278 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD CHAP. 



appearance of the common Latin speech before the new 

 Romance formations or the native languages of Teutonic 

 races, even these changes did not signify mere retro- 

 gression. The new nations were not indifferent to the 

 rest of Christendom. They felt themselves members of 

 one great civilisation, making their characteristic con- 

 tributions to the common stock, and making them all 

 the better because each nation took its own way. Even 

 the aberrations of modern nationalism do not imply any 

 forsaking of this standpoint. The nation or the race is 

 determined to be its own untrammelled self; yet it is 

 willing, nay it claims, to be one of the great family of 

 civilised mankind. The civilised world moves essen- 

 tially as a whole. What one race gains, all share. Is 

 it not plain that our posterity will come to make the 

 same assertion regarding the whole of mankind ? Ulti- 

 mately even the most backward races must join the 

 fellowship. Ultimately even the least philanthropic 

 must share the burden of the weak. "We without 

 them cannot be made perfect." 



Human evolution then differs from evolution in the 

 organic world. It does not mean progressive divergence 

 of type from type, but progressive unifying, all differ- 

 entiation being strictly held subordinate to the unity 

 prescribed by reason. 



Does human evolution then mean progress? As- 

 suredly man can frame the conception of progress, and 

 once he has done so, nothing will satisfy him save steady 

 progressive advance and improvement. 



Reason grasps this conception, and reason itself, or 

 the free development of intelligence, is certainly one 

 condition of historic human progress. Without reason 

 there can be no movement onwards or upwards at the 

 more rapid pace at which history moves. Very likely 



