MIND IN EVOLUTION 



CHAPTER I 



MIND AS A FACTOR IN EVOLUTION 



i. EVOLUTION is a natural process, moving without 

 regard to human judgments of what is good or bad, right 

 or wrong. So its exponents, who are often also its apostles, 

 assure us. None the less, it is held up to our admiration 

 as a process which makes for good. The term itself, in- 

 deed, suggests a growing fulness of existence, the unrolling 

 of latent powers, a tendency towards perfection, the process 

 by which a thing comes to be that for which it was destined. 

 Evolution is used as synonymous with progress, and pro- 

 gress, at least before its association with commercial sta- 

 tistics, meant a movement towards better things. The 

 doctrine that whatever is is right reappears in the modern- 

 ised form that whatever comes to be is justified. Nature 

 thus conceived is not perfect, but is always on the way to 

 become perfect. If only the fittest survive, each generation 

 since the world began must be able to boast with Sthenelos 

 that its members are much better than their fathers. 



Unfortunately for the biological enthusiast, the perfection 

 which Nature seeks is not always a perfection which man 

 as a rational being can welcome or love. If the struggle 

 for existence has produced the wisdom of man, it has also 

 sharpened the tiger's claw and poisoned the cobra's fang. 

 Nothing lives "unless helped by another's death," and the 



