THE SUMMIT OF THE YEARS 



plated by Nature's plan, as, in a sense, it is at war 

 with that plan, and a reversal of it. 



Just as life was a new thing in the inorganic 

 world, contravening the ordinary laws of matter, 

 expressing a kind of energy not derived from gravi- 

 tation, making chemical and physical forces its 

 servants, so was the reason of man a new thing, 

 evolved, of course, from preexisting conditions, or 

 animal automatism, but, when fairly differentiated, 

 a new mode of energy, making its possessor a new 

 kind of animal, reversing or annulling many of the 

 laws that have sway in the rest of the animal king- 

 dom, defeating the law of natural selection and the 

 survival of the fittest, rising superior to climate and 

 to geographical conditions, controlling and chang- 

 ing his environment, making servants of the natural 

 forces about him; in short, fairly facing and mas- 

 tering Nature in a way no other animal had ever 

 done. 



The conditions that have limited the increase and 

 spread of the other animals have been in a measure 

 triumphed over by man. The British scientist I 

 have quoted above, Ray Lankester, has described 

 man as Nature's rebel — he defies her and wrests 

 her territory from her. " Where Nature says, 

 'Die!' man says, *I will live.' According to the 

 law previously in universal operation, man should 

 have been limited in geographical area, killed by 

 extreme cold or heat, subject to starvation if one 

 134 



