Mental Evolution. 489 



Conduct is here modified in accordance with the conceptual 

 system of which it is the outcome and outward expression. 

 And this higher conduct is subject, not to elimination 

 through natural selection, but to elimination through in- 

 congruity. Slavery would never have been abolished 

 through natural selection ; by this means the modest 

 behaviour of a chaste woman could not have been developed. 

 To natural selection neither the Factory Acts nor the 

 artistic products in this year's Academy were due ; by this 

 process were determined neither the conduct of John 

 Howard nor that of Florence Nightingale. Some evolu- 

 tionists have done no little injury to the cause they have at 

 heart by vainly attempting to defend the untenable position 

 that natural selection has been a prime factor in the higher 

 phases of human conduct. I believe that natural selection 

 has had little or nothing to do with them as such. They 

 are the outcome of conceptual ideas, and are subject to the 

 same process of elimination through incongruity. 



So soon as, in the course of mental evolution, the idea 

 of slavery became incongruous, and in certain minds 

 abhorrent and repulsive, steps were taken to check the 

 conduct which was the outward expression of this idea. So, 

 too, in other cases. The reformer must not, however, be too 

 far in advance of his generation, if his reform is to be practi- 

 cally carried out. When his ideas are so "advanced" as 

 to be incongruous with those of all but a very small minority 

 of his contemporaries, even they are forced to confess that 

 the nation is not yet ripe for the changes they contemplate. 



No one will question that artistic products are the 

 outcome of artistic ideas. In the slow and difficult progress 

 of a new school of painting or of music, we see exemplified 

 the rejection of the new ideas through their incongruity 

 with the old-fashioned artistic systems. Only gradually do 

 there grow up new generations for whom these new ideas 

 are not incongruous. For them the old-fashioned systems 

 become incongruous ; and if the school becomes dominant, 

 artistic products embodving the old ideas are eliminated 

 through incongruity. 



