8 The American Geologist. January, J899 
associated the idea that the course of evolution was determined 
from the beginning of things and that "Hfe is energy directed 
by sensibility or by a mechanism which has originated under 
the direction of sensibility." He maintained that both life 
and consciousness preceded organism. The later being a 
primeval attribute of matter and the cause and not the result 
of organism. This conception of consciousness Cope called. 
"The Hypothesis of Archaethetism," (348). 
Cope took up another aspect of evolution in such papers as 
■'On the Hypothesis of Evolution," (90); "Consciousness in 
Evolution;''(i69); "The Origin of the Will," (228). In 1887. 
these and other essays were collected in one volume under 
the title of "The Origin of the Fittest," (554). Professor 
Cope's later contributions to the theory of evolution were 
brought together, about a year before his death, in "Primary 
Factors of Organic Evolution," (795). This book brings 
forward much evidence from embryology, paleontology and 
breeding to support the doctrine of the inheritance of acquired 
characters, and is recognized, even by Cope's opponents, as a 
very able expression of the anti-Weismann views of inheritance. 
Cope did not confine his philosophical Avork entirely to the 
different aspects of evolution, but he took up many metaphysi- 
cal problems and expressed his views about them in such 
papers as "The Relation of Mind to Matter," (557), and 
"Foundations of Theism," (717). 
By far the greater part of professor Cope's work falls in 
one of the above categories, yet his investigations in two other 
branches of science require a brief notice. 
Cope's discovery of fossil remains of various extinct verte- 
brates which he was able to place in certain well known 
geological eras, has greatly aided American geologists in the 
definite determination of the relative ages of different forma- 
tions in the west, and in referring them to corresponding 
formations in the old world. 
When a boy. Cope made a collection of insects and studied 
their habits to some extent, but he did not continue this work 
or take up any other branch of invertebrate zoology. His onlv 
contributions to this department of science are brief descrip- 
tions of various lower forms, principally myriopods, found in 
diflferent cave formations in the United States, (69). 
