8 EVOLUTION AND MAN S PLACE IN NATURE 



Natural History, extended by records of domestica 

 tion, opens the gateway into a large field of inquiry, 

 where, since man belongs to Nature, the artificial is 

 only an additional phase of the natural. Variation 

 artificially induced presents the results of superadded 

 observation and direction by rational life; and this 

 has been so widely extended, as to be essential to the 

 system of things interpreted by science. Human 

 Keason and Will have proved large factors in the 

 earth s history. Through long ages, the highest life 

 has been a directing power in the world, determining 

 the history of subordinate forms. Natural and arti 

 ficial selection have been combined in preparation 

 of the system of organised existence with which we 

 are familiar. The world now is an inheritance from 

 all that the world has contained. This implies 

 natural selection in its larger sense. The art 

 employed by man, itself belongs to Nature. This 

 enables him by selection of conditions to facilitate, 

 and even to intensify, the action of Nature. Arti 

 ficial selection is not extra naturam. The dis 

 tinction between natural and artificial is of obvious 

 value to us, but there is no cleavage in Nature itself. 1 



Our accepted inductions need to be harmonised 

 by extended interpretation of Nature. The history 

 of the theory of Evolution carries this lesson written 

 broadly over many of its pages. While strict observa 

 tion has done vast service, analogy has been allowed 

 more than its legitimate share of influence ; not un- 

 frequently the particular has been unduly over- 



1 Not without reason does Spinoza protest against the tendency to 

 treat of man as if his life were imperium in imperio. Ethics 1. 

 Appendix. 



