The Story of Evolution/Chapter XXI
In the preceding chapters I have endeavoured to show how, without invoking any "definitely directed variations," which we seem to have little chance of understanding, we may obtain a broad conception of the way in which the earth and its living inhabitants came to be what they are. No one is more conscious than the writer that this account is extremely imperfect. The limits of the volume have permitted me to use only a part of the material which modern science affords, but if the whole of our discoveries were described the sketch would still remain very imperfect. The evolutionary conception of the world is itself undergoing evolution in the mind of man. Age by age the bits of fresh discovery are fitted into the great mosaic. Large areas are still left for the scientific artist of the future to fill. Yet even in its imperfect state the evolutionary picture of the world is most illuminating. The questions that have been on the lips of thoughtful men since they first looked out with adult eyes on the panorama of nature are partly answered. Whence and Why are no longer sheer riddles of the sphinx.
It remains to be seen if evolutionary principles will throw at least an equal light on the progress of humanity in the historical period. Here again the questions, Whence and Why, have been asked in vain for countless ages. If man is a progressive animal, why has the progress been confined to some of the race? If humanity shared at first a common patrimony, why have the savages remained savages, and the barbarians barbaric? Why has progress been incarnated so exceptionally in the white section of the race, the Europeans? We approach these questions more confidently after surveying the story of terrestrial life in the light of evolutionary principles. Since the days of the primeval microbe it has happened that a few were chosen and many were left behind. There was no progressive element in the advancing few that was not shared by the stagnant many. The difference lay in the environment. Let us see if this principle applies to the history of civilisation.
In the last chapter I observed that, with the rise of human intelligence, the cultural environment becomes more important than the physical. Since human progress is a progress in ideas and the emotions which accompany them, this may seem to be a truism. In point of fact it is assailed by more than one recent historical writer. The scepticism is partly due to a misunderstanding. No one but a fanatical adherent of extreme theories of heredity will deny that the physical surroundings of a race continue to be of great importance. The progress of a particular people may often be traced in part to its physical environment; especially to changes of environment, by migration, for instance. Further, it is not for a moment suggested that a race never evolves its own culture, but has always to receive it from another. If we said that, we should be ultimately driven to recognise culture, like the early Chinese, as a gift of the gods. What is meant is that the chief key to the progress of certain peoples, the arrest of progress in others, and the entire absence of progress in others, is the study of their relations with, or isolation from, other peoples. They make progress chiefly according to the amount of stimulation they get by contact with a diverse culture.
Let us see if this furnishes a broad explanation of the position of the various peoples of the world. The Ethnologist tells us that the lowest peoples of the earth are the Yahgans of Tierra del Fuego, the Hottentots, a number of little-understood peoples in Central Africa, the wild Veddahs of Ceylon, the (extinct) Tasmanians, the Aetas in the interior of the Philippines, and certain fragments of peoples on islands of the Indian Ocean. There is not the least trace of a common element in the environment of these peoples to explain why they have remained at the level of primitive humanity. Many of them lived in the most promising and resourceful surroundings. What is common to them all is their isolation from the paths of later humanity. They represent the first wave of human distribution, pressed to the tips of continents or on islands by later waves, and isolated. The position of the Veddahs is, to some extent, an exception; and it is interesting to find that the latest German students of that curious people think that they have been classed too low by earlier investigators.
We cannot run over all the peoples of the earth in this way, but will briefly glance at the lower races of the various continents. A branch of the second phase of developing humanity, the negroid stock, spread eastward over the Asiatic islands and Australia, and westward into Africa. The extreme wing of this army, the Australian blacks, too clearly illustrates the principle to need further reference. It has retained for ages the culture of the middle Palaeolithic. The negritos who penetrated to the Philippines are another extreme instance of isolation. The Melanesians of the islands of the Indian and Pacific Ocean are less low, because those islands have been slowly crossed by a much higher race, the Polynesians. The Maoris of New Zealand, the Tongans, Hawaians, etc., are people of our own (Caucasic) stock, probably diverging to the south-east while our branch of the stock pressed westward. This not only explains the higher condition of the Maoris, etc., but also shows why they have not advanced like their European cousins. Their environment is one of the finest in the world, but—it lies far away from the highways of culture.
