Herbert Spencer and the Doctrine of Evolution. 5 1 3 



for existence and the survival of the fittest, with the tend- 

 ency to variation which organisms exhibit. He saw only 

 the power of these processes to produce a higher form of 

 the same type, and did not recognize how they may give 

 rise to divergencies and consequent differentiations of 

 species, and eventually of genera, orders, and classes. 



Early in 1852 Mr. Spencer also printed a brief essay 

 in the Leader, on The Development Hypothesis, in which 

 some of the new current reasons for believing in the 

 gradual evolution of all organisms, including man, are in- 

 dicated. To this paper Mr. Darwin refers in the intro- 

 ductory sketch of the previous course of research on the 

 subject of development, which he prefixed to the Origin of 

 Species. In this essay, however, direct adaptation to the 

 conditions of existence is the only process recognized. 



In October of the same year (1852) Mr. Spencer pub- 

 lished an essay in the Westminster Review, on the Phi- 

 losophy of Style, in W'hich, though the subject appears so 

 remote, there are traceable some of the cardinal ideas now 

 indicated, and others that w-ere afterward developed. The 

 subject was treated from a dynamical point of view, and, as 

 Mr. Lewes remarks in his essays on The Principles of Suc- 

 cess in Literature, it offers the only scientific exposition of 

 the problem of style that we have. The general theory set 

 forth is, that effectiveness of style depends on a choice of 

 w^ords and forms of sentence offering the least resistance 

 to thought in the mind of the reader or hearer — a fore- 

 shadowing of the general law of the " line of least resist- 

 ance " as applied to the interpretation of psychological 

 phenomena, as well as phenomena in general. Moreover, 

 at the close of the essay there is a reference to the law of 

 Evolution in its application to speech — there is a recogni- 

 tion of the fact that " increasing heterogeneity " has been 

 the characteristic of advance in this as in other things, and 

 that a highly evolved style will " answer to the descrip- 



