Evolution is Progress 285 



table life in its lower order, and in short by all life. It is 

 curiously evident that, in evolution, the surviving changes, 

 compelled or secured by hostility of environment, are neces- 

 sarily changes for the better in fitness for that environment ; 

 since any change for the worse is penalized, and if bad 

 enough is exterminated, and upward progress is the normal 

 progress. 



It is difficult to understand the far-reaching import of the 

 continuance of the uplifting evolution principle, when applied 

 to the past and future of progress. Man must recognize 

 himself not as a stable, enduring entity, but as a thing chang- 

 ing like a mist wreath, or a cloud without form. The hopes 

 of future beatitude that man has put into words from time 

 to time, have never been near to adequate expression of the 

 promotions which await him; and they never will, for 

 every advance develops a higher perception of those to be. 

 Man, as man, may, nay must, now believe that his succession 

 will be as far above him, as he is above the cave dweller 

 whose dawning intellect reaches only the beginning of 

 reason. In the face of the revelations of recent science, it 

 is idle to deny or ignore the fact that modern man is really 

 the successor, through evolution, of a progenitor of lower 

 animal type. Notwithstanding the prejudices against such a 

 belief, resting upon misreadings of the crystallized truths 

 of older revelation, all the realities discoverable show that 

 civilization fades away in a backward review, wave by 

 wave, lessening in degree, although with some startling 

 interruptions — until its beg'inning appears in barbarism. 

 And behind this barbarism is animalism down to its 

 beginning. 



