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.
Now the environment of civilised man is a great deal larger in range
than those material phenomena which contribute to his nourishment and
thus to his existence as an animal organism. No doubt his first effort
is to maintain himself as an animal--that is the condition of all
his subsequent activity--but he seeks also to suit himself to an
environment which is wider and subtler than merely animal conditions
of life; to adapt himself to society, perhaps only as a member of it,
perhaps also as a leader or reformer; to adapt himself to the dominant
ideas of his time, absorbing them, perhaps also modifying them; to
adapt himself to a whole region of interests which may in our life be
built upon an animal basis, but of which the animal basis gives no
explanation--interests social, artistic, intellectual, spiritual.
It is correct, therefore, to say of man that his environment is much
larger than the material universe; it is whatever he conceives the
universe as being, and whatever it can be for him: whether he seeks
from it merely intellectual understanding, whether he regards it as
a vehicle for artistic production, or whether he may see in it an
opportunity for realising his own being by fulfilling the will of
God--perhaps by submerging his own individuality in deity.
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