PROGRESS, BIOLOGICAL AND OTHER 49 



branches of the stock, a type of mental organization 

 which has not yet been improved upon. An indi- 

 vidual possessing it is capable, when developing in 

 proper environment (the most important single ele- 

 ments of which are the organization and tradition of 

 the community to which he belongs) of attaining to 

 possibilities which, measured in terms of the poten- 

 tialities of any previous organism, are wellnigh 

 boundless. He can survey the whole of mankind, 

 penetrate the future with prophecy, bring the gamut 

 of experience within a work of art, discover the laws 

 by which the universe operates. Judged thus, Goethe 

 is no greater and no less great than Leonardo, 

 Shakespeare than Dante or ^schylus, Darwin than 

 Pasteur, Kant than Plato. 



The best type of human mind operating to the best 

 advantage, is introduced to possibilities so vast in 

 comparison with its paltry span of existence that it 

 can never realize more than a fraction of them. 

 Furthermore, since the incidence of natural selection 

 has fallen, from long before historical time, upon the 

 community and its traditions far more than upon the 

 individual, and since the conditions under which the 

 possibilities of the individual, can be even qualitatively 

 realized have been rarely forthcoming, it is not sur- 

 prising that the level of possibility itself has not been 

 raised. Indeed, only too often there has been re- 

 versed selection, and the exceptional man has suf- 

 fered from his exceptional endowments. 



There is no theoretical objection whatever to the 



