DARWINISM AND EVOLUTION 191 



deeply learned and universally equipped biological leader 

 should help the lame evolutionism of Lamarck over the 

 organic stile, and leave it free to roam the boundless 

 fields of what Mr. Spencer has sometimes well described 

 as the super-organic sciences. For that office, Darwin 

 at the exact moment presented himself; and his victory 

 and its results rightly entitle him to the popular regard 

 as the founder of all that most men mean when they 

 speak together in everyday conversation of the doctrine 

 of evolution. 



On the other hand, the total esoteric philosophic 

 conception of evolution as a cosmical process, one and 

 continuous from nebula to man, from star to soul, from 

 atom to society, we owe rather to the other great 

 prophet of the evolutionary creed, Herbert Spencer, 

 whose name will ever be equally remembered side by 

 side with his mighty peer's, in a place of high collateral 

 glory. It is he who has given us the general definition 

 of evolution as a progress from an indefinite, incoherent 

 homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, 

 accompanying an integration of matter and dissipation 

 of motion, or, as we should now perhaps more correctly 

 say, of energy. In the establishment of the various 

 lines of thought which merge at last in that magnificent 

 cosmical law, it was Darwin's special task to bring the 

 phenomena of organic life well within the clear ken of 

 known and invariable natural processes. 



