DARWIN ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 135 



of organic evolution has already produced a visible 

 effect upon non-biological studies. Bagehot has applied 

 Darwinian principles to the interpretation of history 

 and politics. Philologists recognise a process very 

 like that of natural selection in the modification of 

 words. The usages of language are inherited from 

 generation to generation ; one idiom competes with 

 another, that persisting which best suits the temper 

 or the convenience of the nation. Philology has 

 like zoology its chains of descent, its breeds or 

 dialects, its species or languages, its fossils (dead 

 languages), its dominant and declining forms, its 

 vestiges (such as letters, still retained, though no 

 longer sounded). Psychology is already in part experi- 

 mental and evolutionary, and seems as if it would 

 attach itself more and more closely to physiology, 

 detaching itself in the same measure from metaphysics. 

 The change may be attributed to two growing convic- 

 tions : (i) That the experimental method is more trust- 

 worthy than the speculative ; and (2) that the mind of 

 man is not a thing apart, but an enhanced form of 

 powers manifest in the lower animals. Sociology finds 

 its most practicable and its most urgent sphere of work 

 in the problems of selection and race, which are 

 naturally examined in the light of Darwinian principles. 

 The new study of Comparative Religion aims at the 

 impartial examination of all forms of religious experience, 

 and is evolutionary in proportion as it is scientific. One 

 of its conclusions, by no means universally accepted as 

 yet, is the recognition of conscience as " the organised 

 result of the social experiences of many generations ' 

 (Galton). Comparative Religion can already show in 

 outline how by slow degrees magical rites passed into 

 polytheistic worship, how polytheism became simplified 



