CHAP, vii EVOLUTION IN DAP.WIN 61 



human providence will discourage and put down. 

 So unfit are even the learned to play the part of 

 providence. So liable are they to misjudge doctrines 

 which, even if destined at last to be regarded as one- 

 sided and more or less fallacious, have yet shown 

 themselves immensely fruitful in suggestions bearing 

 upon every branch of human knowledge. It is now 

 admitted by able adherents of Comte's system * that the 

 doctrine of evolution supplies a background or basis for 

 Comte's unification of knowledge. In such a statement 

 Spencer's form of evolutionary doctrine seems to be 

 most directly contemplated, and Spencer is perhaps the 

 least thoroughly biological of all the evolutionary 

 thinkers, whether moralists or sociologists, whom we 

 shall have to pass in review. Yet the great movement 

 of our day was in connection with a biological doctrine 

 which Spencer will certainly not repudiate. And it 

 falls to us rather to argue for a difference than for a 

 kinship between Spencer and Darwin. The kinship is 

 claimed, asserted, conceded. 2 We do not deny it ; but 

 we believe that the differences reach deep down. 

 Before we go further we must take a hurried view of 

 evolution as conceived by both these influential writers 

 and first, as conceived by Darwin. 



Darwin's problem, vast as it was, and bold as was 

 the effort required to deal with it, was strictly limited. 

 It lay within the world of organic life. It sought to 

 account for the origin of distinct species among plants 

 and animals. Organic evolution, as taught by Darwin, 



1 e.g. Mr. J. C. Oliphant in Chambers's Encyclopaedia, 9th edition. 



2 Mr. C. W. Williams, of whom Mr. Spencer complains, certainly 

 seems to underrate Spencer's originality (in comparison with Darwin) 

 upon p. 2 of his Evolutional Ethics; but he makes concessions on the 

 other side upon p. 28. Our desire is to show that the two great men 

 moved on different lines. 



