264 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



EVOLUTION IN 1858. 



Department of Biology, Columbia College, 

 New York, April 11, 1895. 

 Heviewer of the Greeks to Darwin : 



DEAR SIR : I regret that I do not see 

 the Monthly regularly. A friend has 

 recently called my attention to your review 

 of the Greeks to Darwin, and I write to ask 

 you to consider the following points : 



The history ends absolutely with the 

 publication of the theory of Natural Selec- 

 tion by Darwin and Wallace in 1858, there- 

 fore has no bearing upon the subsequent 

 development of the evolution theory. The 

 bibliography, also, is exclusively a bibli- 

 ography of critical and historical articles 

 upon the pre-Darwinian evolution. Where 

 titles are of more recent date, they simply 

 refer to recent historical and critical notices. 

 This being the case, Herbert Spencer's posi- 

 tion is simply treated as that which belonged 

 to him previous to 1858; and if you will 

 read bis two earlier essays in comparison 

 with Lamarck's Philosophic Zoologie a 

 large work of two volumes, fully expound- 

 ing and expanding the evolution theory I 

 think you will see that I have done Herbert 

 Spencer full justice. 



Herbert Spencer, after 1858, as in his re- 

 markable application of the evolution theory 

 to all departments of thought, of course de- 

 serves a very high position, second only to 

 Darwin, and this position I accorded him in 

 the same course of lectures for the Columbia 

 students, in treating of the Post-Darwinian 

 Period. The fact that I barely consider any 

 of Darwin's later work renders it evident that 

 the omission of Spencer is not in the nature 

 of a slight, but simply that his work did not 

 come within the limits of the period treated. 

 I fully understand and appreciate the peculiar 

 features of Spencer's contributions to the 

 evolution theory, and have myself contrib- 

 uted extensively to the Neo-Lamarckian lit- 

 erature in this country which is the Spence- 

 rian side ; at the same time I can see many 

 weak points in Herbert Spencer's biological 

 system, and his rank in the future as a theo- 

 retical evolutionist is closely tied up with 

 that of Lamarck in the question of the trans- 

 mission or nontransmission of acquired char- 

 acters. 



Trusting I have made this matter clear, 

 I am, Very truly yours, 



Henry F. Osborn. 



[If the contents of Prof. Osborn's book 

 agreed with its title From the Greeks to 

 Darwin we might be able to accept the 

 above excuse as valid. But since the work 

 devotes fifteen pages to tracing the progress 



of Darwin's thought down to 1881 we fail 

 to see the justice of disposing in as many 

 lines of what has been done by a contempo- 

 rary, who is the acknowledged master in the 

 broader field which includes Darwinism. 



Even if Prof. Osborn were correct in 

 stating that " the history ends absolutely 

 with the publication of the theory of Natu- 

 ral Selection by Darwin and Wallace in 

 1858," it is easy to show that he has not 

 done justice to Mr. Spencer. Before that 

 time Spencer had published his Social Statics 

 (1851) and Principles of Psychology (1855), 

 showing the working of evolution in social 

 and mental phenomena respectively. He had 

 also published twenty magazine articles, now 

 to be found among his collected essays, or as 

 chapters in his later books, in all of which the 

 development hypothesis is unmistakably the 

 keynote. More important than the single one 

 of these that Prof. Osborn mentions is Prog- 

 ress: its Law and Cause (1857), in which 

 Spencer states the nature of the process of 

 development, with illustrations from all fields 

 of activity. Furthermore, the implication in 

 the above letter that Spencer has merely 

 extended the application of what Darwin 

 announced in 1858 deserves a word. The 

 prospectus of Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy 

 was printed in March, 1860. It has been 

 reprinted since 1880 in the American edition 

 of several of his books, with a note over the 

 initials E. L. Y. from which the following 

 testimony may be taken: "In 1854, he [Mr. 

 Spencer] arrived at the conception of evolu- 

 tion as a universal process of Nature." Re- 

 ferring specifically to the prospectus : " The 

 writer has seen a still earlier manuscript form 

 of this Prospectus, embracing seven volumes 

 instead of ten, but laying out the same sub- 

 jects in the same order and by the same 

 method, that was written out and became a 

 matter of private correspondence in 1858." 

 Prof. Hudson, in his Introduction to Spencer's 

 Philosophy, corroborates both these dates, 

 and states that the plan for the series of 

 books was formed while Spencer was writing 

 his Nebular Hypothesis, an essay published 

 the day after the date of the journal contain- 

 ing Darwin's and Wallace's historic papers. 

 The real relation between Spencer and Dar- 

 win is that the latter worked out independ- 

 ently one division of the great scheme elab- 

 orated by the former. Editor.] 



A PREDICTION OF THE PHONOGRAPH. 



Editor Popular Science Monthly : 



Sir : Your note in the February num- 

 ber of The Popular Science Monthly on 

 Roger Bacon's dream of the steamship 



