high, there came a dividing of the ways. Instinct, as a factor of
development, had its limitations. It culminated in that remarkable
mechanism, the bee-swarm. It could go no farther. In that direction life
was thwarted. But life, splendid and invincible, not to be thwarted,
changed the direction of its advance, and reason became the all-potent
developmental factor. Reason dawned far down in the scale of life; but
it culminates in man and the end is not yet.

The lever in his arm he duplicates in wood and steel; the lenses in his
eyes in glass; the visual impressions of his brain on chemically
sensitised wood-pulp. He is able, reasoning from events and knowing the
law, to control the blind forces and direct their operation. Having
ascertained the laws of development, he is able to take hold of life and
mould and knead it into more beautiful and useful forms. Domestic
selection it is called. Does he wish horses which are fast, he selects
the fastest. He studies the physics of velocity in relation to equine
locomotion, and with an eye to withers, loins, hocks, and haunches, he
segregates his brood mares and his stallions. And behold, in the course
of a few years, he has a thoroughbred stock, swifter of foot than any
ever in the world before.

Since he takes sexual selection into his own hands and scientifically
breeds the fish and the fowl, the beast and the vegetable, why may he
not scientifically breed his own kind? The fish and the fowl and the
beast and the vegetable obey dim yearnings and vague desires and
reproduce themselves. "Poor the reproduction," says Man to Mother
Nature; "allow me." And Mother Nature is thrust aside and exceeded by
this new creator, this Man-god.

These yearnings and desires of the beast and the vegetable are the best
tools nature has succeeded in devising. Having devised them, she leaves
their operation to the blindness of chance. Steps in man and controls
and directs them. For the first time in the history of life conscious
intelligence forms and transforms life. These yearnings and desires,
promptings of the "abysmal fecundity," have in man evolved into what is
called "love." They arise in instinct and sensation and culminate in
sentiment and emotion. They master man, and the intellect of man, as
they master the beast and all the acts of the beast. And they operate in
the development of man with the same blindness of chance that they
operate in the development of the beast.

Now this