In much the same way can we interpret the swarming peoples of Africa. The more primitive peoples which arrived first, and were driven south or into the central forests by the later and better equipped invaders from the central zone, have remained the more primitive. The more northern peoples, on the fringe of, or liable to invasion from, the central zone, have made more advance, and have occasionally set up rudimentary civilisations. But the movements from the north to the south in early historical times are too obscure to enable us to trace the action of the principle more clearly. The peoples of the Mediterranean fringe of Africa, living in the central zone of stimulation, have proved very progressive. Under the Romans North Africa was at least as civilised as Britain, and an equally wise and humane European policy might lead to their revival to-day.
When we turn to Asia we encounter a mass of little-understood peoples and a few civilisations with obscure histories, but we have a fairly clear application of the principle. The northern, more isolated peoples, are the more primitive; the north-eastern, whose isolation is accentuated by a severe environment, are most primitive of all. The Eskimo, whether they are the survivors of the Magdalenian race or a regiment thrown off the Asiatic army as it entered America, remain at the primitive level. The American peoples in turn accord with this view. Those which penetrate furthest south remain stagnant or deteriorate; those which remain in the far north remain below the level of civilisation, because the land-bridge to Asia breaks down; but those which settle in Central America evolve a civilisation. A large zone, from Mexico to Peru, was overspread by this civilisation, and it was advancing steadily when European invaders destroyed it, and reduced the civilised Peruvians to the Quichas of to-day.
There remain the civilisations of Asia, and here we have a new and interesting aspect of the question. How did these civilisations develop in Asia, and how is it that they have remained stagnant for ages, while Europe advanced? The origin of the Asiatic civilisations is obscure. The common idea of their vast antiquity has no serious ground. The civilisation of Japan cannot be traced back beyond about the eighth century B.C. Even then the population was probably a mixed flotsam from neighbouring lands—Ainus, Koreans, Chinese, and Malays. What was the character of the primitive civilisation resulting from the mixture of these different cultures we do not know. But the chief elements of Japanese civilisation came later from China. Japan had no written language of any kind until it received one from China about the sixth century of the Christian Era.
The civilisation of China itself goes back at least to about 2300 B.C., but we cannot carry it further back with any confidence. The authorities, endeavouring to pick their steps carefully among old Chinese legends, are now generally agreed that the primitive Chinese were a nomadic tribe which slowly wandered across Asia from about the shores of the Caspian Sea. In other words, they started from a region close to the cradle of western civilisation. Some students, in fact, make them akin to the Akkadians, who founded civilisation in Mesopotamia. At all events, they seem to have conveyed a higher culture to the isolated inhabitants of Western Asia, and a long era of progress followed their settlement in a new environment. For more than two thousand years, however, they have been enclosed in their walls and mountains and seas, while the nations of the remote west clashed unceasingly against each other. We need no other explanation of their stagnation. To speak of the "unprogressiveness" of the Chinese is pure mysticism. The next generation will see.
The civilisation of India is also far later than the civilisation of the west, and seems to be more clearly due to borrowing from the west. The primitive peoples who live on the hills about India, or in the jungles, are fragments, apparently, of the Stone Age inhabitants of India, or their descendants. Their culture may have degenerated under the adverse conditions of dislodgement from their home, but we may fairly conclude that it was never high. On these primitive inhabitants of the plains of India there fell, somewhere about or before 1000 B.C., the Asiatic branch of the Aryan race.
A very recent discovery (1908) has strongly confirmed and illumined this view of the origin of Indian civilisation. Explorers in the ruins of the ancient capital of the Hittite Empire (in North Syria and Cappadocia) found certain treaties which had been concluded, about 1300 B.C., between the Hittites and the king of the Aryans. The names of the deities which are mentioned in the treaties seem to show that the Persian and Indian branches of the Aryan race were not yet separated, but formed a united kingdom on the banks of the Euphrates. They seem to have come from Bactria (and possibly beyond), and introduced the horse (hitherto unknown to the Babylonians) about 1800 B.C. It is surmised by the experts that the Indian and Persian branches separated soon after 1300 B.C., possibly on account of religious quarrels, and the Sanscrit-speaking branch, with its Vedic hymns and its Hinduism, wandered eastward and northward until it discovered and took possession of the Indian peninsula. The long isolation of India, since the cessation of its commerce with Rome until modern times, explains the later stagnation of its civilisation.
