Let us take a simple idea like the desire to improve, to become better. Is it a natural instinct, or is it the result of early conditioning? Crocodiles, king-crabs, eagles, no not evolve, and yet seem perfectly content with their humble status. And many human beings enjoy a quiet existence without feeling themselves obliged to expand or develop. With the desire to evolve goes the fear of not evolving, or guilt. If there were no parents to make us try to be good, no schoolmasters to persuade us to learn, no one who wished to be proud of us, should not we be happy? [...] Does nature care in the least whether we evolve or not? Her instincts are for the gratification of hunger and sex, the destruction of rivals and the protection of offspring. What monster first slipped in the idea of progress? Who destroyed our static conception of happiness with these growing-pains?
Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave (Hamish Hamilton, 1945) p. 40
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