A great many people in our time are of the impression that it was not until the serious dis cussion of the theory of evolution came up that man's intimate relations to the animals was rec ognized. It has been the teaching of Christian philosophers from the very beginning that man is an animal, and the definition for man adopted from the Greeks by all Christian writ ers was that he is a rational animal. As to where his body came from Christians are mani festly free to believe — if they think there is evidence for it — that the animality of man is the result of a process of evolution by which in the course of biogenesis the human body de veloped through the animals and then was raised by special creation to the highest species by the introduction of a soul. Those who ar gue that there is no need for this special crea tion of man are as a rule scientists whose inter ests have been largely centred on man's rela tionship to the animals rather than on his su periority to them. The zoologist, intent on the morphology of the human body and its inti mate relation to animal bodies, easily minimizes the extremely great difference that his mind confers upon man. Zoologists have suggested that man may be defined as °a tool making and tool using animal." If that were all that man really is, then there would be no need for the special creation of a soul. Man looked on as merely a higher animal is "a tool-making, tool-using animal," but as a rational animal, man is a thought-creating being, and this places an immense gap between him and the other animals. There can be no question of any process of evolution from the animal account ing for the being which produced the
or the
Many seem to think that the more careful study of the significance of natural selection in the world of life had entirely done away with any necessity for an appeal to forces outside of nature to account for evolution. Any such thought, however, is due to failure to recognize the real place of natural selection as a factor in evolution and to hand over natural processes to the influence of chance. Almost needless to say chance is only a word used to indicate our lack of knowledge of the factors at work in any problem. Creative direction was the phrase that Lord Kelvin preferred to use as descriptive of the forces at work bringing about whatever development there is in nature. Dar win himself did not believe that natural selec tion did away with the necessity for creation and expressed himself to this effect in the last sentence of his book. He realized very clearly that though his book was called the
of Species' it did not discuss origins, but, on the contrary, preservations. He would have preferred to call it by its secondary title
in so many other departments of evolution the Darwinians, so-called, went ever so much far ther than Darwin himself, who recognized very clearly and emphasized the fact that the strug gle for life did not mean any personal con flict between animals to the death, but on the contrary such reaction of vital forces to the environment in which the animal was placed has brought out all its powers and gave it a higher vitality than it would otherwise have had. As Huxley said, °Life is a game infi nitely more complicated than chess and the player on the other side is hidden from us." "We know that his plays are always fair, just and patient. To the man who plays well the highest stakes are paid with that sort of over flowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength." This is a much better picture of the struggle for life than many of those given by the Darwinians and even Ly Huxley himself when he was in ultra-Darwinian mood.
Biological developments have served to minimize the place of the struggle for life and to emphasize mutual aid as a factor in the process of evolution. While the idea of the struggle for life dominated biology it seemed to many as though evolution had been handed over to blind forces, largely composed of strength and the advantage which might gave to the stronger animal. An exaggeration of the significance of the struggle for life against which Darwin had warned, but which was taken up by the Darwinians as representing the most important chapter in biology, made a great many people believe that the law of nature was that the stronger survived and that the weakest must go to the wall; that nature had no care for the individual, but only for the race, and that life was just a huge gory spectacle of death inflicted on living things by other living beings that happened to have secured the advantage over them. Even Hux ley, usually so careful, was carried away by this view and in his essay on "The Struggle for Existence in Its Bearing upon Man," suggested that "From the point of view of the moralist the animal world is about on the same level as a gladiator's show. The creatures are fairly well treated and set to fight ; the strongest, the swiftest and the cunningest live to fight an other day. The spectator has no need to turn his thumb down as no quarter is given" Russian biologists, in the face of the im mense difficulties for living things provided by the severe climate of their country, came to recognize early that it was not the individual of greatest strength that always survived, but that nature provided a great law of helpfulness among the animals. They called attention then to the principle of mutual aid as of probably more importance than the struggle for life as a factor in evolution and it has now come to be recognized that practically all living things have instincts of mutual aid that are extremely precious for them. The smallest living beings, the insects, frankly live community lives for mutual protection, not only against enemies but against the vicissitudes of climate and for the conservation of food. The smaller mam mals often live in villages, so-called, or groups that prove distinctly helpful. Even the larger mammals possess the same precious instinct, and wild horses herd together for protection against packs of wolves which hunt together because thus they are able to overcome even the very large animals. A drove of wild horses, when attacked by a pack of wolves, gather in a circle, heads toward the centre, leaving a space on the inside for the foals and presenting on the outside to their enemies only a battery of heels.