258 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



its life, and it could answer us, it would doubtless 

 say food, sleep, comfort, hunting, sexual pleasure, 

 and family companionship. But it cannot answer; 

 nor can it know the value of what it pursues, but 

 only appreciate the result. Strictly speaking, values 

 do not exist for it. However, even if we allow our- 

 selves to speak of values in the life of pre-human 

 organisms, we see immediately that wholly new val- 

 ues are introduced after the critical point. 



Putting it summarily, we can say that, with the 

 rise of mind to dominance, various activities of mind 

 come to be pursued for their own sake, to have value 

 in themselves. Our life is worth living not only 

 for the sake of eating and drinking, sleeping, athlet- 

 ics, and sexual pleasure. There is a value attached 

 to knowledge for its own sake, apart from the pos- 

 sible access of control that it may bring. But this is 

 new, a property of man alone; not even Athena's 

 owl will exert itself through laborious years to under- 

 stand celestial mechanics or physiology. The high- 

 est anthropoids do not attempt to create works of art, 

 which for man come to have value in themselves. 

 Natural beauty comes to have its value too; a cow 

 (so far as known!) does not interrupt the business 

 of its life to admire the sunset, whereas men may 

 and do. Behaviour also is implicated; with the 

 entry upon the scene of that practically unlimited 

 number of possible reactions which give us what we 

 call free will and choice, there comes a conviction 

 that some modes of action are higher than others; 



