ABSTRACT
The contemporary view seems to be that life has improved down through history: At least in terms of material comfort there has been a great deal of progress, and our more remote ancestors did not live as well as we do. But the founders of social evolutionism went further, adding three elements that would fi nd less than unanimous support today: That there is an inevitable course of progress against which cultures can be judged; that all cultures developed through fi xed stages, from Stone Age to Bronze Age to Iron Age to, ultimately, the Victorian Age; and that the earlier the culture in this cycle, the less imagination, intelligence, artistic sophistication, and sheer human worth its people were born with. Full humanity was hard-won. It took breeding.
