Truth and Error or the Science of Intellection/Chapter 13

by John Wesley Powell

CHAPTER XIII

EVOLUTION

We are now to consider what happens to particles with the passage of time. At the outset we must consider what it is that has persistence and change. The particle has five manifestations as five essential concomitants or constituents: unity, extension, speed, persistence, and consciousness. As all the concomitants inhere in one particle and the particle is unity, extension, speed, persistence, and consciousness, the concept of a particle not having all of these essentials is a pseudo-idea. If any one of them is taken away from a particle it is annihilated, for there is nothing else in the particle but these essentials. They constitute the particle.

By abstraction we consider essentials severally, and when we consider the relation of particles we still consider the relation of essentials severally. The relations of essentials are properties. One concomitant in one particle cannot be related to the same concomitant in another particle without a relation existing between the other concomitants of the particles; that is, there cannot be a relation of one unity to another without a relation of one extension to another, one speed to another, one persistence to another, and one consciousness to another, if the particles be animate. If we go on to consider persistence abstractly, we must still remember that the persistence is the persistency of a unity, an extension, a speed, and a consciousness. But between these persistent concomitants there are relations, and these relations are changeable; so when we consider persistence and change, it is the persistence of particles of essentials and change of relations of particles of essentials. Only relations are changeable, essentials are persistent.

By abstraction we consider essentials severally, and when we consider the relation of particles we still consider the relation of essentials severally. If we go on to consider persistence abstractly, we must still remember that the persistence is the persistence of a unity, an extension, a speed, and a consciousness.

He who cannot distinguish between concomitancy and relativity cannot follow this argument and cannot understand its fundamental doctrines. He who cannot follow up this distinction in all of its logical results under the conditions of complexity which are exhibited in the various bodies of the universe considered by scientific men, had better devote his time to metaphysical speculation where logical distinctions are confused and fine-spun theories of the unknown are the substance of philosophy; for scientific men deal with simple facts, though they may be tangled in relations, while metaphysicians confessedly deal in speculation about the unknown and boldly affirm that realities are fallacies. When a scientific man speaks of phenomena, he speaks of the manifestations of reality; when a metaphysician speaks of phenomena he speaks of manifestations of the unknown reality of which he dreams, while, he deems that the realities of the scientific man are creations of fancy. In science all knowledge is verity and all fallacies are false inferences. In metaphysics all knowledge is illusion which manifests in a vague way an unknown reality.

If particles could exist without speed there would be no change and no motion; or if there was but one particle with speed there would be only rectilineal motion, but as there are many particles with speed they collide and deflect one another; deflected speed is directed motion. The first phase of directed motion is thus change of direction in free particles. Here we have persistence in speed and change in direction by which persistence is divided into portions by events of collision, and this manifests time. There could be no time without motion, and no motion without space, and no space without number. The first or simplest manifestation of time is the division of motion into parts by events. This gives us the simplest concept of time known to science, and whenever in science time is considered, some motion is divided into parts by events. Thus the motion of the earth about the sun is divided into annual parts by events, and the motion of the earth on its axis is divided into daily parts by events.

By the incorporation of particles into bodies the speed of the particle is divided into parts, one part of the speed inhering in the particle as internal motion, another part inhering in the particle as external motion of the body. The speed of the particle is composed of internal speed and external or corporeal speed.

In bodies we consider the corporeal speed, and one body may have greater speed than another, although one ultimate particle cannot have greater speed than another. It is the speed of one body measured in terms of the speed of another by which time is usually determined.

Particle speed is persistent or eternal. Corporeal speed can continue only while the body remains incorporate. So essentials are co-eternal in the particle, but are co-etaneous in the body.

When we consider the collision of one body with another we may consider the action as a force, and if the particles remain without change of incorporation, action and reaction are exhibited as mutual deflection. “When we neglect the nature of this deflection we are considering the forces involved, but if we consider results and compare the paths of the bodies before collision with the paths after collision, we pass from the consideration of force to causation, for the cause of their collision was their incident paths and the effect of collision their reflected paths.

