its ethical aspirations and enthusiasms, is in large part a product of the new industrialism. [Sidenote: The doctrine of evolution] Not less disturbing to morals than the political and industrial revolutions has been the revolution in scientific thought effected by the doctrine of evolution. This theory has been not only a powerful dissolvent of a large part of the body of medieval theology and hence of that part of morality dependent upon this system of thought, but, through the dominant place which this interpretation of the cosmic process assigns to the self-regarding motives, it has exercised in wide circles of society an unfavorable influence upon morals by seeming to give nature’s sanction to self-assertive, antisocial conduct. There are drifts in both the public and the private morality of the last half century which, as we shall see, find their explanation in the disturbance of ethical values created by the general acceptance of the Darwinian theory of progress through “the survival of the fittest.” But we shall also see this same theory, better interpreted in its profoundest intimations, giving strong support to the best ethical instincts of humanity and supplying new incentives and encouragement to humanitarian endeavor. [Sidenote: General intellectual progress] The moral history of the Western world since the Renaissance affords a striking illustration of the dependence of progress in morals upon progress in general intelligence. It is undoubtedly true that, fostered by a free press, by the public-school system, and by various other agencies, the average of intelligence in the modern democratic state is higher than it was in any of the states--save possibly in some of the small city states of Greece--of ancient or medieval times. This new intellectual life, speaking broadly, has reacted favorably upon the moral life. It has dispelled superstition, destroyed prejudices, widened the outlook of men, and broadened their moral sympathies. In a word, the seeing of life and things as they really are has tended to clarify the moral sense and to render clearer and truer the vision of the ethical ideal. [Sidenote: The decline of dogmatic theology]