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With respect to the second point, it is indeed true
that philosophers have held the doctrine that man is
the final cause of the creation, and that all things
were made for his especial benefit. Bernardin de Saint-
Pierre asserted that wherever fleas are, they jump on
white colours, and that this instinct has been given
them that we may more easily catch them. He informs
us that the melon has been divided into sections by nature
for family eating, and he adds that the pumpkin, being
larger, can be eaten with one’s neighbours.* But it is no
less true that this view has been held up to ridicule by
philosophers long, long before the promulgation of the
theory of Natural Selection.
Cicero, in his De NaturA Deorum, puts the following argument
into the mouth of Velleius :—“Or were these things made, as you
almost assert, by God, for the sake of men? Was it for the wise?
If so, then this great design was adopted for the sake of a very
small number. Or for the sake of fools ? First of all there was no
reason why God should consult the advantage of the wicked ; and,
further, what could be His object in doing so, since all fools are,
without doubt, the most miserable of men, chiefly because they are
fools?”—{Book /., § g.)
“Although it be,” says Descartes, “a pious and good thought as
regards morals, to believe that God has made all things for us, to the
end that that may stir us up the more to love and thank Him for so
many benefits, although it be also true in some sense, because ther <
is nothing created from which we cannot derive some use, ... it
is not at all probable that all things have been made for us, in such a-
way that God has had no other end in creating them ; and it would
be, as I think, impertinent to seek to use this opinion in support
of reasonings in physics, for we cannot doubt that there are an
infinity of things now in the world, or that there formerly were,
though they may have entirely ceased to be, without any man having
seen or known them, and which have never served him for any
purpose.”—(Descartes. Priticipes de la Philosophic, vol. Hi., p. j>.)
“ Man,” says Goethe, “ is naturally disposed to consider himself as
the centre and end of creation, and to regard all the beings that
surround him as bound to subserve his personal profit. He takes
Etudes de la Nature. Etude xi.