CHAPTER XVIIl. 



MAN IN NATURE. 



FEW words are used among us more loosely than "nature." 

 Sometimes it stands for the material universe as a whole. 

 Sometimes it is personified as a sort of goddess, working her 

 own sweet will with material things. Sometimes it expresses 

 the forces which act on matter, and again it stands for material 

 things themselves. It is spoken of as subject to law, but just 

 as often natural law is referred to in terms which imply that 

 nature itself is the lawgiver. It is supposed to be opposed to 

 the equally vague term " supernatural " ; but this term is used 

 not merely to denote things above and beyond nature, if there 

 are such, but certain opinions held respecting natural things. 

 On the other hand, the natural is contrasted with the artificial, 

 though this is always the outcome of natural powers, and is 

 certainly not supernatural. Again, it is applied to the inherent 

 properties of beings for which we are unable to account, and 

 which we are content to say constitute their nature. We can- 

 not look into the works of any of the more speculative writers 

 of the day without meeting with all these uses of the word, and 

 have to be constantly on our guard lest by a change of its 

 meaning we shall be led to assent to some proposition alto- 

 gether unfounded. 



For illustrations of this convenient though dangerous ambi- 

 guity, I may turn at random to almost any page in Darwin's 

 celebrated work on the " Origin of Species." In the beginning 

 of Chapter III. he speaks of animals " in a state of nature " 



