Edith Gilman Brewster - "Some Three Hundred Years Ago"

C. N. Williamson - "A Soldier of the Legion"

Charles King - "Warrior Gap"

Pierce Egan - "Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II."

Editorial
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution

A >> Alpheus Spring Packard >> Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution




"I have already made it evident that this internal force which
produces movements and actions should derive its origin in the
intimate feeling of existence which animals with a nervous system
possess, and that this feeling, solicited or aroused by needs,
should then start into motion the subtile fluid contained in the
nerves and carry it to the muscles which should act, this producing
the actions which the needs require.

"Moreover, every want felt produces an emotion in the inner feeling
of the individual which experiences it; and from this emotion of the
feeling in question arises the force which gives origin to the
movement of the parts which are placed in activity....

"Thus, in the animals which possess the power of acting--namely, the
force productive of movements and actions--the inner feeling, which
on each occasion originates this force, being excited by some need,
places in action the power or force in question; excites the
movement of displacement in the subtile fluid of the nerves--which
the ancients called _animal spirits_; directs this fluid towards
that of its organs which any want impels to action; finally makes
this same fluid flow back into its habitual reservoirs when the
needs no longer require the organ to act.

"The inner feeling takes the place of the _will_; for it is now
important to consider that every animal which does not possess the
special organ in which or by which it executes thoughts, judgments,
etc., has in reality no will, does not make a choice, and
consequently cannot control the movements which its inner feeling
excites. _Instinct_ directs these actions, and we shall see that
this direction always results from emotions of the inner feeling, in
which intelligence has no part, and from the organization even which
the habits have modified, in such a manner that the needs of animals
which are in this category, being necessarily limited and always
the same in the same species, the inner feeling and, consequently,
the power of acting, always produces the same actions.

"It is not the same in animals which besides a nervous system have a
brain [the author meaning the higher vertebrates], and which make
comparisons, judgments, thoughts, etc. These same animals control
more or less their power of action according to the degree of
perfection of their brain; and although they are still strongly
subjected to the results of their habits, which have modified their
structure, they enjoy more or less freedom of the will, can choose,
and can vary their acts, or at least some of them."

Lamarck then treats of the consumption and exhaustion of the nervous
fluid in the production of animal movements, resulting in fatigue.

He next occupies himself with the origin of the inclination to the same
actions, and of instinct in animals.

"The cause of the well-known phenomenon which constrains almost all
animals to always perform the same acts, and that which gives rise
in man to a propensity (_penchant_) to repeat every action, becoming
habitual, assuredly merits investigation.

"The animals which are only 'sensible'[184]--namely, which possess
no brain, cannot think, reason, or perform intelligent acts, and
their perceptions being often very confused--do not reason and can
scarcely vary their actions. They are, then, invariably bound by
habits. Thus the insects, which of all animals endowed with feeling
have the least perfect nervous system,[185] have perceptions of
objects which affect them, and seem to have memory of them when they
are repeated. Yet they can vary their actions and change their
habits, though they do not possess the organ whose acts could give
them the means.


"_On the Instincts of Animals._

"We define instinct as the sum (_ensemble_) of the decisions
(_determinations_) of animals in their actions; and, indeed, some
have thought that these determinations were the product of a
rational choice, and consequently the fruit of experience. Others,
says Cabanis, may think with the observers of all ages that several
of these decisions should not be ascribed to any kind of reasoning,
and that, without ceasing as for that to have their source in
physical sensibility, they are most often formed without the will of
the individuals able to have any other part than in better directing
the execution. It should be added, without the will having any part
in it; for when it does not act, it does not, of course, direct the
execution.

"If it had been considered that all the animals which enjoy the
power of sensation have their inner feeling susceptible of being
aroused by their needs, and that the movements of their nervous
fluids, which result from these emotions, are constantly directed by
this inner sentiment and by habits, then it has been felt that in
all the animals deprived of intelligence all the decisions of action
can never be the result of a rational choice, of judgment, of
profitable experience--in a word, of will--but that they are
subjected to needs which certain sensations excite, and which awaken
the inclinations which urge them on.

"In the animals even which enjoy the power of performing certain
intelligent acts, it is still more often the inner feeling and the
inclinations originating from habits which decide, without choice,
the acts which animals perform.

"Moreover, although the executing power of movements and of actions,
as also the cause which directs them, should be entirely internal,
it is not well, as has been done,[186] to limit to internal
impressions the primary cause or provocation of these acts, with the
intention to restrict to external impressions that which provokes
intelligent acts; for, from what few facts are known bearing on
these considerations, we are convinced that, either way, the causes
which arouse and provoke acts are sometimes internal and sometimes
external, that these same causes give rise in reality to impressions
all of which act internally.

