CONTROVERST AND PROGRESS. 67 



none of us had suspected that the road to the heart 

 of the species problem lay through them, until Dar- 

 win and Wallace dispelled the darkness, and the 

 beacon-fire of the 'Origin' guided the benighted.'" 



Herbert Spencer and Compeers. 



With Darwin came Herbert Spencer, " the phi- 

 losopher of Evolution," according to whom the en- 

 tire cosmos, the universe of mind as well as the 

 universe of matter, is governed by Evolution,* Evo- 

 lution being a " cosmical process," which, as Grant 



'Op. cit., p. 551. 



2 It is but just to remark that an essay published by Spencer 

 in the Leader, in 1852, constitutes what has been called " the 

 high-water mark of Evolution " prior to Darwin. In this essay 

 he writes as follows : " Even could the supporters of the devel- 

 opment hypothesis merely show that the production of species 

 by the process of modification is conceivable, they would be in 

 a better position than their opponents. But they can do much 

 more than this ; they can show that the process of modification 

 has effected, and is effecting, great changes in all organisms 

 subject to modifying influences. . . . They can show that 

 any existing species, animal or vegetable, when placed under 

 conditions different from its previous ones, immediately begins 

 to undergo certain changes of structure fitting it for the new 

 conditions. They can show that in successive generations these 

 changes continue until ultimately the new conditions become 

 the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated plants and 

 domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, these 

 changes have uniformly taken place. They can show that the 

 degrees of difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater 

 than those on which distinction of species are, in other cases, 

 founded. They can show that it is a matter of dispute whether 

 some of these modified forms are varieties or modified species. 

 And thus they can show that throughout all organic nature 

 there is at work a modifying influence of the kind they assign 

 as the cause of these specific differences; an influence which, 

 though slow in its action, does in time, if the circumstances de- 

 mand it, produce marked changes ; an influence which, to all 

 appearance, would produce in the millions of years, and under 

 the great varieties of condition which geological records im- 

 ply, any amount of change." 



