EVOLUTION AND SOCIETY 



in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; while during 

 the latter half of the nineteenth century science ob- 

 tained its greatest mastery over society. Many of us, 

 still living, can remember with what supreme assur- 

 ance the new gospel of reason was preached; it was 

 confidently believed that man had found, at last, a 

 new philosophy which was not subject to the vagaries 

 of the emotions and the will, or to the incomprehensi- 

 ble interference of God. We had, of course, much to 

 learn, the book of life was not understood; it was not 

 even read as yet, but we owned the book and we had 

 manufactured the key of the puzzling language in 

 which it was written. And we hoped and expected, 

 having finally had our eyes opened to the universal 

 and natural law of evolution and progress, that we 

 were laying the foundations of a new civilization 

 which should go on growing and expanding in order 

 and efficiency until the past haphazard history of the 

 world would seem to be a merely unpleasant dream. 

 What ingenious, and unfortunately also dreary, pic- 

 tures were given of life and society in a thousand or 

 more years hence I Many tried these essays but of them 

 all only Mr. H. G. Wells still persists in the attempt 

 to outline specifically the evolution of mankind in 

 the distant future, or to show that the habits- of the 

 pterodactyl were the tentative but indispensable fore- 

 runners of social democracy built on the sure founda- 

 tions of biological evolution. 



We are well acquainted with the spectacle of a per- 

 il 299 1 



