384. TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION D. 
Professor Bateson has said in his recently published ‘ Problems of Genetics ’ : 
‘When . . . we contemplate the problem of Evolution at large the hope at the 
present time of constructing even a mental picture of that process grows weak 
almost to the point of vanishing. We are left wondering that so lately men in 
general, whether scientific or lay, were so easily satisfied. Our satisfaction, as 
we now see, was chiefly founded on ignorance.’ 1 
In view of this striking pronouncement on the part of one who has devoted 
his life with signal success to the experimental investigation of evolutionary 
problems, the remarks which I propose to lay before you for your consideration 
to-day may well appear rash and ill-advised. I cannot believe, however, that the 
position is really quite so black as it is painted. We must perforce admit that 
the divers theories with regard to the working of organic evolution cannot all 
be correct in all their details, but it may be that each contains its own elements 
of truth, and that if these elements can but be recognised and sorted out, they 
may perhaps be recombined in such a form as to afford at any rate a plausible 
working hypothesis. We must bear in mind from the outset that in dealing with 
such a complex problem many factors have to be taken into account, and that 
widely different views on the question may be merely one-sided and not neces- 
sarily mutually exclusive. 
I take it there are three principal facts, or groups of facts, that have to be 
accounted for by any theory of organic evolution :— 
(1) The fact that, on the whole, evolution has taken place in a progressive 
manner along definite and divergent lines. 
(2) The fact that individual animals and plants are more or less precisely 
adapted in their organisation and in their behaviour to the conditions under 
which they have to live. 
(3) The fact that evolution has resulted in the existence on the earth to-day 
of a vast number of more or less well-defined groups of animals and plants which 
we call species. 
The first of these facts appears to me to be the most fundamental, and at the 
same time the one to which least attention is usually paid. The great question, 
after all, is, Why do organisms progress at all instead of remaining stationary 
from generation to generation? ‘To answer this question it is not necessary to go 
back to the beginning and consider the case of the first terrestrial organisms, 
whatever they may have been, nor are we obliged to take as illustrations the 
lowest organisms known to us as existing at the present day. We may consider 
the problem at any stage of evolution, for at each stage progress is, or may be, 
still taking place. We may even begin by considering what is usually regarded 
as the highest stage of all, man himself; and indeed this seems the most natural 
thing to do, for we certainly know more about the conditions of progress in man 
than in any other organism. I refer, of course, at the moment, not to progress 
in bodily organisation, but to progress in the ordinary sense of the word, the 
progress, say, of a family which rises in the course of a few generations from 
a position of obscure poverty to one of wealth and influence. You may perhaps 
say that such a case has no bearing upon the problem of organic evolution in a 
state of nature, and that we ought to confine our attention to the evolution of 
bodily structure and function. If so, I must reply that you have no right to 
limit the meaning of the term evolution in this manner; the contrast between 
man and nature is purely arbitrary; man is himself a living organism, and 
all the improvements that he effects in his own condition are part of the progress 
of evolution in his particular case. At any rate I must ask you to accept this 
case as our first illustration of a principle that may be applied to organisms 
in general. 
If we inquire into the cause of the progress of our human family I think there 
can be only one answer—it is due to the accumulation of capital, or, as I should 
prefer to put it, to the accumulation of potential energy, either in the form of 
material wealth or of education. What one generation saves is available for the 
next, and thus each succeeding generation gets a better start in life, and is able 
to rise a little higher than the preceding one. 
Every biologist knows, of course, that there are many analogous cases amongst 
1 Problems of Genetics, p. 97. 
