BIOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 89 



is an inevitable "law of nature," but that it has ac- 

 tually occurred, and that its occurrence provides an 

 external sanction for many of our subjective human 

 hopes and ideals. 



True that we are ourselves a product of the evolu- 

 tionary process and might therefore be thought 

 biased. None the less, it is clear that if a degenerate 

 animal like a tapeworm, or one inevitably specialized 

 like a hermit-crab, could possess and enunciate val- 

 ues, they would be of a very different nature from 

 our own. But we should further find that the direc- 

 tion of the evolutionary process which led to the 

 former was directly opposed to the main trend, that 

 of the latter more or less at right angles to it. The 

 general coincidence of the main observable trend and 

 of our own concepts of value warrants us in calling 

 the one progressive, and in feeling that the other is 

 no mere isolated flicker in an alien or hostile world, 

 but finds a sanction and a resting-place in being part 

 of something vastly bigger than itself. The remark- 

 able and important fact for man is to find, in spite 

 of all the apparently fundamental differences be- 

 tween his organization and his evolutionary methods 

 and those of lower organisms, in spite of the wide- 

 spread degeneration and "blind-alleyism" to be seen 

 in evolution, that the direction in which he desires 

 to go coincides with the resultant, the main direction 

 of organic evolution. There are no ideals, there is 

 no purpose, in fish or ant or tree: but man's ideals 

 and purposes are the outcome of the blind interplay 



