146 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



pinnacle of matter is seen at last what matter is 

 for, and all the lower lives that ever lived appear 

 as but the scaffolding for this final work. The 

 whole sub-human universe finds its reason for ex- 

 istence in its last creation, its final justification in 

 the new immaterial order which opened with its 

 close. Cut off Man from Nature, and, metaphysical 

 necessity apart, there remains in Nature no divinity. 

 To include Man in Evolution is not to lower Man 

 to the level of Nature, but to raise Nature to his 

 high estate. There he was made, these atoms are 

 his confederates, these plant cells raised him from 

 the dust, these travailing animals furthered his 

 Ascent: shall he excommunicate them now that 

 their work is done ? Plant and animal have each 

 their end, but Man is the end of all the ends. The 

 latest science reinstates him, where poet and philo- 

 sopher had already placed him, as at once the 

 crown, the master, and the rationale of creation. 

 "Not merely," says Kant, "is he like all organized 

 beings an end in nature, but also here on earth 

 the last end of nature, in reference to whom all 

 other natural things constitute a system of ends." 

 Yet it is not because he is the end of ends, but the 

 beginning of beginnings, that the completion of the 

 Body marks a crisis in the past. At last Evolution 

 had culminated in a creation so complex and 



