THE IMPERFECTIONS OF MAN 



human beings may be said to have retained the mechanism of 

 heahng by contracture, but to have lost the anatomical pre- 

 requisites which enable it to proceed to good effect. As a 

 mechanism of wound healing, the contracture of human skin 

 is therefore as archaic as the vermiform appendix; like the 

 appendix, we become aware of it only when it leads to harm. 

 Fortunately, thanks to the ingenious and entirely artificial act 

 of skin grafting, human beings need no longer suffer the dilatory 

 and incompetent ministrations of the ""naturaP process of 

 repair. What compensating advantage the human being gets 

 from the novel structure of his skin is far from obvious, though 

 it is hard to believe that there is none. 



What I have sought to show in this article is that evolution- 

 ary advancement is a compromise between what is desirable 

 in the abstract and what can in fact be done; that the lesser 

 evil must be put up with if it makes possible the greater good; 

 and that bad mistakes are made which, though foreseeable to 

 a prescient mind, were not in fact foreseen. The philosophic 

 import of this proposition may well be most debatable, but the 

 truth of the proposition itself can hardly be in doubt. 



133 



