A GREAT CONFESSION. 55 



A GREAT CONFESSION 



By the duke OF AKGYLL. 



AMONG the many distinguished men who have contributed 

 to the world's plebiscite in favor of the Darwinian hy- 

 pothesis on the origin of species, there is no one name more dis- 

 tinguished than that of Mr. Herbert Spencer. He has pursued 

 the idea of development with wonderful ingenuity through not 

 a few of its thousand ramifications. He has carried it into phi- 

 losophy and metaphysics. He has clothed it in numerous and 

 subtle forms of speech, appealing to various faculties, and offer- 

 ing to each its appropriate objects of recognition. He is the 

 author of that other phrase, " the survival of the fittest," which 

 has almost superseded Darwin's own original phrase of " natural 

 selection." Nothing could be happier than this invention for the 

 purpose of giving vogue to whatever it might be supposed to 

 mean. There is a roundness, neatness, and compactness about 

 it, which imparts to it all the qualities of a projectile with im- 

 mense penetrating power. It is a signal illustration of itself. 

 It is the fittest of all phrases to survive. There is a sense of self- 

 evident truth about it which fills us with satisfaction. It may 

 perhaps be suspected sometimes of being a perfect specimen of 

 the knowledge that puffeth up, because there is a suggestion 

 about it — not easily dismissed — that it is tautological. The sur- 

 vival of the fittest may be translated into the survival of that 

 which does actually survive. But the special power of it lies in 

 this, that it sounds as if it expressed a true physical cause. It 

 gets rid of that detestable reference to the analogies of mind 

 which are inseparably associated with the phrase of natural 

 selection. It is the great object of all true science — as some 

 think — ^to eliminate these, and if possible to abolish them. Sur- 

 vival of the fittest seems to tell us not only of that which is, but 

 of that which must be. It breathes the very air of necessity and 

 of demonstration. Among the influences which have tended to 

 popularize the Darwinian hypothesis, and to give it the impos- 

 ing air of a complete and satisfactory explanation of all phe- 

 nomena, it may well be doubted whether anything has been 

 more powerful than the universal currency of this simple for- 

 mula of expression. 



Such is the authority who has lately contributed to this Re- 

 view two papers upon " The Factors in Organic Evolution." 

 The very title is significant. The survival of the fittest is a 

 cause which after all does not stand alone. It is not so complete 

 as it has been assumed to be. There are in organic evolution 



