300 THE WORLD OF LIFE 



a great responsibility is placed upon him for the way in which 

 he deals with this his great heritage from all the ages, not only 

 as regards himself and his fellows of the present generation, 

 but towards the unknown multitude of future generations that 

 are to succeed him. 



x\ll of us who are led to believe that there must be a being 

 or beings high and powerful enough to have been the real 

 cause of the material cosmos with its products life and mind, 

 can hardly escape from the old and much-derided view, that 

 this world of ours is the best of all possible worlds calculated 

 to bring about this result. And if the best for its special pur- 

 pose, then the whole course of life-development was the best; 

 then also every step in that development and every outcome 

 of it which we find in the living things which are our con- 

 temporaries are also the best — are here for a purpose in some 

 way connected with us; and if in our blind ignorance or 

 prejudice we destroy them before we have earnestly endeav- 

 oured to learn the lesson thev are intended to teach us, w^e 

 and our successors will be the losers — morally, intellectually, 

 and perhaps even physically. 



Already in the progress of this work I have dwelt upon the 

 marvellous variety of the useful or beautiful products of the 

 vegetable and animal kingdoms far beyond their o^^TL uses, as 

 indicating a development for the ser^uce of man. This variety 

 and beauty, even the strangeness, the ugliness, and the unex- 

 pectedness we find everywhere in nature, are, and therefore 

 were intended to be, an important factor in our mental de- 

 velopment ; for they excite in us admiration, wonder, and 

 curiosity — the three emotions which stimulate first our at- 

 tention, then our determination to learn the how and the why, 

 which are the basis of observation and experiment and there- 

 fore of all science and all philosophy. These considerations 

 should lead us to look upon all the works of nature, animate or 

 inanimate, as invested with a certain sanctity, to be used by 

 us but not abused, and never to be recklessly destroyed or de- 

 faced. To pollute a spring or a river, to exterminate a bird 



