THE KINGDOM OF MAN 243 



quently fatal, senility is common. Moreover, most 

 wild animals show what we admire as exceptional in 

 civilised mankind, an all-round fitness, a buoyant self- 

 mastery, an abandon of vigour, an absence of fatigue, 

 a freedom from worry, and an exemption from * bad 

 habits.' Walt Whitman felt the contrast keenly. 



Perhaps this aspect of the contrast between Man and 

 animals, which we may emphasise without losing any 

 grip of the fact that he is nevertheless " crowned with 

 glory and honour," is the biological equivalent of what 

 theologians call " the Fall." Why is Man so extra- 

 ordinarily shackled by disharmony, lack of control, 

 disease, bad habits, unhappiness ? Transcendental 

 answers have been given to this question, let us try to 

 discover the biological answers. 



(1) Just as moral evil is the tax on moral freedom, 

 and instability the penalty of genius, so the constitu- 

 tional diseases of mankind express to some extent the 

 seamy side of variabiUty. For constitutional diseases 

 are just types of metabolism which are a little out of 

 place, out of time, and out of tune. A disease may be 

 a new departure that has gone a little too far ; it may 

 be a sHpping down the ladder of evolution to an old- 

 fashioned way of doing things. The hideous subtlety 

 of disease and the trail of misery that it involves must 

 often blot out the sun, but from a detached biological 

 view-point disease cannot be regarded as unintelligible 

 or portentous. 



(2) Man's intelligence has made it possible for him 

 to operate on the outer world in a unique way, and 



