THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY 229 



deterioration are at work which if unchecked would 

 probably bring upon us the fate that overtook the 

 Greeks and the Assyrians. While improving our 

 methods of sanitation, we carefully rescue from the 

 fate that would await them in a ruder society the 

 weak, the vicious, and generally the unfit, and, thanks 

 to our philanthropy, they are enabled to throw their 

 defects into general circulation. Hurtful to the 

 general interest also is our indiscriminate worship 

 of wealth, with the many unsuitable marriages it 

 entails. Finally, class selection, upon the evils of 

 which Jacoby so justly insists, and which prevails in 

 the commercial as well as in the upper classes — in 

 every form of social cHquism, in fact — is a constant 

 and fruitful source of social degeneration. But if 

 evolution means anything at all, it means that Nature 

 does not move in a vicious circle, but, with many 

 halts, much harking back, many false steps, perhaps, 

 keeps in the main advancing. We cannot fairly 

 judge of her progress within the paltry two thousand 

 years covered by authentic history. It takes an in- 

 finitely longer period to work the simplest figure in the 

 warp and woof of existence. In the great web of life, 

 which the Erdgeist of Goethe is ever weaving, there 

 are many broken threads, many imperfect designs. 



