42 
CHARACTER OF MAN’S ACTION. 
tliat of wild animals. It appears to me to (lifter in essential 
character, because, though it is often followed by unforeseen 
and undesired results, yet it is nevertheless guided by a self- 
conscious and intelligent will aiming as often at secondary and 
remote as at immediate objects. The wild animal, on the 
other hand, acts instinctively, and, so far as we are able to 
perceive, always with a view to single and direct purposes. 
The backwoodsman and the beaver alike fell trees; the man 
that he may convert the forest into an olive grove that will 
mature its fruit only for a succeeding generation, the beaver 
that he may feed upon their bark or use them in the construction 
of his habitation. Human differs from brute action, too, in its 
influence upon the material world, because it is not controlled 
by natural compensations and balances. Hatural arrange¬ 
ments, once disturbed by man, are not restored until he retires 
from the field, and leaves free scope to spontaneous recupera¬ 
tive energies ; the wounds he inflicts upon the material crea¬ 
tion are not healed until he withdraws the arm that gave the 
blow. On the other hand, I am not aware of any evidence 
that wild animals have ever destroyed the smallest forest, 
extirpated any organic species, or modified its natural charac¬ 
ter, occasioned any permanent change of terrestrial surface, or 
produced any disturbance of physical conditions which nature 
has not, of herself, repaired without the expulsion of the 
animal that had caused it.* 
The form of geographical surface, and very probably the 
climate of a given country, depend much on the character of 
the vegetable life belonging to it. Man has, by domestication, 
greatly changed the habits and properties of the plants he 
rears; he has, by voluntary selection, immensely modified the 
forms and qualities of the animated creatures that serve him ; 
and he has, at the same time, completely rooted out many 
forms of both vegetable and animal being.f Wliat is there, in 
* There is a possible—but only a possible—exception in the case of the 
American bison. See note on that subject in chap, iii, post. 
t Whatever may be thought of the modification of organic species by 
natural selection, there is certainly no evidence that animals have exerted 