Thus the supposed "non-progressiveness" of the east, after once establishing civilisation, turns out to be a question of geography and history. We have now to see if the same intelligible principles will throw light on the "progressiveness" of the western branch of the Aryan race, and on the course of western civilisation generally.[1]
The first two centres of civilisation are found in the valley of the Nile and the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates; the civilisations of Egypt and Babylon, the oldest in the world. There is, however, a good deal of evidence by which we may bring these civilisations nearer to each other in their earliest stages, so that we must not confidently speak of two quite independent civilisations. The civilisation which developed on the Euphrates is found first at Susa, on the hills overlooking the plains of Mesopotamia, about 6000 B.C. A people akin to the Turkish or Chinese lives among the hills, and makes the vague advance from higher Neolithic culture to primitive civilisation. About the same time the historical or dynastic civilisation begins in Egypt, and some high authorities, such as Mr. Flinders Petrie, believe that the evidence suggests that the founders of this dynastic civilisation came from "the mountainous region between Egypt and the Red Sea." From the northern part of the same region, we saw, the ancestors of the Chinese set out across Asia.
We have here a very suggestive set of facts in connection with early civilisation. The Syro-Arabian region seems to have been a thickly populated centre of advancing tribes, which would be in striking accord with the view of progress that I am following. But we need not press the disputed and obscure theory of the origin of the historic Egyptians. The remains are said to show that the lower valley of the Nile, which must have been but recently formed by the river's annual deposit of mud, was a theatre of contending tribes from about 8000 to 6000 B.C. The fertile lands that had thus been provided attracted tribes from east, west, and south, and there is a great confusion of primitive cultures on its soil.
It is not certain that the race which eventually conquered and founded the historical dynasties came from the mountainous lands to the east. It is enough for us to know that the whole region fermented with jostling peoples. Why it did so the previous chapters will explain. It is the temperate zone into which men had been pressed by the northern ice-sheet, and from Egypt to the Indian Ocean it remained a fertile breeding-ground of nations.
These early civilisations are merely the highest point of Neolithic culture. The Egyptian remains show a very gradual development of pottery, ornamentation, etc., into which copper articles are introduced in time. The dawn of civilisation is as gradual as the dawn of the day. The whole gamut of culture—Eolithic, Palaeolithic, Neolithic, and civilised—is struck in the successive layers of Egyptian remains. But to give even a summary of its historical development is neither necessary nor possible here. The maintenance of its progress is as intelligible as its initial advance. Unlike China, it lay in the main region of human development, and we find that even before 6000 B.C. it developed a system of shipping and commerce which kept it in touch with other peoples over the entire region, and helped to promote development both in them and itself.
Equally intelligible is the development of civilisation in Mesopotamia. The long and fertile valley which lies between the mountainous region and the southern desert is, like the valley of the Nile, a quite recent formation. The rivers have gradually formed it with their deposit in the course of the last ten thousand years. As this rich soil became covered with vegetation, it attracted the mountaineers from the north. As I said, the earliest centre of the civilisation which was to culminate in Babylon and Nineveh is traced at Susa, on the hills to the north, about 6000 B.C. The Akkadians (highlanders) or Sumerians, the Turanian people who established this civilisation, descended upon the rivers, and, about 5000 B.C., set up the early cities of Mesopotamia. As in the case of Egypt, again, more tribes were attracted to the fertile region, and by about 4000 B.C. we find that Semitic tribes from the north have superseded the Sumerians, and taken over their civilisation.
In these ancient civilisations, developing in touch with each other, and surrounded by great numbers of peoples at the high Neolithic level from which they had themselves started, culture advanced rapidly. Not only science, art, literature, commerce, law, and social forms were developed, but moral idealism reached a height that compares well even with that of modern times. The recovery in our time of the actual remains of Egypt and Babylon has corrected much of the libellous legend, which found its way into Greek and European literature, concerning those ancient civilisations. But, as culture advances, human development becomes so complex that we must refrain from attempting to pursue, even in summary, its many outgrowths. The evolution of morality, of art, of religion, of polity, and of literature would each require a whole volume for satisfactory treatment. All that we can do here is to show how the modern world and its progressive culture are related to these ancient empires.
The aphorism that "all light comes from the east" may at times be pressed too literally. To suggest that western peoples have done no more than receive and develop the culture of the older east would be at once unscientific and unhistorical. By the close of the Neolithic age a great number of peoples had reached the threshold of civilisation, and it would be extremely improbable that in only two parts of the world the conditions would be found of further progress. That the culture of these older empires has enriched Europe and had a great share in its civilisation, is one of the most obvious of historical truths. But we must not seek to confine the action of later peoples to a mere borrowing of arts or institutions.
