FOOTNOTES:

Fig. 51.

The Trypanosome (T. equiperdum) of the disease called “Dourine,” as seen alive in the blood of a rat, eight days after inoculation.A, the actively wriggling cork-screw-like parasites; B, the blood-corpuscles of the rat. This figure, of comparatively low magnification, gives an indication of the relative size of the parasites and the blood-corpuscles.The blood-corpuscles are about1/5000th of an inch each in diameter.

The Trypanosome (T. equiperdum) of the disease called “Dourine,” as seen alive in the blood of a rat, eight days after inoculation.

A, the actively wriggling cork-screw-like parasites; B, the blood-corpuscles of the rat. This figure, of comparatively low magnification, gives an indication of the relative size of the parasites and the blood-corpuscles.

The blood-corpuscles are about1/5000th of an inch each in diameter.

The creature drawn in our fig. 50 is, then, the typical trypanosome. It is this which the medical investigator looks for in his human or animal patients; it is this which he has regarded as the sign and proof of infection. Experiments have shown that, though so much alike in appearance in the different diseases we have named, yet each trypanosome has its own properties. Human blood-serum is poisonous to one and not to another; an animal immune to one is not immune to another. At present no treatment has been discovered which will destroy the parasites when once they have effected a lodgment, or act as an antidote to the poison which they produce in the infected animal or man. But the fact that in some cases an animal may become immune to the attack of the parasite which usually is deadly to its kind, gives hope of an eventual curative treatment for trypanosome infection; as does also the fact that the serum of some animals acts as a poison to trypanosomes which flourish in other animals.

With regard to immunity, it must always be remembered that we are liable to confuse two different conditions under this one term. An animal may be said to be immune to blood-parasite because that parasite is actually unable to live in its blood. On the other hand an animal is often said to be immune to a parasite when the parasite can and does flourish in its blood or tissues but produces no poisonous effect. A more precise nomenclature would describe the attacked organism in the first case as “repellent,” for it repels the parasite altogether; in the second case as “tolerant,” for it tolerates the presence and multiplication of the parasite without suffering by it.

We have yet to learn a good deal more as to the repulsion and the toleration of the trypanosome parasites by mammals and man. Still more have we to learn about the life-history of the trypanosome. At the moment of writing, absolutely nothing has been ascertained as to the life-history of the trypanosome of mammalian blood, except that they multiply in the blood by longitudinal fission. Our ignorance about them is all the more serious since other trypanosomes, discovered by Danilewesky in birds, have been studied and have been shown to go through the most varied phases of multiplication and change of size and shape, including a process of sexual fertilisation like that of the malaria parasite, to which, indeed, it now seems certain the trypanosomes are very closely allied.

It is to Dr. Schaudinn[26], that we owe a knowledge of some most extraordinary and important facts with regard to the trypanosomes parasitic in the blood of the little stone-owl of southern Europe (Athene noctua). These facts are so remarkable that, were Dr. Schaudinn not knownas a very competent investigator of microscopic organisms we should hesitate to accept them as true. Supposing, as is not improbable, that similar facts can be shown in regard to the trypanosomes of mammalian blood, the conclusions which our medical investigators have based upon a very limited knowledge of the form and life-history of the trypanosomes occurring in diseases such as sleeping sickness, surra, and nagana, are likely to be gravely modified, and practical issues of an unexpected kind will be involved.

As has already been pointed out in this article, the British Government has no staff of public servants trained to deal with the world-wide problems of sanitation and disease which necessarily come with increasing frequency before the puzzled administrators of our scattered Empire. There is no provision for the study of the nature and history of blood-parasites in this country, that is to say, no provision of laboratories with the very ablest and exceptionally-gifted investigators at their head[27]. We play with the provision of an adequate army, officers, and equipment to fight disease, which annually destroys hundreds of thousands of our people, much as barbarous states or bankrupt European kingdoms play with the provision of an ordinary army and navy. Their forces exist on paper, or even in fact, but have no ammunition, no officers, and no information; and there is no pay for the soldiers or sailors. Dr. Schaudinn, on the other hand, carried on his researches as an officer of the German Imperial Health Bureau of Berlin; and the account of them was published in the official Report of that important department of the German imperial administrative service three years ago.

Fig. 52.Trypanosoma Ziemanni, from the gut of the gnat (Culex), having been sucked in with the blood of the owl (Athene noctua). A, fertilized vermiform stage. B, multiplication of nucleus. C, elongation and coiling, with increase of nuclei (afterSchaudinn).

Trypanosoma Ziemanni, from the gut of the gnat (Culex), having been sucked in with the blood of the owl (Athene noctua). A, fertilized vermiform stage. B, multiplication of nucleus. C, elongation and coiling, with increase of nuclei (afterSchaudinn).

Fig. 53.Minute neutral Trypanosomes in the gut of the gnat liberated from the coiled form of Fig. 52, C (afterSchaudinn).

Minute neutral Trypanosomes in the gut of the gnat liberated from the coiled form of Fig. 52, C (afterSchaudinn).

It is not possible here to give a full report on Dr. Schaudinn’s work; but it appears that he has studied two distinct species of trypanosoma, both occurring side by side in the blood of the little stone-owl, and already seen but incompletely studied, by Danilewsky and Ziemann. The second of the two species of trypanosome is in some respects the more remarkable. Schaudinn calls itTrypanosoma Ziemanni; and from the figures which are here given (figs. 4,5,6, and7), copied from his article, with the explanationsbelow the figures, the reader will at once see what an extraordinary range of form and mode of multiplication is presented by this one species of trypanosome. Space will not permit us to comment on these various phases beyond noting how assuredly such forms would have escaped recognition as belonging to the trypanosome history if seen, before Dr. Schaudinn’s memoir was printed, by any of our medical commissioners blindly exploring round about the diseases caused by trypanosomes in man and mammals.

Fig. 54.

A, B, C, D, Elongated spiral forms ofTrypanosoma Ziemanni(some intertwined) developed from those of Fig. 53—showing transverse division, nucleus, and blepharoplast.E, F, pear-shaped forms resulting from the contraction of forms like A; G, a cluster of very minute individuals.These forms are observed in the gnat and also in the blood of the owl, into which they pass when the gnat bites that bird, and there give rise to the large male and female Trypanosomes seen in Fig. 55 (afterSchaudinn).

A, B, C, D, Elongated spiral forms ofTrypanosoma Ziemanni(some intertwined) developed from those of Fig. 53—showing transverse division, nucleus, and blepharoplast.

E, F, pear-shaped forms resulting from the contraction of forms like A; G, a cluster of very minute individuals.

These forms are observed in the gnat and also in the blood of the owl, into which they pass when the gnat bites that bird, and there give rise to the large male and female Trypanosomes seen in Fig. 55 (afterSchaudinn).

