648 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



such a proenvironal picture and plan can become a people's, 

 a nation's realization, we would reply: by fostering and aiding 

 prophets of ideals. For ideals^ proenrironments, guide and 

 at length rule the world. 



Thus Bellamy's "Looking Backward" was an idealist's, a 

 proenvironer's volume, that called forth callow criticism, rib- 

 ald jest, hateful remarks, and resentful antagonism on its 

 appearance. But, on publication of his second volume, a 

 former unbelieving critic confessed that so much of the teach- 

 ing in the first volume had already come to pass, no one could 

 safely predict how much of the second might not soon become 

 practice. Already the two have effected a mutational evo- 

 lution, while the principles there stated will more and more be 

 reached out to. 



No more suggestive, even marvelous, picture of exact sci- 

 entific kind can be presented at the present day than a survey 

 of man's proenvironal and response advance in the past ages. 

 For is it not a terribly solemn thought that every man, woman, 

 and child is the direct descendant for a million years of a few 

 far remote ancestral forms, whose descendants during the 

 ages between have been exposed to varied and countless en- 

 vironal stimuli, that have at times caused proenvironal stag- 

 nation, at times partial or temporary degeneration, but mainly 

 have caused them to reach outward and upward, by aspiring 

 and summated proenvironal effort, so that lines of word and 

 action were pursued that have caused their existing descen- 

 dants to be biologically surviving and successful organisms? 



But equally deserving of study with the evolving or aspiring 

 phases of proenvironal action is the uniformitarian or stag- 

 nating phase. We have seen in Chapter VIII that every plant 

 and animal may be so exposed to a practically uniform set 

 of stimuli, and may so exactly and similarly respond to these, 

 that they and their progeny — similarly exposed — may remain 

 unaltered for ages, as in the exceptionally striking cases of 

 Terehratula and Lingula already cited. This result is exactly 

 shown also by man. Had it been equally extensive, however, 

 for him as for some of the lower animals, we should have had 