"According to the idea generally attached to the word _instinct_ the
faculty which this word expresses is considered as a light which
illuminates and guides animals in their actions, and which is with
them what reason is to us. No one has shown that instinct can be a
force which calls into action; that this force acts effectively
without any participation of the will, and that it is constantly
directed by acquired inclinations."

There are, the author states, two kinds of causes which can arouse the
inner feeling (organic sense)--namely, those which depend on
intellectual acts, and those which, without arising from it, immediately
excite it and force it to direct its power of acting in the direction of
acquired inclinations.

"These are the only causes of this last kind, which constitute all
the acts of _instinct_; and as these acts are not the result of
deliberation, of choice, of judgment, the actions which arise from
them always satisfy, surely and without error, the wants felt and
the propensities arising from habits.

"Hence, _instinct_ in animals is an inclination which necessitates
that from sensations provoked while giving rise to wants the animal
is impelled to act without the participation of any thought or any
act of the will.

"This propensity owes to the organization what the habits have
modified in its favor, and it is excited by impressions and wants
which arouse the organic sense of the individual and put it in the
way of sending the nervous fluid in the direction which the
propensity in activity needs to the muscles to be placed in action.

"I have already said that the habit of exercising such an organ, or
such a part of the body, to satisfy the needs which often spring up,
should give to the subtile fluid which changes its place where is to
be operated the power which causes action so great a facility in
moving towards this organ, where it has been so often employed, that
this habit should in a way become inherent in the nature of the
individual, which is unable to change it.

"Moreover, the wants of animals possessing a nervous system being,
in each case, dependent on the Structure of these organisms, are:

"1. Of obtaining any kind of food;

"2. Of yielding to sexual fecundation which excites in them certain
sensations;

"3. Of avoiding pain;

"4. Of seeking pleasure or happiness.

"To satisfy these wants they contract different kinds of habits,
which are transformed into so many propensities, which they can
neither resist nor change. From this originate their habitual
actions, and their special propensities to which we give the name
of instinct.[187]

"This propensity of animals to preserve their habits and to renew
the actions resulting from them being once acquired, is then
propagated by means of reproduction or generation, which preserves
the organization and the disposition of parts in the state thus
attained, so that this same propensity already exists in the new
individuals even before they have exercised it.

"It is thus that the same habits and the same _instinct_ are
perpetuated from generation to generation in the different species
or races of animals, without offering any notable variation,[188] so
long as it does not suffer change in the circumstances essential to
the mode of life."


"_On the Industry of Certain Animals._

"In those animals which have no brain that which we call _industry_
as applied to certain of their actions does not deserve such a name,
for it is a mistake to attribute to them a faculty which they do not
possess.

"Propensities transmitted and received by heredity (_generation_);
habits of performing complicated actions, and which result from
these acquired propensities; finally, different difficulties
gradually and habitually overcome by as many emotions of the organic
sense (_sentiment interieur_), constitute the sum of actions which
are always the same in the individuals of the same race, to which we
inconsiderately give the name of _industry_.

"The instinct of animals being formed by the habit of satisfying the
four kinds of wants mentioned above, and resulting from the
propensities acquired for a long time which urge them on in a way
determined for each species, there comes to pass, in the case of
some, only a complication in the actions which can satisfy these
four kinds of wants, or certain of them, and, indeed, only the
different difficulties necessary to be overcome have gradually
compelled the animal to extend and make contrivances, and have led
it, without choice or any intellectual act, but only by the emotions
of the organic sense, to perform such and such acts.

"Hence the origin, in certain animals, of different complicated
actions, which has been called _industry_, and which are so
enthusiastically admired, because it has always been supposed, at
least tacitly, that these actions were contrived and deliberately
planned, which is plainly erroneous. They are evidently the fruit of
a necessity which has expanded and directed the habits of the
animals performing them, and which renders them such as we observe.

"What I have just said is especially applicable to the invertebrate
animals, in which there enters no act of intelligence. None of
these can indeed freely vary its actions; none of them has the power
of abandoning what we call its _industry_ to adopt any other kind.

"There is, then, nothing wonderful in the supposed industry of the
ant-lion (_Myrmeleon formica-leo_), which, having thrown up a
hillock of movable sand, waits until its booty is thrown down to the
bottom of its funnel by the showers of sand to become its victim;
also there is none in the manoeuvre of the oyster, which, to
satisfy all its wants, does nothing but open and close its shell. So
long as their organization is not changed they will always, both of
them, do what we see them do, and they will do it neither
voluntarily nor rationally.

"This is not the case with the vertebrate animals, and it is among
them, especially in the birds and mammals, that we observe in their
actions traces of a true _industry_; because in difficult cases
their intelligence, in spite of their propensity to habits, can aid
them in varying their actions. These acts, however, are not common,
and are only slightly manifested in certain races which have
exercised them more, as we have had frequent occasion to remark."

