ANTHROPOCENTRIC ETHICS 317 



subject of celestial anxiety. The earth is a satrap 

 of the sun — a subordinate among servants, not a 

 sovereign with a retinue of stars. The earth and 

 its contents vv^ere not made for man. They were 

 not made at all. They were evolved. The con- 

 caves of the sea have been hollowed, the mountains 

 upheaved, and the continents planted and peopled, 

 by the same tendencies as those that hold the 

 universes in their grasp. The primal matters of 

 the earth came out of the substance of the sun, 

 and by the play and activity of these elements and 

 the play and activity of their derivatives were 

 evolved all the multitudinous forms of land, fluid, 

 plant, animal, and society. The flowers that 

 * blush unseen ' do not necessarily * waste their 

 sweetness on the desert air,' as the poet so melo- 

 diously imagines. The colours and scents of 

 flowers serve their purposes — which are to secure 

 the services of insects in fertilisation — quite as 

 well when unperceived, as when perceived by 

 human senses. The non-human races of beings 

 were not made for human beings. They were 

 evolved— the higher forms from the lower forms, 

 and the lower forms from still lower — ^just as 

 the higher societies of men have been evolved, 

 under the eye of history, out of barbarism and 

 savagery. They are our ancestors. They have 

 made human life and civilisation possible. They 

 made their homes on primeval land patches when 

 the continents we creep over were sleeping in 

 the seas. They lived and loved and suffered and 

 died in order that a being intelligent enough to 



