ABSTRACT
LAWS OF EXOSOMATIC EVOLUTION We have stated that vision is less important for survival than some other senses, and this is certainly true. Its extraordinary capacity for release gives this away. Congenitally blind neonates of many higher mammalian species, even undomesticated and in the wild, survive well and are cared for by their mothers until after weaning. This includes suckling, licking, retrieving, cleaning, warming, nesting, and nuzzling. It is important to recall how much more important smell is for most of these creatures than it is for human beings. However, adventitiously blinded adult humans could not have survived long even in the earliest food-gathering cultures, if we may deduce this sort of insight from primitive cultures found in the twentieth century, and from primate societies. The survival of the blind, the ill, the insane, the retarded, the maimed, and the old in modern society, and sometimes the high quality of life that they are able to enjoy, are signs of what we call civilization, and indices of its degree. Consequently, to the extent that some law such as the survival of the most fit ruled during somatic evolution, the laws of exosomatic evolution are quite different. Just how different, we do not know, although much has been written on these matters. In any event, it is only in relatively advanced and non-wandering human societies that the affliction of adventitious blindness is not immediately devastating and very soon fatal.
