PROGRESS SHOWN IN EVOLUTION 



power and of purposive action. If we now examine this 

 list further, we find that every one of the improvements 

 enumerated may be thought of as conferring upon the 

 individual or the race increased power of control over 

 environment, increased internal harmony and self-regulative 

 capacity and consequently increased independence as regards 

 the outer world, increased knowledge, and increased intensity 

 and harmony of mental life. 



Whether the list is considered in its first state or in its 

 second, there are very few who will not admit that these 

 biological improvements, which have made for survival and 

 success in evolution, are not also improvements when judged 

 by our human standards of value. We, too, strive for con- 

 trol over nature and for greater independence of outer con- 

 ditions; we value harmony; we prize knowledge and all the 

 products (when balanced) of increased intensity of emotion 

 and v/ill. It is therefore justifiable, since progress is a word 

 which implies progress toward something which we men 

 find of value, to speak of the observed movement of life 

 that we have so far called biological advance as real biological 

 progress. 



It may be argued that this is mere reasoning in a circle; 

 that of course, as we are ourselves products of the evolu- 

 tionary process, we shall find its movement coincide with 

 our ideas of good. This is in reality not so at all. It is ttot 

 all kinds of evolutionary movement which we find good in 

 this way, but only the one kind that we have defined as 

 balanced advance. There are many other kinds of evolu- 

 tionary process. There is, for instance, extinction. Whole 

 groups of animals and plants, some of them of remarkable 

 vigour, size, beauty of adaptation, have wholly disappeared 

 from the face of the earth. The trilobites, the ammonites, 

 the wonderful dinosaur group of reptiles — these are but 



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