Lamarck then (chapter vi.) examines into the nature of the _will_, which
he says is really the principle underlying all the actions of animals.
The will, he says, is one of the results of thought, the result of a
reflux of a portion of the nervous fluid towards the parts which are to
act.

He compares the brain to a register on which are imprinted ideas of all
kinds acquired by the individual, so that this individual provokes at
will an effusion of the nervous fluid on this register, and directs it
to any particular page. The remainder of the second volume
(chapter vii.) is devoted to the understanding, its origin and that of
ideas. The following additions relative to chapters vii. and viii. of
the first part of this work are from vol. ii., pp. 451-466.

In the last of June, 1809, the menagerie of the Museum of Natural
History having received a Phoca (_Phoca vitulina_), Lamarck, as he says,
had the opportunity of observing its movements and habits. After
describing its habits in swimming and moving on land and observing its
relation to the clawed mammals, he says his main object is to remark
that the seals do not have the hind legs arranged in the same direction
as the axis of their body, because these animals are constrained to
habitually use them to form a caudal fin, closing and widening, by
spreading their digits, the paddle (_palette_) which results from their
union.

"The morses, on the contrary, which are accustomed to feed on grass
near the shore, never use their hind feet as a caudal fin; but their
feet are united together with the tail, and cannot separate. Thus in
animals of similar origin we see a new proof of the effect of habits
on the form and structure of organs."

He then turns to the flying mammals, such as the flying squirrel
(_Sciurus volans_, _aerobates_, _petaurista_, _sagitta_, and
_volucella_), and then explains the origin of their adaptation for
flying leaps.

"These animals, more modern than the seals, having the habit of
extending their limbs while leaping to form a sort of _parachute_,
can _only_ make a very prolonged leap when they glide down from a
tree or spring only a short distance from one tree to another. Now,
by frequent repetitions of such leaps, in the individuals of these
races the skin of their sides is expanded on each side into a loose
membrane, which connects the hind and fore legs, and which,
enclosing a volume of air, prevents their sudden falling. These
animals are, moreover, without membranes between the fingers and
toes.

"The Galeopithecus (_Lemur volans_), undoubtedly a more ancient form
but with the same habits as the flying squirrel (_Pteromys Geoff._),
has the skin of the _flancs_ more ample, still more developed,
connecting not only the hinder with the fore legs, but in addition
the fingers and the tail with the hind feet. Moreover, they leap
much farther than the flying squirrels, and even make a sort of
flight.[189]

"Finally, the different bats are probably mammals still older than
the Galeopithecus, in the habit of extending their membrane and even
their fingers to encompass a greater volume of air, so as to sustain
their bodies when they fly out into the air.

"By these habits, for so long a period contracted and preserved, the
bats have obtained not only lateral membranes, but also an
extraordinary elongation of the fingers of their fore feet (with the
exception of the thumb), between which are these very ample
membranes uniting them; so that these membranes of the hands become
continuous with those of the flanks, and with those which connect
the tail with the two hind feet, forming in these animals great
membranous wings with which they fly perfectly, as everybody knows.

"Such is then the power of habits, which have a singular influence
on the conformation of parts, and which give to the animals which
have for a long time contracted certain of them, faculties not found
in other animals.

"As regards the amphibious animals of which I have often spoken, it
gives me pleasure to communicate to my readers the following
reflections which have arisen from an examination of all the objects
which I have taken into consideration in my studies, and seen more
and more to be confirmed.

"I do not doubt but that the mammals have in reality originated from
them, and that they are the veritable cradle (_berceau_) of the
entire animal kingdom.

"Indeed, we see that the least perfect animals (and they are the
most numerous) live only in the water; hence it is probable, as I
have said (vol. ii., p. 85), that it is only in the water or in very
humid places that nature causes and still forms, under favorable
conditions, direct or spontaneous generations which have produced
the simplest animalcules and those from which have successively been
derived all the other animals.

"We know that the Infusoria, the polyps, and the Radiata only live
in the water; that the worms even only live some in the water and
others in very damp places.

"Moreover, regarding the worms, which seem to form an initial branch
of the animal scale, since it is evident that the Infusoria form
another branch, we may suppose that among those of them which are
wholly aquatic--namely, which do not live in the bodies of other
animals, such as the Gordius and many others still unknown--there
are doubtless a great many different aquatic forms; and that among
these aquatic worms, those which afterwards habitually expose
themselves to the air have probably produced amphibious insects,
such as the mosquitoes, the ephemeras, etc., etc., which have
successively given origin to all the insects which live solely in
the air. But several races of these having changed their habits by
the force of circumstances, and having formed habits of a life
solitary, retired, or hidden, have given rise to the arachnides,
almost all of which also live in the air.

"Finally, those of the arachnides which have frequented the water,
which have consequently become progressively habituated to live in
it, and which finally cease to expose themselves to the air--this
indicates the relations which, connecting the Scolopendrae to Julus,
this to the Oniscus, and the last to Asellus, shrimps, etc., have
caused the existence of all the Crustacea.

