THE PURPOSE OF DIVERSITY 397 



scheme of the life-world. That scheme is shown to be the 

 production of an almost infinite diversity in forms of life, 

 beautifully co-ordinated for the common good, and for the 

 ultimate development and education of an almost equally 

 varied humanity. That variety has been assured and 

 increased by the rapid development of man — from the 

 epoch when he became a living soul conscious of good 

 and evil — so far above the beasts which perish that there 

 was little actual selection except to ensure health and vigour, 

 and the gradual advance towards civilisation. All types of 

 character had a fairly equal chance of survival and of leaving 

 offspring, and thus the continued unchecked action of the 

 universal law of variation led to an amount of diversity of 

 human nature far above that of any of the lower animals. 

 We see this diversity manifested through all the ages, from 

 the lowest depths of a Nero, a Borgia, or a De Retz, to the 

 glorious heights of a Confucius or a Buddha, a Socrates or a 

 Newton. 



But if it had been a law of nature that the effects of 

 education should be inherited, then men would have been 

 continually moulded to certain patterns ; originality would 

 have been bred out by the widespread influences of medi- 

 ocrity in power, and that ever-present variety in art, in 

 science, in intellect, in ethics, and in the higher and purer 

 aspirations of humanity, would have been certainly diminished. 

 And if it be said that the very bad would have been made 

 better if educational influences had been inherited, even this 

 may be doubted ; for in times which permitted so much that 

 was bad, education often tended to increase rather than 

 diminish the evil. On the other hand, we are more and 

 more coming to see that none were all bad, and that their 

 worst excesses were due in large part to the influence of 

 their environment and the fierce temptations to which they 

 were, and still are, so unnecessarily exposed. 



But it is when we look upon man as being here for the 

 very purpose of developing diversity and individuality, to be 

 further advanced in a future life, that we see more clearly the 

 whole object of our earth-life as a preparation for it. In this 

 world we have the maximum of diversity produced, with a 

 potential capacity for individual educability, and inasmuch as 



