114 "fHE COMING OF MAN 



seen any advantage in such a change. If it could have awak- 

 ened to a dim feeling of such a need, it would have been too 

 late for it to turn back. 



Nature seems to say to every group of animals: " Try 

 whatever experiment you will, along any line. But once 

 started you must keep to that line and discover its logical re- 

 sult." That is the " law of the jungle." A wise, if illiterate, 

 minister said that the most important text in the Bible was: 

 ^' They got a-going, and they couldn't stop." The fittest is 

 always the parent, never the child of the dominant. 



Dominance and progress are mutually incompatible in the 

 same species. You can very easily fail of both, you can 

 choose between them, you cannot have both. Fitness may in 

 the end triumph, it probably or surely will, you will not live 

 to see it. This seems true of animals and men. The logic 

 of evolution applies to man just as well as to cats and apes. 



Man, like the animal, must cultivate steadily and at all 

 cost the powers which raise him above all lower stages. He 

 must find higher and more difficult exercises and worthier 

 forms, expressions and habits than his ancestors attained, 

 otherwise there is no progress. He must cultivate above all 

 others the powers which have the broadest and highest ca- 

 pacities and possibilities. These must be united in one sym- 

 metrical person controlled by these highest rational powers. 

 Such are the moral and religious powers which have raised 

 man to his present lofty position, and have indefinite capacity 

 for future development. 



Socrates is being entertained at a banquet in the house of 

 Gorgias. The conversation turns first on rhetoric, then on 

 justice and life. Callicles has exhorted Socrates to practice 

 the art of dealing with realities, and that which shall gain him 

 a reputation for common sense; to emulate not the men who 

 waste their time in probing useless questions concerning truth 

 and justice, but rather those who possess means and reputa- 

 tion and all other good things of life. He has assured Soc- 

 rates that the end of all his work will be sentence in the 

 courts and death by the vote of his fellow-citizens. One after 



