NATURE'S INSURGENT SON 29 



much in its practical applications and its material gifts to 

 humanity as in the fact that Man has arrived through it 

 at spiritual emancipation and freedom of thought. 



In the latter part of the last century man's place in 

 Nature became clearly marked out by the accumulation 

 of definite evidence. The significance and the im- 

 measurable importance of the knowledge of Nature to 

 philosophy and the highest regions of speculative thought 

 are expressed in the lines of one who most truly and with 

 keenest insight embodied in his imperishable verse the 

 wisdom and the aspirations of the Victorian age : 



' Flower in the crannied wall, 

 I pluck you out of the crannies : 

 I hold you here, root and all, in my hand 

 Little flower but if I could understand 

 What you are, root and all, and all in all, 

 I should know what God and man is.' 



To many the nearer approach to that * understanding ' 

 has seemed the greatest and a sufficient result of scientific 

 researches. The recognition that such an understanding 

 leads to such vast knowledge would seem to ensure further 

 and combined effort to bring it nearer and nearer to the 

 complete form, even if the perfect understanding of the 

 ' all in all ' be for ever unattainable. Nevertheless, the 

 clearer apprehension, so recently attained, of man's origin 

 and destiny, and of the enormous powers of which he 

 has actually the control, has not led to any very obvious 

 change in the attitude of responsible leaders of human 

 activity in the great civilized communities of the world. 

 They still attach little or no importance to the acquire- 

 ment of a knowledge of Nature : they remain fixed in the 



in its migrations, to races not previously exposed either to the diseases 

 or the drugs, and a consequent destruction of the invaded race. The 

 survival of the fittest is, in these cases, a survival of the tolerant and 

 eventually of the immune. 



