SPENCER AND DARWIN. 8)9 



him. Mr. Butler's "books, therefore, though useful as antidotes in 

 the hands of those who understood the facts, could only mislead 

 and puzzle outsiders. Nevertheless, they did actually do this 

 piece of good service: they brought out in strong relief the true 

 nature of Charles Darwin's magnificent life work, as consisting 

 entirely in the establishment of the principle of natural selection 

 a principle which made the previously discredited notion of 

 descent with modification immediately commend itself to the 

 whole biological world of his time, and more particularly to the 

 younger generation. As to my own little book on Charles Dar- 

 win, if I dare to allude to it here, though it also insisted (from 

 the opposite and sympathetic standpoint) upon this same cardinal 

 fact, and likewise dwelt to a somewhat less degree upon the cen- 

 tral importance of Mr. Spencer's position, it was published only 

 in a popular series, and did not perhaps reach the eyes of those 

 who mostly required to have these facts impressed upon them. I 

 rejoice, therefore, that Mr. Clodd should have reopened this seri- 

 ous question, and especially that the discussion to which his work 

 is likely to give rise may result in putting Mr. Spencer's true 

 place in the evolutionary movement before the eyes of his con- 

 temporaries while he is still among us to be gratified by a recog- 

 nition too long withheld him. 



The needful rectification of public opinion on this subject, it 

 seems to me, embraces two points. In the first place, as regards 

 organic evolution, Darwin was not in any sense the orginator of 

 the idea ; he was anticipated by his own grandfather, by Lamarck, 

 by Herbert Spencer (at least so far as priority of publication is 

 concerned), and by several others. In the second place, as regards 

 evolution in general, the idea was not Darwin's at all; it was 

 entirely and solely Herbert Spencer's. Each of these two points 

 I shall treat briefly but separately. 



Everybody now knows that the idea of organic evolution 

 the conception that plants and animals were not miraculously 

 created, but developed by natural causes from a common original 

 was far older than Charles or even than Erasmus Darwin. In 

 a certain vague way it was anticipated by several early philoso- 

 phers, and somewhat more definitely, though still nebulously, by 

 Lucretius. In modern times, however, it first took a regularly 

 scientific shape with Erasmus Darwin. Most people believed that 

 the theory never progressed beyond that somewhat amorphous 

 stage up to the time when Charles Darwin published The Origin 

 of Species. This is a serious mistake. The concept, once set on 

 foot, grew rapidly in definiteness and in fullness of scientific basis 

 up to the moment of Charles Darwin's cardinal discovery. With 

 Erasmus Darwin, it was little more than a brilliant though preg- 

 nant apergu ; with Lamarck, it became a powerfully supported 