Yet some recent historical writers, in their eagerness to set up indigenous civilisations apart from those of Egypt and Mesopotamia, pass to the opposite extreme. We are prepared to find civilisation developing wherever the situation of a people exposes it to sufficient stimulation, and we do find advance made among many peoples apart from contact with the great southern empires. It is uncertain whether the use of bronze is due first to the southern nations or to some European people, but the invention of iron weapons is most probably due to European initiative. Again, it is now not believed that the alphabets of Europe are derived from the hieroglyphics of Egypt, though it is an open question whether they were not derived, through Phoenicia, from certain signs which we find on ancient Egyptian pottery.
If we take first a broad view of the later course of civilisation we see at a glance the general relation of east and west. Some difficulty would arise, if we pressed, as to the exact stage in which a nation may be said to become "civilised," but we may follow the general usage of archaeologists and historians. They tell us, then, that civilisation first appears in Egypt about 8000 B.C. (settled civilisation about 6000 B.C.), and in the Mesopotamian region about 6000 B.C. We next find Neolithic culture passing into what may be called civilisation in Crete and the neighbouring islands some time between 4000 and 3000 B.C., or two thousand years after the development of Egyptian commerce in that region. We cannot say whether this civilisation in the AEgean sea preceded others which we afterwards find on the Asiatic mainland. The beginning of the Hittite Empire in Asia Minor, and of Phoenician culture, is as yet unknown. But we can say that there was as yet no civilisation in Europe. It is not until after 1600 that civilisation is established in Greece (Mycenae and Tiryns) as an offshoot of AEgean culture. Later still it appears among the Etruscans of Italy—to which, as we know, both Egyptian and AEgean vessels sailed. In other words, the course of civilisation is very plainly from east to west.
But we must be careful not to imagine that this represents a mere transplantation of southern culture on a rude northern stock. The whole region to the east of the Mediterranean was just as fitted to develop a civilisation as the valley of the Nile. It swarmed with peoples having the latest Neolithic culture, and, as they advanced, and developed navigation, the territory of many of them became the high road of more advanced peoples. A glance at the map will show that the easiest line of expansion for a growing people was westward. The ocean lay to the right of the Babylonians, and the country north and south was not inviting. The calmer Mediterranean with its fertile shores was the appointed field of expansion. The land route from Egypt lay, not to the dreary west in Africa, but along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, through Syria and Asia Minor. The land route from Babylon lay across northern Syria and Asia Minor. The sea route had Crete for its first and most conspicuous station. Hence the gradual appearance of civilisation in Phoenicia, Cappadocia, Lydia, and the Greek islands is a normal and natural outcome of the geographical conditions.
But we must dismiss the later Asiatic civilisations, whose remains are fast coming to light, very briefly. Phoenicia probably had less part in the general advance than was formerly supposed. Now that we have discovered a powerful civilisation in the Greek islands themselves, we see that it would keep Tyre and Sidon in check until it fell into decay about 1000 B.C. After that date, for a few centuries, Phoenicia had a great influence on the development of Europe. The Hittites, on the other hand, are as yet imperfectly known. Their main region was Cappadocia, where, at least as far back as 1500 B.C., they developed so characteristic a civilisation, that its documents or inscriptions are almost undecipherable. They at one time overran the whole of Asia Minor. Other peoples such as the Elamites, represent similar offshoots of the fermenting culture of the region. The Hebrews were probably a small and unimportant group, settled close round Jerusalem, until a few centuries before the Christian Era. They then assimilated the culture of the more powerful nations which crossed and recrossed their territory. The Persians were, as we saw, a branch of the Aryan family which slowly advanced between 1500 and 700 B.C., and then inherited the empire of dying Babylon.
The most interesting, and one of the most recently discovered, of these older civilisations, was the AEgean. Its chief centre was Crete, but it spread over many of the neighbouring islands. Its art and its script are so distinctive that we must recognise it as a native development, not a transplantation of Egyptian culture. Its ruins show it gradually emerging from the Neolithic stage about 4000 B.C., when Egyptian commerce was well developed in its seas. Somewhere about 2500 B.C. the whole of the islands seem to have been brought under the Cretan monarchy, and the concentration of wealth and power led to a remarkable artistic development, on native lines. We find in Crete the remains of splendid palaces, with advanced sanitary systems and a great luxuriance of ornamentation. It was this civilisation which founded the centre at Mycenae, on the Greek mainland, about the middle of the second millennium B.C.
