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Erasmus Darwin[19] had a firm grip of the "idea of the gradual formation and improvement of the Animal world," and he had his theory of the process. No sentence is more characteristic than this: "All animals undergo transformations which are in part produced by their own exertions, in response to pleasures and pains, and many of these acquired forms or propensities are transmitted to their posterity." This is Lamarckism before Lamarck, as his grandson pointed out. His central idea is that wants stimulate efforts and that these result in improvements which subsequent generations make better still. He realised something of the struggle for existence and even pointed out that this advantageously checks the rapid multiplication. "As Dr. Krause points out, Darwin just misses the connection between this struggle and the Survival of the Fittest."[20]

The graphic art of the Apache finds expression chiefly in ceremonial paintings on deerskin, and in basketry. Only rarely have they made pottery, their roving life requiring utensils of greater stability. Such earthenware as they did make was practically the same as that of the Navaho, mostly in the form of small cooking vessels. Usually the pictures are painted on the entire deerskin, but sometimes the skin is cut square, and at others ceremonial deerskin shirts are symbolically painted. Occasionally the Apache attempts to picture the myth characters literally; at other times only a symbolic representation of the character is made. In addition to the mythic personages, certain symbols are employed to represent the incident of the myth. These paintings are made under the instruction of a medicine-man and are a part of the medicine paraphernalia. On some skins the most sacred characters in Apache mythology are represented symbolically--Naye{~COMBINING BREVE~}nezgani, the War God; Tubadzischi{~COMBINING BREVE~}ni, his younger brother; Kuterastan, the Creator of All; Stenatlihan, the chief goddess. In fact the symbolism on an elaborately painted deerskin may cover every phase of Apache cosmology.

He met, however, with very partial success. His soldiers became entangled in bogs and morasses; they fell into ambuscades; they suffered every degree of privation and hardship for want of water and of food, and were continually entrapped by their enemies in situations where they had to fight in small numbers and at a great disadvantage. Then, too, the aged and feeble general was kept in a continual fever of anxiety and trouble by Bassianus, the son whom he had brought with him to the north. The dissoluteness and violence of his character were not changed by the change of scene. He formed plots and conspiracies against his father's authority; he raised mutinies in the army; he headed riots; and he was finally detected in a plan for actually assassinating his father. Severus, when he discovered this last enormity of wickedness, sent for his son to come to his imperial tent. He laid a naked sword before him, and then, after bitterly reproaching him with his undutiful and ungrateful conduct, he said, "If you wish to kill me, do it now. Here I stand, old, infirm, and helpless. You are young and strong, and can do it easily. I am ready. Strike the blow."

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