DARWINISM AND EVOLUTION DEFINED. 21 



in Nature that Evolution represents, that philosophy is con- 

 cerned to consider. Not the actual how of the modification 

 and transformism of animal and plant life. 



In pedagogy it is also the theory of descent rather 



than the selection theory which has been drawn on for 



some rather remarkable developments in child- 



Kelationof study and instruction. Unfortunately it is ex- 

 theory of descent 

 to pedagogy. actly on that weakest of the three foundation 



pillars of descent, namely, the science of em- 

 bryology with its Mullerian-Haeckelian recapitulation theory 

 or biogenetic law, that the child-study pedagogues have 

 builded. The species recapitulates in the ontogeny (develop- 

 ment) of each of its individuals the course or history of its 

 phylogeny (descent or evolution). Hence the child corre- 

 sponds in different periods of its development to the phyletic 

 stages in the descent of man. As the child is fortunately 

 well by its fish, dog, and monkey stages before it comes into 

 the care of the pedagogue, he has to concern himself only 

 with its safe progress through the various stages of pre- 

 historic and barbarous man. Detect the precise phyletic 

 stage, cave-man, stone-age man, hunter and roamer, pastoral 

 man, agriculturalist, and treat with the little barbarian ac- 

 cordingly ! What simplicity! Only one trouble here for 

 the pedagogue; the recapitulation theory is mostly wrong; 

 and what is right in it is mostly so covered up by the 

 wrong part, that few biologists longer have any confidence 

 in discovering the right. What then of our generalising 

 friends, the pedagogues ? 



Finally in sociology, 7 more particularly biological soci- 

 ology. Here again, to my eyes, much biological sociology 

 rests on two very insecure bases : ( I ) a too 

 Relation of slight acquaintance with biology on the part 



theory of descent . . 



to sociology, of the biological sociologist, and, (2) an 

 acceptance of, and confidence in, certain biologi- 

 cal theories which are certainlv unwarranted, and are not 



J 







