OCR Text |
Show 1884.] OF THE INDIVIDUAL AND OF THE SPECIES. 467 nine years after the operation (excision of the elbow) which had been performed on account of injury-the man having in the interval acted as guard on a railway, swinging himself from one carriage to another while the train was in motion, with the injured arm, quite as easily and securely as with the other. The ulna was found united to the humerus by ligament; the end of the radius was polished off, and played on the humerus and on the ulna, a material something like cartilage being interposed. The ends of the bones of the forearm were locked in by two processes projecting downwards from the humerus, and strong lateral, and still stronger anterior and posterior ligaments, also bound them to the latter bone." It would ba easy to bring forward a great number of more or less similar cases. The amount of reproduction of lost parts of which many of the lower animals are capable every naturalist knows. It is also a notorious and very noteworthy fact that in both man and the lower animals, the processes of repair take place the more readily theyounger the age of the injured individual may be. But these unconscious but practically teleological processes of repair are often preceded by actions which every one would call instinctive. The actions here referred to are such as the throwing off (by a Lobster, Crab, or Spider) of an injured limb in order that by its (separation at a suitable spot its reproduction may be brought about. But this spontaneous removal of the limb is only the first act, and a necessary act, of the process of its reproduction. It is (as has been observed by Hartmann *) analogous to the reproduction, by a larva, of its injured cocoon, or by a Spider of its torn net. They are all reparative actions accompanied by feelings of different degrees. A consideration of the process of remedial reproduction in the individual, naturally leads us onto the consideration of the reproduction of the individual itself. It would be a quite superfluous task here to make more than a general reference to the wondeiful series of changes which each embryo of a Hydra tuba, an Echinus, a Sepia, a Butterfly, a Batra-chian, and a Man goes through during its individual process of development, or ontogeny. This process, in its perfect unconsciousnesses like reflex action, but it is far more wonderful, since in the earliest stages even nerve-tissue is absent and has itself to be formed. In the accuracy of its direction towards a useful end, it is the very counterpart of the most developed Instinct; nor, if the impulses by which adult individuals are led to seek and to perform those processes which give rise to the embryo are to be called instinctive, is it easy to see how the term "instinctive" can be refused to that impulse by which each developing embryo is led to go through those processes which give rise to the adult. Can these analogies be carried further still, and can we, from the consideration of Instinct in the widest sense of that term, throw any 1 I would refer m y bearers to B. von Hartmann's work on' The Unconscious,' which they will find very suggestive, and to which I gladly acknowledge many obligations, as regards m y treatment of this subject. |