out the centuries no other meaning than that the social progress of the Western peoples has been, after all, but a passing sport of life? Do we only see therein humanity condemned to an aimless Sisyphean labour, breasting the long slope upwards to find when the top has been reached that our civilisation must slide backwards again through a period of squalid ruin and decay, leaving nothing gained or won for the race in the process of the strenuous centuries through which we have passed?

The answer to these questions, which it appears that evolutionary science must give to the biologist who has endeavoured without prepossession or prejudice to carry the methods of his science thus far into the midst of the phenomena of human existence, is very remarkable. It would appear that the conclusion that Darwinian science must eventually establish is that

The evolution which is slowly proceeding in human society is not primarily intellectual but religious in character.

Since man became a social creature the development of his intellectual character has become subordinate to the development of his religious character. It would appear that the process at work in society is evolving religious character as a first product, and intellectual capacity only so far as it can be associated with this quality. In other words, the most distinctive feature of human evolution as a whole is, that through the operation of the law of natural selection the race must grow ever more and more religious.

Our progress, it must be remembered, is, over and above everything else, social progress. It is always tending to secure, in an increasing degree, the subordination of the present interests of the self-assertive individual to the future interests of society, his expanding intellect notwithstanding. The manner in which apparently this result is being attained in human society is by the slow evolution in the race of that type of individual character through which this subordination can be most effectively secured. This type appears to be that which would be described in popular language as the religious character. The winning races have been those in which, other things being equal, this character has been most fully developed. Amongst these again the races that have acquired an ever-increasing ascendency have been those which have possessed the best ethical systems; that is to say, ethical systems which, having secured this subordination of the present interests of the individual to the larger interests of an indefinitely longer - lived social organism, have then allowed the fullest possible development of the powers and faculties of all the individuals concerned. We appear to have, throughout human history, two wellmarked developments, proceeding simultaneously - a development of religious character in the individual on the one hand, and an evolution in the character of religious beliefs on the other.

It would appear also that we must regard many of the estimates which have been made and the opinions which have been formed in the past as to the decay of religious influences and tendencies as altogether untrustworthy. The subject must be approached from a much higher and wider standpoint than any hitherto attempted. When the nature of the process of evolution we are undergoing is understood, it must be recognised that we have been estimating the vitality of religious influences on a wrong principle. They do not derive their strength from the support given to them by the intellect. Any form of belief which could claim to influence conduct solely because of its sanction from individual reason would, in fact, from the nature of things, be incapable of exercising the functions of a religion in the evolution of society. The two forces are inherently antagonistic. The intellect has, accordingly, always mistaken the nature of religious forces, and regarded as beneath notice movements which have had within them the power to control the course of human development for hundreds and even thousands of years. Again the plasticity of religious systems has not been realised. These systems are themselves-under the outward appearances of rigidity, and while always preserving their essential characteristics undergoing profound modifications. They are in a continuous state of evolution. Lastly, it has not been understood or taken into account that the great deep-seated evolutionary forces at work in society are not operating against religious influences and in favour of the uncontrolled sway of the intellect. On the contrary, it seems to be clear that these influences have been always and everywhere triumphant in the past, and that it is a first principle of our social development that they must continue to be in the ascendant to the end, whatever the future may have in store for us.

In short, the law of natural selection would appear to be operating in human society under conditions, a full knowledge of which is likely to necessitate a very considerable readjustment of the standpoint from which the subject of our progress has been hitherto regarded. Let us now see whether history and anthropology furnish any evidence in support of this inference that the progress the race has been making has not been primarily progress in intellectual development. For if the inference be correct it is evident (1) that our intellectual progress must be far smaller, less significant, and more irregular than has been generally supposed; (2) that the wide interval between the peoples who have attained the highest social development and the lowest races, is not mainly the result of a difference in intellectual, but of a difference in ethical development; (3) that there is not that direct connection between high social development and high intellectual development which has been hitherto almost universally assumed to exist.

Now any one who has been closely interested in that department of higher thought which for the past fifty years has been concerned with the subject of human progress as a whole, must have become conscious at times of a peculiar undercurrent of opinion which seems to set in an opposite direction to the ordinary and larger current of thought on this subject of progress. Nothing can be less doubtful, in the first place, than the tendency of general opinion on the subject. By the world at large, and by most of those to whom it looks for information and guidance, our progress has long been accepted as mainly a matter of intellectual development. The almost universal tendency has been to regard the intellectual factor as the ruling and dominant one in the advance we have made. The facts upon which this general opinion is founded are, indeed, regarded as being so prominent, and their import as being so clear, that the conclusion is usually accepted as beyond dispute, so much so that it is scarcely ever felt necessary nowadays to subject it to any general and detailed scrutiny.

The principal links in the chain of evidence seem to stand out clearly, and to have all the appearance of strength and stability. One of the unquestioned facts of biology is the progressive increase in brain development as we rise in the scale of life. The increase is steady and continuous, and the rule is almost without exception. This, too, is apparently only what we should have to expect if we accept the Darwinian hypothesis; for of all the successful variations which it is the part of natural selection to accumulate, none can have been more profitable in the struggle for existence than those which increased the intelligence of the forms of life engaged therein. The increase of brain development, therefore, continues throughout life until it finally culminates in man, whom we find standing in unquestioned supremacy at the head of creation, and holding his high position in virtue of the exceptional intellectual development to which he has attained.

When the anthropologist, restricting himself to human progress, now takes up the tale, it may be observed that he proceeds, almost as a matter of course, to marshal his facts so as to bring out the same developmental law. Ethnological treatises are filled with facts intended to exemplify the great mental gulf which exists between the members of the higher and those of the lower races of the human family, and with others intended to establish the close connection which is assumed to exist between high social development and high intellectual development. Popular imagination has, in like manner, its own evidences in view; for what more conclusive argument, it is asked, can we have as to the direct connection between mental and social development than the visible difference in the world to-day between the position of the lower and the higher races, and the characteristics that accompany