2 Disadvantages of the Upright Position, [January, 
Treviranus, Oken, Goethe, Lamarck, and in our day, Darwin, 
Haeckel, Huxley, have carried on the warfare. Herbert Spencer 
advanced a mechanical physiology and morphology. His has 
carried the conception into histology, and Cope into palzontol- 
ogy. The unity of the laws which control organic and inorganic 
nature are to-day fully recognized by those who stand in the front 
rank of investigators and thinkers, but not until completer text- 
books from the new standpoint shall have found their way into 
the hands of medical students and naturalists generally, will com- 
mon recognition of the success of the mechanical idea be ob- 
tained. 
Assuredly the teleological is a very lazy way of thinking. It 4 
amounts to taking things for granted as so, because they are so, © 
It bars all inquiry, stops all investigation, and hands us bound ~ 
hand and foot to ignorance and superstition. 
Mechanical influences, such as impacts and strains, permanently — 
altering animal organs, have been discussed by Professor E. D. 
Cope in the AMERICAN NATURALIST, in articles entitled, Origin of © 
the Foot Structures of Ungulates, April, 1881; Effects of Im- 
pacts and Strains on the Feet of Mammalia, July, 1881; by 
Alpheus Hyatt, Transformations of Planorbis at Steinheim, with 
Remarks on the Effects of Gravity upon the forms of Shells and 
Animals, June, 1882. In articles published in the January and 
February, 1881, numbers, I attempted a disquisition upon physi- | 
cal influences in their relations to comparative neurology, and in — 
the. Juiy, 1881, number of the American Naruratist, On the 
Origin and Descent of the Human Brain, pointed out some hith- 
erto neglected mechanical factors in the development of the organ 
of the mind and its osseous envelope. 
While engaged in anatomical studies, the idea that there was 4 
definite reason for everything, and that we might some day dis- 
cover the reasons for many things not now known, was ever ‘pres~ 
ent tomy mind. I could get half lights and glimpses of causes 
PO AN FE eS PT ee ee Te 
k 
E AN eich) et eee MES ee 
from hints in Henle, Holden, or Sharpey and Quain, and fancied - 
I saw matters clearly enough in some particulars, only to be con- — 
fused by contradictory experiences subsequently. 
There seemed to be a definite enough law in the formation of | 
_ valves in the veins, for instance, but every student was compelled — 
to learn the location of these- valves by arbitrary exercise of the — 
memory. I think every student will conclude at the end of this : 
