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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



one is treated as being al all points not only coextensive but also 

 cointensive with the other. Two noteworthy results of this mdis- 

 crimination are: first, that Darwin is habitually regarded as the 

 author of the modern doctrine of evolution at large; and, sec- 

 ondly, that this doctrine has, ever since the publication of his 

 great work on the Origin of Species, become so intimately bound 

 up with the special views therein contained, that by the correct- 

 or incorrectness of those special views the whole theory of 



ilntion is supposed to stand or fall. 



Thai this confusion, like all such confusions, has been fraught 

 with many and varied philosophic drawbacks and dangers is a 

 point which wo need not here pause to emphasize; such draw- 

 lacks and dangers must be sufficiently patent to all. Here we 

 aro principally concerned with the entirely unjust and erroneous 

 estimate of the historical significance of Mr. Spencer's w^ork, and 

 consequently of the relations of Mr. Spencer himself to the great- 

 est of modern generalizations, which originated from or which at 



has been largely kept alive by the misconception of which I 



ik. 



To what extent this unjust and erroneous estimate has taken 

 mot, even in more cultivated thought, may be shown briefly and 

 conclusively by one or two quotations. For example, we find the 

 London Saturday Review remarking, in the course of an article 

 on Prof. Tyndall's famous Belfast address, that "what Darwin 

 has done for physiology [!] Spencer would do for psychology, by 

 applying to the nervous system particularly the principles which 

 his teacher had already enunciated for the physical system gener- 

 ally." In much the same strain, and obviously under the same im- 

 pressii >n that Mr. Spencer's ideas were all obtained at second hand,* 

 a gentleman whom we are sorry to detect in such carelessness 

 Colonel Higginson writes, "It seems rather absurd to attribute 

 to him [Spencer] as a scientific achievement any vast enlargement 

 <>r further generalization of the modern scientific doctrine of evo- 

 lution." ( face more, sketching out the college life of his friend, 

 late lamented Prof. Clifford, with whose untimely death so 

 many brilliant promises came to naught, Mr. Frederick Pollock 

 " Meanwhile, he [Clifford] was eagerly assimilating the 

 which had become established as an assured possession of 

 Lence by Mr. Darwin, and were being applied to the systematic 



aping and gathering together of human knowledge by Mr. 



rbert Spencer." And, finally (not to weary by needlessly 



>a perhaps never been so original a thinker as Mr. Spencer who has had such 

 Jggle to get or keep possession of the credit due to his own ideas. Not only is 

 ineed to the position of a mere aide-de-camp of Darwin, but manv of his critics 

 ary m Insisting, spite of all disproof of their assertions, upon his vital indebt- 

 edness to Augusts Comte. 