One very astonishing and revolutionary fact discovered by Schaudinn we must, however, especially point out. Medical men have long been acquainted with the spirillum, or spiral threads, discovered by Obermeyer in the blood of patients suffering from the relapsing fever of eastern Europe. These were universally and without question regarded as Bacteria (vegetable organisms) and referred to the genus “Spirochæta” of Ehrenberg. They were calledSpirochæta Obermeieri; and relapsing fever was held to be a typical case of a bacterial infection of the blood.It is now shown by Schaudinn that the blood-parasite spirochæta is a phase of a trypanosome (fig. 54); that it has a large nucleus and a micronucleus or blepharoplast, neither of which are present in the spiral Bacteria; and, further, that it alters its shape, contracting so as to present the form of minute oval or pear-shaped bodies, each provided with a larger and a smaller nucleus (fig. 54, E, F). These oval bodies are often engulfed by the colourless corpuscles (phagocytes) of the blood; and it is in the highest degree probable that in this condition they have been observed in some tropical diseases without their relation to the spiral forms being suspected. The corpuscles lately describedby Leishman, in cases of a peculiar Indian fever, are very probably of this nature, as are also similar bodies recently described in Delhi sore. On the whole, it may safely be said that the researches of Dr. Schaudinn, of which only a preliminary account has yet been published, have widely modified our conceptions as to these blood-parasites, and must lead to important discoveries in regard to diseases caused by them in mammals and in man.

Fig. 55.Trypanosoma Ziemanni, from the blood of the little owl. The stages shown in Figs. 52–54 are passed inside the gnat. The spiral and pear-shaped bodies of Fig. 54 pass from the gnat’s proboscis into the blood of the little owl, and grow there into the large forms here figured. A, B, and C are females, destined to be fertilized by spermatozoa (seeFig. 21) when swallowed by a gnat. D and E are male Trypanosomes, which will give rise each to eight fertilizing individuals or spermatozoa as shown in Fig. 56—when swallowed by a gnat.

Trypanosoma Ziemanni, from the blood of the little owl. The stages shown in Figs. 52–54 are passed inside the gnat. The spiral and pear-shaped bodies of Fig. 54 pass from the gnat’s proboscis into the blood of the little owl, and grow there into the large forms here figured. A, B, and C are females, destined to be fertilized by spermatozoa (seeFig. 21) when swallowed by a gnat. D and E are male Trypanosomes, which will give rise each to eight fertilizing individuals or spermatozoa as shown in Fig. 56—when swallowed by a gnat.

The facts that wild game serve as a tolerant reservoir of trypanosomes for the infection of domesticated animals by the intermediary of the tsetze fly, and that native children in malarial regions act the same part for the malarial parasite and mosquito, suggest very strongly that some tolerant reservoir of the sleeping-sickness trypanosome may exist in the shape of a hitherto unsuspected mammal, bird, or insect. The investigation of that hypothesis and the discovery of the reproductive and secondary forms of the mammalian trypanosomes are the matters which now most urgently call for the efforts of capable medical officers. But we must not be sanguine of rapid progress, since men of the scientific qualityneedful for pursuing these enquiries are not numerous; and those who exist are not endowed with private fortunes, as a rule. At the same time no attempt is made by the British Government to take such men into its pay, or to provide for the training and selection of such officers.[28]

Fig. 56.

MaleTrypanosoma Ziemanni, giving rise by nuclear division to eight spermatozoa or microgametes. From the stomach of the gnat (Culex).Each of these penetrates and fuses with the substance of a female Trypanosome, swallowed at the same time or already taken in by the gnat. The fertilized animalculæ is the vermiform motile stage of Fig. 52, A; and so we return to the starting-point of the cycle (afterSchaudinn).

MaleTrypanosoma Ziemanni, giving rise by nuclear division to eight spermatozoa or microgametes. From the stomach of the gnat (Culex).

Each of these penetrates and fuses with the substance of a female Trypanosome, swallowed at the same time or already taken in by the gnat. The fertilized animalculæ is the vermiform motile stage of Fig. 52, A; and so we return to the starting-point of the cycle (afterSchaudinn).

The relations of parasites to the organisms upon or in which they are parasitic, and the relation of man, once entered on the first steps of his career of civilisation, to the world of parasites, form one of the most instructive and fascinating chapters of natural history. It cannot be fully written yet, but already some of the conclusions to which the student is led in examining this subject have far-reaching importance and touch upon great general principles in an unexpected manner.

Before the arrival of man—the would-be controller, the disturber of Nature—the adjustment of living things to their surrounding conditions and to one another has a certain appearance of perfection. Natural selection and the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence lead to the production of a degree of efficiency and harmonious interaction of the units of the living world, which, being based on the inexorable destruction of what is inadequate and inharmonious as soon as it appears, result in a smooth and orderly working of the great machine, and the continuance by heredity of efficiency and a high degree of individual perfection.

Parasites, whether microscopic or of larger size, are not, in such circumstances, the cause of widespread disease or suffering. The weakly members of a species may be destroyed by parasites, as others are destroyed by beasts of prey; but the general community of the species, thus weeded, is benefited by the operation. Inthe natural world the inhabitants of areas bounded by sea, mountain, and river become adjusted to one another; and a balance is established. The only disturbing factors are exceptional seasons, unusual cold, wet, or drought. Such recurrent factors may from time to time increase the number of the weakly who are unable to cope with the invasions of minute destructive parasites, and so reduce, even to extermination the kinds of animals or plants especially susceptible to such influences. But anything like the epidemic diseases of parasitic origin with which civilised man is unhappily familiar seems to be due either to his own restless and ignorant activity or, in his absence, to great and probably somewhat sudden geological changes—changes of the connexions, and therefore communications, of great land areas.

It is abundantly evident that animals or plants which have, by long æons of selection and adaptation, become adjusted to the parasites and the climatic conditions and the general company (so to speak) of one continent may be totally unfit to cope with those of another; just as the Martian giants of Mr. H. G. Wells, though marvels of offensive and defensive development, were helpless in the presence of mundane putrefactive bacteria and were rapidly and surely destroyed by them. Accordingly, it is not improbable that such geological changes as the junction of the North and South American continents, of North and South Africa, and of various large islands and neighbouring continents, have, in ages before the advent of man, led to the development of disastrous epidemics. It is not a far-fetched hypothesis that the disappearance of the whole equine race from the American continent just before or coincidently with the advent of man—a region where horses of all kinds had existed in greatervariety than in any other part of the world—is due to the sudden introduction, by means of some geological change, of a deadly parasite which spread as an epidemic and extinguished the entire horse population.

