An introduction to the mammalian dentition / by T. Wingate Todd.

  • Todd, T. Wingate (Thomas Wingate), 1885-1938.
Date:
1918
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An introduction to the mammalian dentition / by T. Wingate Todd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/300 (page 12)
    can be perfectly harmonized with the paleontological record there is, to the writer’s mind, no reason for further hesitation in accepting as a fundamental basis of mammalian tooth forms the Cope-Osborn theory clothed in its most modern guise. All other interpretations have been made subservient to this and the reader’s mind is not distracted by reference either fre- quently or fully to other views. It has been the intention of the writer to illustrate three fundamental principles of life: the marvellous potentiality for adaptation exhibited by organisms in general through the con¬ tinual creation of the absolutely new; the occurrence of adapta¬ tions always in one of several definite directions; the frequency of pause, reversal, or secondary progression, in other words the discontinuous character of evolution. In every field it has been human fortune to discover first the laws of blood and iron, to gain an impression of irrevocable immutable implacable pitiless Force unsoftened by one touch of tenderness. Only with the fuller biological knowledge conies the vision that “if the courses be departed from, the ends will change” and further that the courses can be and con¬ stantly are departed from. One recollects how Claude Ber¬ nard’s spirit revolted from the views current forty years ago when he wrote: “It is not by struggling against cosmic conditions that the organism develops and maintains its place; on the contrary, it is by an adaptation to, an agreement with these conditions. So the living being does not form an excep¬ tion to the great natural harmony which makes things adapt themselves to one another; it breaks no concord; it is neither in contradiction to nor struggling against general cosmic forces; far from that, it forms a member of the universal concert of things, and the life of the animal, for exam¬ ple, is only a fragment of the total life of the universe.” At this time when the soul of France typifies the spirit of emancipation from all that is hide-bound and cruelly inexora¬ ble, it is delightful to remember that Bernard’s fellow-coun-