TIME AND CHANGE 
tional, as I am rational when I weed my garden, 
prune my trees, select my seed or my stock, or arm 
myself with tools or weapons. In such matters I 
take a short cut to that which Nature reaches by a 
slow, roundabout, and wasteful process. How does 
she weed her garden? By the survival of the fittest. 
How does she select her breeding-stock? By the law 
of battle; the strongest rules. Hers, I repeat, is a 
slow and wasteful process. She fertilizes the soil by 
plowing in the crop. She cannot take a short cut. 
She assorts and arranges her goods by the law of the 
winds and the tides. She builds up with one hand 
and pulls down with the other. Man changes the 
conditions to suit the things. Nature changes the 
things to suit the conditions. She adapts the plant 
or the animal to its environment. She does not 
drain her marshes; she fills them up. Hers is the 
larger reason — the reason of the All. Man’s reason 
introduces a new method; it cuts across, modifies, 
or abridges the order of Nature. 
Tdo not see design in Nature in the old teleological 
sense; but I see everything working to its own pro- 
per end, and that end is foretold in the means. 
Things are not designed; things are begotten. It is as 
if the final plan of a man’s house, after he had begun 
to build it, should be determined by the winds and 
the rains and the shape of the ground upon which it 
stands. The eye is begotten by those vibrations in 
the ether called light, the ear by those vibrations in 
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