Thus the study of time as exhibited by bodies leads to the study of causation. So in causation we have more highly related time. If we consider relations of persistence and change in the particle, we consider it as time, but if we consider it in the body we consider it as causation. Time and causation are thus reciprocal.

There are different kinds of natural bodies besides the one ethereal body of all ethereal particles; (1) the celestial bodies of molecular particles; (2) the terrestrial bodies or spheres of petrologic particles, in which certain of the molecular particles are forever undergoing reincorporation; (3) vegetal bodies which are still more ephemeral and reincorporated from the mineral kingdom to exist only for a time and then to be returned to the mineral kingdom; (4) animal bodies which are incorporated from the vegetal kingdom; (5) societies which are ideally incorporated.

In this incorporation they exhibit successions of causations; but causations are processes, and one abstract process cannot exist without the concomitant processes—that is, there can be no processes of causation without processes of force, form, and kind, together with processes of mind.

We know little of the reincorporation of stars, but we know much about the reincorporation of rocks, plants, animals, and societies. The study of incorporation and reincorporation is evolution from the standpoint of causation, which in turn is the study of time.

The consideration of the totality of changes occurring in the universe is evolution. These changes can all be resolved into changes in the position of the ultimate particle of matter. Directed changes in position lead to incorporation, then incorporation is succeeded by reincorporation, and the totality of these changes is the totality of evolution. Starting with this concept we may be able to redefine evolution in a more satisfactory manner at a later stage.

If there were no motion there would be no time but only persistence. If there were no incorporation and reincorporation there would be no evolution but only time as it is exhibited in the ethereal particle. At the very outset, then, we have to consider incorporation in the association of one chemical particle with another.

The theater of the motion of every ethereal particle must be circumscribed by the theater of the adjacent particles; we are logically prohibited from any other conclusion. When particles unite with one another in constituting a body, so that the speeds are divided into internal and external motions, by virtue of the external motion, they may change their space relations to external particles. In order that there may be bodies with changeable environment the particles must, by some means or another, associate. The first cause or method of evolution is choice; the first effect of evolution is change of environment. From this datum point we may go on to discuss the evolution of the laws or methods of evolution.

Affinity is choice of association in atoms and molecules by which new kinds are developed by the development of new orders of units through their incorporation into one body. This is illustrated in the conventional numbers where the ten units of one order constitute one of a higher order. Again, the bricks of a house, thousands in number, constitute one house in a body of a higher order. Now the atoms of a molecule are associated by affinity, which surely resembles choice of association, though it may be the choice of dominant particles or mutual choice; but in the bricks which constitute the house their association is the choice of volition in the builder, by the choice of activities in the control of his muscles. This choice of activity still relates back to a choice in the reciprocal processes of metabolism, which again is affinity. Thus external choice is controlled by mind through internal choice.

The primal law of evolution seems to be psychic. We shall call it the law of affinity and define it as the choice of particles to associate in bodies. The facts observed in the chemical incorporation of particles into bodies are explained by this hypothesis, but they remain the same whether the explanation be valid or invalid, that is, whether we consider affinity to be due to psychic choice or to some unknown mechanical property.

By the incorporation of atoms into molecules particles become bodies which react in collisions with the environment in a new manner; thus bodies can perform functions which particles cannot perform. This leads us to the consideration of incorporation as organization, when functions and organs as concomitants are transmuted together. Molecules, because they are incorporated numbers, are organized numbers, or in other terms, chemical organization by incorporation is numerical organization. Now we must see what these new functions or reactions are.

Molecules of substances are aggregated into stellar bodies by their mutual reactions through the gravitating medium the ether. Thus a second method of evolution is developed which is known as adaptation to environment. By this method not only are the celestial bodies incorporated into higher units, but their forms are subsequently controlled by the same law when they yield to the forces of the environment as spheroidal figures, rotating and revolving as fluid bodies. Stars are evolved under the law of adaptation to environment and remain under its control in their changing figures through the history of their revolutions.

