SPENCER AND DARWIN. 825 



in general, iDoth the concept and the word, that we owe to Mr. 

 Spencer; and Mr. Clodd's book brings into strong relief the actual 

 relations existing in this respect between Herbert Spencer himself 

 and his predecessors or contemporaries. 



The genesis of th'=' idea in his own mind Mr. Spencer has illus- 

 trated by a series of extracts from his original volume of Essays, 

 published previously to The Origin of Species, and therefore 

 necessarily independent of any Darwinian impulse. The series 

 of extracts thus selected he has permitted Mr. Clodd to print 

 entire, and with them the abstract supplied to Prof. Youmans. 

 These summaries I will not still further summarize ; it must suf- 

 fice here to note, for the benefit of those who have never consid- 

 ered dates in this matter, that the chronology of the subject is 

 roughly as follows : In 1859 (almost 1860, for it was in the end of 

 November) Darwin brought out The Origin of Species. Before 

 that period Mr. Spencer had published (among others) the follow- 

 ing distinctly evolutionary works : In 1850, Social Statics, in 

 which the idea of human evolution was clearly foreshadowed ; in 

 1852, an article in the Leader on The Development Hypothesis 

 (from which I have quoted a passage already), where the evolu- 

 tion of species of plants and animals was definitely set forth ; in 

 1854, an article in the British Quarterly Review, on The Genesis 

 of Science, where intellectual evolution was distinctly mapped 

 out; in 1855, The Principles of Psychology (first form), where 

 mental evolution is fully formulated, and the development of 

 animals from a common origin implied at every step; in 1857, an 

 article in the Westminster Review, on Progress, its Law and 

 Cause, where the conception of evolution at large was finally 

 attained (though not quite in the full form which it afterward 

 assumed). From all of these, but especially the last, grew up the 

 idea of the System of Synthetic Philosophy, the first programme 

 of which was drawn up in January, 1858, nearly two years before 

 the appearance of The Origin of Species. Thus so far is it from 

 being true that Mr. Spencer is a disciple of Darwin that he had 

 actually arrived at the idea of organic evolution and of evolution 

 in general, including cosmic evolution, planetary evolution, geo- 

 logical evolution, organic evolution, human evolution, psycho- 

 logical evolution, sociological evolution, and linguistic evolution, 

 before Darwin had published one word upon the subject. 



To some people, in saying all this, I may seem to be trying to 

 belittle Darwin. Not at all. You do not belittle a great man by 

 giving him full credit for what he did, and none for what he did 

 not do. You do not belittle Virgil by showing that he was not the 

 powerful magician the middle ages thought him ; nor do you be- 

 little Bacon by proving that he did not write Othello and Hamlet. 

 Nobody has a greater respect for Bacon, I believe, than Dr. Abbott ; 



