282 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
The second great fundamental law which is obvious in the 
history of nations is the great law of progress or perfecting. 
Taken as a whole, the history of man is the history of his 
progressive development. It is true that everywhere and at 
all times we may notice individual retrogressions, or observe 
that crooked roads towards progress have been taken, which 
lead only towards one-sided and external perfecting, and 
thus deviate more and more from the higher goal of internal 
and enduring perfecting. However, on the whole, the 
movement of development of all mankind is and remains a 
progressive one, inasmuch as man continually removes him- 
self further from his ape-like ancestors, and continually 
approaches nearer to his own ideal. 
Now, if we wish to know what causes actually determine 
these two great laws of development in man, namely, the 
law of divergence and the law of progress, we must com- 
pare them with the corresponding laws of development in 
animals, and on a close examination we shall inevitably come 
to the conclusion that the phenomena, as well as their causes, 
are exactly the same in the two cases. The course of 
development in man, just as in that of animals, being 
directed by the two fundamental laws of differentiation 
and perfecting, is determined solely by purely mechanical 
causes, and is solely the necessary consequence of natural 
selection in the struggle for life. 3 
Perhaps in the preceding discussion the question has pre- 
sented itself to some—‘“ Are not these two laws identical ? 
Is not progress in all cases necessarily connected with diver- 
gence?” This question has often been answered in the 
affirmative, and Carl Ernst Bar, for example, one of the 
greatest investigators in the domain of the history of de- 
