A GREAT CONFESSION. 73 



the summary of it — survival of the fittest — is a group of the 

 widest generality. It may be used to account for anything. The 

 successful application of it to any organic adaptation, however 

 special and peculiar, is so easy as to become a mere trick. We 

 have only to assume the introduction of some primordial organ- 

 isms — one or more — already formed with all the special powers 

 and functions of organic life ; we have only to assume the in- 

 scrutable action of heredity ; we have only to assume, further, 

 that it originates difference as well as. transmits likeness; we 

 have only to assume, still further, that the variations so origi- 

 nated are almost infinite in variety, and that some of them are 

 almost sure, at some time or another, to " turn up trumps," or in 

 other words to be accidentally in a useful direction ; we have only 

 to assume, again, that these will be somehow continued and de- 

 veloped through embryotic stages until they are fit for service ; 

 we have only to assume, again, that there are adjustments by 

 which serviceability, when transmuted into actual use, has pow- 

 er still further to improve all adaptations by some process of 

 self -edification ; then, making all these assumptions, we may ex- 

 plain anything and everything in the organic world. But in 

 such a series of assumptions we do not speak the language of 

 true physical causation. This is what Mr. Spencer now con- 

 ■f esses. " Natural selection," he says, " could operate only under 

 subjection." * This is a prolific truth. It might have been dis- 

 covered sooner. Natural selection could only select among 

 things prepared for and presented to its choice. How — from 

 what physical causes — did these come ? Mr. Spencer's reply is, 

 historically speaking, retrograde. He goes back to Lamarck, he 

 reverts to " use and disuse," to " environment " — to surroundings 

 — to the " medium and its contents." \ These again are mere 

 phrases to cover the nakedness of our own ignorance. But I for 

 one am thankful for the conclusion arrived at })j a mind so 

 acute and so analytical as that of Mr. Spencer, that "among 

 biologists the beliefs concerning the origin of species have as- 

 sumed too much the character of a creed, and that while be- 

 coming settled they have been narrowed. So far from further 

 broadening that broader view which Darwin reached as he grew 

 older, his followers appear to have retrograded toward a more 

 restricted view than he ever expressed." The evil must have 

 gone far indeed when this great apostle of Evolution- has to 

 plead so laboriously and so humbly " that it is yet far too soon 

 to close the inquiry concerning the causes of organic evolution." 

 Too soon indeed! That such an assumption should have been 

 possible, and that it is virtually made, is part of the Great Con- 

 fession to which I have desired to direct attention. I hope it 



* Page 768. (" Popular Science Monthly," vol. xxix, p. 201.) f I^id. 



