SOCIAL EVOLUTION 281 



the perfecting of the most complex and most intelligent 

 of all organisms Man. 1 



The mind of man is developing ; it is getting into a 

 higher and higher condition, and there can be no doubt 

 that the higher we ascend the larger will be our con- 

 sideration for the welfare and estate of all. This is 

 altruism this is religion. 2 



Looking backward, we find two great factors in 

 human development "Fear, and Greed. Fear, which, 



1 " It seems likely, when the application of the principles of 

 evolutionary science to history comes to be fully understood, that we 

 shall have to witness almost as great a revolution in those depart- 

 ments of knowledge which deal with man in society as we have 

 already seen taking place in the entire realm of the lower organic 

 sciences through the development and general application, during the 

 latter half of the nineteenth century, of the biological theories 

 enunciated by Darwin. It is evident that we are approaching a 

 period when we shall no longer have the same justification, as in the 

 past, for regarding human history as a bewildering exception to the 

 reign of universal law a kind of solitary and mysterious island in 

 the midst of the cosmos given over to a strife of forces without clue 

 or meaning. Despite the complexity of the problems encountered 

 in history, we seem to have everywhere presented to us systematic 

 development underlying apparent confusion. In all the phases and 

 incidents of our social annals we are apparently regarding only the 

 intimately related phenomena of a single, vast, orderly process of 

 evolution." (" Social Evolution," Benjamin Kidd, p. 310.) 



2 " For we see that it is possible to interpret the ideals of ethical 

 progress, through love and sociality, co-operation and sacrifice, not 

 as mere Utopias contradicted by experience, but as the highest 

 expressions of the central evolutionary process of the natural world. 

 The ideal of evolution is indeed an Eden ; and although competition 

 can never be wholly eliminated, and progress must thus approach 

 without ever completely reaching its ideal, it is much for our pure 

 natural history to recognise that ' creation's final law ' is not struggle 

 but love." ("The Evolution of Sex," Prof. P. Geddes and J. A. 

 Thomson, 1889, p. 312.) 



