But if man is part of the universe, then the universe is not intelligible apart from man, and the cosmic process is not fully understood unless we also have an understanding of human activity.  This, therefore, is the counter-claim that I would suggest.  The course and method of evolution, or of the ’cosmic process’—­to use Huxley’s term—­is imperfectly described if the methods and principles of human action are left out of account.

No doubt the reply may be made, as the reply has been made, that after all man occupies but a minute space in the cosmos, that he is but an insignificant speck on an unimportant planet.  But, if this is at all meant to imply that we may safely leave the peculiarities of human activity out of account, then I say that the suggestion hardly deserves consideration.  Surely the assumption is too gross and unwarrantable that material magnitude is the standard of importance, or that the significance of man’s life can be measured by the size of his material organism.  We must therefore never delude ourselves with the idea that we have a full account of the cosmos or the cosmic process unless we have taken account of the peculiarities of man’s nature and man’s activity.

In the second place, the discussion of the principle of natural selection suggests a further reflexion.  The process of natural selection is a process which always tends to some end, because by it some organisms are selected, and they are the organisms which are fittest to live.  By ‘fittest’ is of course meant that which is best adapted to the environment, or, as it is simply a question of survival, that which so fits the conditions of the environment that it is able to survive.  The canon of the principle of natural selection is on the face of it relative.  No one would say that the principle can be interpreted as an absolute law for conduct, after the fashion of the absolute laws laid down by the rationalist moralists; what is involved is simply a gelation to one’s surroundings.  One must keep in touch with them, one must adapt oneself to them, in order to live.

But I wish to point out that the principle is not only relative, but that its relation is limited to certain features of the environment which surrounds mankind, namely, to those features and those features only which prevent organisms unsuited to the conditions of life from surviving at all.  The only way in which natural selection works is by killing off rapidly or gradually the organisms which are not fitted to obtain from the environment the means of life—­that is to say, it has to do with life only, with the continuance of life as a possible material phenomenon.  Given that the organisms are fit enough to survive, given that their animal vitality is not diminished, a question remains:  what is the standard of worthy survival? and to that question the process and principle of natural selection can give no answer.  To use the old distinction:  even if it is able to account for being, it can give no standard for wellbeing.