CHAPTER Xn 



MAN 



*Man was certainly not the goal of evolution, which 

 evidently had no goal. He was not planned, in an opera- 

 tion wholly planless. He is not the ultimate in a single 

 constant trend toward higher things, in a history of life 

 with innumerable trends, none of them constant, and 

 some toward the lower rather than the higher. Is his 

 place in nature, then, that of a mere accident without 

 significance? . . . The situation is as badly misrepre- 

 sented and the lesson as poorly learned when man is 

 considered nothing but an accident as when he is con- 

 sidered as the destined crown of creation. His rise was 

 neither insignificant nor inevitable. Man did originate 

 after a tremendously long sequence of events in which 

 both chance and orientation played a part. Not all the 

 chance favored his appearance, none might have, but 

 enough did. Not all the orientation was in his direction, 

 it did not lead unerringly human-ward, but some of it 

 came his way. The result is the most highly endowed 

 organization of matter that has yet appeared on the 

 earth— and we certainly have no good reason to believe 

 there is any higher in the universe. To think that this 

 result is insignificant would be unworthy of the high en- 

 dowment, which includes among its riches a sense of 

 values.' 



Thus writes George Gaylord Simpson in The Meaning 



