36 
DESTRUCTIVENESS OF MAN. 
the inorganic world are, as I have remarked, bound together 
by such mutual relations and adaptations as secure, if not the 
absolute* permanence and equilibrium of both, a long contin¬ 
uance of the established conditions of each at any given time 
and place, or at least, a very slow and gradual succession of 
changes in those conditions. But man is everywhere a dis¬ 
turbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of 
nature are turned to discords. The proportions and accom¬ 
modations which insured the stability of existing arrange¬ 
ments are overthrown. Indigenous vegetable and animal 
species are extirpated, and supplanted by others of foreign 
origin, spontaneous production is forbidden or restricted, and 
the face of the earth is either laid bare or covered with a new 
and reluctant growth of vegetable forms, and with alien tribes 
of animal life. These intentional changes and substitutions 
constitute, indeed, great revolutions; but vast as is their 
magnitude and importance, they are, as we shall see, insig¬ 
nificant in comparison with the contingent and unsought 
results which have flowed from them. 
The fact that, of all organic beings, man alone is to be 
regarded as essentially a destructive power, and that he wields 
energies to resist which, nature—that nature whom all 
material life and all inorganic substance obey—is wholly 
impotent, tends to prove that, though living in physical 
nature, he is not of her, that he is of more exalted parentage, 
and belongs to a higher order of existences than those born of 
her womb and submissive to her dictates. 
There are, indeed, brute destroyers, beasts and birds and 
insects of prey—all animal life feeds upon, and, of course, 
destroys other life,—but this destruction is balanced by com¬ 
pensations. It is, in fact, the very means by which the exist¬ 
ence of one tribe of animals or of vegetables is secured against 
being smothered by the encroachments of another; and the 
reproductive powers of species, which serve as the food of 
others, are always proportioned to the demand they are 
destined to supply. Man pursues his victims with reckless 
destructiveness; and, while the sacrifice of life by the lower 
