THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY 



Let us now examine more closely the relations 

 between the Community and the Environment. 

 From the twofold circumstance that life is high 

 according as the organism is heterogeneous, and 

 also according as it is adjusted to surrounding 

 conditions, may be derived the corollary that the 

 heterogeneity of the environment is the chief proxi- 

 mate determining cause of social progress. Thus we 

 may understand why civilization advances so 

 much more rapidly in modern than it did in an- 

 cient times.^ As Sir Charles Lyell observes : " We 

 see in our own times that the rate of progress 

 in the arts and sciences proceeds in a geometri- 

 cal ratio as knowledge increases, and so, when 

 we carry back our retrospect into the past, we 

 must be prepared to find the signs of retarda- 

 tion augmenting in a like geometrical ratio ; so 

 that the progress of a thousand years at a re- 

 mote period may correspond to that of a cen- 

 tury in modern times, and in ages still more 

 remote Man would more and more resemble the 

 brutes in that attribute which causes one gener- 

 ation exactly to imitate in all its ways the gen- 

 eration which preceded it/* ^ That the process is 

 here the same in social and in organic life. Sir 

 Charles Lyell already suspects ; for he elsewhere 

 observes that the lower the place of organic 

 beings " in a graduated scale, or the simpler 

 their structure, the more persistent are they in 



* See above, p. 72. 2 Antiquity of Man, p. 377. 



2^3 



