276 UNIVERSAL EVOLUTION 



things. He cannot depart very far from nature's 

 method until there comes failure and disaster. How- 

 ever much his human sympathy may lead him to 

 lighten the weakness of old age, he cannot make it 

 young and strong again. However much he may protect 

 the insane, the blind, the deaf and dumb, he cannot 

 prevent the same causes that brought on these abnor- 

 malities from continuing to bring them on. However 

 much he may try to make the weak equal to the strong, 

 in perpetuating the race, and molding the world, he 

 always fails to thus reverse the law of evolution. So 

 that, however much it may appear to us that man's 

 efforts or reason have introduced a new principle 

 opposed to the law of evolution, in the natural survival 

 of the fittest, yet it is not so, in reality. 



All the scientific efforts of the hydraulic engineer to 

 carry water to the arid land have had no effect on the 

 natural law that water must run down, and not up. 

 Neither can the efforts of man, to mold society, affect 

 the principle of "natural selection in the survival of the 

 fittest." The farmer, in the semi arid region, when 

 he has carefully tilled the soil and raised several crops, 

 frequently thinks that the rainfall has been increased 

 thereby. If this were so, then the efforts of man would 

 control a seeming law of nature. He has only succeeded 

 in utilizing the former amount of rainfall, and not in 

 increasing the amount of it The average rainfall, at 

 any locality, will likely remain what it is now. however 

 many trees are planted, or whatever may be the area 

 cultivated. Irrigation has been practiced for two or 

 three thousand years, on the lower Nile. But the rain- 

 fall there has not increased. 



"Self-sacrifice is no less primordial than self-preserva- 

 tion." (Spencer) . The view must be taken that life and 



