136 THE FOUNDATIONS OF ZOOLOGY 



ceive how this proof could show that it is necessary, or predetermined, 

 or useless. 



I know the value of my reason by what seems to me the best 

 of all evidence. If it were proved useless, I should be quite ready 

 to believe; but the improbability of this opinion seems to me so 

 much like impossibility, that I must ask for proof which is corre- 

 spondingly conclusive ; for I most assuredly refuse to give any 

 weight to the "faith" of pious evolutionists, and I must insist on 

 my right to demand more evidence if more is to be had, for I 

 cannot accept the mind of the evolutionist as a measure of nature. 



Living things are continually bringing about rearrangements of 

 matter and motion which would never, so far as I can see, have 

 come about without them, and many of the things which they thus 

 bring about are useful to the beings which bring them about. The 

 earth would be very different in many respects if man had never 

 inhabited it, and the effects of his activity will last as long as matter, 

 whatever may be his fate. His influence upon the earth would 

 have been very different if the plants of Carboniferous times had 

 not stored up solar energy and worked their changes in matter 

 millions of years ago. If the dodo, and the great auk, and the 

 halicore, and the American bison could tell their story, they would 

 bear witness that man is a factor in the order of nature. 



They who are discontented with reasonable or "moral" certainty, 

 and tell us they want absolute certainty, must find this sort of certainty 

 if they can and where they can, but their words seem strange to 

 the zoologist. He knows that the rocks are full of the remains of 

 organisms which passed out of existence because they were born 

 in evil times, when the adjustments to the order of nature, which 

 had served the purposes of their ancestors for millions of years, 

 ceased to hold good. 



If our race should ever find itself where the old order changes ; 

 if our reasonable expectations should disappoint us; if what we 

 call the " order " of nature should prove to be no more than natural 

 selection would lead us to expect ; and if a different selective 

 standard should some time modify this order, — every zoologist knows 

 that the human species would not be the first to meet this evil fate. 



If, with Aristotle, we believe " that is natural which holds 

 good " ; if, with Erigena, we hold that nature is the sum of all 



