X ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



has to study evolution, and in that study there is 

 brought home to him, more vividly than to any one 

 to whom the facts are not so familiar, that in spite of 

 all appearances to the contrary there has been, through- 

 out the whole of evolution, and most markedly in 

 the rise of man from his pre-human forbears, a real 

 advance, a progress. 



He sees further that the most remarkable single 

 feature in that progress has been the evolution of 

 self-consciousness in the development of man. That 

 has made possible not only innumerable single changes, 

 but a change in the very method of change itself ; 

 for it substituted the possibility of conscious control 

 of evolution for the previous mechanism of the 

 blind chances, of Variation aided by the equally blind 

 sifting process of Natural Selection, a mechanism in 

 which consciousness had no part. 



Most of mankind, now as in the past, close their 

 eyes to this possibility. They seek to put off their 

 responsibility on to the shoulders of various abstractions 

 which they think can bear their burden well enough 

 if only they are spelt with a capital letter : — Fate 

 — God — Nature — Law — Eternal Justice — ^and such 

 like. Men are educated to be self-reliant and enter- 

 prising in the details of life, but dependent, unre- 

 flective, laissez-faire about life itself The idea that 

 the basis of living could be really and radically altered 



