CHAPTER XII 



DARWINISM IN POLITICS BAGEHOT 



Applies Darwinism by analogy Evolution transforms imperceptibly By nerve 

 tissue in our case ; but nothing depends on this assertion of use-inheritance 

 by Bagehot ; it is a mere illustration Not ethnological, but political 

 questions Problems both of progress and of differentiation 1st, Custom as 

 the remedy for primitive wildness in the "fit" Criticism 2nd, Customs 

 winnowed by the test of war 3rd, Free discussion Race-blending, etc., as 

 minor factors Three limitations on the Darwinian principle in Bagehot's 

 application of it. 



[Note B. On Professor Ritchie's Darwinism and Politics Inconsistency 

 between the different essays One interesting hint.] 



THE next important application of Darwinian notions to 

 social questions is found in Walter Bagehot's Physics 

 and Politics, a little book full of interest on every page, 

 and still alive with suggestions after twenty-five years. 

 It is or seeks to be truly Darwinian, dealing, as the title- 

 page tells us, with " inheritance " and " natural selection," 

 and trying to " apply them to political society." 



The author is profoundly impressed, first of all, with 

 the transforming power which science attributes to evolu- 

 tionary change. Things become absolutely different from 

 what they were. Nay more ; this is true not merely 

 of some things but of all. Everything is in motion. 

 And therefore everything has become, in the light of 

 modern science, " an antiquity." 



Speaking more strictly of human or social evolution, 

 Mr. Bagehot makes a very strong statement of the part 



