258 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



embodied before selection can act upon them ; thus 

 an increasing amount of evolutionary change will 

 take place through the natural selection of ideas 

 than through the older and far more wasteful process, 

 natural selection of individuals and species. 



Finally, values appear upon the scene. If we could 

 ask a wild animal such as a fox what gave value to 

 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 values 

 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, athletics, 

 and sexual pleasure. There is a value attached to 

 knowledge for its own sake, apart from the possible 

 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 highest 

 anthropoids do not attempt to create works of art, 

 which for man come to have value in themselves. 



