THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ORGANISMS 41 



fact is the absence of all caprice. To refer to the poet's famous line, 

 no one any longer supposes that gravitation can possibly cease 

 when he goes by the avalanche. Nor will a microbe's insurgence be 

 influenced by the social importance of the patient. 



Corresponding to the intelligibility of Nature is the pervasiveness 

 of beauty — a fifth basis of rational wonder, appealing to the 

 emotional side of our personality; but we have discussed this a 

 little in a previous section. Surely Lotze was right, that it is of high 

 value to look upon beauty not as a stranger in the world, nor as 

 a casual aspect of certain phenomena, but as "the fortunate revela- 

 tion of that principle which permeates all reality with its living 

 activity". 



A sixth basis of rational wonder, particularly relevant here and 

 already illustrated, is to be found in the essential characteristics 

 of living creatures. We need only add the caution that the marvel 

 of life is not to be taken at its face value ; as Coleridge wisely said, 

 the first wonder is the child of ignorance ; we must attend diligently 

 to all that biochemistry and biophysics can discount; we must 

 try to understand all that can be formulated in terms of colloids, 

 and so on. Yet when all that is said, there seem to be large residual 

 phenomena whose emergence in living creatures revealed a new 

 depth in Nature. Life is an enduring, insurgent activity, growing, 

 multiplying, developing, enregistering, varying, and above all else 

 evolving. 



For this is the seventh wonder — Evolution. It is not merely that 

 all things flow; it is that life flows uphill. Amid the ceaseless flux 

 there is not only conservation, there is advancement. The changes 

 are not those of a kaleidoscope, but of "an onward advancing 

 melody". As the unthinkably long ages passed the earth became 

 the cradle and home of life ; nobler and finer kinds of living creatures 

 appeared; there was a growing victory of life over things and of 

 "mind" over "body"; until at last appeared Man, who is Life's 

 crowning wonder, since he has given to everything else a higher 

 and deeper significance. And while we must consider man in the 

 light of evolution, as most intellectual combatants admit, there is 

 the even more difficult task of envisaging evolution in the light of 

 Man. Finis coronal opus — a wise philosophical axiom; and yet the 

 scientist must qualify it by asking who can say Finis to Evolution. 



