296 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART iv 



There are shells, it seems, absolutely unchanged 

 through many ages, because they had "arrived." 

 They had reached the limit of possible development 

 on the line which they had chosen. More important 

 still is the case of man, whose physiological improve- 

 ment, according to Fiske, has been superseded and 

 arrested by the emergence of reason, and whose cra- 

 nial development, according to Professor Cleland, 

 has gone about as far as is possible under the laws 

 of space in their bearing on the constitution of the 

 human body. We cannot therefore say in spite 

 of all Darwinising moralists that " everything is 

 in flux," moving "from change to change eternally." 

 Evolution seems to be a definitely limited movement, 

 exhausting its possibilities, now in one direction, now 

 in another, now in some low forms of organised life 

 and again in the highest. Further, was this evolu- 

 tion exactly identical with progress even while it 

 lasted ? In the case of man, we shall assume that it 

 was ; was it equally so in the case of the shells ? 

 Progress means, advance on one line ; evolution 

 seems to mean, radiation in many directions. It may 

 be taken then as meaning, differentiation ; or the 

 gradual filling out, by mechanical process, of a de- 

 signed and purposed scheme ; or the eliciting of all 

 the possibilities latent in " protoplasm " at the first. 

 Of these conflicting interpretations the first might 

 suggest Spencer ; the second, a Christian teleology ; 

 the third, Spinozistic Pantheism. 



There seems no doubt that origin of species by 

 natural selection would imply variation, or differ- 

 entiation of race from race. Animal A preys upon 

 animal B, and threatens to exterminate it. Several 



