rasites refute the vulgar prejudice that evolution is
by the measure of man, progressive; adaptation is indifferent to
better or worse, except as to each species, that its offspring
shall survive by atrophy and degradation. The predatory species
flourish as if in derision of moral maxims; we see that though
human morality is natural to man, it is far from expressing the
whole of Nature. Animals, at first indistinguishable vegetables,
devour them and enjoy a far richer life. Animals that eat other
animals are nearly always superior not only in strength, grace and
agility but in intelligence. There are exceptions to this rule;
some snakes eat monkeys (thanking Providence), and the elephant is
content with foliage; but compare cats and wolves with the
ungulates that make a first concoction of herbs for their sake. It
is true that our monkey kin are chiefly frugivorous; for it may be
plausibly argued that man was first differentiated by becoming
definitely carnivorous, a sociable hunter, as it were, a wolf-ape.
Hence the advantage of longer legs, the use of weapons, the upright
gait and defter hands to use and make weapons, more strategic
brains, tribal organisation, and hence liberation from the tropical
forest, and citizenship of the world. The greater part of his
subsequent history is equally unedifying: having made the world his
prey, he says that God made the world to that end, and those who
have preyed upon their fellows, and enslaved them, and flourished
upon it, have declared that to have been the intention of nature.
(_The Metaphysics of Nature_; pp. 344-5).

A perpetual pulling down and building up, and the building altogether
dependent upon the demolition. The tiger built with tastes and
capacities for catching the gazelle: the gazelle built with capacities
that enable it to escape the tiger. There is no evidence here of the
existence of a single mind working out an intelligent plan. At most we
have either the proof for a number of warring powers, each one striving
to destroy what the other is striving to create, or a single mind that
has deliberately fashioned things so that each part may work for the
destruction of the other part, the whole to presently end in a grand
catastrophe.

But that is not all. If we limit our attention to man, can it be said
that we find in the human structure what