ABSTRACT
Here is the issue we must always face when we speak of developmental laws. Are these merely statements summing up an actual process of development, historical
Two assumptions underlie this seemingly bold assertion. We have assumed in the first place that development is something distinct from mere process. The term" evolution " is rather ambiguous in this and some other respects, and may for the moment be left out of the discussion. But the terms "development" and "progress" imply not merely process but process in a certain direction hereafter to be specified. These two terms, though they are sometimes distinguished, I shall (for reasons shortly to appear) use as equivalent, preferring, however, the term " development" because of a certain narrowed ethical significance sometimes El-ttached to the term" progress." It will now appear that the assertion set out above is not so vast or bold as it may have sounded. We are con-
of development have actually followed or are actually following these laws, but that if a community is to comtinue development from a certain stage it mU8t follow these laws. They are revealed to us in history, but only because, guided by the idea of community, we know what to look for amid the vast welter of historical vicissitude and contradiction. If it be said that such procedure is arbitrary and circular, that we start with an a priori idea of community, and merely select as laws of development those historical changes which conform to it, it may be sufficient to reply-though there is doubtless a deeper answer-that all evolutionary science is faced with the same difficulty. All evolutionary science, however scientists may seek to conceal it, speaks necessarily in terms of development no less than of process-else there would be no system, no hierarchy, no succession, ~o law. Evolutionary science is concerned not with the history of the world but with the history of selected elements of the world. It is not a kind of history revealing successive stages of life. The amoeba did not disappear when man arose. It is not simply a study of the appearance through time of newer and ever newer forms of life. The facts of reversion and retrogression dispel the idea that we can equate evolution with temporal sequence. Evolution in this connection must mean not change but change in a determinate direction. Take away the idea of development, leave only the idea of process, and evolutionary science would become a mere reflection of the myriad inchoate contradictory processes of nature, no science, but an endless series of inconsequent descriptions with no guiding thread.
