388 MIND IN EVOLUTION CHAP. 



Human development^Say be instructively compared and 

 contrasted with simple organic growth. If we consider a 

 seed, we know that it contains within it certain possibilities 

 of development. In the proper soil and under assignable 

 conditions its growth will follow a normal course, and it 

 will come to the perfect flower. What is true of the seed 

 is true of the human being at birth. For each there is 

 normal development, a possibility of full and perfect 

 realisation, renting on certain conditions and laws of 

 growth. There is however this difference, that the 

 flower may become perfect at the expense of its neigh- 

 bours, while for the man, this method of attaining perfec- 

 tion destroys it. The perfection of the human soul is a 

 function of the perfection of others. Thus from indivi- 

 dual development we are driven on to social development, 

 and from that, to the development of the whole race. For 

 the race to be perfect, the individuals must be perfect, and 

 an essential part of their perfection must lie in their mutual 

 relations. This again is a peculiarity of the human world. 

 The general idea of a racial development is of course appli- 

 cable to the plant as well as to the man. Just as the 

 botanist studies the growth of the individual rose, its 

 normal course, its perfection, the conditions of health and 

 disease, so he investigates the evolution of the species or 

 the variety, shows how a generic type exhibits the promise 

 and potency of a specific form', and discovers the condi- 

 tions under which that form evolves. So does the sociolo- 

 gist with the human species : he treats it as something 

 that has evolved, and is evolving, and he seeks to discover 

 what further developments it holds in germ. In this way 

 the study of growth, human evolution, is to the humani- 

 tarian spirit what botany is to the gardener, who would 

 not only bring the flowers that he has to the summit 

 of their perfection, but would seek to derive from them 

 new and more beautiful varieties. 



This scanty sketch will serve its purpose if it suggests 

 that the ethics of the civilised world is a field of thought 

 in which two principles, or more strictly, two phases of 

 development, are confusedly intermingled. On the one 

 hand is the morality of the natural man, a morality that 



