Science in Public Affairs 



centre of interest in Man's pedigree from the Past 

 to the Future. Actually and in point of fact the 

 worst bred of animals, Man has become so, because 

 he of all animals has the highest potency for de- 

 generation or for evolution. That is one of the 

 truths revealed to us by evolutionary biology. The 

 other is the legitimacy of aspiration towards a 

 future ideal. But the ideal of evolutionary biology 

 markedly differs from its pre-scientific anticipa- 

 tions. It is an ideal definable as starting from 

 a known potency, and approximately realisable 

 within finite space and time, and to be reached 

 by ascertainable processes operating within dis- 

 coverable limits. In short, the ideal of Eugenics 

 has the scientific character of being a verifiable 

 ideal and not an illusory one. It postulates an 

 ideal type towards which we can definitely steer 

 and certainly move with assured hope of approxi- 

 mately, but never actually, reaching it. For the 

 ideal itself undergoes evolution, the very increase 

 of evolutionary potencies and processes being itself 

 the warrant of higher aspirations. Mathematicians 

 express the relation of two paths always converg- 

 ing but never meeting by the word asymptotic. 

 Originating outside the systems of professed philo- 

 sophers, evolutionary idealism has yet its necessary 

 relations to traditional doctrines of idealism and 

 realism. Its place and correlation with these has 

 yet to be worked out and defined. But meantime 

 it may help towards establishing a point of con- 

 tact with existing systems of philosophy to say that 

 evolutionary ideals express an asymptotic reality. 



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