EVOLUTION 



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quest, of clarified nomenclature. Evolution has an all-embracing 

 sense; but its process in the physical world, as Inorganic Evolution, 

 we may describe as Genesis (aided by Transmutation, and by 

 Chemical Synthesis). In the biological world, we have Organic 

 Evolution, as Phylogeny; and in embryology for its individuals. 

 Development (Ontogeny). And in sociology we study Social Evolution] 

 and, must we not add, Socian Development for its personal partici- 

 pants, since the word "education" has too established limitations. 

 And while physical and organic evolutionists habitually borrow 

 from social science its terms "History", "Events", and "Pro- 

 gress", and even "Degeneration", and now use them without 

 confusion, these cannot but also retain their older social 

 usage, though especially must we remember that social Progress 

 may only too readily "Degress", and even Regress. So let us 

 try to fix on this clear antithesis as terms of social science, dis- 

 putable though their applications may remain between contrasted 

 schools. 



The mathematician, ranging through space and time, finds his 

 mastery of these in the conception of movement, and this down to 

 "point-events"; and he extends his helpful aid to each successive 

 science; while the logician correspondingly wields his potent dia- 

 lectic throughout their entire range, with criticism and clarification 

 of each new conception they may form; and, in the measure of his 

 philosophic spirit, to the co-ordination of every truth they reach. 

 These fundamental sciences have thus also their full evolutionary 

 attitude and bearing, as the relativity doctrine has last and most 

 fully convinced us. So too evolution is traced, and with increasing 

 advances, in the esthetic, in the psychological, and in the ethical 

 field; and with more and more encouraging results. 



In broadest view, then, the Evolution process, despite much of 

 what we cannot but call evils — as from cosmic catastrophes over- 

 whelming us, to degenerations and uglinesses, to diseases, insanities 

 and perversions, and to social deteriorations and disasters, mas- 

 sacres and horrors, to their recorded utmost in our o^nh times, and 

 all threatening, ever recurring, without end — is yet also productive, 

 and ever manifestly pregnant, throughout all its phenomenal fields, 

 of Progress in its best senses; and thus towards the beautiful, the 

 true, the good. It is a wise old saying, "Every man is either an 

 Aristotelian or a Platonist"; but the evolutionist is increasingly 

 both. For he begins with Aristotle, indeed with far wider encyclopedic 

 survey, and towards fuller interpretative endeavour; yet sooner or 

 later he cannot but also discover more and more of Plato's ideals, 

 even if he were not inspired by them from the first. For each and all 

 of these he finds inherent on the universe, however far back his 

 studies go. Thence, too, he sees them evolving; and why not beyond 

 the fullest forward vision he can form ? 



