CHAPTER VI 

 THE IDEA OF DEVELOPMENT 



When we think of Evolution, and when we use that term to 

 describe a process, we must be very careful that there does not 

 cling to it in our minds some little vestige of that early garment 

 of words with which the idea was clothed in its infancy. When 

 we speak of Evolution, vague ideas, for instance, of design, of 

 survival of the fittest, of nature's carelessness of the single life, 

 etc., may lurk behind our thoughts and quite unconsciously to 

 ourselves prevent us from realising the full import of the term. 



There is little danger of speaking as if there were no such 

 power as that of personality, which forces its own way whether 

 we will or not, which breaks the strongest custom as freezing 

 water bursts the hardest iron, which defies mere ordinary con- 

 vention, ignores those subjective barriers of caste which do so 

 much to retard conscious evolution, and which, with the merest 

 clay at all men's feet, and the words in all men's mouths, opens 

 the eyes of all future generations. 



With institutions this fact is also true, and we find that con- 

 ceptions or conditions only incidental in their origin still survive 

 and come from sheer age to be considered as essential parts of 

 an institution, when in reality they are no more than the acci- 

 dental concomitants of its genesis. So that we are not surprised 

 to find the idea of force still lurking in our conception of the 

 state, the belief in future reward and punishment still under- 

 lying many theologies, and to find the weeds of tradition choking 

 the educational field. 



With terms, too, or ideas we find that some of the denotation 

 of the term when first used has, through careless thinking or in- 

 accurate usage, crept into the connotation and has to a certain 

 degree vitiated subsequent thought and has sometimes given a 



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