The Monist, Vol. 1, 1890-1891 : $b A quarterly magazineVarious
Philosophy
The Monist, Vol. 1, 1890-1891 : $b A quarterly magazine
Various
Philosophy -- Periodicals
A third theory of evolution is that of Mr. Clarence King. The testimony
of monuments and of rocks is that species are unmodified or scarcely
modified, under ordinary circumstances, but are rapidly altered after
cataclysms or rapid geological changes. Under novel circumstances, we
often see animals and plants sporting excessively in reproduction,
and sometimes even undergoing transformations during individual life,
phenomena no doubt due partly to the enfeeblement of vitality from the
breaking up of habitual modes of life, partly to changed food, partly
to direct specific influence of the element in which the organism is
immersed. If evolution has been brought about in this way, not only
have its single steps not been insensible, as both Darwinians and
Lamarckians suppose, but they are furthermore neither haphazard on the
one hand, nor yet determined by an inward striving on the other, but
on the contrary are effects of the changed environment, and have a
positive general tendency to adapt the organism to that environment,
since variation will particularly affect organs at once enfeebled and
stimulated. This mode of evolution, by external forces and the breaking
up of habits, seems to be called for by some of the broadest and most
important facts of biology and paleontology; while it certainly has
been the chief factor in the historical evolution of institutions as in
that of ideas; and cannot possibly be refused a very prominent place in
the process of evolution of the universe in general.
Passing to psychology, we find the elementary phenomena of mind fall
into three categories. First, we have Feelings, comprising all that
is immediately present, such as pain, blue, cheerfulness, the feeling
that arises when we contemplate a consistent theory, etc. A feeling
is a state of mind having its own living quality, independent of any
other state of mind. Or, a feeling is an element of consciousness which
might conceivably override every other state until it monopolised the
mind, although such a rudimentary state cannot actually be realised,
and would not properly be consciousness. Still, it is conceivable,
or supposable, that the quality of blue should usurp the whole
mind, to the exclusion of the ideas of shape, extension, contrast,
commencement and cessation, and all other ideas, whatsoever. A feeling
is necessarily perfectly simple, _in itself_, for if it had parts these
would also be in the mind, whenever the whole was present, and thus the
whole could not monopolise the mind.[34]
[34] A feeling may certainly be compound, but only in virtue
of a perception which is not that feeling nor any feeling at
all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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