LAMARCK'S THEORY OF DESCENT 



353 



As we understand Lamarck, when he speaks of the 

 incipient giraffe or long-necked bird as making efforts 

 to reach up or outwards, the efforts may have been 

 as much physiological, reflex, or instinctive as mental. 

 A recent writer. Dr. R. T. Jackson, curiously and yet 

 naturally enough uses the same phraseology as La- 

 marck when he says that the long siphon of the com- 

 mon clam (Mya) " was brought about by the effort 

 to reach the surface, induced by the habit of deep 

 burial " in its hole.* 



On the other hand, can we in the higher verte- 

 brates entirely dissociate the emotional and mental 

 activities from their physiological or instinctive acts ? 

 Mr. Darwin, in his Expressions of the Emotions in 

 Man and Animals, discusses in an interesting and 

 detailed way the effects of the feelings and passions 

 on some of the higher animals. 



It is curious, also, that Dr. Erasmus Darwin went 

 at least as far as Lamarck in claiming that the trans- 

 formations of animals " are in part produced by their 

 own exertions in consequence of their desires and 

 aversions, of their pleasures and their pains, or of 

 irritations or of associations." 



Cope, in the final chapter of his Primary Factors 

 of Organic Evolution, entitled "The Functions of 

 Consciousness," goes to much farther extremes than 

 the French philosopher has been accused of doing, 

 and unhesitatingly attributes consciousness to all ani- 

 mals. " Whatever be its nature," he says, " the pre- 

 liminary to any animal movement which is not auto- 



* American Naturalist, 1891, p. 17. 

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