THE ABREST OF THE BODY. 115 



Man is the end of all the ends. The latest science re- 

 instates him, where poet and philosopher had already 

 placed him, as at once the crown, the master, and the 

 rationale of creation. " Not merely," says Kant, " is 

 he like all organized beings an end in nature, but also 

 here on earth the last end of nature, in reference to 

 whom all other natural things constitute a system of 

 ends." Yet it is not because he is the end of ends, 

 but the beginning of beginnings, that the completion 

 of the Body marks a crisis in the past. At last Evolu- 

 tion had culminated in a creation so complex and ex- 

 alted as to form the foundation for an inconceivably 

 loftier super-organic order. The moment an organism 

 was reached through which Thought was possible, 

 nothing more was required of matter. The Body was 

 high enough. Organic Evolution might now even 

 resign its sovereignty of the world ; it had made a 

 thing which was now its master. Henceforth Man 

 should take charge of Evolution even as up till now 

 he had been the one charge of it. Henceforth his 

 selection should replace Natural Selection ; his judg- 

 ment guide the struggle for life ; his will determine 

 for every plant upon the earth, whether it should 

 bloom or fade, for every animal whether it should in- 

 crease, or change, or die. So Man entered into his 

 Kingdom. 



Science is charged, be it once more recalled, with 

 numbering Man among the beasts, and levelling his 

 body with the dust. But he who reads for himself 

 the history of creation as it is written by the hand 

 of Evolution will be overwhelmed by the glory and 

 honor heaped upon this creature. To be a Man, and 

 to have no conceivable successor ; to be the fruit and 



