SPENCER AND DARWIN. 817 



according to the use made of it, are all explicable on this same 

 principle. And thus they can show that throughout all organic 

 Nature there is at work a modifying influence of the kind they 

 assign as the cause of these specific differences, an influence 

 which, though slow in its action, does, in time, if the circum- 

 stances demand it, produce marked changes ; an influence which, 

 to all appearance, would produce in the millions of years, and 

 under the great varieties of conditions which geological records 

 imply, any amount of change/' 



Now, by most readers at the present day, this passage would 

 undoubtedly be at once set down as " Darwinian." But when was 

 it written ? " Would you be surprised to learn " that it was pub- 

 lished by Herbert Spencer in the Leader newspaper no less than 

 seven years before the appearance of The Origin of Species ? 

 The essay which contains it was first printed in 1853 ; The Origin 

 of Species was published in 1859. As I have already remarked in 

 my Charles Darwin, " This admirable passage . . . contains ex- 

 plicitly almost every idea that ordinary people, not specially 

 biological in their interests, now associate with the name of Dar- 

 win. That is to say, it contains, in a very philosophical and 

 abstract form, the theory of descent with modification, luithout 

 the distinctive Darwinian adjunct of natural selection, or survival 

 of the fittest." To put it briefly, most people at the present day, 

 now that evolutionism has practically triumphed, now that the 

 evolutionary method is being applied to almost every form of 

 scientific subject-matter, go doubly wrong as to the origin of that 

 method. In the first place, they attribute mainly or exclusively 

 to Darwin ideas which were current long before Darwin wrote ; 

 in the second place, they also attribute to Darwin ideas which 

 were promulgated, in some cases before, and in other cases after 

 Darwin, by independent thinkers who accepted his theories as 

 part only of their own systems. Mr. Spencer has been by far the 

 greatest sufferer from this curious human habit of finding an 

 ostensible figurehead for every great movement, and then attach- 

 ing everything in the movement to that figurehead alone Luther 

 for the Protestant Reformation, Rousseau or Robespierre for the 

 French Revolution, Pusey for the Anglo- Catholic revival, and 

 so forth. I am glad that Mr. Clodd has undertaken definitely to 

 combat this doubly erroneous view, and that his book has allowed 

 me the opportunity of adding my mite to this question of as- 

 cription. 



At the same time, I should like to premise that I write this 

 article in a spirit of the profoundest loyalty to Darwin's memory 

 and opinions. No man could have a deeper respect than I have 

 for the character and the life work of that great man of science. 

 But loyalty, as I understand the term, consists in giving your 



TOL. L. 62 



