THE FUTURE. 491 



on for so many thousand years, should have now suddenly 

 ceased ; and he must be blind indeed who imagines that our 

 civilisation is unsusceptible of improvement, or that we our- 

 selves are in the highest state attainable by man. If we 

 turn from experience to theory, the same conclusion forces 

 itself upon us. 



The great principle of natural selection, which in animals 

 affects the body and seems to have little influence on the 

 mind; in man affects the mind and has little influence on 

 the body. In the first it tends mainly to the preservation of 

 life ; in the second to the improvement of the mind and 

 consequently to the increase of happiness. It ensures, in the 

 words of Mr. Herbert Spencer, "a constant progress towards 

 a higher degree of skill, intelligence, and self-regulation a 

 better co-ordination of actions a more complete life/'* Even 

 those, however, who are dissatisfied with the reasoning of 

 Mr. Darwin, who believe that neither our mental and material 

 organisation are susceptible of any considerable change, may 

 still look forward to the future with hope. The tendency of 

 recent improvements and discoveries is less to effect any 

 rapid change in man himself, than to bring him into har- 

 mony with nature; less to confer upon him new powers, 

 than to teach him how to apply the old. 



It will, I think, be admitted that of the evils under which 

 we suffer nearly all may be attributed to ignorance or sin. 

 That ignorance will be diminished by the progress of science 

 is of course self-evident, that the same will be the case with 

 sin, seems little less so. Thus, then, both theory and ex- 

 perience point to the same conclusion. The future happiness 

 of our race, which poets hardly ventured to hope for, science 

 boldly predicts. Utopia, which we have long looked upon as 

 synonymous with an evident impossibility, which we have 



* Herbert Spencer. A Theory of Population deduced from the General Law 

 of Animal Fertility, p. 34. 



