BIOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 87 



produce on the whole what we find good, to bring 

 into being more and more things on which we can 

 set positive value. This is not to say that progress 

 is an inevitable ' law of nature,' but that it has actually 

 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 values, 

 they would be of a very different nature from our own. 

 But we should further find that the direction 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 remarkable and im- 

 portant fact for man is to find, in spite of all the 

 apparently fundamental differences between his organ- 

 ization and his evolutionary methods and those of 

 lower organisms, in spite of the widespread degenera- 

 tion and ' blind-alleyism ' to be seen in evolution, 

 that the direction in which he desires to go coincides 