Under this law stars change their environment, passing through a succession of positions in a cycle of revolution. This seems to be a valid statement of the changes brought about by the incorporation of atoms into molecules, and their further incorporation into stars, and their still further incorporation as stars into systems.

In celestial bodies we know only of the fluid state of matter as revealed by astronomy. While there may be solid bodies in the other orbs, as in the earth, astronomical investigation does not reveal them to research as solids; such solid bodies are recognized to be studied only in the earth, where they are revealed as rocks, and if they may exist in the other orbs the science of astronomy does not deal with them. The forms of the stellar bodies are those assumed by fluids under the force of gravity. The stars themselves are particles in systems which are bodies of a higher order. Events are discovered in the motions of the celestial orbs and exhibited in a great variety of ways as set forth in the science of astronomy.

Thus states of motion are divided into events of motion. The states are represented by rotation of body, which is the revolution of particles, while events are marked by phenomena which attend the rotation and revolution. These are phenomena of time, or persistence and change. Then the heavenly bodies are constantly changing their relations to one another, and a vast system of perturbations are discovered. Motion at apogee differs from motion at perigee, motion at aphelion differs from motion at perihelion, and a great variety of perturbations of path are revealed. Here we study causation. Finally, the genesis of the heavenly bodies is studied as their evolution.

LaPlace was the founder of this department of astronomy. The researches in this realm had revealed the common direction of motion in the orbs of the solar system, the small eccentricities of path, the inclination of the orbits, and the conservation of areas. Reasoning that contraction would accelerate rotation and hence oblateness, he conceived the hypothesis of the evolution of the solar system on the theory of the radiation of heat into solar space from a nebulous mass. He conceived that this mass, revolving in an orbit, constantly accelerating and thus constantly increasing its oblateness, would thus gradually retire by attraction from an external ring of matter which would ultimately break up into one or more orbicular bodies.

Since the time of LaPlace his method of accounting for satellites as a breaking up of rings has been questioned, and facts have been discovered that give ground to the conjecture that other methods of separation into bodies by fission are not only possible but even probable. This new doctrine arises from the investigation of binary stars. It will be observed that LaPlace’s theory was an attempt to harmonize many diverse laws discovered by induction and verified by deduction, by accounting for them all by one fundamental doctrine of evolution, which is no other than the adaptation of every particle of matter to the conditions imposed upon it by every other particle in the environment. Under this hypothesis LaPlace promulgated a doctrine of evolution which, in its fundamental elements, has remained to the present, notwithstanding the tests of observation and recomputation to which it has been submitted, though minor components of the doctrine are questioned.

There is still another assumption of LaPlace that must now be questioned, as it is unnecessary to his argument and incongruous with facts herein demonstrated; his assumption is that heat is radiated into space and that it leaves the cooling body to join external bodies. All of this was quite compatible with the concept in vogue in his time, when heat corpuscles were supposed to be itinerant from body to body. Now we know that heat is not a special form of matter, but is only a deflection of the motions of the particles of matter whose speeds are constant, and that one body causes heat in another but does not yield heat as speed of particles so that it loses what the other gains. While the heat of one body induces heat in another, no motion as speed leaves the cooling body, but its reaction transmutes the heat motion into the structural motion of the body and that reaction which we call the transfer of heat from one body to another is in fact its equilibration through mutual transmutation.

Thus, by the theory of LaPlace, the chemical changes proceeding in the combination of atomic particles existing in the nebulous mass were accelerated by gravity until they were consolidated into stellar bodies, the process being a succession of recombinations in molecules of higher orders.

