I shall take occasion repeatedly to emphasize this point in the present volume, though I alluded to it already in my first book (55) in the following passage, which my critics evidently overlooked: "In passing from animals to human beings we find at first not only no advance in the sexual relations, but a decided retrogression.

If it takes the first form, and if we assume, as Lord Ampthill probably does, that the North European racial type is 'higher' than any other, then the slaughter of half a million selected Englishmen and half a million selected Germans will clearly be an act of biological retrogression.

As it was, his cyclical retrogression made us just too late for the train, and we had to wait two hours for the next.

"Hitherto the empire has held itself aloof from other countries and is ignorant of the affairs of the world; the only object sought has been to give ourselves the least trouble, and by daily retrogression we are in danger of falling under foreign rule.

As respects moral and intellectual culture, stagnation: in all that concerns material development, a fatal retrogression.

But this, as would appear from the history of the science, is a mere retrogression towards the rudeness of its earlier stages.

In some places, the pastoral age, or that of good fellowship, continues for a whole life, to the obvious retrogression of the people, in most of the higher qualities, but to their manifest advantage, however, in the pleasures of the time being; while, in others, it passes away rapidly, like the buoyant animal joys, that live their time, between fourteen and twenty.

Injury to the thyroid, especially in growing animals, is followed by profound retrogression or arrest of development in skin, skeleton and brain.

The world never saw a more rapid retrogression in human rights, or a greater prostration of liberties.

After centuries of warfare and the steady retrogression, in the waste of blood and treasure and loyalty, of modern civilisation, two empires, England and Germany, or America and China, may remain.

Can any one calmly compare this marvellous progression of Cuba with the equally astounding retrogression of our Antilles, and fail to come to the irresistible conclusion that the prosperity of the one is intimately connected with the distress of the other.

Few observers can see beyond this temporary retrogression into the future for which it is a preparation.