Adaptation to environment, therefore, is no indication or test of progress, or of what is good or right or true or beautiful. Everything that exists is shown, by the mere fact of its existence, to be adapted to its environment. If, therefore, such adaptation is evidence that the thing is ideally satisfactory, it will follow that whatever is, is right. At the same time, our conception of right and good will be emptied of all meaning: a "right" or "good" thing will simply mean a thing which exists. The epithets will simply predicate existence, not a quality; and consequently we shall have to call the successful villain and the prosperous traitor good, and their methods right. They have adapted themselves to their conditions, and have flourished in consequence. Adaptation to environment could only mean progress provided that the environment was uniformly such as to favour the survival of those alone who were ideally fit to survive. But it is not: instances are not uncommon in which organisms, having attained to a certain degree of complexity and heterogeneity of structure, subsequently, as a consequence of adapting themselves to their environment, lose it and revert to an earlier stage of development, relatively simple, homogeneous, and structureless. Such reversion or regressive metamorphosis is as much a part of the organism's evolution as its previous progressive metamorphosis; and progress and regress both are equally the result of adaptation to environment. Further, though reversion and regress may now be only occasional, it is certain that as the earth cools down they must become universal: the altered conditions of temperature, etc., will allow only the lower forms of life to survive, and will eventually extinguish even them. As regards organic evolution in general, then, the struggle for existence and the action of the environment do not necessarily tend to result in progress. As regards the evolution of man in particular, Mr. Huxley went further and maintained that they were absolutely inimical to human progress, which has been effected, not because, but in spite of them, and is the result not of obeying the cosmic process, but of defying it. The qualities which brought success in the struggle for existence to man as an animal were rapacity, greed, selfishness, and an absolute and cruel indifference to the wants and sufferings of others. On the gratification, at all cost to others, of his animal desires, his animal existence depended: it was the "ape and tiger" within him that made him victor in the struggle for existence; it was the environment that imposed this as the condition of success.