Rediscovery of Darwin's Message 269 



true message and to learn that he finds the cause 

 of the advance of civilization in the social habits of 

 man, in co-operation and mutual aid for the struggle 

 against the physical universe, and in the moral law. 

 This rediscovery of Darwin's social message, if it 

 becomes an integral part of the intellectual revo- 

 lution, will profoundly modify social theories and 

 political institutions in the future, for, whereas 

 the "social Darwinists" in the past have founded 

 their philosophy upon the forces which make for 

 social disintegration and injustice, Darwin bases 

 his philosophy of social progress upon the forces 

 that make for social organization and justice. 



It is interesting to note, before beginning the 

 examination of Darwin's social theories, that both 

 Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of the 

 theory of evolution, and Huxley, who is usually 

 considered its greatest exponent, agree with 

 Darwin that the chief cause of social progress and 

 human evolution is to be found in ethical factors. 

 We have already noted Huxley's sharp division 

 between social evolution and natural evolution in 

 Chapter II., and his theory of social progress is 

 summarized in the following quotation from his 

 Romanes lecture ^ : 



Social progress means a checking of the cosmic 

 process at every step and the substitution for it of 

 another, which may be called the ethical process; the 

 end of which is not the survival of those who may 

 happen to be the fittest in respect of the whole of the 



^ Evolution and Ethics, pp. 81-83, 203. 



