The causes and course of organic evolution; (1918) (14793880663)

Identifier: causescourseofor00macf (find matches)

Title: The causes and course of organic evolution;

Year: 1918 (1910s)

Authors: Macfarlane, John Muirhead, 1855-1943

Subjects: Evolution

Publisher: New York, The Macmillan Company

Contributing Library: MBLWHOI Library

Digitizing Sponsor: MBLWHOI Library

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y interaction of both. Built upon and nourished by this protoplasmatin as a basisis the highly important chromatin substance that he inheritsin common with most plants and animals, and the energyfor the upbuilding of which—the cognitic—brings him activelyand continuously into contact with varied environal stimuli,which, as they affect him, are responded to correspondingly.This gives to him what—humanly speaking—we may callthe sensuous or sense-perceptive capacity. Perception of andresponse to energizing stimuli, either by direct reflex action,or by linking together of several of these stimuli into a result-ant response of more complex character, form its main func-tion; but by being itself slowly altered in its molecular rela-tions, and by similarly stimulating the protoplasm to effectchanged responses, it assumes prime importance as the bearerof heredity. Built upon, nourished, and receiving external sensuous im-pressions from one or other of the two last is the ganglionic or

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804 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution Nissl or neuratin substance. This lie inherits in common withall animals from the rotiferan grade upward, and the energyfor the upbuilding of it—the cogitic—enables him to receiveand respond to directly, or to sort out, compound, and uniteinto simple or complex resultant responses, the varied stimuliabsorbed by the cognitic system. This confers on him thatcapacity which—humanly speaking—we may call the mentaland mento-moral. The entire material mechanism connectedwith it is derived embryologically from the surface or sensorylayer—the ectoderm—^but it becomes wholly shut off from thesurface as a part of the internal nervous system and verylargely as the brain. It functions therefore as an internalcorrelating, compounding, and mentally elaborating substance,that gives to super-man his high position over the other mam-mals and even over the ruder savage. Finally, the phenomena, the experiences of human life inthe past ten millennia e

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1918

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