340 THE WOKLD OF LIFE 



The main facts and probabilities clearly point to the conclu- 

 sion that the extensive group of nut-like fruits or seeds are 

 intended to be eaten, not by birds while on the trees, but by 

 ground -feeding animals — to be devoured wholesale, in order 

 to disperse and save a few which may germinate and produce 

 another generation of trees. 



The Colours of Plants and Animals in relation to Man 



The views of Ilaeckel and of the whole school of Monists, 

 as ^\^e\\ as of most of the followers of Spencer and Darwin, 

 are strongly antagonistic to the idea that in the various groups 

 of phenomena w^e have so far touched upon there has been in 

 any real sense a preparation of the earth for man; and those 

 who advocate such a theory are usually treated with scorn as 

 being unscientiiic, or Avith contempt as being priest-ridden. 

 Darwin himself was quite distressed at my rejection of his 

 own conclusion — that even man's highest qualities and pow- 

 ers had been developed out of those of the lower animals by 

 natural or sexual selection. Several critics accused me of 

 ^' appealing to first causes " in order to get over difficulties ; 

 of maintainins: that '^ our brains are made bv God and our 

 lungs by natural selection " ; and that, in point of fact, " man 

 is God's domestic animal." This was when I published my 

 Contributions to the Theory of Xatural Selection, in IS 70, its 

 last chapter on The Limits of ^Natural Selection as applied to 

 Man, being the special object of animadversion, because I 

 pointed out that some of man's physical characters and many 

 of his mental and moral faculties could not have been pro- 

 duced and developed to their actual perfection by the law of 

 natural selection alone, because they are not of survival value 

 in the struggle for existence. 



In the present work I recur to the subject after forty years 

 of further reflection, and I now uphold the doctrine that not 

 man alone, but the whole World of Life, in almost all its varied 

 manifestations, leads us to the same conclusion — that to afford 

 any rational explanation of its phenomena, w^e require to pos- 



