which are evi- 

 dently adaptive in their nature." He soon 

 detected this error ; but a year later, in a 

 paper upon ' The Laws of Organic Develop- 

 ment,' before the American Association, he 

 again connected rudimentary will or con- 

 sciousness with use and effort, and struck 

 the keynote of all his later evolution phil- 

 osophy in the sentence : " Thus intelli- 

 gent choice may be regarded as the origi- 

 nator of the fittest, while natural selection 

 is the tribunal to which all the results of 

 accelerated growth are submitted . " (1869.) 



His chief contention in the ' Origin of 

 Genera ' is that, while a large proportion of 

 specific characters are adaptive, few generic 

 characters are so, and the latter evolve 

 separately by the force of ' acceleration or 

 retardation ' of one of several plans or 

 types of development preordained by the 

 Creator. To sustain this proposition he 

 applied the principles of arrested, hastened 

 or abbreviated development with extra- 



ordinary knowledge both of the osteology 

 and soft anatomy of the entire vertebrata 

 to hundreds of examples of exact and inexact 

 parallelism,* and with such force that he 

 completely establishes his law. Inciden- 

 tally the principle of heterology, or what Lan- 

 kester has since termed homoplasy, is abun- 

 dantly illustrated. Darwin, in one of his let- 

 ters, states that he never could understand 

 this Cope- Hyatt f law of ' acceleration and 

 retardation.' It is undeniable that its ex- 

 position might have been clearer ; of its 

 truth, not as a theoretical factor, but as a 

 grand principle of evolution, there can, 

 however, be no question, and it has received 

 far less attention than it deserves. 



Cope subsequently altered some of the 

 main standpoints of this thesis, but his sys- 

 tematic definition of genera and families, 

 horizontally or transversely to phyletic de- 

 scent according to the heterologous assump- 

 tion of similar structures, persisted as a 

 conspicuous and confusing feature of all his 

 later phylogenetic tables and writings. It 

 is throughout evident that in 1868 he was 

 still en route to his later broader conception 

 of the sweeping extent and natural causa- 

 tion of evolution. He entered vigorously 

 into the evolution compaign,J always show- 

 ing great consideration and courtesy for his 

 orthodox opponents and desiring rather to 

 convert than to offend. As above noted, 

 in 1870, he drew a sharp distinction be- 

 tween the ' preservation of the fittest ' and 

 ' the causes of the origin of the fittest,' 

 which he ascribed to the increase and loca- 

 tion of 'growth force.' In 1871 appeared 

 ' The Method of Creation of Organic 



* Parallelism is here used in the sense of recapitu- 

 lation (von Baer), not of homoplasy or convergence. 



t Professor Hyatt, Cope's fellow lahorer in La- 

 marckism, worked out this law independently at 

 the same time. 



t' On the Hypothesis of Evolution, ' Lippincott's 

 Magazine, 1870 ; ' Evolution and its Consequences, ' 

 T/ie Penn Sloutldy, 1872. 



