ABSTRACT
NATURE’S REDNESS AND THE ABUSE OF COMMON SPEECH We move on now from strange beliefs based on optimistic distortions of evolutionary theory to ones based on pessimistic distortions, from Lamarck’s escalator to nature red in tooth and claw. Are we then still in realms which ought to be called religious at all? Certainly this is a gloomy and alarming cult. But it is still one celebrated with powerful incantations, such as Tennyson’s and that of M.T. Ghiselin (quoted on p. [240] and to be looked at again shortly). As we have already seen, even the cosmic escalator, when set against a sufficiently vast and disheartening backdrop, can give a deeply gloomy impression. Yet the drama to which this picture contributes is certainly spiritually ambitious enough to constitute a faith and in some sense a religion.
