Septembee 25, 1896.] 



SCIENCE. 



457 



throw a clear light on the problem of organic 

 evolution, and especially that of the animal 

 kingdom." (p. v.) That he has well succeeded 

 in this attempt Neo-Lamarckians will be likely 

 to give cordial assent upon reading these pages. 

 But those who believe that natural selection has 

 played a chief and essential role in all evolution 

 will not be so well pleased with Prof, (dope's 

 accovint of the matter. 



The book is a direct plea for the efficiency of 

 those factors of evolution which were promi- 

 nently set forth by Lamarck and further elabo- 

 rated by later writers ; and it will stand as the 

 most concise and complete exposition of the 

 doctrines of the Neo-Lamarckian school hitherto 

 published ; pervaded, however, by the extreme 

 Copean doctrine that consciousness is the prime 

 mover in all organic evolution. This latter 

 doctrine, elaborated and brilliantly expounded 

 by Cope in his ' Origin of the Fittest,' and called 

 Archsesthetism, though barely suggested pre- 

 viously by Erasmus Darwin, constitutes the 

 fundamental thesis of Cope's theory of organic 

 evolution. He describes it in the following 

 words : 



' ' It maintains that consciousness as well as life 

 preceded organism and has been the primum mobile 

 in the creation of organic structure. This conclusion 

 also follows from a due consideration of the nature of 

 life. I think it possible to show that the true defini- 

 tion of life is : Energy directed by sensibility, or by a 

 mechanism which has originated under the direction of 

 sensibility. If this be true, the two statements that 

 life has preceded organism, and that consciousness 

 has preceded organism are coequal expressions." (P. 

 513. Quoted from ' Origin of the Fittest,' p. 428.) 



That Prof. Cope regards this consciousness 

 as distinct from the physical basis of protoplasm 

 which it is conceived to influence is shown by 

 the following quotation : 



"The relation of consciousness to the physical 

 basis is as yet a profound mystery, but that they 

 exercise over each other a definite mutual control is 

 unquestionable." * * * "In other words, the forms of 

 thought, which have no weight, direct the move- 

 ments of muscles, which have weight." (P. 506.) 



In like manner another quotation indicates 

 that his conception of consciousness distin- 

 guishes it from a form of energy, for he says : 

 ' ' Whether the intrinsic energies which accomplish 

 evolution be forms of radiant or other energy only. 



acting inversely as the square of the distance, and 

 without consciousness, or whether they he energies 

 whose direction is affected by the presence of con- 

 sciousness, the energy is a property of the physical 

 basis of tridimensional matter, and is not outside of 

 it, according to the doctrine we are about to consider. ' ' 

 (P. 1.) 



While the phenomena of life are thus con- 

 ceived of as fundamentally influenced by this, 

 may I call it unknown quantity, consciousness, 

 Prof. Cope recognizes the fact that the actual 

 phenomena themselves are the direct expression 

 of some form of energy. 



"The phenomena of growth are also evidently ex- 

 hibitions of energy. The term energy is used to ex- 

 press the motion of matter, and the building of an 

 embryo to maturity is evidently accomplished by the 

 movement of matter in certain definite directions. 

 The energy which accomplishes this feat is, however, 

 none of those which characterize inorganic matter." 

 (P. 475). 



This energy peculiar to living organism is 

 called Bathmism. 



"All the mechanisms necessary to the mature life 

 of the individual are constructed by the activity of 

 the special form of energy known as growth-energy 

 or Bathmism. It is the modifications of this energy 

 which constitute evolution." (P. 479.) 



Having constructed this conception of an 

 energy which may be present in definite quan- 

 tities in any particular individual, the energy or 

 mode of motion is treated of as a measurable 

 somewhat, which may be passed from one in- 

 dividual to another, as is illustrated by the fol- 

 lowing passages : 



" All this means that a certain limited quantity of 

 energy is at the disposal of each individual organism. " 

 (P. 481.) " The most rational conception of this in- 

 heritance of structural characters is the transmission 

 of a mode of motion from the soma to the germ-cells. 

 * * * The bathmic theory of heredity bears about 

 the same relation to a theory of transmission of the 

 pangenes of Darwin, or the ids of Weismann, as the 

 undulatory theory of light and other forms of radiant 

 energy does to the molecular theory of Newton" (P. 

 480.) 



As one speaks of the absorption or dissipation 

 of light or heat, so he speaks of the phenomena 

 of organic growth as involving 



" the absorption of energy and not its dissipation." 

 (P. 483.) 



