Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 11.djvu/172

160 repair the injury, otherwise very slow at healing. In some similar way it must be that a small seed of a plant selects just such ingredients from the soil as shall make it thrive and increase. On these organic powers of initiation and selection, Lucretius ponders in his great poem, and wonders how it is that different animals—the pig, dog, and fowl—eat the same food and yet make of it such diverse substance. On a seed's peculiar nature it may follow whether a field shall give its substance to maples or cabbages. Just so a volcanic island's population depends, to a large extent, on the first comers—on what human tribe first lands there, what seeds and insects are first wafted upon it, and what birds first alight on its shores. Once in possession, the process of multiplication soon renders occupancy by stray creatures of superior kinds impossible; and so we have incidentally a case where the best may not be the conquerors and survivors. Mere precedence in time is often of much account. No man shall ever have as many children as Adam. The first poets exhausted the most striking and beautiful similes in Nature, such as now may independently but uselessly occur to every cultured imagination. The limits of choice in the subjects for invention, authorship, and art, are constantly narrowed by the occupation of territory by those who have gone before. Of course, infinite additions to knowledge and achievement are possible, but many efforts suggested by the wants of the time, though quite original, are fruitless simply because they do not happen to be first.

With respect to the great effectiveness of force, when used largely or totally in initiation, Prof. Stewart thinks that intelligence depends on conditions in the organism of unstable equilibrium, and he draws a parallel between the great powers of a human mind and the marked decomposibility of its brain-substance. The particular supremacy of man in Nature is thus traced to a principle which highly characterizes his own frame, and of which he avails himself in his mastery of external Nature—delicacy of poise in construction rendering large powers obedient to slight ones.

Our subject further suggests the importance of leadership among mankind. Heroes have been so unduly praised that a reaction has set in with many thinkers, who would detract from their real value. Popular discontent, or a wide-spread spirit of enterprise, often lingers in useless agitation for want of some man a little bolder than the rest, who shall make the first onslaught on tyranny, or captain the first ship that shall set its prow toward the shores of a new world. To be sure, a hero is no more than a representative of the strong feelings of his land and time; yet, without his faith and enthusiasm, perhaps but little more than that of many of his neighbors, their desires and hopes might never have fulfillment.

Finally, our theme shows us the immense difficulties in the way of reducing some inquiries of deep interest to exact treatment. If the