y--it matters not--a brain just sufficient for the
beginning of growth. Suppose the monster to be of incalculable size and
of a strength quite abnormal--a veritable incarnation of animal strength.
Suppose this animal is allowed to remain in one place, thus being removed
from accidents of interrupted development; might not, would not this
creature, in process of time--ages, if necessary--have that rudimentary
intelligence developed? There is no impossibility in this; it is only
the natural process of evolution. In the beginning, the instincts of
animals are confined to alimentation, self-protection, and the
multiplication of their species. As time goes on and the needs of life
become more complex, power follows need. We have been long accustomed to
consider growth as applied almost exclusively to size in its various
aspects. But Nature, who has no doctrinaire ideas, may equally apply it
to concentration. A developing thing may expand in any given way or
form. Now, it is a scientific law that increase implies gain and loss of
various kinds; what a thing gains in one direction it may lose in
another. May it not be that Mother Nature may deliberately encourage
decrease as well as increase--that it may be an axiom that what is gained
in concentration is lost in size? Take, for instance, monsters that
tradition has accepted and localised, such as the Worm of Lambton or that
of Spindleston Heugh. If such a creature were, by its own process of
metabolism, to change much of its bulk for intellectual growth, we should
at once arrive at a new class of creature--more dangerous, perhaps, than
the world has ever had any experience of--a force which can think, which
has no soul and no morals, and therefore no acceptance of responsibility.
A snake would be a good illustration of this, for it is cold-blooded, and
therefore removed from the temptations which often weaken or restrict
warm-blooded creatures. If, for instance, the Worm of Lambton--if such
ever existed--were guided to its own ends by an organised intelligence
capable of expansion, what form of creature could we imagine which would
equal it in potentialities of evil? Why, such a being would devastate a
whole country. Now, all these things require much thought, and we want
to apply the knowledge usefully, and we should therefore be exact. Would
it not be well to resume the subject later in the day?"
"I quite agree, sir. I am in a whirl already; and want to atten
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