N OF SPECIES
changed the situation by disproving definitely the dogma of fixity of
species and assigning real causes for "transformism." What might be
set aside before as a brilliant guess was elevated to the rank of a
scientific hypothesis, and the following twenty years were enlivened by
the struggle around the evolution of life, against prejudices chiefly
theological, resulting in the victory of the theory.

The ORIGIN OF SPECIES led to the THIRD stage of the fortunes of the idea
of Progress. We saw how the heliocentric astronomy, by dethroning man
from his privileged position in the universe of space and throwing him
back on his own efforts, had helped that idea to compete with the
idea of a busy Providence. He now suffers a new degradation within the
compass of his own planet. Evolution, shearing him of his glory as a
rational being specially created to be the lord of the earth, traces a
humble pedigree for him. And this second degradation was the decisive
fact which has established the reign of the idea of Progress.

2.

Evolution itself, it must be remembered, does not necessarily mean,
applied to society, the movement of man to a desirable goal. It is a
neutral, scientific conception, compatible either with optimism or with
pessimism. According to different estimates it may appear to be a cruel
sentence or a guarantee of steady amelioration. And it has been actually
interpreted in both ways.

In order to base Progress on Evolution two distinct arguments are
required. If it could be shown that social life obeys the same general
laws of evolution as nature, and also that the process involves an
increase of happiness, then Progress would be as valid a hypothesis as
the evolution of living forms. Darwin had concluded his treatise with
these words:

As all the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those
which lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that the
ordinary succession by generation has never once been broken, and that
no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look with some
confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length. And as
natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being,
all corporeal and mental environments will tend to progress towards
perfection.

Here the evolutionist struck the note of optimism. And he suggested that
laws of Progress would be found in other quarters than those where they
had hitherto been sought.