Extrinsic and Intrinsic Views 129 



thing lives for itself and its kind, and to live is 

 worth the effort of living for man or bug. But 

 there are more homely reasons for believing 

 that things were not made for man alone. 

 There was logic in the farmer's retort to the 

 good man who told him that roses were made 

 to make man happy. "No, they waVt," said 

 the farmer, "or they wouldn't 'a' had prickers." 

 A teacher asked me what snakes are "good 

 for." Of course, there is but one answer: they 

 are good to be snakes. 



Being human, we interpret nature in human 

 terms. Much of our interpretation of nature 

 is only an interpretation of ourselves. Because 

 a condition or a motive obtains in human affairs, 

 we assume that it obtains everywhere. The 

 only point of view is our own point of view. 

 Of necessity, we assume a starting-point; there- 

 from we evolve an hypothesis which may be 

 either truth or fallacy. Asa Gray combated 

 Agassiz's hypothesis that species were originally 

 created where we now find them and in approx- 

 imately the same numbers by invoking Mauper- 

 tuis's "principle of least action" "that it is 

 9 



