40 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



tory so far is a record of experiment after experiment. 

 From a period so short and so empirical it is impos- 

 sible to deduce any general law of progress. In cer- 

 tain respects, as we shall see more in detail later, 

 there has been advance; in others, the species has 

 been stationary. But whether humanity in this or 

 that particular has progressed is for the moment com- 

 paratively immaterial. Humanity is part of life, a 

 product of life's movement; and in life as a whole 

 there is progress.^ 



What is more, there was progress before man ever 

 appeared on the earth, and its reality would have 

 been in no way impaired even if he had never come 

 into being. His rise only continued, modified, and 

 accelerated a process that had been in operation since 

 the dawn of life. 



Here we find, in the intellectual sphere at least, 

 that assurance which men have been seeking from 

 the first. We see revealed, in the fact of evolution- 

 ary progress, that the forces of nature conspire to- 

 gether to produce results which have value in our 

 eyes, that man has no right to feel helpless or with- 

 out support in a cold and meaningless cosmos, to be- 

 lieve that he must face and fight forces which are 

 definitively hostile. Although he must attack the 

 problems of existence in a new way, yet his face is 

 set in the same direction as the main tide of evolving 

 life, and his highest destiny, the end towards which 

 he has so long perceived that he must strive, is to 



9 See Conklin, '22. 