But our inquiry into the origin of European civilisation does not demand any extensive description of the AEgean culture and its Mycenaean offshoot. It was utterly destroyed between 1500 and 1000 B.C., and this was probably done by the Aryan ancestors of the later Greeks or Hellenes. About the time when one branch of the Aryans was descending upon India and another preparing to rival decaying Babylonia, the third branch overran Europe. It seems to have been a branch of these that swept down the Greek peninsula, and crossed the sea to sack and destroy the centres of AEgean culture. Another branch poured down the Italian peninsula; another settled in the region of the Baltic, and would prove the source of the Germanic nations; another, the Celtic, advanced to the west of Europe. The mingling of this semi-barbaric population with the earlier inhabitants provided the material of the nations of modern Europe. Our last page in the story of the earth must be a short account of its civilisation.
The first branch to become civilised, and to carry culture to a greater height than the older nations had ever done, was the Hellenes. There is no need for us to speculate on the "genius" of the Hellenes, or even to enlarge on the natural advantages of the lower part of the peninsula which they occupied. A glance at the map will explain why European civilisation began in Greece. The Hellenes had penetrated the region in which there was constant contact with all the varied cultures of the older world. Although they destroyed the AEgean culture, they could not live amidst its ruins without receiving some influence. Then the traders of Phoenicia, triumphing in the fall of their AEgean rivals, brought the great pacific cultural influence of commerce to bear on them. After some hundreds of years of internal trouble, barbaric quarrels, and fresh arrivals from the north, Greece began to wear an aspect of civilisation. Many of the Greeks passed to Asia Minor, as they increased, and, freed from the despotism of tradition, in living contact with the luxury and culture of Persia, which had advanced as far as Europe, they evolved the fine civilisation of the Greek colonies, and reacted on the motherland. Finally, there came the heroic struggle against the Persian invaders, and from the ashes of their early civilisation arose the marble city which will never die in the memory of Europe.
The Romans had meantime been advancing. We may neglect the older Italian culture, as it had far less to do with the making of Italy and Europe than the influence of the east. By about 500 B.C. Rome was a small kingdom with a primitive civilisation, busy in subduing the neighbouring tribes who threatened its security, and unconsciously gathering the seeds of culture which some of them contained. By about 300 B.C. the vigour of the Romans had united all the tribes of Italy in a powerful republic, and wealth began to accumulate at Rome. Not far to the east was the glittering civilisation of Greece; to the south was Carthage, a busy centre of commerce, navigation, and art; and from the Mediterranean came processions of ships bringing stimulating fragments and stories of the hoary culture of the east. Within another two hundred years Rome annihilated Carthage, paralysed and overran Greece, and sent its legions over the Asiatic provinces of the older empires. By the beginning of the Christian Era all that remained of the culture of the old world was gathered in Rome. All the philosophies of Greece, all the religions of Persia and Judea and Egypt, all the luxuries and vices of the east, found a home in it. Every stream of culture that had started from the later and higher Neolithic age had ended in Rome.
And in the meantime Rome had begun to disseminate its heritage over Europe. Its legions poured over Spain and Gaul and Germany and Britain. Its administrators and judges and teachers followed the eagles, and set up schools and law-courts and theatres and baths and temples. It flung broad roads to the north of Britain and the banks of the Rhine and Danube. Under the shelter of the "Roman Peace" the peoples of Europe could spare men from the plough and the sword for the cultivation of art and letters. The civilisations of Britain, France, Germany, Spain, North Africa, and Italy were ushered into the calendar of mankind, and were ready to bear the burden when the mighty city on the Tiber let the sceptre fall from its enfeebled hands.
Rome fell. The more accurate historians of our time correct the old legend of death from senile decay or from the effect of dissipation. Races of men, like races of animals, do not die; they are killed. The physical deterioration of the citizens of Rome was a small matter in its fall. Fiscal and imperial blunders loosed the frame of its empire. The resources were still there, but there was none to organise and unify them. The imperial system—or chaos—ruined Rome. And just when the demoralisation was greatest, and the Teutonic tribes at the frontiers were most numerous and powerful, an accident shook the system. A fierce and numerous people from Asia, the Huns, wandered into Europe, threw themselves on the Teutonic tribes, and precipitated these tribes upon the Empire. A Diocletian might still have saved the Empire, but there was none to guide it. The northern barbarians trod its civilisation underfoot, and Europe passed into the Dark Ages.
One more application of the evolutionary principle, and we close the story. The "barbarians"—the Goths and Vandals and their Germanic cousins—were barbaric only in comparison with the art and letters of Rome. They had law, polity, and ideals. European civilisation owes elements to them, as well as to Rome. To say simply that the barbarians destroyed the institutions of Rome is no adequate explanation of the Dark Ages. Let us see rather how the Dark Ages were enlightened.
