PROGRESS, BIOLOGICAL AND OTHER 51 



selection within the community, it largely, under 

 present conditions, encourages qualities such as in- 

 telligence and initiative, which are biologically pro- 

 gressive. And finally, when Eugenics shall become 

 practical politics, its action, so far as we can see, will 

 be at first entirely devoted to this raising of the aver- 

 age, by altering the proportion of good and bad stock, 

 and if possible eliminating the lowest strata, in a 

 genetically mixed population. ^^ 



Since, however, the main stress in human evolu- 

 tion has been upon the community and upon tradi- 

 tion, it is here that we shall expect to find most defi- 

 nite evidences of progress, and it is here that we do 

 in fact find them. 



We have in the first place the increase of the size of 

 units, familiar to us already in lower forms. This, 

 however, is tending to a limit, which will be attained 

 when the present competition of sovereign states has 

 been replaced (as, if we can read the future from the 

 past, it inevitably will be) by some form of federa- 

 tion covering the globe. We find an immense in- 

 crease of control over environment — a theme so hack- 

 neyed as to need no labouring. We find an almost 

 equally striking, if less spectacular, increase in inde- 

 pendence. Man becomes less and less at the mercy 

 of the forces of nature and of other organisms, at- 

 tains much more to self-regulation. This has de- 

 pended upon increased efliciency of "organs" — here 

 the extra-organismal organs we call tools and ma- 



15 See Whetham, '21; Castle, '12. 



