218 The Bible of Nature 



by experience, but as the highest expressions of 

 the central evolutionary process of the natural 

 world. As evolutionary biologists we are thus 

 practically with moralist and theologian, even with 

 poet and sentimentalist, if you will, against the 

 * vulgar economist* of Ruskin, or the self-styled 

 'practical politician' of to-day."' 



Retrospect. — So far, we have considered man as 

 an organism, the long result of time, the pre- 

 destined outcome of a long-drawn-out orderly 

 process, the heir of all the ages. We see him 

 emerging, to use Walt Whitman's quaint phrase, 

 "stuccoed all over with quadrupeds." 



We then saw, however, that man, because he 

 is man, has freed himself from passive subordina- 

 tion to the cosmic mechanism — in a much greater 

 degree than any other creature. He will not be 

 tied to his mother's apron strings, though he often 

 returns to her wearied. He will make a kingdom 

 for himself — an imperium in imperio; he pits him- 

 self against the cosmic processes. 



We have thus simply hinted at another chapter 

 — how man actively uses Nature for his own ad- 

 vancement, for fuller self-realization, for the de- 

 velopment of his spirit. The servant becomes a 

 master, the searcher an interpreter, and the prod- 

 uct of evolution furnishes a key to the whole. 



* Thomson and Geddes, in "Ideals of Science and 

 Faith," London, 1905, p. 73. 



