A GREAT CONFESSION. 57 



dogma, which is really a curious phenomenon in the history of 

 thought. "We may fitly ask," he says, whether it "accounts 

 for" organic evolution. " On critically examining the evi- 

 dence," he proceeds, " we shall find reason to think that it by no 

 means explains all that has to be explained." And then follows 

 an allusion of curious significance. " Omitting," says Mr. Spen- 

 cer, " for the present any consideration of a factor which may 

 ''be distinguished as primordial — " * Here we have the mind of 

 this distinguished philosopher confessing to itself — as it were in 

 a whisper and aside — that Darwin's ultimate conception of some 

 primordial "breathing of the breath of life" is a conception 

 which can only be omitted "for the present." Meanwhile he 

 goes on with a special, and it must be confessed a most modest, 

 suggestion of one other "factor" in addition to natural selec- 

 tion, which he thinks will remove many difficulties that remain 

 unsolved when natural selection is taken by itself. But while 

 great interest attaches to the fact that Mr. Herbert Spencer does 

 not hold natural selection to be the sole factor in organic evolu- 

 tion, it is more than doubtful whether any value attaches to the 

 new factor with which he desires to supplement it. It seems 

 unaccountable indeed that Mr. Herbert Spencer should make so 

 great a fuss about so small a matter as the effect of use and dis- 

 use of particular organs as a separate and a newly recognized 

 factor in the development of varieties. That persistent disuse 

 of any organ will occasion atrophy of the parts concerned, is 

 surely one of the best established of physiological facts. That 

 organs thus enfeebled are transmitted by inheritance to off- 

 spring in a like condition of functional and structural decline, 

 is a correlated phj^siological doctrine not generally disputed. 

 The converse case — of increased strength and development aris- 

 ing out of the habitual and healthy use of special organs, and of 

 the transmission of these to offspring — is a case illustrated by 

 many examples in the breeding of domestic animals. I do not 

 know to what else we can attribute the long, slender legs and 

 bodies of greyhounds so manifestly adapted to speed of foot, or 

 the delicate powers of smell in pointers and setters, or a dozen 

 cases of modified structure effected by artificial selection. 



But the most remarkable feature in the elaborate argument 

 of Mr. Spencer on this subject is its complete irrelevancy. 

 Natural selection is an elastic formula under which this new 

 "factor" may be easily comprehended. In truth, the whole 

 argument raised in favor of structural modification arising out 

 of functural use and disuse, is an argument which implies that 

 Mr. Spencer has not himself entirely shaken off that interpreta- 

 tion of natural selection which he is disputing. He treats it as 

 * Page 5T0. (" Popular Science Monthly," vol. xxviii, p. toO.) 