It is now fully recognised that the reawakening of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was very largely due to a fresh culture-contact with the older civilisations. The Arabs had, on becoming civilised, learned from the Nestorians, who had been driven out of the Greek world for their heresies, the ancient culture of Greece. They enshrined it in a brilliant civilisation which it inspired them to establish. By the ninth century this civilisation was exhibited in Spain by its Moorish conquerors, and, as its splendour increased, it attracted the attention of Europe. Some Christian scholars visited Spain, as time went on, but the Jews were the great intermediaries in disseminating its culture in Europe. There is now no question about the fact that the rebirth of positive learning, especially of science, in Europe was very largely due to the literature of the Moors, and their luxury and splendour gave an impulse to European art. Europe entered upon the remarkable intellectual period known as Scholasticism. Besides this stimulus, it must be remembered, the scholars of Europe had at least a certain number of old Latin writers whose works had survived the general wreck of culture.
In the fifteenth century the awakening of Europe was completed. The Turks took Constantinople, and drove large numbers of Greek scholars to Italy. Out of this catastrophe issued the great Renaissance, or rebirth, of art, science, and letters in Italy, and then in France, Germany, and England. In the new intellectual ferment there appeared the great artists, great thinkers and inventors, and great navigators who led the race to fresh heights. The invention of printing alone would almost have changed the face of Europe. But it was accompanied by a hundred other inventions and discoveries, by great liberating and stimulating movements like the Reformation, by the growth of free and wealthy cities, and by the extension of peace over larger areas, and the concentration of wealth and encouragement of art which the growth and settlement of the chief European powers involved. Europe entered upon the phase of evolution which we call modern times.
The future of humanity cannot be seen even darkly, as in a glass. No forecast that aspires beyond the immediate future is worth considering seriously. If it be a forecast of material progress, it is rendered worthless by the obvious consideration that if we knew what the future will do, we would do it ourselves. If it is a forecast of intellectual and social evolution, it is inevitably coloured by the intellectual or social convictions of the prophet. I therefore abstain wholly from carrying the story of evolution beyond realities. But I would add two general considerations which may enable a reflective reader to answer certain questions that will arise in his mind at the close of this survey of the story of evolution.
Are we evolving to-day? Is man the last word of evolution? These are amongst the commonest questions put to me. Whether man is or is not the last word of evolution is merely a verbal quibble. Now that language is invented, and things have names, one may say that the name "man" will cling to the highest and most progressive animal on earth, no matter how much he may rise above the man of to-day. But if the question is whether he WILL rise far above the civilisation of to-day, we can, in my opinion, give a confident answer. There is no law of evolution, but there is a fact of evolution. Ten million years ago the highest animal on the earth was a reptile, or, at the most, a low, rat-like marsupial. The authorities tell us that, unless some cosmic accident intervene, the earth will remain habitable by man for at least ten million years. It is safe to conclude that the man of that remote age will be lifted above the man of to-day as much as we transcend the reptile in intelligence and emotion. It is most probable that this is a quite inadequate expression of the future advance. We are not only evolving, but evolving more rapidly than living thing ever did before. The pace increases every century. A calm and critical review of our development inspires a conviction that a few centuries will bring about the realisation of the highest dream that ever haunted the mind of the prophet. What splendours lie beyond that, the most soaring imagination cannot have the dimmest perception.
And the last word must meet an anxiety that arises out of this very confidence. Darwin was right. It is—not exclusively, but mainly—the struggle for life that has begotten higher types. Must every step of future progress be won by fresh and sustained struggle? At least we may say that the notion that progress in the future depends, as in the past, upon the pitting of flesh against flesh, and tooth against tooth, is a deplorable illusion. Such physical struggle is indeed necessary to evolve and maintain a type fit for the struggle. But a new thing has come into the story of the earth—wisdom and fine emotion. The processes which begot animal types in the past may be superseded; perhaps must be superseded. The battle of the future lies between wit and wit, art and art, generosity and generosity; and a great struggle and rivalry may proceed that will carry the distinctive powers of man to undreamed-of heights, yet be wholly innocent of the passion-lit, blood-stained conflict that has hitherto been the instrument of progress.
- ↑ In speaking of Europeans as Aryans I am, of course, allowing for an absorption of the conquered non-Aryans. A European nation is no more Aryan, in strict truth, than the English are Anglo-Saxon.