390 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



nessed the successive volumes of Hegel's masterpiece. All things con- 

 sidered, the physical sciences as we know them now — astronomy, geol- 

 ogy, physics and chemistry, as well as mathematics in large part — had 

 hardly begun their latest growth ; the biological sciences, in their splen- 

 did structure of to-day, were still ahead; while the entire group of 

 human sciences, created mainly by the impetus lent by Hegel himself, 

 in the nature of the case, had not entered upon significant formulation. 

 In a word, the idea of development saturated the intellectual atmos- 

 phere; nevertheless, the elaborate and toilsome labor of thinking it 

 through piecemeal for the endless realms of nature, and for the subtlest 

 manifestations of consciousness, lay in the future. Here Darwin, like 

 many another, found his opportunity. 



In the second place, he was favored by the situation dominant in 

 the field of science as a whole, no less than by his own preeminently 

 cautious and " concrete " mind. With regard to the latter, we have a 

 characteristic statement from his pen, in the form of a letter to Herbert 

 Spencer, acknowledging a copy of the " Essays." Eecall that, not long 

 before, Spencer had been writing to Huxley on the subject of Owen, 

 who was to damn Darwin with faint praise eighteen months after,^ and 

 had expressed himself as follows: 



I am busy with the onslaught on Owen. I find on reading, the " Archetype 

 and Homologies " is terrible bosh — far worse than I had thought. I shall 

 make a tremendous smash of it, and lay the foundations of a true theory on 

 its ruins.'' 



From one point of view, this is still the nineteenth century 

 against the eighteenth. Darwin's letter, dated 25th November, 

 1858 — one year precisely before the "Origin of Species" — runs thus: 



Your remarks on the general argument of the so-called Development Theory 

 seem to me admirable. I am at present preparing an abstract of a larger work 

 on the changes of species; but I treat the subject simply as a naturalist, and 

 not from a general point of view; otherwise, in my opinion, your argument 

 could not have been improved on, and might have been quoted by me with 

 great advantage.* 



If Hegel evinced intuitive grasp upon the general framework of 

 development, DarAvin's cautious genius led him to exercise superlative 

 perseverance in conquering difficult provinces of the detailed phe- 

 nomena incidental to evolution. 



At the same time, Darwin valued the aid of generalization and 



* It is generally understood now that the review of the " Origin of 

 Species " published in the Edinburgh Review for April, 1860, was by Owen. 

 At this time, all who have access to it should refresh their memories by reading 

 it. The tone of Spencer's references explains not a little to be found in this 

 critique, especially its concluding emphasis upon the superiority of Cuvier. 



'"Life and Letters of Herbert Spencer," D. Duncan, Vol. I., p. 112, 



'Ihid., p. 113. 



