EMERGENT EVOLUTION- THE GIFFORD LECTURES DELIVERED IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS IN THE YEAR 1922 by C. LLOYD MORGAN.
Originally published in 1923. PREFACE: HALF a century ago, as years
run, a student was called on to take the chair at a dinner in
connection with the Royal School of Mines. Members of the staff
were present. And the fortunate youth was honoured by the support
of Professor Huxley. Which of the lines of science you have
followed has chiefly engaged your interest Following up the thread
of my reply, he drew from me the confession that an interest in
philosophy, and in the general scheme of things, lay deeper than my
interest in the practical applications of science to what then
purported to be my bread-and butter training. With sympathetic
kindliness that soon dispelled my fear of him he led me to speak
more freely, to tell him how this came about, what J had read, and
so on. That such a man should care to know what Berkeley and Hume
had done for me what I had got from Descartes Discourse how I was
just then embrangled in difficulties over Spinoza filled me with
glad surprise. His comments were so ripe and they were made to help
me Whatever else you may do, he said, keep that light burning. But
remember that biology has supplied a new and powerful illuminant.
Then speeches began. His parting words were When you have reached
the goal of your course, why not come and spend a year with us at
South Kensington So when I had gained the diploma of which so
little direct use was to be made, and when my need of the
illuminant, and my lack of intimate acquaintance with the facts on
which the new lamp shed light, had been duly impressed on me during
a visit to North America andBrazil, I followed his advice, attended
his lectures, and worked in his laboratory. On one of the memorable
occasions when he beckoned me to come to his private room he spoke
of St. George Mivart s Genesis of Species. I had asked him some
questions thereon a few days before to which he was then too busy
to reply and he gave me this opportunity of repeating them. Mivart
had said If then such innate powers must be attributed to chemical
atoms, to mineral species, to gemmules, and to physiological units,
it is only reasonable to attribute such to each individual organism
p. 260, I asked on what grounds this line of approach was
unreasonable for even then there was lurking within me some touch
of Pelagian heresy in matters evolutionary. Far from snub bing a
youthful heretic he dealt kindly with him. The question, he said,
was open to discussion but he thought Mivarts position was based on
considerations other than scientific. Any analogy between the
growth of a crystal and the development of an organism was of very
doubtful validity. Yes, Sir 1 I said, save in this that both invite
us to distinguish between an internal factor and the incidence of
external conditions He then asked what I under stood by innate
powers, saying that for Mivart they were the substantial forms of
scholastic tradition. I ventured to suggest that the School men and
their modern disciples were trying to explain what men of science
must perhaps just accept on the evidence. And I asked whether for
an innate power in the organism one might substitute what he had
taught us to call an internal metamorphic tendency which must be as
distinctly recognised as that of an internal conservative tendency
H. E. ii. p. 116. Ofcourse you may so long as you regard this
merely as an ex pression of certain facts at present unexplained. n
I then asked whether it was in this sense one should accept his
statement that nature does make leaps ii. pp. 77, 97 and, if this
were so, whether the difference on which Mivart laid so much stress
that between the mental capacities of animals and of men might not
be regarded as a natural leap in evolutionary progress. This was
the point to which I was leading up...
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