127 
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.