injurious assault. It is
the selection of a certain means of self-preservation. But at what level
of life the animal becomes conscious of this disturbance, and "feels
pain," it is very difficult to determine. The subject is too vast to be
opened here. In a special investigation of it. [*] I concluded that there is
no proof of the presence of any degree of consciousness in the
invertebrate world even in the higher insects; that there is probably
only a dull, blurred, imperfect consciousness below the level of the
higher mammals and birds; and that even the consciousness of an ape is
something very different from what educated Europeans, on the ground of
their own experience, call consciousness. It is too often forgotten that
pain is in proportion to consciousness. We must beware of such fallacies
as transferring our experience of pain to a Mesozoic reptile, with an
ounce or two of cerebrum to twenty tons of muscle and bone.

* "The Evolution of Mind" (Black), 1911.

One other view of evolution, which we find in some recent and reputable
works (such as Professor Geddes and Thomson's "Evolution," 1911), calls
for consideration. In the ordinary Darwinian view the variations of the
young from their parents are indefinite, and spread in all directions.
They may continue to occur for ages without any of them proving an
advantage to their possessors. Then the environment may change, and
a certain variation may prove an advantage, and be continuously and
increasingly selected. Thus these indefinite variations may be so
controlled by the environment during millions of years that the fish at
last becomes an elephant or a man. The alternative view, urged by a few
writers, is that the variations were "definitely directed." The phrase
seems merely to complicate the story of evolution with a fresh and
superfluous mystery. The nature and precise action of this "definite
direction" within the organism are quite unintelligible, and the facts
seem explainable just as well--or not less imperfectly--without as with
this mystic agency. Radiolaria, Sponges, Corals, Sharks, Mudfishes,
Duckbills, etc., do not change (except within the limits of their
family) during millions of years, because they keep to an environment
to which they are fitted. On the other hand, certain fishes, reptiles,
etc., remain in a changing environment, and they must change with it.
The process has its obscurities, but we make them darker, it seems to
me, with