The Theory of Evolution 39 



tude all that Heaven and their betters sent. 

 Thus the market came to take its place as the 

 unquestioned arbiter of society — a place that, 

 in spite of many beginnings in social legisla- 

 tion, it still retains. 



5. The Doctrine of Evolution 



As has already been said, the transition from 

 Malthus to Darwin took place in the realm of 

 speculative science rather than in the more 

 practical field of political economy, and is a 

 product of the intellectual activity awakened 

 by the machine age. Yet the evolutionary phi- 

 losophy, though apparently remote from prac- 

 tical considerations, swings back eventually to 

 reinforce commercialism, as will be pointed 

 out. In the development of the theory a con- 

 siderable group of advanced thinkers, both 

 English and continental, were engaged. The 

 main approaches were made through geology, 

 and many thinkers early grasped in a general 

 way the idea of a progressive evolution of life 

 forms on the earth; one pioneer, Lamarck, 

 even worked out an ingenious though fanciful 

 hypothesis explaining nature's method. The 

 evolutionary point of view was also anticipated 

 in literature before it found adequate scientific 



