56 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



is it possible to speak of progress when at this pres- 

 ent moment there are vast poverty-stricken and slum 

 populations with all the great nations, and when 

 these same great nations have just been engaged in 

 the most appalling war in history? 



It is a formidable indictment: but I venture to as- 

 sert that it can be met by the same argument with 

 which, in the realm of biology, was met the argu- 

 ment from degeneration. 



Such facts show at once that any idea of inevitable 

 or of universal progress is untenable, the product of 

 an irrational idealism which prefers its own desires 

 to reality. They show further that, up to the pres- 

 ent, suffering and pain on the one hand, and on the 

 other degeneration in a certain number of individ- 

 uals, are as universal and apparently inevitable in 

 human as in animal evolution. But they do not 

 show that some sort of progress may not have oc- 

 curred — not necessarily the kind of progress that 

 i,ome of us would like, not necessarily as rapid as 

 could be desired, but yet indubitably and solidly 

 Progress. We have seen that in the hundreds of 

 thousands of species which constitute life, that which 

 has been increased most obviously is the upper level 

 of certain qualities — primitive forms have persisted, 

 degenerate forms have arisen side by side with and 

 in spite of the steady improvement in the highest 

 types. This has happened in man also. 



The upper level of control and of independence 

 in human group-units, and in a certain number of 



