298 ORGANIC EVOLUTION CONSIDERED 



others still the air, to be the only perfect place irr 

 which to live; and there would be an endless number 

 of voices from every nook and corner and crevice of 

 the earth — from under rocks and logs, from holes in 

 the ground, from inside and outside of every species 

 of vegetation, from caves and mountain tops, from 

 the hottest desert and from the temperate and the 

 frigid zones, from deepest ocean and from shallowest 

 pool — each creature, from the smallest microscopic 

 form to the huge whale a hundred feet in length, 

 would declare that its mode of life and its place of 

 existence are the most desirable. According to these 

 answers there would be a countless number of stand- 

 ards of perfection. 



We, however, are accustomed to judge of the per- 

 fection of nature from its relations to man. The infi- 

 nite adaptations of nature to all organisms below man 

 are presumptive evidence that nature is quite per- 

 fectly adapted to him. 



The fact that he has been here for thousands of 

 years, and that he has made, and is still making, prog- 

 ress — the fact that whatever work he desires to under- 

 take, he finds the means for its accomplishment at 

 hand, whether it is to lay an Atlantic cable, cut a 

 Mount Cenis tunnel, suspend a Brooklyn bridge, blow 

 up Hell-Gate, talk around the world, or bring distant 

 worlds into view, the materials and forces for the 

 accomplishment of these purposes have been prepared 

 in advance. The Creator has anticipated all the 

 wants of man's highest intelligence. The more fully 

 his intelligence is developed the more perfect nature 

 appears in her adaptations to him, and, judging from 

 the past, we may well believe that in the future, as 

 his knowledge becomes more perfect, the perfections 

 of nature will be more and more revealed, until what 

 now seem to be imperfections will wholly disappear. 



