64 COMTE TO BENJAMIN K1DD PART n 



monotonously, in mechanical batches, but with minute 

 yet important differences ; the result was continuous 

 adjustment, and adaptation, and evolution, and improve- 

 ment, at the cost of a heavy and remorseless " pluck," 

 year after year, age after age. Finally, what variation, 

 and struggle, and selection have beaten out, heredity 

 preserves. Within the limits of variation heredity 

 perpetuates, in the offspring, the good and victorious 

 qualities of the parents. 



This, in very rough and brief outline, is the central 

 portion of Darwin's hypothesis, the doctrine of natural 

 selection through struggle. When this doctrine is 

 applied to morals or politics, we have Darwinism in 

 morals or politics. Where this doctrine is absent or 

 subordinate, we may have evolutionism in morals or 

 politics ; Darwinism we have not. In this lay Darwin's 

 superiority over many evolutionist predecessors, he had 

 laid his finger upon a vera causa, an undeniable fact in 

 nature, the abundance of offspring, or otherwise 

 roughly stated the scantiness of food ; upon an undeni- 

 able tendency in nature ; a tendency to improve and 

 modify all living forms, improving them, i.e., so far as 

 to make them fitter to survive in their given environ- 

 ment. Theories like Lamarck's of the direct action of 

 environment might be plausible, but they seemed to 

 lack verification. Darwin's theory sprang into a different 

 position because it appealed undeniably to real facts ; 

 although it gave them a very startling extension in the 

 range of their operation. Certainly the plain man would 

 have said that the tendency, though real, was too 

 infinitesimal for its work. One would have said that 

 natural selection was as utterly unable to explain 

 variety of species, as Sadler's doctrine, or Herbert 

 Spencer's hope, to meet the difficulties alleged by 



