346 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



these I shall treat elsewhere. It may be a question 



capable of very opposite answers whether the philosophy 



of history, such as it has been offered in the brilliant 



42. generalisations of Kant, Herder, Hegel, and Buckle, has 



Philosophi- * 



eai theories, really aided the science of history proper; whereas no 

 question can arise as to the indispensable service that 

 has been rendered to historians by the criticism and 

 conjectural emendation of texts and other monuments 

 of antiquity. With Darwinism the matter stands dif- 

 ferently : no person who peruses the great and increasing 

 literature of the subject can deny the enormous assist- 

 ance which the philosophical ideas of evolution have 

 rendered to the cause of Darwinism how the latter, 

 when it appeared, found ready made, though then only 

 slightly appreciated, the philosophical canons and terms 

 which were so well fitted to its systematic enunciation 

 and literary mise en sctne. This was the independent 

 work of Mr Herbert Spencer. 1 The other well-known 



43. 



Herbert 

 Spencer. 



I seemed to he among the sombre 

 grouse ; and then, towards incuba- 

 tion, the characters of the sand- 

 grouse and hemipod stood out be- 

 fore me. Rubbing these away in 

 my downward work, the form of 

 the tinamou looked me in the face ; 

 then the aberrant ostrich seemed to 

 be described in large archaic char- 

 acters ; a little while and these 

 faded into what could just be read 

 off as pertaining to the sea-turtle ; 

 whilst underlying the whole the 

 fish in its simplest myxinoid form 

 could be traced in morphological 

 hieroglyphics. " 



1 The part and position which 

 belongs to Mr Herbert Spencer in 

 the history of evolution as a scien- 

 tific doctrine has not yet received 

 due attention or adequate recogni- 



tion. There is, however, no doubt 

 that the principal features of the 

 genetic view of natural phenomena 

 were clearly before his mind as 

 early as 1852, when he wrote his 

 short essay on " The Development 

 Hypothesis " in ' The Leader,' re- 

 published in the first volume of his 

 ' Collected Essays. ' It has been 

 pointed out by Romanes (' Darwin 

 and After Darwin,' vol. i. p. 257) 

 that though the attempts towards 

 a genetic conception of organic 

 nature were numerous, if not 

 abundant, before Darwin, yet this 

 view only broke through and be- 

 came dominant on the appearance 

 of the theory of natural selection. 

 He says : " If we may estimate the 

 importance of an idea by the change 

 of thought which it effects, this 



