56 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



more elements than one. There is concerned in it not one canse 

 but a plurality of causes. A " factor '' is specially a doer. It is 

 that which works and does. It is a word appropriated to the con- 

 ception of an immediate, an efficient cause. And of these causes 

 there are more than one. Neither natural selection nor survival 

 of the fittest is of itself a sufficient explanation. They must be 

 supplemented. There are other factors which must be admitted 

 and confessed. 



This is the first and most notable feature of Mr. Spencer's 

 articles. But there is another closely connected with it, and 

 that is the emphatic testimony he bears to the fact that the ex- 

 isting popular conception is unconscious of any defect or failing 

 in the all-sufficiency of the Darwinian hypothesis. He speaks of 

 the process brought into clear view by Mr. Darwin, and of those 

 with whom he is about to argue, as men "who conclude that 

 taken alone it accounts for organic evolution."* In order to 

 make his own coming contention clearer, he devises new forms 

 of expression for defini g acurately the hypothesis of Darwin. 

 He calls it " the natural selection of favorable variations." 

 Again and again he emphasizes the fact that these variations, 

 according to the theory, were "spontaneous," and that their 

 utility was only " fortunate," or, in other words, accidental. He 

 speaks of them as " fortuitously arising " ; f and it is of this 

 theory, so defined and rendered precise, that he admits that it is 

 now commonly supposed to have been " the sole factor " in the 

 origin of species. 



It is surely worth considering for a moment the wonderful 

 state of mind which this declaration discloses. When Mr. Her- 

 bert Spencer here speaks of the "popular" belief, he is not 

 speaking of the mob. He is not referring to any mere supersti- 

 tion of the illiterate multitude. He is speaking of all ranks in 

 the world of science. He is speaking of some overwhelming 

 majority of those who are investigators of Nature in some one 

 or other of her departments, and who are supposed generally to 

 recognize as a cardinal principle in science, that the reign of law 

 is universal there — that nothing is fortuitous — that nothing is 

 the result of accident. Yet Mr. Herbert Spencer represents this 

 great mass and variety of men as believing in the preservation 

 of accidental variations as "the sole factor," and as the one 

 adequate explanation in all the wonders of organic life. 



Nor can there be any better proof of the strength of his im- 

 pression upon this subject than to observe his own tone when he 

 ventures to dissent. He speaks, if not literally with bated 

 breath, yet at least with a deferential reverence for the popular 



* Page 5*70. ("Popular Science Monthly," vol. xxviii, p. 759.) 

 t Page 575. ("Popular Science Monthly," vol. xxviii, p. 765.) 



