The Wonder of the World 27 



fathers were impressed by the tactics of Nature, 

 we are impressed by the strategy. 



"There is a wider teleology," Huxley wrote, 

 "which is not touched by the doctrine of evolution, 

 but is actually based upon the fundamental 

 proposition of evolution." 



Progress. The crowning wonder of the world 

 is that the succession of events spells progress. 

 What we more or less dimly discern in the long 

 past is not like the succession of patterns in a 

 kaleidoscope; it is rather like the sequence of stages 

 in the individual development of a plant or an 

 animal, stages whose meaning is disclosed more 

 and more fully as the development goes on. It is 

 not a phantasmagoric procession that the history of 

 nature reveals, it is a drama. The solid earth is 

 more differentiated and integrated than a swarm 

 of meteorites; it is in some sense progress to be- 

 come fit to be a home of life, a home of creatures 

 who can feel and understand, who can sometimes 

 give the earth more significance than it had be- 

 fore. All through the ages we see life slowly 

 creeping upward, with many losses, but with 

 steady gains. Living creatures become nobler, 

 their life becomes fuller and freer, there is an in- 

 creasing expression of the Psyche, and in man the 

 hitherto voiceless Logos implicit in the pro- 

 gressive order becomes at last articulate. As 

 Lotze has said in his " Microcosmus " : "The 



