THE COMING OF EVOLUTION 227 



nature, like physical nature, became one problem. 

 Creation, if never to be understood, at least is 

 something to be investigated by methods we can 

 understand a new and mighty revelation to the 

 human mind. 



Evolutionary philosophy has modified profoundly 

 our conceptions of human society. In a word, it has 

 History destroyed for ever the idea of finality. 

 Politics, and Never again shall we set forth to build 

 cloud-cuckoo-boroughs between heaven 

 and earth, nor sail across the seas to found a new 

 Utopia with More, or a Pittsburg, Pa., with the 

 Pilgrim Fathers. The legitimist Tory, with his un- 

 changing, divinely ordered State, and the philosophic 

 Radical with his ideal Republic only delayed by Tory 

 stupidity and cupidity, become equally obsolete. 

 They go, with the hansom cab in which they drove, 

 to South Kensington Museum. Political institutions, 

 no less than living beings, must fit their environment. 

 Both are subject to variation, and, for social health, 

 must develop pari passu. Institutions successful in 

 one racial environment may fail lamentably in another. 

 Even Liberals are coming to learn that represen- 

 tative government on the British model may not be 

 applicable to every nation. The Hottentot may be 

 right in preferring the clear evening fire that awaits 

 him in his primeval kraal to tea on the terrace of 

 the House of Commons at Westminster. 



A similar change is passing over economics. The 

 formal political economy of the earlier days of the 

 science sought for a state of society, eternal, universal, 

 valid for all times, in all places, for all peoples. The 



