only more intelligent than other brutes”; and “even the best of modern civilisations appears to me to exhibit a condition of mankind which neither embodies any worthy ideal nor even possesses the merit of stability.”  There may be some hope of a large improvement, but otherwise he would “welcome a kindly comet to sweep the whole affair away.”  And he came to the final conclusion that such an improvement could only set in by deliberately resisting, instead of co-operating with, the processes of nature.  “Social progress means the checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another which may be called the ethical process.” [Footnote:  Huxley considers progress exclusively from an ethical, not from an eudaemonic point of view.] How in a few centuries can man hope to gain the mastery over the cosmic process which has been at work for millions of years?  “The theory of evolution encourages no millennial anticipations.”

I have quoted these views to illustrate that evolution lends itself to a pessimistic as well as to an optimistic interpretation.  The question whether it leads in a desirable direction or not is answered according to the temperament of the inquirer.  In an age of prosperity and self-complacency the affirmative answer was readily received, and the term evolution attracted to itself in common speech the implications of value which belong to Progress.

It may be noticed that the self-complacency of the age was promoted by the popularisation of scientific knowledge.  A rapidly growing demand (especially in England) for books and lectures, making the results of science accessible and interesting to the lay public, is a remarkable feature of the second half of the nineteenth century; and to supply this demand was a remunerative enterprise.  This popular literature explaining the wonders of the physical world was at the same time subtly flushing the imaginations of men with the consciousness that they were living in an era which, in itself vastly superior to any age of the past, need be burdened by no fear of decline or catastrophe, but trusting in the boundless resources of science might securely defy fate.

4.

[It was said in 1881 by an American writer (who strongly dissented from Spencer’s theory) that the current view was “fatalistic.”  See Henry George, Progress and Poverty.  But it may be doubted whether those of the general public who optimistically accepted evolution without going very deeply into the question really believed that the future of man is taken entirely out of his hands and is determined exclusively by the nature of the cosmic process.  Bagehot was a writer who had a good deal of influence in his day; and in Physics and Politics (1872), where he discusses Progress, there is no suggestion of fatalism.  In France, the chief philosophical writers who accepted Progress as a fact protested against a fatalistic interpretation(Renouvier, Cournot, Caro; and cf.  L. Carrau’s article on Progress in the Revue des deux Mondes (Oct. 1875)).