INTRODUCTION xi 



Yet it was essentially in the very opposite 

 way that modern evolution doctrines really 

 originated; as a social theory, that of progress : 

 and this generally diffused spirit of the later 

 eighteenth century, and the earlier nineteenth, 

 has both consciously and unconsciously stimu- 

 lated naturalist and physicist towards their 

 evolutionary inquiries and doctrines. Of this 

 social ferment of evolutionary thought there 

 have been as yet two main phases; and first 

 the French eighteenth century " Progress of 

 Humanity," that characteristic doctrine of 

 the Encyclopedists and Physiocrats, of Rous- 

 seau, and of the Revolution at its best, and 

 this expressed for history by Condorcet, for 

 living nature by Lamarck. The second phase 

 is that of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, 

 from Watt and Arkwright to Stephenson and 

 Wheatstone; and thence to a nineteenth - 

 century manufacturing and commercial world- 

 predominance, proportionately culminating 

 from 1851 to 1860 or thereby; with its char- 

 acteristic " self-made men," its colonial expan- 

 sion and growing empire. 



It was the former period, with its theories 

 of society and of morals, which gave birth to 

 the " Doctrine of Evolution " ; while the 

 latter period, with its competitive industry, 

 its resultant " population question," etc., has 



