5 io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



from barrow and picture- writing, with singular ingenuity. Anthropol- 

 ogy and sociology have acquired the rank of distinct sciences. The 

 study of institutions has reached a sudden development under the 

 hands of Spencer, Tylor, McLennan, Maine, Freeman, Lang, and Bage- 

 hot. Comparative mythology and folk-lore have asserted their right 

 to a full hearing. Evolutionism has penetrated all the studies which 

 bear upon the divisions of human life. Language, ethnography, his- 

 tory, law, ethics, and politics, have all felt the widening wave of its 

 influence. The idea of development and affiliation has been applied 

 to speech, to writing, to arts, to literature, nay, even to such a detail 

 as numismatics. Our entire view of man and his nature has been re- 

 versed, and a totally fresh meaning has been given to the study of 

 savage manners, arts, and ideas, as well as to the results of antiquarian 

 and archaeological inquiry. 



In psychology, the evolutionary impulse has mainly manifested 

 itself in Herbert Spencer, and to a less degree in Bain, Sully, Ro- 

 manes, Croom Robertson, and others of their school. The develop- 

 ment of mind in man and animal has been traced pari passu with the 

 development of the material organism. Instinct has been clearly 

 separated from reason : the working of intelligence and of moral feel- 

 ing has been recognized in horse and dog, in elephant and parrot, in 

 bee and ant, in snail and spider. The genesis and differentiation of 

 nervous systems have been fully worked out. Here Maudsley has car- 

 ried the practical implications of the new psychology into the domain 

 of mental pathology, and Ferrier has thrown a first ray of light upon 

 the specific functions of portions of the brain. Galton's " Hereditary 

 Genius" and other works have also profoundly influenced the thought 

 of the epoch : while Bastian, Clifford, Jevons, and others have carried 

 the same impulse with marked success into allied lines of psychological 

 research. 



But the evolutionary movement as a whole sums itself up most fully 

 of all in the person and writings of Herbert Spencer, whose active life 

 almost exactly covers and coincides with our half-century. It is to 

 him that we owe the word evolution itself, and the general concept of 

 evolution as a single, all-pervading natural process. He, too, has traced 

 it out alone through all its modes, from sun and star, to plant and ani- 

 mal and human product. In his " First Principles," he has developed 

 the system in its widest and most abstract general aspects ; in the 

 " Principles of Biology," he has applied it to organic life ; in the 

 "Principles of Psychology," to mind and habit ; in the "Principles 

 of Sociology," to societies, to politics, to religion, and to human activi- 

 ties and products generally. In Spencer, evolutionism finds its per- 

 sonal avatar : he has been at once its prophet, its priest, its architect, 

 and its builder. 



Second only in importance to the evolutionary movement among 

 the scientific advances of our own day must be reckoned the establish- 