In the geonomic realm three so-called states of substance are found: the ethereal, the fluid, and the solid. All of these states are conditions of incorporation. Gases may become liquids and liquids may become solids, and vice versa, by progressive incorporation and reincorporation. These states of substance often exhibit interesting critical points in which secular changes are accelerated by sudden metagenesis, especially at critical points of temperature and pressure. Thus changes of state are secular metageneses accelerated in sudden metageneses. Everywhere and forever the states are changing by events and the geonomic realm is forever in flux. The winds are in motion, the waters are in waves, tides and currents, and the waters themselves are evaporated and move in clouds through the air and are condensed into streams that flow into the great bodies of water and into the ocean itself. The fluid waters are transformed into solid, and the solid are gathered at high altitudes and high latitudes into great bodies of ice that are forever growing, melting, and moving forward. The solid rocks are forever undergoing geologic changes under the stress and strain produced; thus molar metamorphosis is forever in progress. The rocks are carried from the land to the sea and the sea-bottoms are upheaved, while mechanical changes are forever in progress throughout the solid envelope. States appear to be changed into other states only by events which come in winds, storms, earthquakes, and fires.

That which we are to note as germane to this argument is that there are three states of matter involved in the study of geonomy: the ethereal state in which the phenomena of heat and electricity are observed, the fluid state, and the solid state in which the especial phenomenon of the geonomic orb—the earth—is observed. As in the stars we are compelled to discuss ethereality, terrestrial heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and gravity, together with centripetal and centrifugal force and fluidity, so in the geonomic realm we must study not only the same subjects, but must also consider the solid condition with the stresses and strains involved and the metageneses that appear through chemism.

In the ethereal realm we know of the ethereal state; in the stellar realm we know of the ethereal and the fluid states; in the geonomic realm we know of the ethereal, the fluid, and the solid states.

In the study of the earth a differentiation is found in the air, the sea, the land, and the nucleus. They are also integrated by the rotation of the earth, which is the revolution of its particles. The air is imperfectly differentiated into winds. The waters are differentiated into seas with gulfs, lakes with bays, and rivers with creeks, brooks, and rills. Then the waters are evaporated and differentiated into vapor, and these vapors become clouds and the clouds become rains. Then the waters that were evaporated into vapor and condensed into rain are also frozen into snow and ice, and ice itself plays an important part in the mechanical changes wrought upon the surface of the earth. Then the solid sphere is differentiated into formations, and the formations into rocks or blocks, and these again into crystals and grains; then the rocks are ground by the running waters and blown by the winds and distributed through the air and over the land as dust. They are also carried by the waters into the sea and deposited in formations, and finally they are carried in solution by the interpenetrating waters into the crevices of the rocks, by which blocks are parted. Finally, fluid masses from the molten interior are thrust into the rocks in dykes, chimneys, and lacolites, and spread over the surface in coulees, cinders, and dust. All of this commingling of materials results in a recombination of substances ever found to be more and more highly compound. At the surface of the earth these changes are still further multiplied in the production of soils, which is accomplished by the wash of rains, the grinding of ice, the chemical decomposition of the rock, especially aided by heating and cooling, together with the disintegration that arises from the action of plants and animals upon the soil, and by the commingling of their bodies with it, so that a highly compound mass of particles is produced, known as the soil. This soil is the theater of chemical changes by which the more highly compound molecules are developed, necessary directly to vegetation and indirectly to animal life. As chemical compounds are more sensitive to change, mineral forms are more sensitive to metamorphosis, and as mineral and molar forms are changed processes are multiplied and become more efficient in the production of change. Thus the new law of evolution which we find in the geonomic realm, is the acceleration of change by increasing heterogeneity. It may be called the method of heterogeneity.

The law of affinity and the law of adaptation found in the astronomic realm also pertain to the geonomic realm. But to them there is added this new law of heterogeneity. Thus an incessant metalogosis, metamorphosis, and metaphysisis results in universal, constant, and multifarious metageneses.

As substances become more compound they become less stable, and acceleration of heterogeneity is the acceleration of metagenesis.

In the phytonomic realm, that is, in plants, a fourth state of substance is found. This is the vital state, for plants have life. Substance in the fluid and solid states is taken up by the plant through the medium of the ethereal state exhibited in light and heat and metagenetically changed into the fourth state as vitality. These metagenetic changes are known as assimilation, by which the plant is produced. Plant growth is secular, and the materials pass through the fluid state into the living state, which is growth; the plant may then dissolve secularly by decay, or by sudden change in combustion.

