xxxiv THE DARWIN CENTENARY. [April 23, 



man is what he is in virtue of his inheritance and his environment; 

 it is not a matter of accident or of wholly inexplicable perversity 

 that, at certain stages in the evolution of society, men are ignorant, 

 limited in their sympathies, incapable of recognizing their own best 

 interests. He who realizes this can see a relative good in that 

 which the unenlightened will unhesitatingly condemn. There are 

 those who have welcomed with enthusiasm the idea of the ascent 

 of man, who have found it an inspiration to look into the future, 

 to conceive of a development as yet faintly foreshadowed ; a devel- 

 opment from the standpoint of which man as he now is, limited in 

 intelligence and in the control of himself and of the forces of nature, 

 a creature of instinct and of impulse, climbing the hill before him 

 stumblingly and with much waste of effort, will seem a creature 

 to be pitied, a being whose feet are set on an upward path, it is 

 true, but, nevertheless, one who is only at the outset of his journey, 

 far from the regions of light toward which the development of 

 humanity is tending. 



The development of humanity, the gradual evolution of social 

 systems, the idea of a historical order in which man has his definite 

 place — are these not conceptions which protect the man who has 

 really comprehended them against those radical proposals, so dear 

 to men of quick sympathies and of ardent temperament, to make 

 sudden and far-reaching changes in the social order, to forestall 

 the slow course of natural development, and at once to confer upon 

 us citizenship in some Utopia with all the advantages and none of 

 the drawbacks of the world in which we actually find ourselves, 

 and to which, as a matter of fact, we are moderately well adjusted? 

 I shall not dwell upon these visionary schemes. They always are, 

 they always have been, with us. It is no small thing to have in our 

 hands an instrument of defence against the man who would make 

 us perfect by violence, increase our stature by stretching us on the 

 rack, drive us perforce into a land of milk and honey, when we 

 cannot drink milk and are unfitted to subsist on honey. 



So much for an inadequate sketch of one aspect of the doctrine 

 of evolution, for the fruitfulness of the idea as an instrument of 

 research, as a real help in pushing back the barriers of our ignorance, 

 as the earnest of a hope for better things to come. And now for 



