106 MYSTICISM AND LOGIC 



would be unfair to attribute to Hegel any scientific 

 motive or foundation, but all the other evolutionists, 

 including Hegel s modern disciples, have derived their 

 impetus very largely from the history of biological 

 development. To a philosophy which derives a law of 

 universal progress from this history there are two objec 

 tions. First, that this history itself is concerned with a 

 very small selection of facts confined to an infinitesimal 

 fragment of space and time, and even on scientific 

 grounds probably not an average sample of events 

 in the world at large. For we know that decay 

 as well as growth is a normal occurrence in the world. 

 An extra-terrestrial philosopher, who had watched 

 a single youth up to the age of twenty-one and had never 

 come across any other human being, might conclude that 

 it is the nature of human beings to grow continually 

 taller and wiser in an indefinite progress towards per 

 fection ; and this generalisation would be just as well 

 founded as the generalisation which evolutionists base 

 upon the previous history of this planet. Apart, how 

 ever, from this scientific objection to evolutionism, 

 there is another, derived from the undue admixture 

 of ethical notions in the very idea of progress from which 

 evolutionism derives its charm. Organic life, we are told, 

 has developed gradually from the protozoon to the 

 philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is 

 indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philoso 

 pher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance, 

 and we can have no security that the impartial outsider 

 would agree with the philosopher s self-complacent 

 assumption. This point has been illustrated by the 

 philosopher Chuang Tzii in the following instructive 

 anecdote : 