Whatever may have happened in past geological epochs, by force of great earth-movements which rapidly brought the adaptations of one continent into contact with the parasites of another, it is quite certain that man, proud man, ever since he has learnt to build a ship, and even before that, when he made up his mind to march aimlessly across continents till he could go no further, has played havoc with himself and all sorts of his fellow-beings by mixing up the products of one area with those of another. Nowhere has man allowed himself—let alone other animals or even plants—to exist in fixed local conditions to which he or they have become adjusted. With ceaseless restlessness he has introduced men and beasts and plants from one land to another. He has constantly migrated with his herds and his horses, from continent to continent. Parasites, in themselves beneficent purifiers of the race, have been thus converted into terrible scourges and the agents of disease. Europeans are decimated by the locally innocuous parasites of Africa; the South Sea islanders are exterminated by the comparatively harmless measles of Europe.

A striking example of the disasters brought about by man’s blind dealings with Nature—disasters which can and will hereafter be avoided by the aid of science—is to be found in the history of the insect phylloxera and the vine. In America the vine had become adjusted to the phylloxera larvae, so that when they nibbled its roots the American vine threw out new root-shoots and was none the worse for the little visitor. Man in his blundering way introduced the American vine, and with it thephylloxera, to Europe; and in three years half the vines in France and Italy were destroyed by the phylloxera, because the European vines had not been bred in association with this little pest, and had not acquired the simple adjusting faculty of throwing out new shoots.

But it is not only by his reckless mixing up of incompatibles from all parts of the globe that the unscientific man has risked the conversion of paradise into a desert. In his greedy efforts to produce large quantities of animals and plants convenient for his purposes, and in his eagerness to mass and organise his own race for defence and conquest, man has accumulated unnatural swarms of one species in field and ranch and unnatural crowds of his own kind in towns and fortresses. Such undiluted masses of one organism serve as a ready field for the propagation of previously rare and unimportant parasites from individual to individual. Human epidemic diseases as well as those of cattle and crops, are largely due to this unguarded action of the unscientific man.

A good instance of this is seen in the history of the coffee plantations of Ceylon, where a previously rare and obscure parasitic fungus, leading an uneventful life in the tropical forests of that country, suddenly found itself provided with an unlimited field of growth and exuberance in the coffee plantations. The coffee plantations were destroyed by this parasite, which has now returned to its pristine obscurity. Disharmonious, blundering man was responsible for its brief triumph and celebrity. Dame Nature had not allowed the coffee fungus more than a very moderate scope. Man comes in and takes the reins; disaster follows; and there is no possibility of return to the old régime. Man must make his blunders and retrieve them by further interference—by the full use of his intelligence, by the continually increasing ingenuity of his control of thephysical world, which he has ventured to wrest from the old rule of natural selection and adaptation.

The adjustment of all living things to their proper environment is one of great delicacy and often of surprising limitation. In no living things is this more remarkable than in parasites. The relation of a parasite to the “host” or “hosts” in which it can flourish (often the host is only one special species or even variety of plant or animal) is illustrated by the more familiar restriction of certain plants to a particular soil. Thus the Cornish heath only grows on soil overlying the chemically peculiar serpentine rocks of Cornwall. The two common parasitic tape-worms of man pass their early life the one in the pig and the other in bovine animals. But that which requires the pig as its first host (Tænia solium) cannot use a bovine animal as a substitute; nor can the other (Tænia mediocanellata) exist in a pig. Yet the difference of porcine and bovine flesh and juices is not a very patent one; it is one of small variations in highly complex organic chemical substances. A big earth-worm-like stomach-worm flourishes in man, and another kind similar to it in the horse. But that frequenting man cannot exist in the horse, nor that of the horse in man. Simpler parasites, such as are the moulds, bacteria, and again the blood-parasites, trypanosoma, etc., exhibit absolute restrictions as to the hosts in which they can or can not flourish without showing specific changes in their vital processes. Being far simpler in structure than the parasitic worms, they have less “mechanism” at their disposal for bringing about adjustment to varied conditions of life. The microscopic parasites do not submit to alterations in the chemical character of their surroundings without themselves reacting and showing changed chemical activities. A change of soil (that is to say ofhost) may destroy them; but, on the other hand, it may lead to increased vigour and the most unexpected reaction on their part in the production of virulent chemical poisons.

We are justified in believing that until man introduced his artificially selected and transported breeds of cattle and horses into Africa there was no nagana disease. TheTrypanosoma Bruceilived in the blood of the big game in perfect harmony with its host. So, too, it is probable that the sleeping-sickness parasite flourished innocently in a state of adjustment due to tolerance on the part of the aboriginal men and animals of West Africa. It was not until the Arab slave raiders, European explorers, and indiarubber thieves stirred up the quiet populations of Central Africa, and mixed by their violence the susceptible with the tolerant races, that the sleeping-sickness parasite became a deadly scourge—a “disharmony” to use the suggestive term introduced by my friend Elias Metschnikow.

The adjustment of primaeval populations to their conditions has also been broken down by “disharmonies” of another kind, due to man’s restless invention, as explained a few years ago in the interesting book of Mr. Archdall Reid on the “Present Evolution of Man.” Not only does the human race within given areas become adjusted to a variety of local parasites, but it acquires a tolerance of dangerous drugs, such as alcohol and opium, extracted by man’s ingenuity from materials upon which he operates. A race thus provided and thus immune imposes, by its restless migrations, on unaccustomed races the deadly poisons to the consumption of which it is itself habituated. The unaccustomed races are deteriorated or even exterminated by the poisons thus introduced.

Infectious disease, it was long ago pointed out, must be studied from three main points of view: (1) the lifehistory and nature of the disease-germ or infective matter; (2) the infected subject, his repellant or tolerant possibilities, and his predisposition or receptivity; (3) the intermediary or carrying agents. Whilst it is true that little or nothing has been done by the State in acquiring or making use of knowledge as to the first and second of these factors, with a view to controlling the spread of disease, it is the fact that much has been done both in the way of investigation and administration in relation to the third factor. The great public-health enquiries and consequent legislation in this country, in which scientific men of the highest qualifications, such as Simon, Farr, Chadwick, and Parkes, took part during the Victorian period, have had excellent results; to them are due the vast expenditure at the present day on pure water, sewage disposal, and sanitary inspection. But little or nothing has been done in regard to the first and second divisions of the subject, in which the less organised portions of the British Empire are more deeply concerned than in waterworks and sewer-pipes. It is still contested whether leprosy (which is a serious scourge in the British Empire, though expelled from our own islands) is a matter of predisposition caused by diet or solely due to contagion; and yet it is left to individual practitioners to work out the problem. The State prepares vaccine lymph in a cheap and unsatisfactory way for the use of its, till recently, compulsorily vaccinated citizens; but the State, though thus interfering in the matter of vaccine, has spent no money to study effectively and so to improve the system of vaccination. Here and there some temporary and ineffective enquiry has been subsidised by a Government office; but there is no great army of investigators working in the best possible laboratories, led by the ablest minds of the day, with the constant objectof improving and developing in new directions the system of inoculation. Surely if compulsion, or every pressure short of compulsion, is justified in enforcing vaccine inoculation on every British family, it would be only reasonable and consistent to expend a million or so a year in the perfection and intelligent control of this remedy by the most skilled investigators. Yet not a halfpenny is spent by the British Government in this way. Medicine is organised in this country by its practitioners as a fee-paid profession; but as a necessary and invaluable branch of the public service it is neglected, misunderstood, and rendered to a large extent futile by inadequate funds and consequent lack of capable leaders. The defiant desperate battle which civilised man wages with Nature must go on; but man’s suffering and loss in the struggle—the delay in his ultimate triumph—depend solely on how much or how little the great civilised communities of the world seek for increased knowledge of nature as the basis of their practical administration and government.

