The ascription of utilitarian purposes to natural things leaves many cold. It is not how they react to “works of nature.” They prefer an aesthetic response. I will end with the sestet of one of Shakespeare’s great sonnets:
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
The lark ascending has inspired the poetry of William Shakespeare, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and George Meredith, and the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams. The display of the male skylark has been used to evoke selfless joy, but a modern Darwinist might describe the display as an honest, because strenuous, signal of quality made credible by the risk of being taken by a hawk. The lark is probably not bursting with joy, but exhausted and afraid. Shakespeare’s and Shelley’s transcendent metaphors could be seen as reflecting an erroneous view of the natural world. Does the striving of the skylark have no higher end than showing off to attract mates? Is there squalor in this view of life? Must Darwinists live in a disenchanted world? When I observed a lark at break of day arising from an Oxford meadow in cascades of song, did the richness of the scientific vision impoverish the poetic image?
I saw again the skylark’s flight,
Rising up on Solsbury Hill,
And once again my spirit rose,
My heart pounding with the climb.