The cusps of the molar teeth do not appear "fortuitously" and then survive in accordance with their relative fitness, as would be required by the Darwinian theory, nor do they appear fully formed in a discontinuous manner, in the sense of De Vries' theory; they appear at definite points, at first too small to have any adaptive or selective value, and become with succeeding ages larger and larger until they are of adaptive value. In other words they are determinate in their origins; they develop gradually; and they are adaptive in the direction of their development from the very start.... They arise because of some inherent tendency or potentiality to vary in a determinate direction. What this internal determining factor is we do not know.
The same problem presents itself in the origin of horns, at first and for ages too small to be of any value.
Science has recently discovered the "subconscious," finding that it possesses powers over the body, fashioning, healing, or deforming, which are quite beyond the reach of the conscious mind.
Suppose that the subconscious is part of the conscious of nature. Grant to nature the purposiveness which we find in the subconscious, and the difficulties respecting the appearance of variations vanish. Heredity is an aspect of the persistence of the purpose, a persistence shown likewise by the relatively wide area of a species in which a variations occurs, and by the steady progression of the variation, despite its primary uselessness, on to the stage where first it becomes helpful in the struggle for life.
A DUTCH HOUSE COURT BY PIETER DE HOOCH
PRACTICALLY nothing is known of the life of Pieter de Hooch, but the fifty or sixty examples of his exquisite genre painting are now almost priceless. He was a native of Rotterdam, and it is supposed he died in 1681 at Haarlem at the age of fifty. There are three of his pictures in the London National Gallery, from one of which the illustration herewith reproduced is taken. This is an out-door subject—a rather unusual choice for the master, who preferred interiors as a rule. He is noted for an extraordinary skill in depicting the atmosphere of rooms lighted by various doors and windows, and for his marvelous perfection in detail, which however, is never obtrusive nor does it interfere with the broad effect. There is an air of the greatest serenity in all his pictures, and the simple, homely subjects he preferred are transfigured into classics by the discrimination of his choice and the perfection of his mastery of the most difficult problems of light and shade and tone values. No reproduction can give the least idea of the delicate handling of tone in his works. His drawing is absolutely true to nature; the perspective of his buildings is more than photographically accurate, but it never obtrudes itself or interferes with the general effect of repose.
De Hooch painted very few large pictures; unfortunately the only one which came down to our time perished in a fire in 1864. He was little appreciated in his own lifetime—indeed it was not until the eighteenth century that he was recognized in his own country. He was a disciple of the school of Rembrandt, but his taste did not lie in the direction of life-size portraits or of the classical or scriptural stories which were the greater master's favorite subjects.
Lomaland Photo. and Engraving Dept.