INTRODUCTION xxi 



which I afterwards found Mr. Sutherland's expression 

 "orthogenic evolution" as a series of advances in the 

 development of mind involving a parallel curtailment of 

 the sphere of natural selection. The conclusion was clear 

 that natural selection was not the cause of progress, if pro- v 

 gress meant the advance of mind. But what was the cause 

 of progress, how mind came into being, how it grew, what 

 were the conditions of its further development, I did not at 

 first enquire. I saw no light upon the question, and I 

 thought that the empirical account leading up as it did to 

 the control of life as a whole by consciousness was the most i 

 important or at least the first thing to prove. 



There was further difficulty with regard to human pro- 

 gress which could be met by emphasizing this factor. If 

 it was admitted that man was something higher than the 

 animals, it might easily be denied that modern man was _.. 

 anything higher than ancient man. Certainly if we take 

 specially favoured races and epochs of tht past for compari- 

 son, there is not the slightest proof of any advance in 

 average human faculty. True, social progress does not 

 necessarily require any improvement in the congenital 

 qualities of the individual, and the question should be 

 rather whether the collective achievement of mankind 

 grows in knowledge, religion, ethics, art, social organisa- 

 tion. But on all these points, with the exception of know- 

 ledge and its direct applications to industry, scepticism is 

 abundantly possible, and it is easy to assert that there have 

 been earlier epochs when religion was purer, social life 

 better organised, men and women on the whole happier, and 

 industry devoted to the production of more beautiful 

 objects than sky-scrapers, factory chimneys, gigantic hoard- 

 ings and aniline dyes. I was never one of those who think 

 that the general fact of progress may be readily assumed, 

 or that mankind constantly advances to higher things by 



