IS NATURE CRUEL?
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I think Mr. Ailwyn Best in his criticism of my letter overlooked the previous correspondence and failed to see that- my point about man rising above and not imitating the processes of Nature had nothing to do with man as an animal, but with man as a spiritual and intellectual being.
Of course man is a part of Nature in the physical aspect of his existence, but surely Mr. Best recognizes that he is also something more, and that the very name by which he is known in the Aryan speech we inherit—man (nranas—the thinker) indicates his differentiation from his lesser kindred. Is he not homo sapiens? Because of this added (or unfolded) something he must rise above the law of the jungle.
Huxley fully recognized this in his Evolution and Ethics and there was never a stronger upholder of evolution than he. Apropos—Dr. Bernard Hollander in Friday's Times emphasizes the gulf between physical and psychical aspects of the phenomena of life. His position is unassailable.
I agree with your correspondent when he says :—" It is difficult to see how far two thousand years of 'spiritual and ethical progress' have eradicated this element of violence from among mankind." Of course it is ; but two thousand years are a mere bagatelle in the eternal process, or to the vision for which a thousand years are but "as a watch in the night." Of course evolution is terribly slow to us, but it rests with man to hasten or retard it, once he has reached the point of understanding and can willingly co-operate by obeying the higher law.
Mr. Best recognizes in his final paragraph that "spiritual and physical serenity" should be attained, but when he says that it must be reached by "working- in harmony with the processes of Nature " he should also recognize that Nature in the fullest meaning of the word has spiritual as well as
physical aspects and that living in harmony with spiritual law cannot include the voluntary infliction of mental and physical pain upon sentient creatures for amusenient.
Moreover, even Nature, ordinarily so-called, adumbrates for the open-eyed observer foreshadowings of the higher law in the evidence offered by symbiosis and the communal life of some animals—notably those which have shown themselves most capable of domestication and of service to man.—I am,
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