Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1921 edition. Excerpt: ... XIII Mental Inheritance. "splitting Up Of Phenomena" MAN has proclaimed himself "conqueror of the air." He has fashioned himself ships that venture fishlike through the darkness of the subma rine wastes. Daily millions of humans are at work inventing, altering, improving engines and materials so that man may further extend his underwater and aerial adventures. Why? The aviator, the submarine builder, will tell you that his work is done solely for the purpose of bettering and making happier the human race. He will probably talk largely of Science and of his loyalty to her. He is deceiving himself and you, if you believe him. It is not love of science, nor the conqueror's lust, to bring new worlds under his sway that have driven man to the air and the depths of the sea. In my belief it is homesickness. In the course of his evolution man has been both fish and bird. Even though he has dropped his scales and fins, his feathers and wings, in bis upward climb, through inherited recollection there comes to him the faintest memory of his joy in his former domains. When he flies, when he takes to the submarine, he is trying to get back to these lost provinces, and to that end he is building himself mechanical bodies to approximate the shapes that were his, in his paleozoic days. Man stands, at the peak of things, the most splendid product of the terrific travail that evolved a world from chaos. He is the child of endless thousands of years of human development upward from the first ape-man. And he is more--child of the fish, child of the serpent, child of the bird. Hold in mind that picture of man, the ultimate and supreme product of creation, with a heritage stretching back to the protozoa, and turn your eyes for a moment to the kitten at play...
