THE ARREST OF THE BODY 135 



years hence ? Is there not here a conspicuous testi- 

 mony to the improbability of a further Evolution 

 of the sense of Sight in civilized communities — in 

 other words, another proof of the Arrest of the 

 Animal ? What defiance of Evolution, indeed, what 

 affront to Nature, is this ? Man prepares a compli- 

 cated telescope to supplement the Eye created by 

 Evolution, and no sooner is it perfected than it 

 occurs to him to create another instrument to aid 

 the Eye in what little work is left for it to do. That 

 is to say, he first makes a mechanical supplement to 

 his Eye, then constructs a mechanical Eye, which is 

 better than his own, to see through it, and ends by 

 discarding, for many purposes, the Eye of Organic 

 Evolution altogether. 



As regards the other functions of civilized Man, 

 the animal in almost every direction has reached 

 its maximum. Civilization — and the civilized state, 

 be it remembered, is the ultimate goal of every 

 race and nation — is always attended by deteriora- 

 tion of some of the senses. Every man pays a 

 definite price or forfeit for his taming. The sense 

 of smell, compared with its development among 

 the lower animals, is in civilized Man already all 

 but gone. Compared even with a savage, it is an 

 ascertained fact that the civilized Man in this re- 

 spect is vastly inferior. So far as hearing is con- 



