28 
Nature Portraits 
FIG. 7. BUTTERFLY IMMEDIATELY AFTER EMERGING 
FROM CHRYSALID SHELL. 
FIG. 8. TWO MINUTES LATER. 
By I.. W. Brownell. 
FIC. 9. WRINKLES NEARLY CONE. 
everything is man’s because he may use 
it or enjoy it, but not because it was 
designed and made for him in the begin- 
ning. This notion that all things were 
made for man’s special pleasure is colos- 
sal self-assurance. It has none of the 
humility of the psalmist, who exclaimed: 
“ What is man, that Thou art mindful of 
him ?” 
“ What were these things made for, 
then ?” asked my friend. Just for them- 
selves ! Each thing lives for itself and 
its kind, and to live is worth the effort 
of living for man or bug. But there are 
more homely reasons for believing that 
things were not made for man alone. 
There was logic in the farmer’s retort to 
the good man who told him that roses 
were made to make man happy. “ No, 
they wa’n’t,” said the farmer, “ or they 
would n’t ’a’ had prickers.” 
Being human, we interpret nature in 
human terms. Much of our interpreta- 
tion of nature is really an interpretation 
of ourselves. Because a condition or a 
motive obtains in human affairs, we 
assume that it obtains everywhere. The 
only point of view is our own point of 
view. Of necessity, we assume a start- 
ing-point; therefrom we evolve an 
hypothesis which may be either truth or 
fallacy. Asa Gray combated Agassiz’s 
hypothesis that species were originally 
created where we now find them and in 
approximately the same numbers by in- 
voking Maupertuis’s “ principle of least 
action” — “that it is inconsistent with 
our idea of divine wisdom that the 
