Professor Huxley's definition of progress cuts at the root of two misconceptions as to its nature, which, though mutually inconsistent, are both widely spread. One is that the latest products of time, simply because they are the latest, are superior to all that has preceded. The other is that to know the origins of a thing will best enable us to assign its value. The tendency of the one is to result in the idea that because a thing has been evolved it must be superior; of the other to lead to the conclusion that because a thing has been evolved out of certain elements it cannot be superior to them. The truth is that the mere fact that a thing has been evolved--be it an institution, a mode of life, or a disease--does not in itself prove either that the thing is or is not an advance on that out of which it was evolved. Regressive metamorphosis, degeneration, pathological developments--physiological, mental, moral, and religious--are all processes of evolution, but are not progress. A society in its decay, or an art in its decline, is evolved out of a previous healthier state or more flourishing period, but is not because later therefore better. Nor, on the other hand, does it follow, because the earliest manifestations of a tendency are the lowest, and can be shown by the theory of evolution to be so, that no progress has been made in the process of evolution. The artistic impulse in its earliest manifestations, in children and in savages, is rude enough; but it would be absurd to say, therefore, that art in its perfection has no more value than in its origins, that the Hermes of Praxiteles is on a level with a misshapen idol from the South Sea islands.