i SPENCER'S CONFESSION 29 



Neither the organic structures them- 

 selves he proceeds to say nor their 

 individual movements are related in any 

 analogous way to the things and actions 

 in the midst of which they live. Having 

 made this marvellous denial, he reiterates 

 in another form his great confession 

 his gran rifiuto that his own famous 

 phrase, although carefully designed to 

 express self-acting and automatic physical 

 operations, is, after all, a failure. And 

 this result he admits not only as proved, 

 but as obviously true. His confession 

 is a humble one. " Evidently," he says, 

 " the word fittest as thus used is a figure 

 of speech." 1 



This elaborate dissection and con- 

 demnation by Mr. Herbert Spencer of 

 both the two famous phrases which have 

 been so long established in the world 

 as expressing the Darwinian hypothesis 

 1 P. 751- 



