Some Illustrations.

It will be expected of course that for the claim here advanced on behalf of the predominant influence of the nervous system in the initiative of the evolutionary process some experimental or other evidence should be produced. Before entering upon this, I think some analogous facts from the story of man, in accordance with the principle laid down in the first chapter should be stated, so as to illustrate the line of thought. These will be in the nature of analogies, and whether or not the accepted accounts of the chosen examples agree precisely with the last word of the critics is immaterial, for if not they will equally well serve the purpose of illustra­tion.

Abraham.

When from his Mesopotamian home an opulent and successful farmer decided for reasons sufficient to himself that he would leave his present prosperity for a promised land, and went out not knowing whither he went, it is manifest that the construc­tion and organiza­tion of Abraham’s cerebral cortex was the motive power which led to this step so fraught with change to himself, his descendants, and the world. By his choice he showed the inherited structure of his brain, its nature, and perhaps its nurture, to be different from those of his family and tribe. Implicit in this venture was the introduc­tion of a new group of people into a new environment, and their reaction to it through many generations is written before our eyes to-day in indelible characters. It was neither stature, muscular development, colour of hair, skin or eyes, properties of digestive or circulatory organs, keenness of sight, hearing, taste, smell, or touch which led to this result even though without a high degree of efficiency of these he could never have “arrived” as he did.

Mohammed.

The conjunc­tion of environment with a certain organized complexity of grey matter was hardly ever more important to the world than that of Mohammed. The powerful frame, abundant black hair, wonderful dark eyes, and great imposing head may well have attracted the rich widow who “made his fortune” by marrying him, and they stood him in good stead in his later adventurous career. But nothing short of a unique arrangement of his reflex-arcs, chiefly in the associa­tion-areas of his brain, could have opened up to him the world of Asia and Europe.

Columbus.

Who can doubt that it was ultimately to the inherited structure of the convolutions of his brain that Columbus owed his great achievement in opening up a New World; or that to the reactionary and intense “character” of Philip’s brain the persecutions in the Netherlands were due; and on the other hand that to the brain of William of Orange with its liberal and enlightened “character” the Seven Provinces that resisted Philip owed their freedom; the results in the two cases being the decay of Spain from that time forward, and the final success in the struggle for religious liberty. In such a view of historical facts it is not necessary either to follow Carlyle in his extreme claims for the influence of great men and heroes, nor to look upon the hero as an epiphenomenon. It is certain that eventually some other great man would have arisen to do what the great Genoese did, if he had not done it, and as it is claimed that Amerigo di Vespucci did, and it is certain that Philip was only the last of the Hapsburg sovereigns who determined the fall of Spain, and that Huss, Jerome, Wycliffe and Luther in their days initiated the struggle for religious liberty which Holland brought to success. But the facts referred to can hardly be disputed, and the men and their “characters” did certainly determine permanent changes in the world.

Napoleon.

Among individual men of modern times none strikes the imagina­tion as does Napoleon. Without ignoring the tremendous outburst of the soul of down-trodden France at the Revolu­tion, it cannot be denied that the “character” or grey matter of brain of the man of whom it is said “nothing where he had passed was as it had been before,” was the dominant and natural fact that changed the face of Europe. What physical quality had Napoleon, except those of his grey cells, which could have led him to such results on the environment into which he was cast?