486 PURPOSE IN EDUCATION. 



Is not this fact to be taken into consideration? If so, what 

 bearing has it on the question ? A body of scientists should have 

 no difficulty in answering this question. If there is one dominant 

 principle in all scientific inquiry it is that of evolution. However 

 scientists may dispute as to the nieans by which evolution is 

 effected there is no dispute as to the fact itself. Further, whether 

 evolution takes place through the propagation of acquired 

 characteristics or by the development of potential variation, it is 

 conditioned by the environment. In nature, at any rate outside 

 the human race, there is an elimination of the unfit in the struggle 

 for existence due to the environment. In the case of man, 

 however, the environment can be to a large extent controlled. It 

 is possible, therefore, that natural selection is no longer opera- 

 tive. This is the position held by Sir E. Ray Lankester, who 

 calls man " Nature's insurgent son." These are his words : 



The mental qualities which have developed in man arc of such 

 unprecedented power, and so far dominate everything else in his activities 

 as a living organism, that they have to a very large extent, if not entirely, 

 cut him ofif from the general operation of that process of natural selection 

 and survival of the fittest which up to their appearance, had been the law 

 of the living world, Nature's inexorable discipline of death to those v/ho 

 do not rise to her standard — survival and parentage to those alone who 

 do — has been from the earliest times more and more definitely resisted 

 by the will of man. 



In extra-human nature, then, evolution is^ an unconscious pro- 

 cess, whereas in man it can be a conscious one. In any case man 

 does control largely his own environment, and through this his 

 evolution. It is obvious that it is advisable that this should be 

 done intelligently. On this point Sir E. Ray Lankester says : 



Civilised man has proceeded so far in his interference with extra- 

 human nature, has produced for himself and the living organisms asso- 

 ciated with him such a special state of things by his rebellion against 

 natural selection and his defiance of nature's pre-human dispositions, that 

 he must either go on and acquire firmer control of the conditions, or 

 miserably perish by the vengeance certain to fall on the half-hearted 

 meddler in great affairs. 



Man therefore requires the education which is necessary for the 

 control of his evolution in order that he may not be! eliminated. 

 But this is not all. He must also have come to a decision a^ to 

 the direction in which he wishes to move. The first considera- 

 tion, then, for education is the preservation of the species, and 

 the second is its progress. 



Notwithstanding the strong expression of opinion of Sir Ray 

 Lankester, it is just possible that the preservation of the species 

 is not inconsistent with the maintenance of the status quo, o-r 

 even with retrogression, but the fact remains, that whether we 

 will, or no, change, that is evolution, is a part of the order '0(i 

 nature. Therefore there will be evolution, even if we have no 

 definite ideal towards which we should try to move. As man, 

 however, differs from lower species in having acquired a power 

 of prevision, he would not be acting intelligently if he adopted a 



