June 14, 1918] 



SCIENCE 



573 



arises from the failure to appreciate what 

 science has done. Instead of restricting 

 our imagination science has so enlarged our 

 horizon that we may take a bolder flight. 

 To the mind of primitive man and to the 

 savage who survives in this state until our 

 own times, nature appeared a thing of 

 caprice rather than of order. The world 

 was one of spirits, good or evil, who must 

 alwaj's be considered, with whom man must 

 make his peace. The day as well as the 

 night was peopled with beings who ruled in 

 the absence of any definite sequence of 

 events and safety could be found only by 

 submission to their caprice or propitiation 

 of it. Under these conditions imagination 

 had full play. But who in our generation 

 would choose this brand of imagination ? 

 When man first observed the changeless 

 motion of the stars "without haste, with- 

 out rest," and gained an inkling that the 

 same orderly sequence might apply to all 

 natural phenomena, the opportunity for 

 imagination was not lost. It was placed on 

 a higher plane. The inhabitants of Eu- 

 rope, who once imagined Hell or the "Is- 

 lands of the Blest" to lie beyond the At- 

 lantic, have lost many fields in which the 

 imagination of medieval man found exer- 

 cise ; but what a vista has been opened. 

 Consider the sweep of the evolutionary con- 

 ception through time and space. Or con- 

 sider man as the victor over nature, not- 

 withstanding those laws which are inexor- 

 able for other living things. No other spe- 

 cies is known to have spread itself so 

 widely over the earth and to have so 

 changed its environment to suit its needs. 

 Herein lies the difference between man and 

 the rest of the animal world. Wherever 

 else an animal has been subjected to a new 

 environment, the result has been death or 

 the evolution of a new type suited "to meet 

 the changed conditions. But man has 

 taken himself and his domesticated plants 



iuid animals into surroundings to which 

 neither he nor they are properly adapted; 

 and instead of paying the penalty inevita- 

 ble in a state of nature, has survived and 

 the creatures under his care have survived 

 with him. Where nature would say ' ' Die ! ' ' 

 man has said, "I will live!"; and he has 

 succeeded in this because he forces from 

 his environment the readjustments neces- 

 sary for his well-being. Not always is this 

 possible. The path is not trod with ease, 

 but it is being steadily pursued. In his 

 essay entitled "Nature's Insurgent Son," 

 Lankester^ thus compares man to an in- 

 surgent gone so far in his rebellion that 

 there is no return ; for capitulation can 

 mean only death. The rebel must continue 

 on his course until the end is won, if he is 

 to find safetj'. He can not now return to 

 the dominion of nature, he must succeed 

 by controlling his surroundings, and 

 knowledge of how to do this is more vital 

 to him than aught else. 



Again, take the poetry in modern inven- 

 tion. For it is there in plenty when you 

 know how to find it, as Kipling has done 

 time and again, but nowhere better than in 

 his verses on "The Deep-sea Cables." 



The wrecks dissolve above us; their dust drops 



down from afar — 

 Down to the dark, to the utter dark, where the 



blind white sea-snakes are. 

 There is no sound, no echo of sound, in the deserts 



of the deep. 

 Or the great gray level plains of ooze where the 



shell-burred cables creep. 

 Here in the womb of the world — here on the tie- 

 ribs of earth 

 Words, and the words of men, flicker and flutter 



and beat — 

 Warning, sorrow and gain, salutation and mirth — 

 For a Power troubles the Still that has neither 



voice nor feet. 

 They have wakened the timeless Things; they hav« 



killed their father Time; 



3 Lankester, E. R., ' ' The Kingdom of Man, ' ' 

 Holt and Co., 1907. 



