Man's Place in Nature 219 



Value of the Evolutionary Conception of Man. In 

 accordance with the philosophical temper of the 

 time, we must now ask what the evolutionary in- 

 terpretation of man is good for. What is the value 

 of the view that science takes of man's place in 

 Nature? Nietzsche said that history has three 

 great uses a monumental use, perpetuating the 

 memory of great deeds and great men; an anti- 

 quarian use, showing the living hand of the past in 

 the present; and a critical use, enabling us to 

 estimate the present provisional order of things by 

 comparing it with what has been before. So the 

 evolution-doctrine has a monumental use, re- 

 minding us of great events in the past; an anti- 

 quarian use, showing the solidarity of what is and 

 what has been; and a critical use, enabling us to 

 judge of the present trend of things in the light of 

 past history. 



In the first place, is it not of great significance 

 that, while science does not pretend to deal at all 

 with ultimate realities or with the purpose of evo- 

 lution, it can give a provisional intelligible history 

 of things and living creatures and man himself 

 intelligible in the sense that it is a genetic descrip- 

 tion of what has occurred. This, it seems to us, is 

 the greatest contribution which science makes to 

 human thought. As Professor Pringle-Pattison 

 says: "The postulate which underlies every sci- 

 entific induction is the intelligibility of the uni- 



