272 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XI. No. 268. 



as mammals act under injury to presume on 

 that account an absence of that degree of un- 

 pleasant consciousness which corresponds to 

 the higher animal's pain. One might d, priori, 

 from diflference in structure and in function 

 both, expect wholly different reactions to 

 stimuli or even none at all. Qualitatively as 

 well as quantitatively the reactions of any two 

 genera may differ to any indefiuite degree. 



Again that relative deficiency of simplicity of 

 neural organs, natural to the low orders, may 

 be and presumably is correlated with a like de- 

 ficiency in the duration of the sensations rep- 

 resented by these organs. The time of con- 

 tinuance of a sensation occasioned by a momen- 

 tary stimulation is perhaps determined by the 

 number and extent of something comparable to 

 association-currents running either between 

 different parts of the neural unit or between 

 these units extended spatially, or both. The 

 former of these conditions may be simpler in 

 the lowest orders, and the latter wholly or at 

 least partly lacking. ' Reverberation,' in a 

 word is less, the simpler the nervous organ. 

 Professor Norman expressly noted in most of his 

 experimental reports a period of quiet on the 

 animal subject's part, representing nervous 

 shock. It is a pure presumption to conclude 

 that such a condition is not ' painful ' to the 

 animal. In all the higher animals severe pain 

 is essentially asthenic in its effect on the organ- 

 ism. Limulus, cited by the writer, shows this 

 especially well, and furthermore presents yet 

 further evidence of painful or destructive sen- 

 sation in the extreme abdominal flexion, the 

 general concomitant of pain, noted in the ex- 

 periments. This depressing period being past, 

 and the perhaps only pseudo-individual being 

 by the injury in no way incapacitated for its 

 customary movements (because of lack of coor- 

 dinating neural mechanism), these movements 

 soon proceed as if nothing had happened, as 

 indeed perhaps nothing had happened to more 

 than an insignificant independent portion of 

 the quondam individual. 



Another consideration, quite old but on that 

 account not less reasonable as it seems to the 

 present writer, may be based on the biologic 

 principle that nature does not act by leaps, that 

 continuity is the all-pervading principle of 



evolution and so of psychophysical develop- 

 ment. Man undoubtedly has consciousness and 

 at times pain ; the lowest organism has a mini- 

 mum, but always some, of both, ' conscious- 

 ness,' here indicating experience correlate with 

 mechanical function, and 'pain' thatsortof dis- 

 advantageous experience correlated with injury 

 to the biologic egotism of the individual — very 

 general terms, but therefore the more useful. 

 Between these two zoologic extremes, the max- 

 imum and the minimum of developed life, all 

 animal life has place and has accordingly, from 

 this theoretical point of view, some degree or 

 other of what, for want of a better term, is 

 called pain. Each individual in its degree, be 

 it man's degree or the earthworm's, has feeling, 

 from this the philosophical view point, even as 

 it has motion through space or within its organs. 

 Let one who is disposed to deny this say with 

 what genus sensation ends as one looks down the 

 closely crowded scale of life — is it between man 

 and the monkey or between the alligator and 

 the flounder ? However large the empirical 

 gap at present between any two genera may be, 

 the problem is not altered, for like biologic 

 principles actuate them all, and strongest of 

 these principles normally is the preservation of 

 the individual. To this end, perhaps, pain de- 

 veloped, and to this end it everywhere, in the 

 long run, works. This proposition is more than 

 a mere speculative presumption, for observation 

 inductively originated it and continually sup- 

 ports it. To get beneath it were to solve at 

 length the great problem of Job, were to go 

 deeper than empirical science can. It is a 

 principle too firmly fixed in the philosophy of 

 biology, so to say, to be shaken by the neces- 

 sarily wholly negative result of experimenta- 

 tion where the conditions are so far from those 

 of man, the judge. 



Geokge V. N. Dbakboen. 

 Harvard University. 



plant material foe laboeatoey usb in 

 the schools. 



Foe more than a year there has been offered 

 through the Ithaca Botanical Supply Co. plant 

 material suitable for laboratory use in first 

 courses, and for demonstrations of some of the 

 organs and processes which it is rather difficult 



