28 THE KINGDOM OF MAN 



by death of the unfit and the survival and reproduction 

 of the fit, which we know as Natural Selection. 1 



The standard raised by the rebel man is not that of 

 'fitness' to the conditions proffered by extra-human 

 nature, but is one of an ideal comfort, prosperity, and 

 conscious joy in life imposed by the will of man and 

 involving a control and in important respects a subversion 

 of what were Nature's methods of dealing with life before 

 she had produced her insurgent son. The progress of 

 man in the acquirement of this control of Nature has 

 been one of enormous rapidity within the historical 

 period, and within the last two centuries has led on the 

 one hand to immensely increased facilities in the appli- 

 cation of mechanical power, in locomotion, in agriculture, 

 and in endless arts and industries ; and on the other hand 

 to the mitigation of disease and pain. The men whom 

 we may designate as ' the Nature-searchers ' those who 

 founded the New Philosophy of the Invisible College at 

 Oxford and the Royal Society in London have placed 

 boundless power in the hands of mankind. 



ii. THE ATTAINMENT BY MAN OF THE KNOW- 

 LEDGE OF HIS RELATIONS TO NATURE. 



But to many the greatest result achieved by the pro- 

 gress of Natural Knowledge seems not to have been so 



1 It would be an error to maintain that the process of Natural Selec- 

 tion is entirely in abeyance in regard to Man. In an interesting book, 

 The Present Evolution of Man, Dr. Archdall Reid has shown that in 

 regard to zymotic diseases, and also in regard to the use of dangerous 

 drugs such as alcohol and opium, there is first of all the acquirement of 

 immunity by powerful races of men through the survival among them 

 of those strains tolerant of the disease or of the drug, and secondly, the 

 introduction of those diseases and drugs by the powerful immune race, 



