ii SPENCER'S CHARGE 125 



no small surprise that, in Mr. Spencer's 

 article, I find it taken up and used for 

 a wholly different contention. His adop- 

 tion of it is a good example of the uses 

 of controversy. Thirty -two years ago 

 he would not have used it. We have 

 good evidence of this in a vigorous 

 letter published in the Appendix to vol. i. 

 of his Principles of Biology, 1864. In 

 that letter he makes "enormous time" 

 an essential condition of even the very 

 lowest steps in organic evolution. And 

 for a good reason, which, with his usual 

 candour, he frankly explains. The 

 sudden or very rapid evolution of even 

 the lowest organic forms, from some 

 primordial germs, he sees plainly, would 

 be a very dangerous admission. "If," 

 he says, " there can suddenly be imposed 

 on simple protoplasm the organisation 

 which constitutes it a Paramcecium, I 

 see no reason why animals of greater 



