CHAP, xx SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS 303 



biological analogies, or look to the mixture of races l 

 as the cause of new "varieties." Once the spring is 

 opened up, it flows. There is in intelligence, freely 

 exercised and firmly organised, a constant tendency 

 towards improvement. This is no metaphysical as- 

 sumption like Mr. Herbert Spencer's evolutionary 

 doctrine; it is plain fact that where the reason of 

 man is at work, a force has come into operation 

 which makes for progress by an internal law. 



Is that force absolutely sufficient ? Does it carry 

 with it all the allied forces of our nature so far as 

 other forces are distinguishable from it ? That is 

 the doctrine laid down by Mill, and more explicitly 

 affirmed over against the claims of morality by 

 Buckle. 2 From criminal statistics Buckle drew the 

 extraordinarily sweeping inference that goodness and 

 sin were fixed quantities, and that intelligence was 

 the varying and progressive factor in human nature. 

 As well might he have watched half-a-dozen waves 

 break on the beach, and then announced that the tide 

 was neither ebbing nor flowing. Moral progress, no 

 doubt, is slow in comparison with material progress ; 

 but who will dare to affirm that in a world of evolu- 

 ion goodness alone fails to evolve ? 



When we transport this question into the field of 

 history, we are struck with the phenomenon of the 

 breakdown of ancient civilisation. The defeat of the 

 Roman Empire as a fighting force was the least of its 



1 Compare Bagehot as above ; also Dr. Tiele's Gifford Lectures. 



2 It must be remembered that Mill and Buckle were pre-Darwin- 

 ian writers or thinkers. They had no opportunity of asking themselves, 

 Does reason alter the working of evolution ? The working of evolu- 

 tion was not among their data. 



