Man's Full-Rounded Nature 17 



Man's Full-Rounded Nature 



This same evolutionary panegyric might be pronounced 

 over man's will, which is still another side of his nature, 

 over man's imagination, over man's faculty of language ; 

 in fact over every great attribute, faculty, or quality of 

 his rich, many-sided nature. And fortunate it would 

 seem to have been for man that his nature is prismatic, 

 fortunate that his intellectual ignorance at first saved 

 him from following out unchecked and to its rigorous 

 logical conclusion the struggle for self before he had 

 had time to develop the higher altruistic qualities 

 within him. For man is selfish with his head, generous 

 with his heart. (If you doubt this, note the difference 

 between the sexes.) Unbounded selfishness, the per- 

 petual struggle between different selfish entities, each 

 striving to absorb all that tended to their own indi- 

 vidual advancement regardless of the interests of 

 family, tribe, or nation, would have kept man forever 

 in anarchy and prevented all progress. (Even the 

 common sparrow has risen in the evolutionary scale 

 above this point.) Equally unbounded generosity on 

 man's part, on the other hand, would have led to race 

 extinction. Each quality seems to have served as an 

 indispensable check upon the other. 



Selfishness 



Prominent among the many elements of the large 

 debt of gratitude which our race owes to the great- 

 hearted originator of the theory of evolution is the 