Postscript, December, 1906.—Messrs. Thomas and Breinl, of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, two years ago discovered and published the fact that an arsenical aniline product known as “atoxyl” when injected into patients suffering from Sleeping Sickness destroys the parasite and promises to be a cure for this terrible infection. Experiments are in progress in many quarters in regard to this treatment, but certainty can only be arrived at by prolonged observation of the patients. The newspapers have lately, in error, attributed this discovery to Dr. Robert Koch of Berlin, who has merely confirmed the observations of the earlier workers.—E. R. L.

FOOTNOTES:[1]The foundation of the Royal Society of London is most intimately connected with the University of Oxford. Dr. Wallis, an original member, writes:—‘I take its first ground and foundation to have been in London about the year 1645, when Dr. Wilkins and others met weekly at a certain day and hour.... About the year 1648–9 some of our company were removed to Oxford; first Dr. Wilkins, then I, and soon after Dr. Goddard. Those in London continued to meet there as before (and we with them, when we had occasion to be there), and those of us at Oxford; with Dr. Ward (since Bishop of Salisbury), Dr. Ralph Bathurst (now President of Trinity College in Oxford), Dr. Petty (since Sir William Petty), Dr. Willis (then an eminent physician in Oxford), and divers others, continued such meetings in Oxford and brought those studies into fashion there; meetings first at Dr. Petty’s lodgings (in an apothecarie’s house) because of the convenience of inspecting drugs and the like, as there was occasion; and after his remove to Ireland (though not so constantly) at the lodgings of Dr. Wilkins, then Warden of Wadham College, and after his removal to Trinity College in Cambridge, at the lodgings of the Honourable Mr. Robert Boyle, then resident for divers years in Oxford.... In the meanwhile our company at Gresham College being much again increased by the accession of divers eminent and noble persons, upon his Majesty’s return, we were (about the beginning of the year 1662) by his Majesty’s grace and favour incorporated by the name of the Royal Society.’[2]See, however, the letter from theTimes, reprinted onp. 62.[3]There is a tendency among writers on Variation, as affording the opportunity for the operation of Natural Selection, to assume that the variations presented by organisms are minute variations in every direction around a central point. Those observers who have done useful work in showing the definite and limited character of organic variations have very generally assumed that they are opposing a commonly held opinion that variation is of this equally distributed character. I cannot find that Mr. Darwin made any such assumption; and it is certain, and must on reflection have been recognized by all naturalists, that the variations by the selection and intensification of which natural selection has produced distinct forms or species, and in the course of time altogether new groups of plants and animals, are strictly limited to definite lines rendered possible, and alone possible, by the constitution of the living matter of the parental organism. We have no reason to suppose that the offspring of a beetle could in the course of any number of generations present variations on which selection could operate so as to eventually produce a mammalian vertebrate; or that, in fact, the general result of the process of selection of favourable variations in the past has not beenab initiolimited by the definite and restricted possibilities characteristic of the living substance of the parental organisms of each divergent line or branch of the pedigree.[4]Seep. 62.[5]M. Paul Bourget of theAcadémie Française, is not only a charming writer of modern ‘novels,’ but claims to be a ‘psychologist,’ a title which perhaps may be conceded to every author who writes of human character. His works are so deservedly esteemed, and his erudition is as a rule, so unassailable, that in selecting him as an example of the frequent misrepresentation, among literary men, of Darwin’s doctrine, I trust that my choice may be regarded as a testimony of my admiration for his art. In his novelUn Divorce, published in 1904, M. Bourget, says: ‘La lutte entre les espèces, cette inflexible loi de l’univers animal, a sa correspondance exacte dans le monde des idées. Certaines mentalités constituent de véritables espèces intellectuelles qui ne peuvent pas durer à côté les unes des autres’ (Edition Plon, p. 317). This inflexible law of the animal universe, the struggle between species, is one which is quite unknown to zoologists. The ‘struggle for existence,’ to which Darwin assigned importance, is not a struggle between different species, but one between closely similarmembers of the same species. The struggle between species is by no means universal, but in fact very rare. The preying of one species on another is a moderated affair of balance and adjustment which may be described rather as an accommodation than as a struggle.A more objectionable misinterpretation of the naturalists’ doctrine of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence is that made by journalists and literary politicians, who declare, according to their political bias, either that science rightly teaches that the gross quality measured by wealth and strength alone can survive and should therefore alone be cultivated, or that science (and especially Darwinism) has done serious injury to the progress of mankind by authorizing this teaching. Both are wrong, and owe their error to self-satisfied flippancy and traditional ignorance in regard to nature-knowledge and the teaching of Darwin. The ‘fittest’ does not mean the ‘strongest.’ The causes of survival under Natural Selection are very far indeed from being rightly described as mere strength, nor are they baldly similar to the power of accumulating wealth. Frequently in Nature the more obscure and feeble survive in the struggle because of their modesty and suitability to given conditions, whilst the rich are sent empty away and the mighty perish by hunger.[6]A short discussion of this subject and the introduction of the term ‘educability’ was published in a paper by me entitled ‘The Significance of the Increased Size of the Cerebrum in recent as compared with extinct Mammalia,’Cinquantenaire de la Société de Biologie, Paris, 1899, pp. 48–51.It has been pointed out to me by my friend Dr. Andrews, of the Geological Department of the British Museum, that the brain cavity of the elephants was already of relatively large size in the Eocene members of that group, which may be connected with the persistence of these animals through subsequent geological periods.[7]It would be an error to maintain that the process of Natural Selection is entirely in abeyance in regard to Man. In an interesting book,The Present Evolution of Man, Dr. Archdall Reid has shown that in regard to zymotic diseases, and also in regard to the use of dangerous drugs such as alcohol and opium, there is first of all the acquirement of immunity by powerful races of men through the survival among them of those strains tolerant of the disease or of the drug, and secondly, the introduction of those diseases and drugs by the powerful immune race, in its migrations, to races not previously exposed either to the diseases or the drugs, and a consequent destruction of the invaded race. The survival of the fittest is, in these cases, a survival of the tolerant and eventually of the immune.[8]‘Religion means the knowledge of our destiny and of the means of fulfilling it.’—Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton sometime Bishop of London, vol. ii. p. 195.[9]This has been established in the case of theTrypanosoma Brucei, a minute parasite living in the blood of big game in south-east Africa, amongst which it is disseminated by a blood-sucking fly, theGlossina morsitansor Tsetze fly. The parasite appears to do little or no harm to the native big game, but causes a deadly disease both in the horses and cattle introduced by Europeans and in the more anciently introduced native cattle (of Indian origin). Similar cases are found where a disease germ (such as that of measles) produces but a small degree of sickness and mortality in a population long associated with it, but is deadly to a human community to which it is a new-comer. Thus Europeans have introduced measles with deadly results in the South Sea Islands. A similar kind of difficulty, of which many might be cited, is brought about by man’s importations and exportations of useful plants. He thus brought the Phylloxera to Europe, not realizing before hand that this little parasitic bug, though harmless to the American vine, which puts out new shoots on its roots when the insect injures the old ones, is absolutely deadly to the European vine, which has not acquired the simple but all-important mode of growth by which the American vine is rendered safe. Thus, too, he took the coffee-plant to Ceylon, and found his plantations suddenly devastated by a minute mould, theHimileia vastatrix, which had lived very innocently before that in the Cingalese forests, but was ready to burst into rapacious and destructive activity when the new unadjusted coffee-trees were imported by man and presented in carefully crowded plantations to its unrestrained infection.[10]The phosphorescent disease of the sand-hopper (Talitrus) is described by Giard and Billet in a paper entitled ‘Observations sur la maladie phosphorescente des Talitres et autres Crustacés,’ in the memoirs of theSociété de Biologie, Oct. 19, 1889. Billet subsequently gave a further account of this organism, and named itBacillus Giardi—after Professor Giard of Paris. (Bulletins scientifiques de la France et de la Belgique, xxi. 1898, p. 144).It appears that the parasite is transmitted from one individual to another in coition. The specimens studied by Giard and Billet were obtained at Wimereux near Boulogne. I found the disease very abundant at Ouistreham near Caen in the summer of 1900. I have not observed it nor heard of its occurrence on the English coast. Sea-water commonly contains a free-living phosphorescent bacterium which can be cultivated in flasks of liquid food so as to give rich growths which glow like a lamp when the flask is agitated so as to expose the contents to oxidation. This bacterium is not, however, the cause of the ‘phosphorescence’ of the sea often seen on our coasts. That is due in most cases to a much larger organism, as big as a small pin’s head, and known asNoctiluca miliaris.