xi SOCIAL DEVELOPMENTS 207 



less telegraphy to Australians, Fuegians and Veddas, whose 

 life is almost entirely dependent on the caprices of nature. 

 Between these extremes we can place a series of barbaric 

 and semi-civilised peoples of the present day together with 

 the civilisations of recorded history. Beyond the confines 

 of history we find remains testifying at first to a level 

 commensurate with contemporary barbarism, but descend- 

 ing, as we go still further back into the palaeolithic age, to a 

 level even below that of the rudest living savages. 



On this side, then, the general drift of human evolution 

 is sufficiently clear. Yet even on this side it is not a 

 straightforward continuous movement. The material cul- 

 ture of classical antiquity was in large measure destroyed 

 in the fall of the Roman Empire, and it was not till the 

 later Middle Ages that all the lost ground was made good. 

 Nor is it probable that this is the only break which a full 

 investigation would disclose. If we speak, then, of a y 

 tendency or a progress towards the growth of knowledge 

 and the increased command of nature we must not think of / 

 this as an automatic process, as a c law ' of progress whichy/ 

 must inevitably effect itself. It is something dependent 

 on further concurrent conditions which may work against 

 it and arrest it. It does not, so to say, represent a straight 

 line to which the movement of humanity is confined and 

 along which it is always marching. All we can say is that, 

 with whatever halts and back turnings, it is a direction in 

 which humanity, or a large part of it, has actually moved 

 a very considerable distance, and is at present moving with 

 greatly increased velocity. 



When we pass to other sides of social life these considera- 

 tions become still more important. It is rarely, if ever, 

 that we can say of any institution or any order of ideas or 

 of activity that its growth can be traced as a continuous 

 process from its first beginnings to its present form. 

 Normally we find a series of actions and reactions, and must 

 be more than content if we can find in the upshot some 

 definite result indicating a net movement in some distinct 

 .direction. Take, for example, the position of women. 

 We conceive of the equality of the sexes and the freedom 

 of women as one of the distinctive ideas of modern times, 



