468 Darwinism and Sociology 



the sorting out can be brought about mechanically, simply by the 

 action of the environment. In this connection Huxley could with 

 good reason maintain that Darwin's originality consisted in showing 

 how harmonies which hitherto had been taken to imply the agency of 

 intelligence and will could be explained without any such intervention. 

 So, when later on, objective sociology declares that, even when 

 social phenomena are in question, all finalist preconceptions must 

 be distrusted if a science is to be constituted, it is to Darwin that 

 its thanks are due ; he had long been clearing paths for it which 

 lay well away from the old familiar road trodden by so many theories 

 of evolution. 



This anti-finalist doctrine, when fully worked out, was, moreover, 

 calculated to aid in the needful dissociation of two notions : that of 

 evolution and that of progress. In application to society these had 

 long been confounded ; and, as a consequence, the general idea 

 seemed to be that only one type of evolution was here possible. 

 Do we not detect such a view in Comte's sociology, and perhaps 

 even in Herbert Spencer's? Whoever, indeed, assumes an end for 

 evolution is naturally inclined to think that only one road leads to 

 that end. But those whose minds the Darwinian theory has en- 

 lightened are aware that the transformations of living beings depend 

 primarily upon their conditions, and that it is these conditions which 

 are the agents of selection from among individual variations. Hence, 

 it immediately follows that transformations are not necessarily im- 

 provements. Here, Darwin's thought hesitated. Logically his theory 

 proves, as Ray Lankester pointed out, that the struggle for existence 

 may have as its outcome degeneration as well as amelioration : 

 evolution may be regressive as well as progressive. Then, too 

 and this is especially to be borne in mind each species takes its 

 good where it finds it, seeks its own path and survives as best it 

 can. Apply this notion to society and you arrive at the theory of 

 multilinear evolution. Divergencies will no longer surprise you. You 

 will be forewarned not to apply to all civilisations the same measure 

 of progress, and you will recognise that types of evolution may differ 

 just as social species themselves differ. Have we not here one of the 

 conceptions which mark off sociology proper from the old philosophy 

 of history ? 



But if we are to estimate the influence of Darwinism upon socio- 

 logical conceptions, we must not dwell only upon the way in which 

 Darwin impressed the general notion of evolution upon the minds 

 of thinkers. We must go into details. We must consider the 

 influence of the particular theories by which he explained the 

 mechanism of this evolution. The name of the author of The Origin, 



