or master all the great beasts; his eye is not so sharp as that of
the eagle or the vulture, and yet he can see into the farthest
depths of siderial space; he has only very feeble occult powers of
communication with his fellows, and yet he can talk around the world
and send his voice across mountains and deserts; his hands are weak
things beside a lion's paw or an elephant's trunk, and yet he can
move mountains and stay rivers and set bounds to the wildest seas.
His dog can out-smell him and out-run him and out-bite him, and yet
his dog looks up to him as to a god. He has erring reason in place
of unerring instinct, and yet he has changed the face of the planet.

Without the specialization of the lower animals,--their wonderful
adaptation to particular ends,--their tools, their weapons, their
strength, their speed, man yet makes them all his servants. His
brain is more than a match for all the special advantages nature has
given them. The one gift of reason makes him supreme in the world.




VI



We have a stake in all the past life of the globe. It is no doubt a
scientific fact that your existence and mine were involved in the
first cell that appeared, that the first zoophyte furthered our
fortunes, that the first worm gave us a lift. Great good luck came
to us when the first pair of eyes were invented, probably by the
trilobite back in Silurian times; when the first ear appeared,