FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION 



factor of natural selection was demonstrated by 

 Darwin that the doctrine of special creation re- 

 ceived its death - blow. The average man, and 

 even the professed biologist, had not the mental 

 fervor of Spencer, who renounced the old doctrine 

 in 1840, when he was still an infant in the eyes of 

 the law, and who was destined to spend many 

 hours in trying to convince Huxley of the truth of 

 organic evolution. Spencer accepted it at this 

 early date not because he was unaware of the diffi- 

 culties in the way, but because he saw that there 

 was no choice save between special creation and 

 evolution, and because he recognized the old dogma 

 as really a "pseud-idea," in the last resort "un- 

 thinkable." 



But our business here is to inquire into the 

 status of the idea of natural selection to-day, 

 nearly half a century after Darwin's enunciation 

 of it. It is but eleven years since the late Mar- 

 quis of Salisbury, 1 in his notorious Presidential 

 Address delivered before the British Association 

 at its Oxford meeting in 1894, declared that "no 

 one had seen natural selection at work." Since 

 then, however, we have seen natural selection at 

 work in more than one instance. There is abun- 

 dance of experimental evidence to support the 

 retort of Herbert Spencer that the opposite of 



1 Among the distinguished men of the nineteenth century 

 who rejected its main contribution to thought were Salisbury, 

 Disraeli, Gladstone, Carlyle, Ruskin, and Newman. With 

 these the name of Emerson may be contrasted. 

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