n6 COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART m 



presumably played by nerve tissue in rendering such 

 evolution possible. No one, he thinks, will be able to 

 understand evolution in history, if he has not this 

 material basis of evolution before his eyes. In other 

 words, we have here an act of adherence to Spencer's 

 position to Spencer's even more than Darwin's 

 against attacks such as have more recently been made 

 by Weismann. For we have here not merely an assertion 

 of the inheritance of acquired qualities, but an assertion 

 of the physical inheritance of the results of mental 

 processes. Further, we find Bagehot here emphasising 

 an element which Leslie Stephen though apparently 

 believing in it was content to drop out of sight all 

 through his ethical treatise. Further still, we observe 

 that for the moment Bagehot is not transferring Darwinian 

 ideas to a new sphere, and asking how they apply there, 

 but rather showing us how politics are influenced by 

 Darwinism in its direct bearing upon the physical basis 

 of mind. Man is a political animal, but he is primarily 

 an animal. We cannot appreciate how his politics 

 evolve unless we have formed just ideas of the process 

 by which he himself evolves. Still, in all this, Bagehot 

 is only preparing the way for his special contribution, 

 which consists rather in extending the biological 

 analogy than in claiming a wide range for biology 

 proper. In point of fact, he might drop out this 

 illustration altogether; he might surrender his strong 

 belief in the inheritance of experience via the nervous 

 system ; and yet the main lines of his book need not be 

 changed. 



All through the discussion his problem, as he con- 

 ceives it, has these two sides, physiological and political, 

 but he declines to deal directly with the physiological 

 questions involved. How have nations been differen- 



