Principles of western civilisation

1 PROJECTED EFFICIENCY 63

fact in mind, it will be seen from the foregoing that we must regard the evolutionary process in life as proceeding under the domination of a cause which we may here and in future designate as the principle of Projected Efficiency. The winning types of life which have come down from the beginning are those which have held their places under the operation of this principle. The types in the present around us to which the future belongs are those which will hold it under the operation of this principle. When the future arrives it will be the forms equipped to the best effect with the qualities through which this principle found expression which will have survived to represent it. And if it were possible to construct the scientific formula of life for any existing form destined, eres viventis, to maintain its place in the future, the interests of the existing individuals would be found to have no place in it, except in so far as they were included in the interests of the majority which is in the future.

The condition under which development has proceeded in life throughout measureless epochs of time has been, in short, a condition in which the shadow of the future has continually rested upon the present, growing and deepening as the upward process has continued. In the course of this process we must consider that it has never been the welfare of the infinitesimal number of individuals at any time existing which constitutes the end towards which Natural Selection may be regarded as working. It is always the advantage of the incomparably larger number of individuals yet to come towards which the whole process moves.

This is the lesson, for the social sciences, of the