148 rfEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



tive adapration has once begun, any hope of salvation within Ihe 

 organism or group of organisms, of turning back, recouping 

 and starting agam on the upward path. In the face of the 

 counter evidence h'^'.re set forth, the conclusion is unavoidable that, 

 for a large part of humanity ethical philosophies are inefficient and 

 illusive. 



The lines of progress in organic life have steered wide of these 

 dependent existences or have maintained their charted course in 

 spite of them. 



Great groups of organisms, classes, orders and sub kingdoms 

 have been so permeated by degeneracy of growth that their life, 

 lasting, it may be, from almost the dawn of existence to the present, 

 has had no other outcome than to perpetuate a depraved race. Such 

 a race, however broad its boundaries and long its perdurance, has 

 been entirely outside the general path of that upward advance 

 which has le.d to the higher expressions of life. I would cite the 

 moUusks as such a great division of organisms. Created free and 

 independent, their almost universal acquisition of shell protection 

 has kept them down to earth or made them grubbers in the mud of 

 the ocean. Only a few of them, by acquirement rather than by 

 endowrnent, sail the seas, and the floating habit, says a well known 

 writer, is nearly related to the sessile. They have progressed only 

 within the narrow limitations of their own race. Out of them 

 has come nothing better. No lines of progressive evolution lead 

 from the higher organisms back to them, but all pass them by. 

 We do not even know the real relations of the great subdivision 

 of the Mollusca to the moUuscoids — the brachiopods and bryo- 

 zoans; whether these are not degenerative expressions from the 

 early mollusks rather than stages along the line of develop- 

 ment to higher moUuscan forms. We do know that all have 

 filled the earth and sea of today with representatives in no sub- 

 stantial degree different from their ancestors of the Silurian. 



Were we to begin an investigation of the degenerate condition 

 pervading nature and to start with man and his more than one 

 hundred species of parasites, there would be but one conclusion of 

 our excursion ; it was clearly stated long ago : — the whole creation 

 groaneth and travaileth. 



In the more innocent expressions of symbiosis termed mutualism 

 and commensalism, where associations of organisms are purely 



