CONCLUSION. 609 



ually so moulded as to subserve their own welfares and the 

 welfares of their species, yet the immense majority ignore 

 the implication that human beings, too, have been under 

 going in the past, and will undergo in the future, progressive 

 adjustments to the lives imposed on them by circumstances. 

 But there are a few who think it rational to conclude that 

 what has happened with all lower forms must happen with 

 the highest form a few who infer that among types of 

 men those most fitted for making a well-working society 

 will, hereafter as heretofore, from time to time emerge and 

 spread at the expense of types less fitted, until a fully fitted 

 type has arisen. 



The view thus suggested must be accepted with qualifica 

 tions. If we carry our thoughts as far forward as palaeo 

 lithic implements carry them back, we are introduced, not 

 to an absolute optimism but to a relative optimism. The 

 cosmic process brings about retrogression as well as progres 

 sion, where the conditions favour it. Only amid an infinity 

 of modifications, adjusted to an infinity of changes of cir 

 cumstances, do there now and then occur some which con 

 stitute an advance: other changes meanwhile caused in 

 other organisms, usually not constituting forward steps in 

 organization, and often constituting steps backwards. Evo 

 lution does not imply a latent tendency to improve, every 

 where in operation. There is no uniform ascent from lower 

 to higher, but only an occasional production of a form 

 which, in virtue of greater fitness for more complex condi 

 tions, becomes capable of a longer life of a more varied kind. 

 And while such higher type begins to dominate over lower 

 types and to spread at their expense, the lower types survive 

 in habitats or modes of life that are not usurped, or are 

 thrust into inferior habitats or modes of life in which they 

 retrogress. 



What thus holds with organic types must hold also with 

 types of societies. Social evolution throughout the future, 

 like social evolution throughout the past, must, while pro- 



