PREFACE 



THE first proofs of the following pages reached 

 me from across the Atlantic on the same day as a 

 report of Professor George Darwin's Presidential 

 Address to the British Association reached us from 

 South Africa. In that fine address, entitled " Evo- 

 lutionary Speculation," the illustrious son of an 

 immortal father discussed the evolution of worlds 

 and atoms, and suggested that the principle is of 

 universal application. The leader-writer in the 

 Times, commenting on the address, stated that 

 only within the last few years has any one ventured 

 to maintain the principle of universal evolution 

 first held by Heraclitus. Neither the journalist 

 nor the professor mentioned the name of Herbert 

 Spencer. Thus I take it that an attempt to show 

 how the Synthetic Philosophy stands in relation to 

 the most advanced knowledge will not be entirely 

 superfluous, even for Anglo-Saxon readers. 



I know, of course, that hero-worship and rever- 

 ence for our predecessors are nowadays accounted 

 somewhat bourgeois and superfluous virtues, and I 

 shall be sorry if any exhibition of them in the 

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