Ill 



EACH FOR ITS OWN SAKE 



"Proud man exclaims, 'See all things for my use!' 

 'See all for mine,' replies the pampered goose." 



AND the pampered goose was right: all things 

 are just as much for her use as for man's, 

 while there are reasonable doubts whether things 

 were created for the especial use of either. 



Man, like the goose, appropriates what suits him, 

 but is slow to realize the fact that what suits him, or 

 is fitted to his use, depends upon his own powers of 

 adaptation. We can say that he suits it, rather than 

 that it suits him. He has lungs because there is air, 

 and eyes because there are certain vibrations in the 

 ether. In short, nature is the primary fact, and the 

 forms and organs of life the secondary fact. 



Goethe said to Eckermann that he followed Kant 

 in looking upon each creature as existing for its own 

 sake. He could not believe, he said, that the cork- 

 trees grow merely that we might stop our bottles, 

 and, he might have added, that rubber-trees grow 

 that we might have rubber overshoes. The lady in a 

 public audience who once asked me what flies are 

 for, evidently thought that God had made a mistake 

 in creating that which annoyed her. I was pleased 

 with a remark of John Muir's in his Sierra book 



30 



