74 EVOLUTION AND MAN S PLACE IN NATURE 



influence extends, the struggle for existence meets 

 a check previously unknown. Development of life 

 takes new directions, under a guiding power which is 

 the main factor in determining results. Only by 

 making full account of man s work, can we have a com 

 pleted theory of the evolution of life on the earth. 



Man largely modifies, and even makes, his own 

 environment. In the history of human effort, 

 society itself becomes an organisation in which 

 personal rights are sustained and vindicated. Under 

 co-operation in industrial enterprise, and in the 

 government of civil life, environment begins to 

 wear a variety of aspects. For lower forms of life, 

 environment proves a dominating force controlling 

 vital movement. Without it, the seed were only a 

 lifeless thing, dry as a particle of sand. Hence the 

 prominence of environment in the literature of 

 Evolution. On the other hand, it is equally clear, 

 as Eimer has admirably maintained, in pleading for 

 modification of theoretic teaching as to environment, 

 that evolution proceeds according to the laws of 

 organic growth. L While there is no exception to 

 the law of dependence of life on outward conditions, 

 it is equally clear that the laws of organic growth 

 are such as to favour advancing development. There 

 is double action disclosed, when we speak of the 

 potency of environment and of the inherent energy 

 of life. Life itself is the moving power. Environ 

 ment only fixes the conditions which vital move 

 ment encounters, and to which it must adapt itself. 

 Neither does life account for environment, nor en- 



1 Organic Evolution as the Result of the Inheritance of Acquired 

 Characters, by Professor Eimer, of Tubingen. 



