NATURE CROWNED IN MAN 565 



7. In What Sense May It Be Said that Nature Is 

 Crowned in Man? 



It may be said that Man is the outcome of a persistent 

 trend towards freedom of mind which has been charac- 

 teristic of the process of organic evolution for millions of 

 years. A Martian zoologist, on another line of life altogether, 

 would, we fancy, have said in his report on a scientific 

 expedition to our planet in Eocene times, that the Saurop- 

 sidan line of evolution had been crowned in the peopling of 

 earth and sky with a fascinating set of bipeds, of quaintly 

 engaging ways and consummate locomotion, with adorable 

 parental virtues and an extraordinarily high level of artistic 

 culture which seemed to be quite instinctive to every one 

 of them, and so pervasive that many of them could not per- 

 form the commonest offices of life, without investing them 

 with grace. He was reporting on Birds, of course. 



But is it not justifiable, in an equally detached way, to 

 say of Man that he crowns one line of Mammalian evolution ? 

 He shows in notable excellence what his predecessors, both 

 direct and collateral, have moved slowly towards, a large 

 and intricate cerebral cortex, a subtle integration of the 

 body, and a masterly resourceful behaviour. 



We cannot suppose, with the scholars in the school of 

 ' Naturalism ', that the only realities are those that Natural 

 Science deals with, but we are not sure that Mr. Arthur J. 

 Balfour is accurate when he speaks of Man being, according 

 to Naturalism, " no more than a phenomenon among phe- 

 nomena, a natural object among other natural objects, his 

 very existence an accident, his story a brief and transitory 

 episode in one of the meanest of the planets ". For even 

 from the position of ' naturalism ', it does not seem justifiable 