We cannot understand the plant without a consideration of all the four states of matter and all the four changes of matter which occur therein as events. As the plant grows, minute molecules are added; as the plant decays, minute molecules are taken away, as the vital changes observed.

Vitality as a state first finds expression in the continued growth of the plant, and a still higher expression in the heredity of the species, for the state is continued from plant to germ through the germ in life and growth to reproduction, where it again appears in the new germ. Thus we are compelled to consider the vital conditions of heredity. The metagenetic changes of the individual are bequeathed to its posterity, and the environmental changes of the individual are wrought into its structure and these again are bequeathed within more or less restricted limits. Thus in the study of the plant we study a new state of substance, and new changes are here events in the history of the individual, transferred by heredity to its offspring. In the consideration of the development of germs into adult individuals, the accomplishment of the process is ontogeny. In the consideration of the development of individuals in generations by which the race is evolved, we may consider the result reached as phylogeny.

In this realm the law of the acceleration of evolution is the one discovered by Darwin and known as the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence. Plants multiply by germs, and more germs are produced than can possibly find room on the surface of the earth when developed into adults. Plants multiply by hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands and perhaps even millions; some must perish by inexorable conditions, and the few that arrive at maturity are those best adapted to the local environment where they live; but the germs themselves have their environments changed by mechanical agencies, as on winds, waves and streams, and they are often carried about by animals. This change of environment modifies the plants themselves in such a manner that varieties are developed which ultimately become species.

The evolution of plants is fundamentally chemical under the law of affinity; it is accelerated by adaptation to environment; it is then subject to the law of acceleration by heterogeneity, and evolution is still further accelerated by the survival of the fittest.

In animal life a fifth state of substance is found which I call motility. In this state all the other states are found: ethereal, fluid, solid, and vital. Changes which occur as events in the history of motility are collisions and metageneses in the ethereal, fluid, solid, and vital states, but to them is added a series of changes which are expressed in motility. In the animal, anabolism and catabolism are contemporaneous, as the animal has coeval growth and decay; anabolism and catabolism then become metabolism. The dual processes of metageneses, which are evolution and dissolution, are now combined so long as life lasts. In rest, and especially in sleep, anabolism may progress at a greater rate than catabolism; in exercise, and especially in violent exercise, catabolism may prevail, but neither can wholly cease while the motile state endures. Here, in the state of motility, ontogeny appears in the individual and phylogeny in the race.

In attempting to define the states of substance a precaution is necessary. It must be understood that the states of matter do not always appear to be separated by hard and fast planes of demarcation; and so far as we can assert with confidence, there seems to be a gap between ether and ponderable matter, though a complete recognition of the ether is but an event of the present day. The gaseous and liquid states are included in the fluid state. Between the fluid and the solid states intervening conditions are found.

It is known that no perfect distinction can be made between the solid and the vital state. There are those who believe that an impassable barrier exists between them, but this doctrine is rapidly being dispelled; indeed it is no exaggeration to say that scientific men rather confidently believe that the barrier is soon to be thrown down. That the barrier between vitality and motility has been overthrown is believed by many biologists, though there are still those who believe that the apparent consciousness of plants as exhibited in a great variety of phenomena can be explained as mechanical phenomena. If this lingering belief be true, the barrier still exists; but there is no ontogenic barrier even if there be a phylogenic barrier.

In the motile state of matter the special law of evolution was discovered by Lamarck. It is the law of effort, and may be stated as the development of organs by exercise and their extirpation by disuse. It must be remembered that all the other laws of evolution apply to the animal and that this new law is added in the motile state. Sometimes the law of heredity is called a law of evolution, but in fact it is the law of the continuation of species both vegetal and animal, and is not a law of evolution.

In the animal the law of affinity still appears in metabolism as fundamental, for by metabolism the development of the organ is accomplished and without it there could be no effort.

