TIME AND CHANGE 



tional, as I am rational when I weed my garden, 

 prune my trees, select my seed or my stock, or arm 

 myself with tools or weapons. In such matters I 

 take a short cut to that which Nature reaches by a 

 slow, roundabout, and wasteful process. How does 

 she weed her garden? By the survival of the fittest. 

 How does she select her breeding-stock? By the law 

 of battle; the strongest rules. Hers, I repeat, is a 

 slow and wasteful process. She fertilizes the soil by 

 plowing in the crop. She cannot take a short cut. 

 She assorts and arranges her goods by the law of the 

 winds and the tides. She builds up with one hand 

 and pulls down with the other. Man changes the 

 conditions to suit the things. Nature changes the 

 things to suit the conditions. She adapts the plant 

 or the animal to its environment. She does not 

 drain her marshes; she fills them up. Hers is the 

 larger reason — the reason of the All. Man's reason 

 introduces a new method; it cuts across, modifies, 

 or abridges the order of Nature. 



I do not see design in Nature in the old teleological 

 sense; but I see everything working to its own pro- 

 per end, and that end is foretold in the means. 

 Things are not designed; things are begotten. It is as 

 if the final plan of a man's house, after he had begun 

 to build it, should be determined by the winds and 

 the rains and the shape of the ground upon which it 

 stands. The eye is begotten by those vibrations in 

 the ether called light, the ear by those vibrations in 



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