[11]As little is the question of the use and abuse of food and drink dealt with, as yet, by civilized man. As in many other matters man has carried into his later crowded, artificial, nature-controlling life habits and tendencies derived from savage prehistoric days, so has he perpetuated ways of feeding which are mere traditions from his early ‘animal’ days, and have never been seriously called in question and put to proof. The persistence under new conditions of either habit or structure which belonged to old conditions may be attended with great danger and difficulty to an organism which changes, as man does, with great rapidity important features in its general surroundings and mode of life. This is in effect Metschnikoff’s doctrine of ‘désharmonies.’ It is probable that in very early days when a tribe of primitive men killed a mammoth, they all rushed on to the dead monster and gorged as much of its flesh as they could swallow (cooked or possibly uncooked). They had to take in enough to last for another week or two—that is to say, until another large animal should be trapped and slain. Accordingly he who could eat most would be strongest and best able to seize a good share when the next opportunity arrived, and it naturally became considered an indication of strength, vigour, and future prosperity to be capable of gorging large quantities of food. By means of the phrases ‘enjoying a good appetite,’ or ‘a good trencherman,’ or other such approving terms, civilized society still encourages the heavy feeder. The lower classes always consider a ravenous appetite to be an indication of strength and future prosperity in a child. Most healthy men, and even many women, in Western Europe, attack their food and swallow it without sufficient mastication, and as though they did not hope to get another chance of feeding for a week or two to come. Medical men have never ventured to investigate seriously whether civilized man is doing best for his health in behaving like a savage about his food. It is their business to attend to the patient with a disordered digestion, but not to experiment upon the amount of food of various kinds which the modern man should swallow in order to avoid indigestion and yet supply his alimentary needs. No individual can possibly pay medical men to make these observations. It is the business of the State to do so, because such knowledge is not only needed by the private citizen, but is of enormous importance in the management of armies and navies, in the victualling of hospitals, asylums, and prisons. Thousands of tons of preserved meat have been wasted in recent wars because the reckless and ignorant persons who purchased the preserved meat to feed soldiers had never taken the trouble to ascertain whether preserved meat can be eaten by a body of men as a regular and chief article of diet. It appears that certain methods of preserving meat render it innutritious and impossible as a diet.It is probable from recent experiment that we all, except those unfortunate few who do not get enough, eat about twice as much as we require, and that the superfluous quantity swallowed not only is wasted, but is actually a cause of serious illness and suffering. It surely is an urgent matter that these questions about food should be thoroughly investigated and settled. In the opinion of the most eminent physiologist of the United States (Professor Bowditch), we shall never establish a rational and healthy mode of feeding ourselves until we give up the barbarous but to some persons pleasant custom of converting the meal into a social function; we are thus tempted into excess. Only long and extensive experiment can provide us with definite and conclusive information on this matter, which is far more important than, at first sight, it seems to be. And similarly with regard to the admittedly serious question of alcohol—only very extensive and authoritative experiment will suffice to show mankind whether it is a wise and healthy thing to take it in small quantities, the exact limits of which must be stated, or to reject it altogether.[12]It is, perhaps, needful to point out that what is aimed at is that the education of all the youth of the country, both of pass-men and of class-men, of girls as well as of boys, of the rich as well as of the poor, should be primarily directed to imparting an acquaintance with what we already possess in respect of knowledge of Nature, and the training of the pupil so as to enable him or her (a) to make use of that knowledge, and (b) to take part in gaining new knowledge of Nature, at this moment needed but non-existent. This does not involve the complete exclusion of other subjects of instruction, to which about one-third of the time and effort of school and college life might be devoted.[13]I desire especially to draw the attention of those who have misunderstood and misrepresented my estimate of the importance of the study of History, to this paragraph.—E.R.L.[14]The practical steps which would correspond to the views enunciated in this discourse are two. First, the formation of an educational association to establish one or more schools and colleges in which nature-knowledge and training in nature-searching should be the chief matters to which attention would be given, whilst reasonable methods would also be employed for implanting in the minds of the students a love and understanding of literature and other forms or art. Those who desired such an education for their children would support these schools and colleges, just as in the days of Anglican exclusiveness the Nonconformists and Roman Catholics supported independent educational institutions. The second practical step would be the formation of a political union which would make due respect to efficiency, that is to say, to a knowledge of Nature, a test question in all political contests. No candidate for Parliament would receive the votes of the union unless he were either himself educated in a knowledge of Nature or promised his support exclusively to ministers who would insist on the utilization of nature-knowledge in the administration of the great departments of State, and would take active measures of a financial character to develop with far greater rapidity and certainty than is at present the case, that inquiry into and control of Nature which is the indispensable factor in human welfare and progress. Such a programme will, I hope, at no distant date obtain the support of a sufficient number of parliamentary voters to raise political questions of a more genuine and interesting character than those which many find so tedious at the present moment.[15]It seems necessary to emphasize that I here say merely that no “new support” is given to the notion of so-called telepathy, a support some persons have wrongly claimed. I do not say that the notion is rendered less likely to prove true than it was before.[16]See the introduction to Part II. of a Treatise on Zoology. Edited by E. Ray Lankester (London: A. & C. Black).[17]From the Jubilee volume of theSoc. de Biol.of Paris, 1899. Reprinted inNature, vol. lxi., 1900, pp. 624, 625.[18]I use the term ‘acquired’ without prejudice in the sense given to that word by Lamarck himself. It is of primary importance that those who follow this controversy should clearly understand what Lamarck pointed to by this word ‘acquired.’ Utter confusion and absurdity has resulted from a misunderstanding on this subject by some writers who deliberately call newly appearing congenital characters ‘acquired’ or ‘acquisitions.’[19]Nature, vol. li., 1894, p. 127.[20]In a review of Metschnikoff’s ‘Leçons sur l’Inflammation’ inNature, 1899.[21]See thenext chapter, devoted to this subject.[22]I had the honour and good fortune to found this association and to collect the funds so generously given to it—then for many years to act as its honorary secretary, to design and superintend the erection of the laboratory and to organize, in conjunction with my scientific colleagues, its staff, its scheme of work and government. On the death of our beloved president, Professor Huxley, I was elected as his successor, and still occupy that position.[23]The disease has actually entered into the administrative area known as British East Africa, but has not made any rapid progress towards the coast. According to a report by Dr. Wiggins, the disease is confined in British East Africa, as in Uganda, to those areas in whichGlossina palpalisoccurs.[24]Only last year (1905) Lieut. Tulloch, of the Army Medical Department, who with Professor Minchin was engaged in carrying on further researches for the Royal Society on the sleeping sickness at Entebbe in Uganda, became infected by the trypanosome, probably through an unobserved bite by a tsetze fly, and died of the disease soon after his return to England.[25]Professor Minchin investigated this subject during 1905 in Uganda whither he went on behalf of the Tropical Diseases Committee of the Royal Society. He did not discover anything corresponding to the development of the malarial parasite in the gnat, but his investigations are not yet brought to a conclusion (December, 1906).[26]Dr. Schaudinn died in 1906. He was only 35 years of age.[27]Since this was written a professorship of Protozoology has with the assistance of the Colonial Office been established in the University of London. This is a first step towards a recognition of the duty of the State in this matter.[28]Seefootnoteon p. 179.

