298 DARWINIAN ISM. 



universal i.e. the true logical universal of the natural 

 facts as logical particulars -"has never the force of a 

 constitutive, but only of a regulative, and, generally, very 

 loosely regulative, principle. As we have seen again 

 and again, the only principle proper to Mr. Darwin is 

 accidental variation followed by a conjectural accidental 

 selection. It surely stands to common sense that it 

 cannot be well possible to point to any two principles 

 that would be looser and more equivocal and insecure 

 than these, not on any terms as constitutive, but simply 

 as regulative. Keener senses than those of Mr. Darwin 

 never existed ; but, for all that, his imagination is keener 

 still; and almost the products of the former become 

 travestied into the products of the latter. Moses Mai- 

 monides (11351204), in his More Nevochim, complains 

 of both Christian and Mahommedan writers, that, " in the 

 realisation of their principles, they have not followed the 

 nature of the thing itself ; they have only considered how 

 the thing must be, if it is to support their doctrine, and 

 so then afterwards boldly asserted that the thing is so, 

 and that it is so they drag all possible materials from 

 elsewhere to prove they confound for the most part 

 imagination with understanding, and give the former the 

 name of the latter. Everything might as well be other- 

 wise than it is, absolutely no ground being present why 

 each thing is so rather than not so." May we not bring 

 these old sayings at least in illustration of much that we 

 have here before us ? 



" I suspect (for I have never read it) that Spencer's 

 PsycJwloyy has a bearing on psychology as we should look at 

 it." So says Mr. Darwin once (ii. 265) to Lyell, and this 

 is so far an acknowledgment on his part of other principles, 

 modes of looking, than those usual in philosophy generally. 

 That ordinary anecdotical manner of his, indeed, to call it 

 so, reminds only of these old stories of the Middle Ages, 