The animal is adapted to environment by many ways, especially in the development of agencies for accommodation to climate, as in the down of birds, the fur of animals, and in various protective devices as external coverings exhibited in the shells and shards of the lower animals. But the animal adapts itself to environment in another manner: endowed with locomotion, it seeks a favorable environment best adapted to protection and best adapted to supply stores of food.

The animal is still subject to the law of heterogeneity, for the multiplication of heterogeneous characteristics adapts it to heterogeneous conditions of environment, and so the limitations to the multiplication of adults are largely thrown down.

The animal also is subject to the law of survival, for notwithstanding the utilization of every possible environment for every variety, there is yet an overmultiplication of individuals, which must perish.

Upon these laws supervenes the law of effort by which organs are developed on various lines for various conditions of environment, and the result of this organic evolution leads to the survival of those best adapted. In animal life evolution is by affinity, adaptation, heterogeneity, survival, and effort. The first of these methods is the basis while the others are successive accelerations, so that the changes wrought in the animal are progressive in geometrical ratio by the compounding of all the factors.

Another factor in evolution appears in the organization of demotic life which may be observed among those of the lower animals in which societies are found, appearing among mankind and becoming the chief factor in civilized life. It is a method of evolution to which inadequate attention has been given, and the failure to recognize it has led to misapprehension of the nature of human evolution and to preposterous claims for the efficiency in mankind of the laws of evolution found among lower animals. This mode of evolution, therefore, needs more elaborate presentation than that which we have already given for the other laws. By man in civilization the law of effort is transmuted into the law of culture, the method of invention; that is, the effort is designed effort for the purpose of improving human conditions. The chemical law still remains valid, but the exercise of organs is ever from age to age, century to century, and even decade to decade concentrated upon one special system of organs. Of the five systems, that which has the function of thought and which is the nervous system is ever more and more exercised, until metabolism itself is accelerated to such a degree that the changes in the nervous system are far more rapid than in either of the other four systems. Thus human evolution comes to be mental evolution, and this mental evolution is the product of culture by invention.

The law of culture transforms and then absorbs the law of adaptation, the law of heterogeneity, the law of survival, and finally the law of effort. In what manner this transformation and absorption are effected must be explained. In man adaptation to environment is transmuted into the adaptation of environment to man. Man is not adapted to food, but food is adapted to man by culture. New foods are developed until many are used. The animals which furnish food are cultivated and multiplied under the direction of man. Vegetal foods are in like manner multiplied and cultivated in vast fields, vineyards, orchards, and gardens, and new varieties are forever developed by the skill of man.

Man is not adapted to the environment of climate, but he adapts the climate to himself; when it is too cold he kindles a fire, and he protects himself when away from the fire by clothing; when it is too wet he covers himself with a roof; when it is too windy he protects himself with walls; thus man does not develop down like the birds, or wool like the mammals, or carapaces like the turtles. Man does not develop fins for life in the water, but he constructs boats that he may dwell on the sea. Man does not become a climber to live on the trees, but he ascends the trees on ladders and he fells the trees for temples. Man does not seek shelter among the rocks, but he quarries the rocks and builds palaces. Man does not burrow in the ground, but he molds and burns the clay and constructs marts of trade. Man does not develop eyes that he may live in the dark, but he invents lightning light that night may become day. The illustrations of the change of adaptation from man himself to the environment may be found in endless profusion. There is a change wrought in man by all these agencies, but it is a change in his mind exhibited in the development of the organ of mind and the concomitant development of thought.

The law of heterogeneity undergoes a like transformation. Upon the things in the environment which are useful to man the law of heterogeneity is concentrated. Domestic animals are multiplied in variety, and cultivated plants are changed until their native forms are lost and the new forms are multiplied beyond enumeration. Fabrics for clothing are produced and garments are made; materials for house structure are differentiated from the materials of nature, and dwellings, storehouses, marts, and temples are constructed in a multiplicity of forms. Tools and machines are differentiated from natural material; all the powers of nature are specialized for man’s purposes; the whole progress of mankind is a succession of differentiations or specializations of the materials of nature to become the works of art.

