258 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



put into Nature, but he had to be placed in the 

 machine and held there, and brought back there as 

 often as he tried to evade it. To say that man 

 evolved himself, nevertheless, is as absurd as to say 

 that a newspaper prints itself. To say even that 

 the machinery evolved him is as preposterous as 

 to say of a poem that the printing-press made it 

 The ultimate problem is. Who made the machine ? 

 and Who thought the poem that was to be 

 printed ? 



If you say that you do not unreservedly ap- 

 prove of the machine, that it lacerates as well 

 as binds, the difficulty is more real. But it is a 

 principle in the study of history to suspend judg- 

 ment both of the meaning and of the value of a 

 policy until the chain of sequences it sets in motion 

 should be worked out to its last fulfilment. When 

 the full tale of the Struggle for Life is told, 

 when the record of its victories is closed, when the 

 balance of its gains and losses has been struck, and 

 especially when it is proved that there actually 

 have been losses, it will be time to pass judgment 

 on its moral value. Of course this principle cuts 

 both ways ; it warns off a favourable as well as an 

 unfavourable verdict on the beneficence of the 

 system of things. But Evolution is a study in 

 history, and its results are largely known. And it 