[1]The foundation of the Royal Society of London is most intimately connected with the University of Oxford. Dr. Wallis, an original member, writes:—‘I take its first ground and foundation to have been in London about the year 1645, when Dr. Wilkins and others met weekly at a certain day and hour.... About the year 1648–9 some of our company were removed to Oxford; first Dr. Wilkins, then I, and soon after Dr. Goddard. Those in London continued to meet there as before (and we with them, when we had occasion to be there), and those of us at Oxford; with Dr. Ward (since Bishop of Salisbury), Dr. Ralph Bathurst (now President of Trinity College in Oxford), Dr. Petty (since Sir William Petty), Dr. Willis (then an eminent physician in Oxford), and divers others, continued such meetings in Oxford and brought those studies into fashion there; meetings first at Dr. Petty’s lodgings (in an apothecarie’s house) because of the convenience of inspecting drugs and the like, as there was occasion; and after his remove to Ireland (though not so constantly) at the lodgings of Dr. Wilkins, then Warden of Wadham College, and after his removal to Trinity College in Cambridge, at the lodgings of the Honourable Mr. Robert Boyle, then resident for divers years in Oxford.... In the meanwhile our company at Gresham College being much again increased by the accession of divers eminent and noble persons, upon his Majesty’s return, we were (about the beginning of the year 1662) by his Majesty’s grace and favour incorporated by the name of the Royal Society.’

[2]See, however, the letter from theTimes, reprinted onp. 62.

[3]There is a tendency among writers on Variation, as affording the opportunity for the operation of Natural Selection, to assume that the variations presented by organisms are minute variations in every direction around a central point. Those observers who have done useful work in showing the definite and limited character of organic variations have very generally assumed that they are opposing a commonly held opinion that variation is of this equally distributed character. I cannot find that Mr. Darwin made any such assumption; and it is certain, and must on reflection have been recognized by all naturalists, that the variations by the selection and intensification of which natural selection has produced distinct forms or species, and in the course of time altogether new groups of plants and animals, are strictly limited to definite lines rendered possible, and alone possible, by the constitution of the living matter of the parental organism. We have no reason to suppose that the offspring of a beetle could in the course of any number of generations present variations on which selection could operate so as to eventually produce a mammalian vertebrate; or that, in fact, the general result of the process of selection of favourable variations in the past has not beenab initiolimited by the definite and restricted possibilities characteristic of the living substance of the parental organisms of each divergent line or branch of the pedigree.

[4]Seep. 62.

[5]M. Paul Bourget of theAcadémie Française, is not only a charming writer of modern ‘novels,’ but claims to be a ‘psychologist,’ a title which perhaps may be conceded to every author who writes of human character. His works are so deservedly esteemed, and his erudition is as a rule, so unassailable, that in selecting him as an example of the frequent misrepresentation, among literary men, of Darwin’s doctrine, I trust that my choice may be regarded as a testimony of my admiration for his art. In his novelUn Divorce, published in 1904, M. Bourget, says: ‘La lutte entre les espèces, cette inflexible loi de l’univers animal, a sa correspondance exacte dans le monde des idées. Certaines mentalités constituent de véritables espèces intellectuelles qui ne peuvent pas durer à côté les unes des autres’ (Edition Plon, p. 317). This inflexible law of the animal universe, the struggle between species, is one which is quite unknown to zoologists. The ‘struggle for existence,’ to which Darwin assigned importance, is not a struggle between different species, but one between closely similarmembers of the same species. The struggle between species is by no means universal, but in fact very rare. The preying of one species on another is a moderated affair of balance and adjustment which may be described rather as an accommodation than as a struggle.A more objectionable misinterpretation of the naturalists’ doctrine of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence is that made by journalists and literary politicians, who declare, according to their political bias, either that science rightly teaches that the gross quality measured by wealth and strength alone can survive and should therefore alone be cultivated, or that science (and especially Darwinism) has done serious injury to the progress of mankind by authorizing this teaching. Both are wrong, and owe their error to self-satisfied flippancy and traditional ignorance in regard to nature-knowledge and the teaching of Darwin. The ‘fittest’ does not mean the ‘strongest.’ The causes of survival under Natural Selection are very far indeed from being rightly described as mere strength, nor are they baldly similar to the power of accumulating wealth. Frequently in Nature the more obscure and feeble survive in the struggle because of their modesty and suitability to given conditions, whilst the rich are sent empty away and the mighty perish by hunger.

