xix SELF-CONSCIOUS DEVELOPMENT 441 



that speedily, but the remainder would be unable to swim 

 the stream where the bridge was broken. Of the second 

 class, all would arrive, and, on the average, still more 

 speedily, since, taking obstacles into account, they know the 

 best way. Of the third, the different members would start 

 together and gradually disperse, and, having a tendency to 

 keep apart, one out of the number would in time happen on 

 one of the paths leading to the right spot. 



3. Self-conscious evolution, then, differs from previous 

 evolution in having a purpose towards which it steadily 

 makes its way. This difference not only affects the 

 method by which it advances, but also the rate at which 

 it moves. I referred at the outset to the growing rapidity 

 of social changes as orthogenic evolution advances. The 

 whole life span of the human species, even if we take the 

 highest estimates of its antiquity, is a very small fraction 

 of the millions of years occupied by organic evolution. 

 But it is not too much to say that the extension during 

 that time in the scope of Mind and its power to control 

 natural forces and direct its own life is as great, and in 

 some respects greater than all that was effected in the 

 vastly longer period preceding the appearance of man. 

 But this is not all. If we accept a high antiquity of 

 anything over 100,000 years for the human race, the 

 result follows, that the greater part, eight- or nine-tenths 

 at least, of that period belongs to the lowest stage of 

 culture the stage in which men had not learnt to grind 

 and polish their stone tools and weapons. The first 

 rudiments of civilisation in the great river valleys arose 

 from 6,000 to 8,000 years ago, but this again was a 

 civilisation judged by modern standards of an extremely 

 stationary type. It is only with the rise of Grek civilisa- 

 tion that anything like a forward movement began, and 

 civilisation since that day has had not only to maintain 

 and improve itself, but to absorb and control the vast 

 masses of barbarism which have constantly threatened to 

 submerge it. To this day the outlying mass of savagery 

 and semi-civilisation still threatens us, not with the open 

 conquest which has haunted perverted imaginations, but 

 with the far subtler danger of internal corruption. Civilised 



