EDITOR'S TABLE. 



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413 



for David and his pebbles, but whose 

 strutting and boasting one of those peb- 

 bles brought to a sudden end. The 

 duke is not a man of huge physical 

 stature — quite the reverse people say 

 ■wTio have seen him ; but he is armed in 

 a panoply of multifarious knowledge, he 

 is practiced in the use of controversial 

 •weapons, and he has the truculent tone 

 befitting one who constitutes himself the 

 champion of reactionary ideas, and who 

 hopes to make bluster do to a large 

 extent the work of argument. After 

 assailing Prof. Huxley, and with him 

 nearly the whole body of modern men 

 of science, in the geological field at 

 least, on the absurd ground that they 

 had conspired to smother a certain new 

 theory of the origin of coral-reefs, simply 

 because it differed from the one promul- 

 gated by Darwin, he turns his attention 

 to Mr. Herbert Spencer, whom he repre- 

 sents as having made, in his " Factors of 

 Organic Evolution," a " great confes- 

 sion " as to the inadequacy of the Dar- 

 winian view of the origin of species, and 

 whom he further charges with a per- 

 sistent effort to degrade philosophy to 

 the lowest possible level. Upon both 

 points the Philistine champion is simply 

 as unjust to Mr. Spencer as it is possible 

 for him to be, and this we propose to 

 briefly show. We invite our readers, 

 however, to turn to the pages of "The 

 Popular Science Monthly " for verifica- 

 tion of what we have here to say ; for 

 at different times we have published all 

 the more important parts of the con- 

 troversies now in question, including the 

 Duke of Argyll's article, " A Great Con- 

 fession," in our number for May, and 

 Mr. Spencer's " Counter Criticism " in 

 that for June. 



To make " a great confession " must 

 mean — if it means anything — to ac- 

 knowledge some serious error on one's 

 own part. To assert the deficiencies 

 of another man's theories is not to make 

 a great confession or any confession. 

 Now, Mr. Spencer's work on " The Fac- 

 tors of Organic Evolution," far from 



being a confession of error on his own 

 part, was an attempt to fix attention 

 upon a view of his own which he holds 

 now, as he has done for many years, to 

 be of much importance as a complement 

 to the Darwinian doctrine of the origin 

 of species. If some one who had strong- 

 ly asserted the all-sufiiciency of the 

 principle of natural selection, independ- 

 ently of the action of the principle con- 

 tended for by Mr. Spencer, that, namely, 

 of the inheritance of functionally pro- 

 duced modifications of structure, had 

 come round to Mr. Spencer's view and 

 published a treatise similar in scope and 

 object to his on " The Factors of Organic 

 Evolution," that might have been called 

 a confession. Whether it would have 

 been a " great " one or not would have 

 depended on the writer's rank in the 

 world of thought and the extent to which 

 his previous views had affected scientific 

 opinion generally. In Mr. Spencer's 

 case there was no "confession" at all: 

 on the contrary, there was the reaffir- 

 mation of a special view of his own, and 

 a re-enforcement of it by additional 

 arguments. 



Had our Scotch Goliath admitted the 

 force of Mr. Spencer's arguments, in so 

 far as they tend to show the insufficiency 

 of the principle of natural selection, pure 

 and simple, to account for the origin of 

 species, it might have been possible to 

 explain his calling Mr. Spencer's recent 

 work " a great confession " by assum- 

 ing that, in his polemical haste and 

 fury, he saw nothing in " The Factors 

 of Organic Evolution " save a criti- 

 cism — and a powerful one — on the doc- 

 trine of natural selection by the most 

 distinguished of contemporary evolu- 

 tionists. But, far from this being the 

 case, the champion will not admit that 

 there is any force in Mr. Spencer's argu- 

 ments, but likens them to "some bit of 

 Bumbledom setting up for Home Rule, 

 some parochial vestry claiming independ- 

 ence of a universal empire." Where, then, 

 does he find the "great confession"? 

 How can arguments to which all force 



