xx SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 275 



taken the trouble to build up new and higher forms of 

 life ? There seems reason to think that this considera- 

 tion points to some grave flaw or gap in naturalistic 

 theories of evolution. 1 



On the whole, from our human point of view, we 

 consider that the evolution of species has been attended 

 with progress, because "higher" animals and plants 

 have appeared, and, above all, because man has 

 emerged. We must also admit that the evolutionary 

 process has been attended with a vast differentiation 

 of life into forms not all of them admirable from an 

 aesthetic or from a quasi-moial point of view. Whether 

 there is advance upon each divergent line, as differentia- 

 tion takes place, may appear doubtful, though the theory 

 seems to affirm it. Differentiation appears to be pro- 

 claimed far more clearly than progress, alike by the 

 theory of natural selection and by the phenomena of 

 living but irrational nature. 



When we turn to human evolution, we find at once 

 that there are changes. The law of differentiation has 

 still been at work, though its conditions are obscure 

 and ill-comprehended. We have negroes, Esquimaux, 

 Mongols, Caucasians, all probably of the same stock, 

 all very dissimilar. Yet even here there is some- 

 thing quite different from animal evolution. Kaces of 

 men do not dwell simply side by side, indifferent to 

 each other, as plant and animal races do. You may, 

 of course, have a society built in separate compart- 

 ments, as in the institution of caste, or in the simpler 



1 Mr. A. R Wallace suggests that the lower types fill up the few 

 places of that kind which nature allots ! Mr. Wallace is a little inclined 

 to switch on and off selective struggle at his arbitrary pleasure and con- 

 venience. His own position is exceptional (see p. 2 10) ; but, on the natural- 

 istic view, ought not the lowest forms to be originating before our eyes ? 



