CHAPTER IV 

 EVOLUTIONAL PSYCHOLOGY 



Creation, freedom, will these doubtless are great things ; but we 

 cannot lastingly admire them unless we know their drift. We cannot, 

 I submit, rest satisfied with what differs so little from the haphazard ; joy 

 is no fitting consequent of efforts which are so nearly aimless. THE 

 Rx. HON. ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR, on Creative Evolution, Hibbert, 

 October, 1911. 



IN the present chapter my object is to show that, in the normal 

 course of Nature, psychical progress is earned by " right " con- 

 duct, i.e., by adherence to a " good " and mainly symbiotic 

 pathway of life. Such biologically righteous conduct tends, 

 I believe, in virtue of its wide usefulness in the furtherance of 

 life, to engender new and higher psychic capacities. 



As in previous chapters, the guiding idea is that life has always 

 been faced by the economic, i.e., the food problem, and that for 

 several reasons a study of the way in which this, the perennial 

 and central problem", has been attacked and in part solved 

 will provide the most reliable key to the understanding of 

 evolutionary developments. 



Spencer, more perhaps than any other evolutionist, was 

 fond of leaning on Economics. There is undoubtedly good cause 

 for the fascination of economic doctrines upon the pioneers of 

 " Evolution." It was not enough to have established " Descent 

 with Modification." It remained to be seen how progress was 

 mainly brought about. And this question, as the pioneers 

 keenly felt on more than one occasion, cannot be satisfactorily 

 answered, unless we know what makes throughout for true 

 economy in the world of life. It is intelligible, therefore, that 

 Economics is again capable of inspiring new lines of thought on 

 the perennial question of evolution. 



As regards Psychology, Darwin prognosticated in the Origin 

 that in the future it would be securely based on the foundations 

 already well laid by Herbert Spencer, who, in his turn, in " The 

 Moral Sentiments," refers us to an Economist, Adam Smith, 



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