[247] This is not merely a simple hypothesis, but a well-demonstrated fact. Hundreds of experiments by Boeck, Weill, Moebius, Charrin, Mairet, Bosc, Slosse, Laborde, Marie, etc., have established that among the deranged, during periods of excitation and afterwards, the urine is more toxic, i.e., more full of waste and excreted organic matter, while after the periods of depression it is less toxic, i.e., poorer in disaggregated matter, than among sane individuals, which proves that, among the former, the nutrition of the tissues is morbidly increased or retarded.
[248] Dr. Paul Moreau, of Tours, describes perversion (l’aberration) in these somewhat obscure terms: ‘Perversion constitutes a deviation from the laws which rule the proper sensibility of the organs and faculties. By this word we mean to designate those cases in which observation testifies to an unnatural, exceptional, and wholly pathological change, a change carrying palpable disturbance into the regular working of a faculty.’—Des Aberrations du Sens génésique. 4e édition. Paris, 1887, p. 1.
[249] ‘The vices of the psycho-physical organization manifesting themselves by acts prohibited, not only by morality—that aggregate of necessary rules elaborated by the secular experience of peoples—but also by their penal codes, are in discord with life in society, in the midst of which humanity can alone make progress.... A man, from his birth adapted to social life, can only acquire such vices as a consequence of certain pernicious conditions, through which his psycho-physical powers are set in opposition to the necessary exigencies of social life.’—Drill, Les Criminels mineurs, quoted by Lombroso in Les Applications de l’Anthropologie criminelle. Paris, 1892, p. 94. See also G. Tarde, La Philosophie pénale, Lyon, 1890, passim; ‘The morally deranged are not true lunatics. A Marquise de Brinvilliers, a Troppmann, a being born without either compassion or sense of shame—can it be said of such an one that he is not himself when he commits his crime? No. He is only too much himself. But his existence, his person, are hostile to society. He does not feel the same sentiments which we civilized people regard as indispensable. It is useless to think of curing him or of reforming him.’
[250] Darwinism explains adaptation only as the result of the struggle for existence, and of selection which is a form of this struggle. In one individual a quality appears accidentally, which makes it more capable of preserving itself and of conquering its enemies than those individuals not born with this quality. It finds more favourable conditions of existence, leaves behind it more numerous descendants inheriting this advantageous quality, and by the survival of the fittest and the disappearance of the less fit, the whole species comes into the possession of this advantageous quality. I do not at all deny that an accidental individual deviation from the type of the species, which proves an advantage in the struggle for existence, can be a source of transformations having as their result a better adaptation of the species to given and unmodifiable circumstances. But I do not believe that such an accident is the only source, or even the most frequent source, of such transformations. The process of adaptation appears to me to be quite otherwise, viz., the living being experiences in some situation feelings of discomfort from which he wishes to escape, either by change of situation (movement, flight), or by trying to act vigorously on the causes of these feelings of discomfort (attack, modification of natural conditions). If the organs possessed by the living being, and the aptitude these organs have acquired, are not sufficient to furnish the counteractions felt and wished for as necessary to those feelings of discomfort, the weaker creatures submit to their destiny, and suffer or even perish. More vigorous individuals, on the contrary, make violent and continuous efforts in order to attain their design, of flight, defence, attack, suppression of natural obstacles; they give strong nervous impulses to their organs to increase to the highest degree their functional capacity, and these nervous impulses are the immediate cause of transformations, giving to the organs new qualities, and rendering them more fit to make the living creature thrive. That the nervous impulse produces, as a consequence, an increase in the flow of blood, and a better nutrition for the organ in play, is a positive biological fact. In my opinion, then, adaptation is most frequently an act of the will, and not the result of qualities accidentally acquired. It has as premise the clear perception and representation of the external causes of the feelings of discomfort, and a keen desire to escape from them, or, again, that of procuring feelings of pleasure, i.e., an inorganic appetite. Its mechanism consists in the elaboration of an intense representation of serviceable acts of certain organs, and in the sending of adequate impulses to these organs. That such impulses can modify the anatomical structure of the organs, Kant already anticipated when he wrote his treatise, Von der Macht des Gemüthes; and modern therapeutics has fully confirmed this, by showing that the stigmata of a Louise Lateau, the healing of tumours on the tomb of the Deacon Paris, the modifications induced by suggestion on the skin of hysterical subjects, the formation of birth-marks by eventualities and emotions, are the effect of presentations on the bodily tissues. It was wrong to laugh at Lamarck for teaching that the giraffe has a long neck because it has continually stretched it in order to be able to feed off the topmost foliage of plants with tall stems. When the animal elaborates the clear idea that he ought to elongate his neck as much as possible in order to reach the elevated foliage, this presentation will influence in the strongest manner the circulation of the blood in all the tissues of the neck; these will be quite differently nourished from what they would be without this presentation, and the changes desired by the animal will certainly take place little by little, if his general organization makes them possible. Knowledge and will are therefore causes of adaptation—not the will in the mystical sense of Schopenhauer, but the will that is the dispenser of nervous impulses. This summary must suffice for the reader; this is not the place to develop it more, and to demonstrate in detail how fertile these ideas are for the theory of evolution.
[251] H. Taine, Les Origines de la France contemporaine: La Révolution, vol. ii., ‘La Conquête jacobine,’ Paris, 1881, pp. 11-12: ‘Neither exaggerated self-esteem nor dogmatic argument is rare in the human species. In every country these two roots of the Jacobin spirit subsist indestructible beneath the surface. Everywhere they are kept in check by established society, and everywhere they try to upheave the old historical structure which presses on them with all its weight.... At twenty years old, when a young man enters the world, his reason is hurt at the same time as his pride. In the first place, of whatever society he may be a member, it is a scandal to pure reason, for it has not been constructed on a simple principle by a philosophical legislator; it has been arranged by successive generations according to their multiple and varying needs.... In the second place, however perfect institutions, laws, and manners may be, since they have preceded him he has not assented to them at all; others, his predecessors, have chosen for him, and have enclosed him, in advance, in a moral, political, and social mould which pleased them. It matters little if it displeases him; he is forced to submit to it, and, like a harnessed horse, he must walk between the shafts in the harness put on him.... It is not surprising, then, if he is tempted to kick against the framework in which, nolens volens, he is enclosed, and in which subordination will be his lot. Thence it comes that the majority of young men—above all, those who have their careers to make—are more or less Jacobins on leaving college; it is an infirmity of growth.’
[252] Dr. Paul Sollier, Psychologie de l’Idiot et de l’Imbécile, p. 109 et seq.: ‘There exists among idiots another instinct which is met with, nevertheless, to a certain degree among normal children. This is destructiveness, which shows itself among all children as a first manifestation of their powers of movement, under the form of a desire to strike, break, and destroy.... This tendency is much more pronounced among idiots.... It is not the same with imbeciles. Their malicious and mischievous spirit drives them to destroy, not only for the purpose of expending their strength, but with the object of injuring. It is an unwholesome gratification which they seek.’
[253] Jules Huret, Enquête sur l’Évolution littéraire, p. 288.
[254] Théophile Gautier, Les Grotesques. 3me édition. Paris, 1856.
[255] Les Fleurs du Mal, par Charles Baudelaire, précédées d’une notice par Théophile Gautier. 2e édition. Paris, 1869, p. 46.
[256] M. Guyau, ‘L’Ésthétique du Vers moderne,’ Revue philosophique, vol. xvii., p. 270.