4 



TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



thedevel >pmen1 1 f scientific thought, I am aiming only to show, as 

 ( . ;m hown,and as simple justice requires to be shown, 



t } 1;i . atogether an exaggeration to speak of him as the father 



of the modem doctrine of .volution. What Darwin did was to 

 amasa an enormous number of facts from almost every department 

 f :l l science, and by the devoted labor, patient examina- 



tion, and long-searching thought of many studious years, to 



blish, once and for all, not the reality of evolution, nor even 

 the laws and conditions of evolution, but the operation of one of 

 the main factors of evolution a factor which, though it had till 

 his time entirely eluded the scientific mind, was yet required to 

 render comprehensible a vast array of phenomena otherwise with- 

 out interpretation. How near Mr. Spencer's own investigations 

 had l.i] him to a realization of the process of natural selection, or, 

 as he afterward called it, the survival of the fittest in the struggle 

 for existence, we have already been able to remark, and he himself 

 took occasion to point out, when in the course of his later work 



ame 1<> deal more systematically with the whole problem of 

 animal fertility and its practical implications.* But the factors 

 mainly relied upon by him, in common with all pre-Darwinian de- 



ipmentalists, were the direct action of the environment and the 

 inheritance, with increase, of functionally-produced modifications ; 

 and as these processes, whatever might be their individual impor- 

 tance (and this is probably somewhat underrated by scientists of 

 nt day), were obviously incapable of throwing light upon 

 a large part perhaps the larger part of the facts which pressed 

 f'-r explanation, the theory of evolution could not for the time 

 being hope for inductive establishment. Darwin's book put the 

 whole question upon a new foundation, by exhibiting a process 

 which did account for the hitherto unmanageable facts; and un- 

 doubtedly it was thus to a large extent effectual in bringing the 

 general theory intoopen court as an entertainable hypothesis. But 

 while all this is freely conceded while the greatness of Darwin's 

 work in itself, and its importance as a contribution to scientific 

 LOUght, are acknowledged without hesitation, it has still to be 

 red that that work was special and limited in character, 

 and that with the general doctrine of evolution at large it had 

 bself nothing whatever to do. The laws of evolution as a nniver- 



Of Biology, vol. ii, p. 500, note. The whole of this very interesting 



fled carefully, not only because it makes clear the scientific relations 



" Ud Darwin, but also for the foreshadowing which it contains of a reaction 



IttBive recognition of natural selection which soon became typical of bio- 



ndoita nt large. In hi., little work, recently published, on The Factors of Organic 



"t'"n, H oet has opened the whole question up afresh, by showing that, to ob- 



ful! fk w of the methods of evolution, other processes besides natural selection have 



to be taken into account. 



