III.

No doubt, it may be properly urged that the operation of human energy
and intelligence, which has brought into existence and maintains the
garden, by what I have called "the horticultural process," is,
strictly speaking, part and parcel of the cosmic process. And no one
could more readily agree to that proposition than I. In fact, I do not
know that any one has taken more pains than I have, during the last
thirty years, to insist upon the doctrine, so much reviled in the
early part of that period, that man, physical, intellectual, and
moral, is as much a part of nature, as purely a product of the cosmic
process, as the humblest weed.*

* See "Man's Place in Nature," Collected Essays, vol. vii., and
"On the Struggle for Existence in Human Society" (1888), below.

But if, following up this admission, it is urged [12] that, such being
the case, the cosmic process cannot be in antagonism with that
horticultural process which is part of itself--I can only reply, that
if the conclusion that the two are, antagonistic is logically absurd,
I am sorry for logic, because, as we have seen, the fact is so. The
garden is in the same position as every other work of man's art; it is
a result of the cosmic process working through and by human energy and
intelligence; and, as is the case with every other artificial thing
set up in the state of nature, the influences of the latter, are
constantly tending to break it down and destroy it. No doubt, the
Forth bridge and an ironclad in the offing, are, in ultimate resort,
products of the cosmic process; as much so as the river which flows
under the one, or the seawater on which the other floats.
Nevertheless, every breeze strains the bridge a little, every tide