MAN IN NA TURE 20 - 



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 altogether unfounded. 



For illustrations of this convenient though dan 

 gerous ambiguity, I may turn at random to almost 

 any page in Darwin s Origin of Species. In the 

 beginning of Chapter III. he speaks of animals in a 

 state of nature/ that is, not in a domesticated or arti 

 ficial condition, so that here nature is opposed to the 

 devices of man. Then he speaks of species as * arising 

 in nature, that is, spontaneously produced in the 

 midst of certain external conditions or environment 

 outside of the organic world. A little farther on he 

 speaks of useful varieties as given to man by the 

 hand of Nature, which here becomes an imaginary 

 person ; and it is worthy of notice that in this place 

 the printer or proof-reader has given the word an 

 initial capital, as if a proper name. In the next 

 section he speaks of the works of nature as superior 

 to those of art. Here the word is not only opposed 

 to the artificial, but seems to imply some power above 

 material things and comparable with or excelling the 

 contriving intelligence of man. I do not mean by 

 these examples to imply that Darwin is in this 

 respect more inaccurate than other writers. On the 

 contrary, he is greatly surpassed by many of his con 

 temporaries in the varied and fantastic uses of this 

 versatile word. An illustration which occurs to me 



