PROGRESS 47 



and some primitive mammal such as a duck-billed 

 platypus, and to compare the course which we hope 

 society will in time accomplish with what has been 

 accomplished in the progress of the mammalian type 

 from a creature resembling the platypus up to man, 

 with what creature should we have to compare the 

 existing state of human communities ? I venture 

 to say that we should be flattering ourselves if we 

 were to fix upon the dog.' 



Then we must remember that Natural Selection 

 in man has fallen chiefly upon groups, not upon 

 individuals, and differences in the nature and organiza- 

 tion of human groups are determined chiefly by what 

 we can best sum up as differences of tradition in the 

 widest sense of the term. The later history of man- 

 kind, from a period long antedating written records, 

 has been one of the rapid rise and equally rapid ex- 

 tinction, not only of one group-unit after another, 

 but of one type of group-unit after another. It is 

 further obvious at first glance that the group-units, 

 the types of society which are at present dominant, 

 are far from perfect and far from stable, and indeed 

 that they are evolving, with speed of change hitherto 

 unsurpassed, towards new and unknown forms. 



When the mammalian type first became dominant 

 on the globe — ^at the transition between the Secondary 

 and Tertiary periods — 3. somewhat similar history was 

 passed through. The new type of organization gave 

 its possessors marked advantages over other animal 



