It is too often forgotten that pain is in
proportion to consciousness. We must beware of such fallacies as
transferring our experience of pain to a Mesozoic reptile, with
an ounce or two of cerebrum to twenty tons of muscle and bone.
* "The Evolution of Mind" (Black), 1911.
One other view of evolution, which we find in some recent and
reputable works (such as Professor Geddes and Thomson's
"Evolution," 1911), calls for consideration. In the ordinary
Darwinian view the variations of the young from their parents are
indefinite, and spread in all directions. They may continue to
occur for ages without any of them proving an advantage to their
possessors. Then the environment may change, and a certain
variation may prove an advantage, and be continuously and
increasingly selected. Thus these indefinite variations may be so
controlled by the environment during millions of years that the
fish at last becomes an elephant or a man. The alternative view,
urged by a few writers, is that the variations were "definitely
directed." The phrase seems merely to complicate the story of
evolution with a fresh and superfluous mystery. The nature and
precise action of this "definite direction" within the organism
are quite unintelligible, and the facts seem explainable just as
well--or not less imperfectly--without as with this mystic
agency.
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