INTRODUCTION xxv 



cules being so arranged that they admit of being easily separated and appropriated. Life selects and rejects at 

 discretion both matter and force, and living things are superior to their surroundings. They are not the slaves of 

 euArironment, and all the changes and modifications which occur in them, at every stage of their histories, primarily 

 origmate in themselves according to fixed laws. Environment, while it is indirectly associated with modifications 

 up to a point, cannot be credited with the modifications, any more than it can be credited with the production of 

 structures and organs. As a matter of fact, plants and animals are very little amenable to environment ; they are 

 not moved by dead substances acting simply as stimuli, and are not irritable in the modern sense. They, as a rule, 

 feel, but feeling and irritability are essentially different things, the one being natural, the other unnatural, that is, 

 abnormal. Plants and animals are entities, and represent creations in time and space. They have their incomings 

 and outgoings, their rise and fall ; their habitat is provided, their food assured, and quite an extraordinary degree 

 of permanence guaranteed to leading types. Nothing is left to the fates ; not only are the essential factors of 

 plants and animals provided for in the great scheme of nature, but trivial details are arranged and boundaries thrown 

 up which restrict modifications and variations to comparatively narrow dimensions. In no case is endless modifi- 

 cation permitted. Boundaries and limits are set to the changes and movements which occur in the inanimate and 

 animate kingdoms, and everything that is is amenable to law and order, and virtually to the same law and order. 

 There can be but one Creator, Regulator, and Upholder. 



I am wholly opposed to the theory of irritabiUty, and its ally, extraneous stimulation, as applied to plants and 

 animals. All my researches go to prove that plants and animals are masters within their own domain, and that 

 they select, subjugate, and utiUse matter in every form, whether that be solid, liquid, or gaseous. It is more reason- 

 able to believe that living things inaugurate and regulate their own movements than that their movements are 

 inaugurated and regulated by dead matter outside of themselves. While living things must be credited with sensi- 

 tiveness, sensitiveness must not be confounded with irritability. Neither is responsiveness to external stimuh any 

 proof of irritability of constitution in plants and animals. Finally, it does not follow that because plants and 

 animals respond, within limits, to external stimulation, the external stimulation or outside influence is identical 

 with the internal impulse which, imder normal conditions, initiates and determines all the movements and functions 

 of plants and animals. It is an error to suppose that plants and animals must, of necessity, be possessed of irritable 

 constitutions, and be jogged into activity by externalities. Such views ignore the powers and potentiahties of life, 

 and regard plants and animals as mere automata, which they certainly are not. 



Plants and animals never lose their identity, or abrogate their powers. Chmate and other external conditions 

 only affect them up to a certain point. That there inheres in plants and animals a power of endurance, a power 

 of resistance, and a power of initiation and adaptation is proved in various ways. Plants and animals of various 

 orders protect themselves by developing structures calculated to ward off inimical influences. Thus plants which 

 in temperate climates, where evaporation is moderate, have smooth stems and thin leaves, develop rough stems 

 and thick fleshy leaves in tropical climates where evaporation is excessive and moisture has to be conserved and water 

 stored. They also, in many cases, alter their shape and position and diminish or altogether dispense with leaves ; 

 developing scales, prickles, hairs, &c., and exuding gums, waxes, and protecting varnishes. They hkewise, in not 

 a few instances, develop protecting epidermic cells and ligneous and other tissues. 



In the case of invasion by insects and grubs, plants throw up defensive works, as happens in the formation of 

 briar and other galls. They protect themselves from poison wounds by exuding callous substances to prevent 

 absorption of the materies morhi. Similar remarks may be made of animals. The skin of the European is white, 

 thin, and dry ; that of the negro dark, thick, and oleaginous, and adapted to high temperatures. Animals in the 

 Arctic region have their skins protected by an abundance of fur. In tropical climates, animals have fine coats of 

 hair or are hairless and thick-skinned, as witness the elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus. The fact that plants 

 and animals adapt themselves to their surroundings for their own protection and comfort lends no countenance to 

 the doctrine that they are a prey to circumstances, and wholly at the mercy of external conditions and environment. 



The time has now come when, it appears to me, the subject of environment, irritability, and external stimulation 

 must be reconsidered. Environment undoubtedly exercises a certain influence on the structural peculiarities and 

 movements of plants and animals, but the influence is of an indirect and limited character, and all changes of 

 structure, and all movements resulting therefrom, begin and terminate in the plants and animals themselves. 

 In other words, environment does not act as a cause in the strict and proper acceptation of that term, and it 

 does not, however great the time allowed, alter plants and animals beyond recognition. Mr. Charles Darwin in part 

 reahsed this fact. In his " Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection " he says (p. 11) : " We clearly see that 

 the nature of the conditions is subordinate in importance in comparison with the nature of the organism in 

 determining each particular form of variation." He, however, modifies and virtually alters his opinion in other 

 passages, for he adds (p. 46) : " Changed conditions of life are of the highest importance in causing variabihty, both by 

 acting directly on the organisation, and indirectly by affecting the reproductive system. . . . Variations of all kinds 

 VOL. I. ^ 



