80 



THE AMEBIC AN NATURALIST 



[Vol. XLVII 



In the development of onr race, however, an increasing 

 experience of deterministic cansal relations has been ac- 

 companied by a progressive effort to expunge the idea of 

 purposefulness from our thinking. The numerous myth- 

 ological personages just called to mind have gradually 

 suffered a curtailing of their powers for good and evil, 

 and have, in general, by natural science at least, been 

 totally discarded. Many relics of the past of course re- 

 main in all our mental life ; many of our words and not a 

 few of our instinctive modes of thought are survivals 

 from the teleological period of our development. Jupiter 

 and Venus still play their part in modern astronomy, and 

 Vulcan's name is still heard among geologists. But ob- 

 vious teleological expressions have been generally out- 

 grown and discarded by all of the sciences that deal with 

 the non-living. In biology alone they persist, mainly as 

 personifications of plants and animals, making our mod- 

 ern writings a curious jumble of exactly stated observa- 

 tions and conclusions, together with many statements 

 that might have been taken bodily from primitive fairy- 

 tales. Foreseeing of the future and conscious purpose 

 are apparently attributed to living things in which we 

 have no evidence for the existence of consciousness. The 

 eye develops in the animal in order that it may see, the 

 leaves of the plant are for the purpose of obtaining car- 

 bon dioxid from the atmosphere. The list of such state- 

 ments might be made very long, but you are quite fa- 

 miliar with their nature. 



Not only are the organisms with which we deal fre- 

 quently personified to the extent of attributing to them 

 the foresight and will needed to carry out complicated 

 plans, but they are also frequently supposed to be ca- 

 pable of making a mist ah en judr/ment. I find in Gibson's 

 translation of Jost's "Plant Physiology," 1907 (page 

 389), an excellent example of this assumption, where it 

 appears that one lower organism may be clever enough 

 to outwit another. The statement in question reads, 

 "The gall, for example, is of service only to the insect, 



