LESSONS OF EVOLUTION 605 



and with Mercy in his heart, to enter courageously into the 

 fuller possession of his Kingdom. 



It was the beginning of a new era for mankind, and it 

 influenced thought and feeling as well as practice. If there be 

 almost no constitutional disease in wild nature, why should 

 it persist in mankind ? Why should Man and his stock have 

 a monopoly of senility ? If certain microbic diseases can be 

 got rid of, why do we allow them to linger in our midst ? 

 And we have, of course, practically ousted some terrors 

 from their lairs, as in the cases of smallpox and typhus. If 

 we cannot alter the span of human life, we can at any rate 

 make sure what we shall not die of. The practical corollary 

 of the doctrine of evolution is the controllability of life. 



We have argued that Nature is crowned in Man, not 

 merely because he has an all-round excellence of differentia- 

 tion and integration, but especially because he is the finest 

 expression of those qualities which mark the main trend 

 of organic evolution, such as freedom, awareness, mastery. 

 Speaking metaphorically, we may say that Nature finds her- 

 self in Man, who understands, appreciates, and enjoys her in 

 a sense that is certainly not true of the grazing herd. But 

 the anomaly is that Man, minister and interpreter of Nature 

 as he is, is subject to inhibitions and disharmonies which 

 are not tolerated in wild nature. If there be an under- 

 lying purpose or meaning in organic Evolution, is not Man 

 hindering it by his slowness to understand and fall in with 

 the principles of its accomplishment ? If the central fact 

 in evolution be " the slowly wrought-out dominance of mind 

 in things ", it is surely man's fundamental task to use this 

 expanding mind to control his own life. If the process of 

 Evolution suggests any lesson, it is surely that " the sharp- 

 ened life commands its course ", by brains, correlation, 



