CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



three examples; and even to-day the process is being very 

 rapidly continued by man, who is, often needlessly, extermi- 

 nating entire species — strange creatures like the great auk, 

 lovely ones like the passenger pigeon or the sea-otter. 

 Extinction is in itself not a good but an evil. It can only be 

 a good on balance, if and vv^hen it is necessary that one 

 group or type should perish that another more advanced 

 group should flourish. 



Then, as we have seen, specialization, though sometimes 

 we should call it good, is never an unmixed or a balanced 

 good. Not only that, but in some of the examples considered, 

 such as parasitism, the balance is the other way, and what 

 seems good to us is outweighed by what seems clearly evil. 

 If tapeworms could reason and formulate their opinions 

 about the universe, they would have to admit that the gen- 

 eral trend of evolution was very different in its direction 

 from that to which they owed their being, and that on the 

 whole the two were opposed. They would, presumably, 

 have to adopt that philosophy or belief which characterized 

 the Manicheans of the early Christian era. Even the prod- 

 ucts of specialization that to us is clearly on balance 

 good, though limited — such products, for instance, as the 

 birds — ^would (if they were able to think it all out) think in 

 rather different terms. Their specialization has led to flight, 

 to intense activity, to colour and song unrivalled among 

 the mammals. Well might they pity earthbound, drab- 

 coloured, hairy creatures, and maintain that activity and the 

 conquest of the air were the highest achievements of evolv- 

 ing life. But they would be wrong. It is simply a matter 

 of hard fact, which takes no account of actual human wishes 

 or hypothetical bird wishes, that for some reason (probably 

 their sacrifice of fore-limb for a tool of flight) the birds' brain- 

 development has been restricted, whereas the mammals, 



[33(5] 



