ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



mark because it hits all marks. Species succeed be- 

 cause the tide that bears them on is a universal tide- 

 It is not a river, but an ocean current. Nature pro- 

 gresses, but not as man does by discarding one form 

 and adapting a higher. She discards nothing; she 

 keeps all her old forms and ways and out of them 

 evolves the higher; she keeps the fish's fin, while she 

 perfects the bird's wing; she preserves the inver- 

 tebrate, while she fashions the vertebrate; she 

 achieves man, while she preserves the monkey. She 

 gropes her way like a blind man, but she arrives be- 

 cause all goals are here. Perceptive intelligence she 

 has given in varying degrees to all creatures, but 

 reasoning intelligence she has given to man alone. I 

 say "given," after our human manner of speaking, 

 when I mean "achieve." There is no giving in Na- 

 ture — there is effort and development. There is in- 

 terchange and interaction, but no free gifts. Things 

 are bought with a price. The price of the mind of 

 man — who can estimate what it has been through 

 the biological and geological ages? — a price which 

 his long line of antecedent forms has paid in strug- 

 gle and suffering and death. The little that has been 

 added to the size of his brain since the Piltdown 

 man and the Neanderthal man — what effort and 

 pain has not that cost? We pay for what we get, or 

 our forbears paid for it. They paid for the size 

 of our brains, and we pay for our progress in 

 knowledge. 



106 



