The
day for creative work of this sort has probably gone by, as the day for
the evolution of annulose segments and vertebrate skeletons has gone
by,--on our planet, at least. In the line of our own development, all
work of this kind stopped long ago, to be replaced by different methods.
As an optical instrument, the eye had well-nigh reached extreme
perfection in many a bird and mammal ages before man's beginnings; and
the essential features of the human hand existed already in the hands of
Miocene apes. But different methods came in when human intelligence
appeared upon the scene. Mr. Spencer has somewhere reminded us that the
crowbar is but an extra lever added to the levers of which the arm is
already composed, and the telescope but adds a new set of lenses to
those which already exist in the eye. This beautiful illustration goes
to the kernel of the change that was wrought when natural selection
began to confine itself to the psychical modification of our ancestors.
In a very deep sense all human science is but the increment of the power
of the eye, and all human art is the increment of the power of the
hand.
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