n of
life, must find their place somewhere related to the simplest movements
of the amoeba. Hence the whole of animate evolution, and not only that
part of which Dr. Marett spoke, may be thought of as the growth of soul.

But, the objector will inquire, does this imply the enlargement of every
individual or even of the average or the typical personality? And if
not, what becomes of a 'growth of the soul'?

To this we must admit the impossibility of any complete, or even
approximate, answer with our present knowledge. We can only note one or
two points of certainty or of confident belief. The first, that there
have been individual men, an Aristotle or a Shakespeare, in the past,
with whom later ages never have, and perhaps never may, compare. The
second, that there are good grounds for thinking that the average man
has improved in goodness and in knowledge since we first knew him dimly
in the dawn of history. But more important and more certain is the fact
that the collective soul of man has grown, and all the extensions of
knowledge and of power of which our volume speaks bear witness to it.
They are essentially social in origin and outlook, and rest on a
foundation of common thought immeasurably wider than any in the more
distant past.

The man of science, the statesman, even the poet, now speaks for a
multitude, and out of a multitudinous consciousness, which had not
gathered to support, to inspire, or to weigh down, an Aristotle, a
Pericles, a Cromwell. This is a dominating fact from which it is well to
take our start. Assuredly the soul of mankind has been collectively
enlarged and enriched. How far the individual can share in this
enlargement is still one of the problems of the future. The West has
committed itself to a general policy of education which aims at making
every citizen a full partaker in the advance of the race. But it cannot
be said that this policy has yet been really tried. It is the
acknowledged ideal to which in all Western countries partial steps have
been taken, and the democracy, through their most enlightened leaders,
will continue to press for its fulfilment. As this approaches, the
individual may become more and more in his degree the microcosm which
philosophers have proclaimed him, and the enlargement of the soul, which
we know to be a fact for humanity, will become a fact for every man.
Need we doubt that with the general raising in the level new eminences
will appear? Do not great mou