Chapter I: Front Matter

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THE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER OF MAN

A Brief History of His Origin and Development through Conformity to Environment

Being the Morse Lectures of 1895

by

JOHN M. TYLER Professor of Biology, Amherst College

New York Charles Scribner's Sons

1896

Morse Lectures

1893--THE PLACE OF CHRIST IN
MODERN THEOLOGY. By Rev. A.M.
Fairbairn, D.D. 8vo, $2.50

1894--THE RELIGIONS OF JAPAN. By Rev.
William Elliot Griffis, D.D.
12mo, $2.00.

1895--THE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER OF
MAN. By Professor John M. Tyler.
12mo, $1.75.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I

THE PROBLEM: THE MODE OF ITS SOLUTION

The question.--The two theories of man's origin.--The argument purely historical.--Means of tracing man's ancestry and history.--Classification.--Ontogenesis and Phylogenesis.

CHAPTER II

PROTOZOA TO WORMS: CELLS, TISSUES, AND ORGANS

Amoeba: Its anatomy and physiology.--Development of the cell.--Hydra: The development of digestive and reproductive organs, and of tissues.--Forms intermediate between amoeba and hydra: Magosphæra, volvox.--Embryonic development.--Turbellaria: Appearance of a body wall, of ganglion, and nerve-cords.

CHAPTER III

WORMS TO VERTEBRATES: SKELETON AND HEAD

Worms and the development of organs.--Mollusks: The external protective skeleton leads to degeneration or stagnation.--Annelids and arthropods: The external locomotive skeleton leads to temporary rapid advance, but fails of the goal.--Its disadvantages.--Vertebrates: The internal locomotive skeleton leads to backbone and brain.--Reasons for their dominance.--The primitive vertebrate.

CHAPTER IV

VERTEBRATES: BACKBONE AND BRAIN

The advance of vertebrates from fish through amphibia and reptiles to mammals.--The development of skeleton, appendages, circulatory and respiratory systems, and brain.--Mammals: The oviparous monotremata.--Marsupials.--Placental mammals.--Development of the placenta.--Primates.--Arboreal life and the development of the hand.--Comparison of man with the highest apes.--Recapitulation of the history of man's origin and development.--The sequence of dominant functions.

CHAPTER V

THE HISTORY OF MENTAL DEVELOPMENT AND ITS SEQUENCE OF FUNCTIONS

Mode of investigation.--Intellect.--Sense-perceptions.--Association. --Inference and understanding.--Rational intelligence.--Modes of mental or nervous action.--Reflex action, unconscious and comparatively mechanical.--Instinctive action: The actor is conscious, but guided by heredity.--Intelligent action.--The actor is conscious, guided by intelligence resulting from experience or observation.--The will stimulated by motives.--Appetites.--Fear and other prudential considerations.--Care for young and love of mates.--The dawn of unselfishness.--Motives furnished by the rational intelligence: Truth, right, duty.--Recapitulation: The will, stimulated by ever higher motives, is finally to be dominated by unselfishness and love of truth and righteousness.--These rouse the only inappeasable hunger, and are capable of indefinite development.--Strength of these motives.--Their complete dominance the goal of human development.

CHAPTER VI

NATURAL SELECTION AND ENVIRONMENT

The reversal of the sequence of functions leads to extermination, degeneration, or, rarely, to stagnation.--Natural selection becomes more unsparing as we go higher.--Extinction.--Severity of the struggle for life.--Environment one.--But lower animals come into vital relation with but a small part of it.--It consists of a myriad of forces, which, as acting on a given form, may be considered as one grand resultant.--Environment is thus a power making at first for digestion and reproduction, then for muscular strength and activity, then for shrewdness, finally for unselfishness and righteousness.--An ultimate "power, not ourselves, making for righteousness," a personality.--Our knowledge of this personality may be valid, even though very incomplete.--Religion.--Conformity to the spiritual in or behind environment is likeness to God.--The conservative tendency in evolution.

CHAPTER VII

CONFORMITY TO ENVIRONMENT

Human environment.--The development of the family as the school of man's training.--The family as the school of unselfishness and obedience.--The family as the basis of social life.--Society as an aid to conformity to environment by increasing intelligence and training conscience.--Mental and moral heredity.--Personal magnetism.--Man's search for a king.--The essence of Christianity.--Conformity to environment gives future supremacy, but often at the cost of present hardship.--Conformity as obedience to the laws of our being.--Environment best understood through the study of the human mind.--Productiveness and prospectiveness of vital capital.--Faith.

CHAPTER VIII

MAN

Composed of atoms and molecules, hence subject to chemical and physical laws.--As a living being.--As an animal.--As a vertebrate.--As a mammal.--As a social being.--As a personal and moral being.--The conflict between the higher and the lower in man.--As a religious being.--As hero.--He has not yet attained.--Future man.--He will utilize all his powers, duly subordinating the lower to the higher.--The triumph of the common people.

CHAPTER IX

THE TEACHINGS OF THE BIBLE

Subject of the Bible.--_Man_: Body, intellect, heart.--_God_: Law, sin, and penalty.--God manifested in Christ.--Salvation, the divine life permeating man--Faith.--Prayer.--Hope.--The Church.--The battle.--The victory.--The crown.

CHAPTER X

PRESENT ASPECTS OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION

The struggle for existence.--Natural selection.--Correlation of organs.--Fortuitous variation.--Origin of the fittest.--Nägeli's theory: Initial tendency supreme.--Weismann and the Neo-Darwinians: Natural selection omnipotent.--The Neo-Lamarckians.--Comparison of the Neo-Darwinian and the Neo-Lamarckian views.--"Individuality" the controlling power throughout the life of the organism.--Transmission of special effects of use and disuse.--Summary.

CHART SHOWING SEQUENCE OF ATTAINMENTS AND OF DOMINANT FUNCTIONS

PHYLOGENETIC CHART OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM

INDEX