A more objectionable misinterpretation of the naturalists’ doctrine of the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence is that made by journalists and literary politicians, who declare, according to their political bias, either that science rightly teaches that the gross quality measured by wealth and strength alone can survive and should therefore alone be cultivated, or that science (and especially Darwinism) has done serious injury to the progress of mankind by authorizing this teaching. Both are wrong, and owe their error to self-satisfied flippancy and traditional ignorance in regard to nature-knowledge and the teaching of Darwin. The ‘fittest’ does not mean the ‘strongest.’ The causes of survival under Natural Selection are very far indeed from being rightly described as mere strength, nor are they baldly similar to the power of accumulating wealth. Frequently in Nature the more obscure and feeble survive in the struggle because of their modesty and suitability to given conditions, whilst the rich are sent empty away and the mighty perish by hunger.

[6]A short discussion of this subject and the introduction of the term ‘educability’ was published in a paper by me entitled ‘The Significance of the Increased Size of the Cerebrum in recent as compared with extinct Mammalia,’Cinquantenaire de la Société de Biologie, Paris, 1899, pp. 48–51.It has been pointed out to me by my friend Dr. Andrews, of the Geological Department of the British Museum, that the brain cavity of the elephants was already of relatively large size in the Eocene members of that group, which may be connected with the persistence of these animals through subsequent geological periods.

It has been pointed out to me by my friend Dr. Andrews, of the Geological Department of the British Museum, that the brain cavity of the elephants was already of relatively large size in the Eocene members of that group, which may be connected with the persistence of these animals through subsequent geological periods.

[7]It would be an error to maintain that the process of Natural Selection is entirely in abeyance in regard to Man. In an interesting book,The Present Evolution of Man, Dr. Archdall Reid has shown that in regard to zymotic diseases, and also in regard to the use of dangerous drugs such as alcohol and opium, there is first of all the acquirement of immunity by powerful races of men through the survival among them of those strains tolerant of the disease or of the drug, and secondly, the introduction of those diseases and drugs by the powerful immune race, in its migrations, to races not previously exposed either to the diseases or the drugs, and a consequent destruction of the invaded race. The survival of the fittest is, in these cases, a survival of the tolerant and eventually of the immune.

[8]‘Religion means the knowledge of our destiny and of the means of fulfilling it.’—Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton sometime Bishop of London, vol. ii. p. 195.

[9]This has been established in the case of theTrypanosoma Brucei, a minute parasite living in the blood of big game in south-east Africa, amongst which it is disseminated by a blood-sucking fly, theGlossina morsitansor Tsetze fly. The parasite appears to do little or no harm to the native big game, but causes a deadly disease both in the horses and cattle introduced by Europeans and in the more anciently introduced native cattle (of Indian origin). Similar cases are found where a disease germ (such as that of measles) produces but a small degree of sickness and mortality in a population long associated with it, but is deadly to a human community to which it is a new-comer. Thus Europeans have introduced measles with deadly results in the South Sea Islands. A similar kind of difficulty, of which many might be cited, is brought about by man’s importations and exportations of useful plants. He thus brought the Phylloxera to Europe, not realizing before hand that this little parasitic bug, though harmless to the American vine, which puts out new shoots on its roots when the insect injures the old ones, is absolutely deadly to the European vine, which has not acquired the simple but all-important mode of growth by which the American vine is rendered safe. Thus, too, he took the coffee-plant to Ceylon, and found his plantations suddenly devastated by a minute mould, theHimileia vastatrix, which had lived very innocently before that in the Cingalese forests, but was ready to burst into rapacious and destructive activity when the new unadjusted coffee-trees were imported by man and presented in carefully crowded plantations to its unrestrained infection.

[10]The phosphorescent disease of the sand-hopper (Talitrus) is described by Giard and Billet in a paper entitled ‘Observations sur la maladie phosphorescente des Talitres et autres Crustacés,’ in the memoirs of theSociété de Biologie, Oct. 19, 1889. Billet subsequently gave a further account of this organism, and named itBacillus Giardi—after Professor Giard of Paris. (Bulletins scientifiques de la France et de la Belgique, xxi. 1898, p. 144).It appears that the parasite is transmitted from one individual to another in coition. The specimens studied by Giard and Billet were obtained at Wimereux near Boulogne. I found the disease very abundant at Ouistreham near Caen in the summer of 1900. I have not observed it nor heard of its occurrence on the English coast. Sea-water commonly contains a free-living phosphorescent bacterium which can be cultivated in flasks of liquid food so as to give rich growths which glow like a lamp when the flask is agitated so as to expose the contents to oxidation. This bacterium is not, however, the cause of the ‘phosphorescence’ of the sea often seen on our coasts. That is due in most cases to a much larger organism, as big as a small pin’s head, and known asNoctiluca miliaris.

It appears that the parasite is transmitted from one individual to another in coition. The specimens studied by Giard and Billet were obtained at Wimereux near Boulogne. I found the disease very abundant at Ouistreham near Caen in the summer of 1900. I have not observed it nor heard of its occurrence on the English coast. Sea-water commonly contains a free-living phosphorescent bacterium which can be cultivated in flasks of liquid food so as to give rich growths which glow like a lamp when the flask is agitated so as to expose the contents to oxidation. This bacterium is not, however, the cause of the ‘phosphorescence’ of the sea often seen on our coasts. That is due in most cases to a much larger organism, as big as a small pin’s head, and known asNoctiluca miliaris.

