58 ESSAYS OF A BIOLOGIST 



belief in Progress asserts only (though there is much in 

 that ' only ') that life may be made more worth living 

 to a larger proportion of people, although effort and 

 failure always will and must be conditions of its opera- 

 tion. As Goethe said, ' Let humanity last as long as it 

 will, there will always be hindrances in its way, and 

 all kinds of distress, to make it develop its powers.' 



It is important to remember, what we have already 

 noted, that the history of mankind is largely the 

 history of competition between group-units or com- 

 munities. When rare communities have been able 

 to escape from this race of competition and have 

 deliberately devoted the energy and resources thus 

 set free to better community-regulation and an 

 improvement in the lives of the individuals composing 

 them, then, like Denmark, they have moved rapidly 

 along a path of real progress. Once an efficient 

 federation of communities has come into being, 

 Progress can knock at the door with some chance 

 of being admitted. In general, it is enough for 

 our present purpose to have shown that some modicum 

 of progress has occurred within the species Man ; 

 and that some of the characteristics which most 

 saliently mark him off from other organisms — his 

 powers of generalization and his self-consciousness 

 — ^are in themselves germs, potentialities of great 

 progress in the future, because through them blind 

 biological progress can become economical, fore- 

 seeing, and conscious of herself. 



