220 SECRETS OF ANIMAL LIFE 
to see the stars. It is easy to assert that with other 
elements, with other properties, there might have 
been other living creatures, very different from those 
we know, yet just as well adapted and just as 
marvelous and beautiful; but no one has substan- 
tiated this assertion. The fact to stand firm on is 
that the order of inanimate Nature has been such 
that it facilitated the order and progress of animate 
Nature. The “material nature ’’—the stones and 
mortar of the world—must be admitted to have 
had a character which made the preparation of a 
home for life possible—a potentiality to which we 
do not seem to do anything like full justice unless 
we call it purposive. But preparing a home for life 
was not all, for far in the future there was the 
rational mind of man, prying into the facts, puzzling 
over them, in part understanding them; and if this 
also evolved naturally, there is no way, even if we 
wished, of escaping the conclusion that what we 
call material is also spiritual, for there can be 
nothing in the end which was not also present in 
kind in the beginning. It looks, then, as if Nature 
was Nature for a purpose. 