The law of survival also undergoes a profound modification. Men are no longer subject to the vicissitudes of natural environment where winds may congeal their limbs, where floods may overwhelm them with death, and where disease may carry them away in multitudes. These agencies still act and have their victims, but the inventions of man are ever becoming more potent for the preservation of life. There was a time when drought in a narrow belt of country might produce a famine and when the people of such regions might perish; but no more famines can occur, for railroads link all fields to every man’s farm. There was a time when a blizzard might destroy a tribe; but now a storm may sweep in vain from the boreal zone about the dwellings of civilized men, for man constructs his home against these vicissitudes.

Human providence is more potent than flood, more potent than drought, more potent than wind. The man of intellect wields a power that giants cannot exercise.

The differentiation of animal species found in the lower world is replaced as a new method of progress is evolved. The animals differentiate into biotic species. This tendency seems to have prevailed in the early and more animal history of mankind, for the records of these forms are still preserved in types of men, as exhibited in the conformation of the skeleton and especially in the cranium; it is also exhibited in the color of the skin, the structure of the hair, the attitude of the eyes, the conformation of the face, and in other ways. But there is no black, or white, or tawny species, there is no straight or woolly-haired species, there is no horizontal or oblique-eyed species, there is no blue-eyed or black-eyed species, there is no broad or long-skulled species, but these characteristics are now intermingled in inextricable confusion—the result of the admixture of streams of blood. Thus the method of differentiation of animal species has been reversed in the case of man. That in which men now differ is intellectual power, but fools are not necessarily blue-eyed and wise men black-eyed. The traits in which men differ are moral, but honest men are not necessarily broad-skulled or rogues long-skulled.

The law of adaptation in the lower animals and in plants was made efficient by a high rate of multiplication, but in civilization this rate is diminished, so that man has not even yet crowded the earth and no land has been inhabited so densely as to press upon the capacity of the land to produce food. Famines have occurred only by improvidence, and the poor starve by neglect. The effort of mankind for sanitation, the healing of wounds and the curing of diseases, is the endeavor of mankind to repeal the law of nature when the environment is his destruction; thus this law of adaptation to environment for the preservation of the few among the lower animals, is made inefficient by the slow rate of the multiplication of men and is replaced by human effort to preserve and prolong life.

There is an environment to which men are adapted; it is the environment of culture. Most men speak the language of the people among whom they were born. Every man seeks a vocation to adapt himself to the vocations of others, that by his special labor he may acquire the most of the special labors of others; so he adjusts himself to the industrial conditions by which he is surrounded. From the cradle to the grave his intellectual advancement is dependent largely upon his intellectual environment, and he suits that environment to his purpose.

Man cultivates his physical powers by exercise in the industries and in a variety of athletic sports, in the same manner as do the lower animals, and he invents new methods of physical training; but he also and chiefly develops methods of intellectual training, instruction and research, to which the schools, the libraries, the journals, and the systems of research abundantly attest. No, the laws of brute evolution have been repealed by substitution and the new ways are methods of culture. The laws of nature unmodified by man produce horns, claws, fangs, and poisons for attack, with armor, cowardice, and deceit for defense. Culture replaces these brutal devices; smiling fields, cheerful homes, and all the products of civilization are derived from the inventions of man himself. As the generations come each inherits from his predecessor and adds to the patrimony by self-activity. That which the self can accomplish is multiplied by all which the social environment produces. Man is not only an heir to the past generations, but he coöperates in the activities of the present, and when he dies he bequeaths the intellectual wealth which his self-activity has acquired in coöperation with all his contemporaries of the world.

In the natural world evolution is primarily by incorporation and reincorporation. This incorporation is by affinity. We have shown that affinity is explained as the consciousness and choice of ultimate particles. When we reach animate beings in which affinity is mind, the Lamarckian law of effort becomes potent in evolution until men are developed and the five forms of culture are invented. Molecular reincorporation by heredity now goes hand in hand with culture or self-activity modified by social environment.

Evolution as a process is the development of new kinds with their concomitant forms, forces, causations and ideations by the multiplication of the relations of causation.