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Show 170 io ascend in a disciplined manner toward the plan of the :reator, even if he never reached it. Gray never doubted that Mature was a planned conception, he only thought that the neat chapter headings and categories of man's classification systems were approximate. [Man] is often obliged to make arbitrary divisions where nature shows only transitions . . . to assume, on paper at least, a strictly definite limitation of genera, of tribes, and of orders, although observation shows so much blending here and there of natural groups, sufficiently distinct on the whole, as to warrant us in assuming the likelihood that the Creator's plan is one of gradation, not of definite limitation, even perhaps to the species themselves. For a thoroughgoing Darwinian, it was no longer possible to think of Nature as a Book. The chapter headings were false distinctions, because the creator's plan flowed continuously from species to species. By accepting gradation, Gray was opening the door for evolution. If species could not be clearly separated, they might well have evolved from each other. Nature was a tree, a path, a flow, not a Book. Muir had ascended toward higher and wider views, as Gray recommended. He had evolved as Gray thought an ideal student ought, while he was using the metaphor of Nature as Book, and classifying Yosemite Valleys in the second chapter of the Studies, Muir used these comparisons only as a crude introduction to his message. As he finally reached higher |