ated, so that from the standpoint of the method of evolution alone, aside from all other considerations, we have the significant phenomenon of a process unfolding its various forms after a manner common to all, until a form is reached which not only differs from all the others, but which marks a radical change in the very process itself by transcending its own limitations, enlarging its scope and determining its ends. Intellect may be potential in Darwin's "Simian ancestor with arboreal habits and caudal appendage," or even in Tyndall's "fiery cloud"; but it is actual in man and that too in a unique manner and degree.
Darwin has observed that if man had not been his own classifier, he would never have thought of founding a separate order for his own reception.[1]
This is, however, the most significant quality of the human species, that man can contemplate the process of which he is a part, and can become 'his own classifier,' and claim a unique status for himself. The very fact that man can critically study the process, formulate its procedure, classify its results and generalize its phenomena, is in itself a mode of transcending the very process itself. The cosmical forces at a certain stage in their development become reflective in man. Man is a philosophical animal. In his capacity for reflection, he exercises a gift that cannot possibly possess any 'survival value.' It brings to him no advantage in the struggle for existence. But in the satisfactions which accrue to him in giving free play to these inner compulsions of thought, he proves that thought is something more than an instrument of competition and that man himself is not actuated merely by animal needs and desires, but is capable of responding to a vocation which has a higher sanction than the forces of nature and the demands of a bare existence.
II. The question suggests itself at this point concerning the significance of the purposeful activities of man in relation to the natural process of evolution. Every system of naturalism seeks to eliminate all teleological factors from the course of nature. However successfully nature may be freed from the implication of purpose, it is not so simple or easy a task to explain away the fact of purpose in human nature.
- ↑ Descent of Man, p. 231.
