1 66 HEREDITY AND SOCIETY 



reason for this process of continuous creation, no 

 underlying meaning in this painful and never-ceasing 

 evolution. Natural selection gave an explanation of 

 the means by which modifications of species might be 

 brought about, but a knowledge of the means does not 

 banish the need of some more fundamental principle 

 as an underlying cause. When once the field of 

 inquiry is extended to the human race, we cannot be 

 content to survey the movement from a distance, or 

 merely to enrol its multitude of curious manifestations 

 in our note-books. We require to know what impulse 

 there is behind this constant creation and readjustment 

 of life, or possibly, what life is to be found behind this 

 constant impulse to create and renew. Why, indeed, 

 are we any of us any more than comfortable cockle 

 shells, eminently adapted to their environment and 

 safely ensconced in a nook of the ocean's bed ? 



The older writers on these subjects began at the 

 other end of the story. Every mythology, every 

 religion, tried to suggest a reason for the development 

 of ever higher and higher types of living forms, and 

 postulated a life and a consciousness behind the act of 

 creation. But they were unable to suggest the methods 

 of the action in any convincing form, except to express 

 an intuitive belief that it was very good and that the 

 morning stars sang together at the sight thereof. 



Now at every stage of knowledge this intuitive 

 induction is needed if we are to make any attempt to 

 touch ultimate verities. The poet, the prophet and 

 the philosopher can always find somewhere an appro- 

 priate field of action. When they are absent, we are 

 conscious that life and thought are moving on a lower 



