Nature and Man

Abstract

PROF. LANKESTER in his Romanes lecture began by a statement of the theory of evolution, directing attention to unwarranted inferences commonly drawn by clever writers unacquainted with the study of nature. He described how the change in the character of the struggle for existence, possibly in the Lower Miocene period, which favoured an increase in the size of the brain in the great mammals and the horse, probably became most important in the development of man. The progress of man cut him off from the general operation of the law of natural selection as it had worked until he appeared, and he acquired knowledge, reason, self-consciousness, and will, so that “survival of the fittest,” when applied to man, came to have a meaning quite different from what it had when applied to other creatures. Thus man can control nature, and the “nature-searchers,” the founders of the Royal Society and their followers, have placed boundless power in the hands of mankind, and enabled man to arrive at spiritual emancipation and freedom of thought. But the leaders of human activity at present still attach little or no importance to the study of nature. They ignore the penalties that rebellious man must pay if he fails to continue his study and acquire greater and greater control of nature.