"The other aquatic worms which are never exposed to the air,
multiplying and diversifying their races with time, and gradually
making progress in the complication of their structure, have caused
the formation of the Annelida, Cirripedia, and molluscs, which
together form an uninterrupted portion of the animal scale.

"In spite of the considerable hiatus which we observe between the
known molluscs and the fishes, the molluscs, whose origin I have
just indicated, have, by the intermediation of those yet remaining
unknown, given origin to the fishes, as it is evident that the
latter have given rise to the reptiles.

"In continuing to consult the probabilities on the origin of
different animals, we cannot doubt but that the reptiles, by two
distinct branches which circumstances have brought about, have given
rise on one side to the formation of birds, and on the other to
that of amphibious mammals, which have given in their turn origin to
all the other mammals.[190]

"Indeed, the fishes having caused the formation of Batrachia, and
these of the Ophidian reptiles, both having only one auricle in the
heart, nature has easily come to give a heart with a double auricle
to other reptiles which constitute two special branches; finally,
she has easily arrived at the end of forming, in the animals which
had originated from each of these branches, a heart with two
ventricles.

"Thus, among the reptiles whose heart has a double auricle, on the
one side, the Chelonians seem to have given origin to the birds; if,
independently of several relations which we cannot disregard, I
should place the head of a tortoise on the neck of certain birds, I
should perceive almost no disparity in the general physiognomy of
the factitious animal; and on the other side, the saurians,
especially the 'planicaudes,' such as the crocodiles, seem to have
given origin to the amphibious mammals.

"If the branch of the Chelonians has given rise to birds, we can yet
presume that the palmipede aquatic birds, especially the
_brevipennes_, such as the penguins and the _manchots_, have given
origin to the monotremes.

"Finally, if the branch of saurians has given rise to the amphibious
mammals, it will be most probable that this branch is the source
whence all the mammals have taken their origin.

"I therefore believe myself authorized to think that the terrestrial
mammals originally descended from those aquatic mammals that we call
Amphibia. Because the latter being divided into three branches by
the diversity of the habits which, with the lapse of time, they have
adopted, some have caused the formation of the Cetacea, others that
of the ungulated mammals, and still others that of the unguiculate
mammals.

"For example, those of the Amphibia which have preserved the habit
of frequenting the shores differ in the manner of taking their food.
Some among them accustoming themselves to browse on herbage, such as
the morses and lamatines, gradually gave origin to the ungulate
mammals, such as the pachyderms, ruminants, etc.; the others, such
as the Phocidae, contracting the habit of feeding on fishes and
marine animals, caused the existence of the unguiculate mammals, by
means of races which, while becoming differentiated, became entirely
terrestrial.

"But those aquatic mammals which would form the habit of never
leaving the water, and only rising to breathe at the surface, would
probably give origin to the different known cetaceans. Moreover, the
ancient and complete habitation of the Cetacea in the ocean has so
modified their structure that it is now very difficult to recognize
the source whence they have derived their origin.

"Indeed, since the enormous length of time during which these
animals have lived in the depths of the sea, never using their hind
feet in seizing objects, their disused feet have wholly disappeared,
as also their skeleton, and even the pelvis serving as their
attachment.

"The alteration which the cetaceans have undergone in their limbs,
owing to the influence of the medium in which they live and the
habits which they have there contracted, manifests itself also in
their fore limbs, which, entirely enveloped by the skin, no longer
show externally the fingers in which they end; so that they only
offer on each side a fin which contains concealed within it the
skeleton of a hand.

"Assuredly, the cetaceans being mammals, it entered into the plan of
their structure to have four limbs like the others, and
consequently a pelvis to sustain their hind legs. But here, as
elsewhere, that which is lacking in them is the result of atrophy
brought about, at the end of a long time, by the want of use of the
parts which were useless.

"If we consider that in the Phocae, where the pelvis still exists,
this pelvis is impoverished, narrowed, and with no projections on
the hips, we see that the lessened (_mediocre_) use of the hind feet
of these animals must be the cause, and that if this use should
entirely cease, the hind limbs and even the pelvis would in the end
disappear.

"The considerations which I have just presented may doubtless appear
as simple conjectures, because it is possible to establish them only
on direct and positive proofs. But if we pay any attention to the
observations which I have stated in this work, and if then we
examine carefully the animals which I have mentioned, as also the
result of their habits and their surroundings, we shall find that
these conjectures will acquire, after this examination, an eminent
probability.

"The following _tableau_[191] will facilitate the comprehension of
what I have just stated. It will be seen that, in my opinion, the
animal scale begins at least by two special branches, and that in
the course of its extent some branchlets (_rameaux_) would seem to
terminate in certain places.

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