96 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



There can be little doubt that the apparent orthogenesis which has 

 pushed groups ever further along their line of evolution until they are 

 balanced precariously upon the edge of extinction, is due, especially in its 

 later stages, to the hypertely induced by intra-specific competition. 



This conclusion is of far-reaching importance. It disposes of the 

 notion, so assiduously rationalised by militarists and laisser-faire economists, 

 that all man needs to do to achieve further progressive evolution is to 

 adopt the most thorough-going competition : the more ruthless the com- 

 petition, the more efficacious the selection, 'and accordingly the better 

 the result. But we now realise that the results of selection are by no 

 means necessarily ' good,' from the point of view either of the species 

 or of the progressive evolution of life. They may be neutral, they may 

 be a dangerous balance of useful and harmful, or they may be definitely 

 deleterious. 



Natural selection, in fact, though like the mills of God in grinding 

 slowly and grinding small, has few other attributes that a civilised religion 

 would call divine. It is efficient in its way — at the price of extreme 

 slowness and extreme cruelty. But it is blind and mechanical ; and 

 accordingly its products are just as likely to be aesthetically, morally, 

 or intellectually repulsive to us as they are to be attractive or worthy of 

 imitation. Both specialised and progressive improvement are mere 

 by-products of its action, and are the exceptions rather than the rule. 

 For the statesman or the eugenist to copy its methods is both foolish 

 and wicked. Not only is natural selection not the instrument of a God's 

 sublime purpose : it is not even the best mechanism for achieving 

 evolutionary progress. 



Evolutionary Progress. 



This question of evolutionary or biological progress remains. I have 

 discussed elsewhere at some length the meaning to be attached to this 

 term, so that here a few points will be sufficient. In the first place, it 

 is not true that the use of the word progress is a mere anthropocentrism. 

 There has been a trend during evolution which can rightly be called 

 progressive and has led to a rise in the level of certain definable properties 

 of organisms. The properties whose rise constitutes biological progress 

 can be defined in the broadest terms as control over the environment 

 and independence of it. More in detail they consist in size and power, 

 mechanical and chemical efficiency, increased capacity for self-regulation 

 and a more stable internal environment, and more efficient avenues of 

 knowledge and of methods for dealing with knowledge. 



One-sided progress is better called specialisation. For progress must 

 not merely be defined a priori : it must also be defined on the basis of 

 results. These results have consisted in the historical fact of a succession 

 of dominant groups. And the chief characteristics which analysis reveals 

 as having contributed to the rise of these groups are improvements that 

 are not one-sided but all-round and basic, such as temperature-regulation 

 or placental reproduction. 



It might be held that biological inventions such as the lung and 

 shelled egg, which opened the world of land to the vertebrates, are 

 after all nothing but specialisations. Are they not of the same nature 



