v Improvement is from isolated beginnings. 65 



improvement has its rise from isolated beginnings. 

 When it is the purpose of the Creator to produce a 

 new and improved race out of an old one, the end is 

 not attained by simultaneously improving the entire 

 parent race : on the contrary, the Creator's method 

 is to improve, by the inscrutable process which we 

 call spontaneous variation, a few individuals or 

 families of the old race ; these prevail and multiply, 

 and give origin to a new and improved race, which, 

 it may be, supersedes the old. 



Another general principle is here shown ; namely, 

 that equality is no part of the Creator's purpose. 

 This is little more than another statement of the 

 truth that entire races are not improved in mass, but 

 improvement begins at particular points. It would 

 appear, moreover, that the Creator's purpose is not 

 improvement simply, but improvement on as many 

 divergent lines as possible. This is shown, not merely 

 by the " divergence of character " under the Darwinian 

 law whereof we have already spoken, but (as I have 

 elsewhere endeavoured to prove) by many facts of 

 morphology and classification, which the exclusively 

 Darwinian theory scarcely attempts to explain. 1 



So far as we can trace the Divine purpose in 

 Creation, that purpose appears to be the production 

 of the highest and the most varied excellence ; 

 this excellence is in great part attained by conflict ; 

 and it is no part of that purpose either to let all 



1 See Habit and Intelligence, 2nd edition, chapters xiii. xiv. 

 and xviii. 