[11]As little is the question of the use and abuse of food and drink dealt with, as yet, by civilized man. As in many other matters man has carried into his later crowded, artificial, nature-controlling life habits and tendencies derived from savage prehistoric days, so has he perpetuated ways of feeding which are mere traditions from his early ‘animal’ days, and have never been seriously called in question and put to proof. The persistence under new conditions of either habit or structure which belonged to old conditions may be attended with great danger and difficulty to an organism which changes, as man does, with great rapidity important features in its general surroundings and mode of life. This is in effect Metschnikoff’s doctrine of ‘désharmonies.’ It is probable that in very early days when a tribe of primitive men killed a mammoth, they all rushed on to the dead monster and gorged as much of its flesh as they could swallow (cooked or possibly uncooked). They had to take in enough to last for another week or two—that is to say, until another large animal should be trapped and slain. Accordingly he who could eat most would be strongest and best able to seize a good share when the next opportunity arrived, and it naturally became considered an indication of strength, vigour, and future prosperity to be capable of gorging large quantities of food. By means of the phrases ‘enjoying a good appetite,’ or ‘a good trencherman,’ or other such approving terms, civilized society still encourages the heavy feeder. The lower classes always consider a ravenous appetite to be an indication of strength and future prosperity in a child. Most healthy men, and even many women, in Western Europe, attack their food and swallow it without sufficient mastication, and as though they did not hope to get another chance of feeding for a week or two to come. Medical men have never ventured to investigate seriously whether civilized man is doing best for his health in behaving like a savage about his food. It is their business to attend to the patient with a disordered digestion, but not to experiment upon the amount of food of various kinds which the modern man should swallow in order to avoid indigestion and yet supply his alimentary needs. No individual can possibly pay medical men to make these observations. It is the business of the State to do so, because such knowledge is not only needed by the private citizen, but is of enormous importance in the management of armies and navies, in the victualling of hospitals, asylums, and prisons. Thousands of tons of preserved meat have been wasted in recent wars because the reckless and ignorant persons who purchased the preserved meat to feed soldiers had never taken the trouble to ascertain whether preserved meat can be eaten by a body of men as a regular and chief article of diet. It appears that certain methods of preserving meat render it innutritious and impossible as a diet.It is probable from recent experiment that we all, except those unfortunate few who do not get enough, eat about twice as much as we require, and that the superfluous quantity swallowed not only is wasted, but is actually a cause of serious illness and suffering. It surely is an urgent matter that these questions about food should be thoroughly investigated and settled. In the opinion of the most eminent physiologist of the United States (Professor Bowditch), we shall never establish a rational and healthy mode of feeding ourselves until we give up the barbarous but to some persons pleasant custom of converting the meal into a social function; we are thus tempted into excess. Only long and extensive experiment can provide us with definite and conclusive information on this matter, which is far more important than, at first sight, it seems to be. And similarly with regard to the admittedly serious question of alcohol—only very extensive and authoritative experiment will suffice to show mankind whether it is a wise and healthy thing to take it in small quantities, the exact limits of which must be stated, or to reject it altogether.

It is probable from recent experiment that we all, except those unfortunate few who do not get enough, eat about twice as much as we require, and that the superfluous quantity swallowed not only is wasted, but is actually a cause of serious illness and suffering. It surely is an urgent matter that these questions about food should be thoroughly investigated and settled. In the opinion of the most eminent physiologist of the United States (Professor Bowditch), we shall never establish a rational and healthy mode of feeding ourselves until we give up the barbarous but to some persons pleasant custom of converting the meal into a social function; we are thus tempted into excess. Only long and extensive experiment can provide us with definite and conclusive information on this matter, which is far more important than, at first sight, it seems to be. And similarly with regard to the admittedly serious question of alcohol—only very extensive and authoritative experiment will suffice to show mankind whether it is a wise and healthy thing to take it in small quantities, the exact limits of which must be stated, or to reject it altogether.

[12]It is, perhaps, needful to point out that what is aimed at is that the education of all the youth of the country, both of pass-men and of class-men, of girls as well as of boys, of the rich as well as of the poor, should be primarily directed to imparting an acquaintance with what we already possess in respect of knowledge of Nature, and the training of the pupil so as to enable him or her (a) to make use of that knowledge, and (b) to take part in gaining new knowledge of Nature, at this moment needed but non-existent. This does not involve the complete exclusion of other subjects of instruction, to which about one-third of the time and effort of school and college life might be devoted.

[13]I desire especially to draw the attention of those who have misunderstood and misrepresented my estimate of the importance of the study of History, to this paragraph.—E.R.L.

[14]The practical steps which would correspond to the views enunciated in this discourse are two. First, the formation of an educational association to establish one or more schools and colleges in which nature-knowledge and training in nature-searching should be the chief matters to which attention would be given, whilst reasonable methods would also be employed for implanting in the minds of the students a love and understanding of literature and other forms or art. Those who desired such an education for their children would support these schools and colleges, just as in the days of Anglican exclusiveness the Nonconformists and Roman Catholics supported independent educational institutions. The second practical step would be the formation of a political union which would make due respect to efficiency, that is to say, to a knowledge of Nature, a test question in all political contests. No candidate for Parliament would receive the votes of the union unless he were either himself educated in a knowledge of Nature or promised his support exclusively to ministers who would insist on the utilization of nature-knowledge in the administration of the great departments of State, and would take active measures of a financial character to develop with far greater rapidity and certainty than is at present the case, that inquiry into and control of Nature which is the indispensable factor in human welfare and progress. Such a programme will, I hope, at no distant date obtain the support of a sufficient number of parliamentary voters to raise political questions of a more genuine and interesting character than those which many find so tedious at the present moment.

[15]It seems necessary to emphasize that I here say merely that no “new support” is given to the notion of so-called telepathy, a support some persons have wrongly claimed. I do not say that the notion is rendered less likely to prove true than it was before.

[16]See the introduction to Part II. of a Treatise on Zoology. Edited by E. Ray Lankester (London: A. & C. Black).

[17]From the Jubilee volume of theSoc. de Biol.of Paris, 1899. Reprinted inNature, vol. lxi., 1900, pp. 624, 625.

[18]I use the term ‘acquired’ without prejudice in the sense given to that word by Lamarck himself. It is of primary importance that those who follow this controversy should clearly understand what Lamarck pointed to by this word ‘acquired.’ Utter confusion and absurdity has resulted from a misunderstanding on this subject by some writers who deliberately call newly appearing congenital characters ‘acquired’ or ‘acquisitions.’

[19]Nature, vol. li., 1894, p. 127.

[20]In a review of Metschnikoff’s ‘Leçons sur l’Inflammation’ inNature, 1899.

[21]See thenext chapter, devoted to this subject.

[22]I had the honour and good fortune to found this association and to collect the funds so generously given to it—then for many years to act as its honorary secretary, to design and superintend the erection of the laboratory and to organize, in conjunction with my scientific colleagues, its staff, its scheme of work and government. On the death of our beloved president, Professor Huxley, I was elected as his successor, and still occupy that position.

[23]The disease has actually entered into the administrative area known as British East Africa, but has not made any rapid progress towards the coast. According to a report by Dr. Wiggins, the disease is confined in British East Africa, as in Uganda, to those areas in whichGlossina palpalisoccurs.

[24]Only last year (1905) Lieut. Tulloch, of the Army Medical Department, who with Professor Minchin was engaged in carrying on further researches for the Royal Society on the sleeping sickness at Entebbe in Uganda, became infected by the trypanosome, probably through an unobserved bite by a tsetze fly, and died of the disease soon after his return to England.

[25]Professor Minchin investigated this subject during 1905 in Uganda whither he went on behalf of the Tropical Diseases Committee of the Royal Society. He did not discover anything corresponding to the development of the malarial parasite in the gnat, but his investigations are not yet brought to a conclusion (December, 1906).

[26]Dr. Schaudinn died in 1906. He was only 35 years of age.

[27]Since this was written a professorship of Protozoology has with the assistance of the Colonial Office been established in the University of London. This is a first step towards a recognition of the duty of the State in this matter.

[28]Seefootnoteon p. 179.

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