vanquished, while
the only reward to the victors ... is the permission to reproduce
their kind--to carry on by heredity to another generation, the
specific qualities by which they triumphed." The _origin_ of man,
partly, at any rate, by such a process of natural selection, is one
chapter in his history. Another begins with the development of his
mental qualities, which are of such unprecedented power in Nature.
These qualities so dominate all else in his "living" activities that
they largely cut him off from the general operations of natural
selection. Perhaps the only direction in which natural selection is
the chiefly operative factor in human evolution to-day is in the
development of immunity from infectious disease. Just as man is a new
departure in the unfolding scheme of the world, so his presence and
characteristics lead to new methods of evolution, of survival, and the
like. Knowledge, reason, self-consciousness, will, are new processes
in Nature, and it is these which have largely determined the direction
of man's history. Nature's discipline of death is more or less
successfully resisted by the will of man. Man is Nature's Rebel.
"Where Nature says 'Die'! Man says 'I will live.'" By his wits and his
will man has overcome many of Nature's bounds and difficulties without
changing, as other organisms would, his innate characteristics. Not
only this but man has obtained control of his surroundings and at
every step of his development he has receded farther from the rule of
Nature. Now "he has advanced so far and become so unfitted to the
earlier rule, that to suppose that Man can 'return to Nature' is as
unreasonable as to suppose that an adult animal can return to its
mother's womb."

But at present man puts into operation no real substitute for natural
selection. "The standard raised by the rebel man is not that of
fitness to the conditions proffered by extra-human Nature, but is one
of ideal comfort, prosperity, and conscious joy of life--imposed by
the will of man and involving a control, and in important respects a
subversion, of what were Nature's methods of dealing with life before
she had produced her insurgent son." Progress in the control of Nature
has been going on with enormous rapidity during the last two centuries
particularly--the "nature searchers" have placed almost limitless
power in the hands of men. And yet the builders of society and
governments and nations have failed to profit by this incre