414 THE BIOCOSM08 HISTORICAL. 



gically evolves himself evolving Evolution as 

 the time's basic thought expressed in a cate- 

 gory. Moreover Darwin has his peculiar 

 method of Evolution : it takes place through 

 Natural Selection, or the Survival of Fittest, 

 which involves the elimination of the unse- 

 lected or the unfit. Thus the method has a 

 deeply negative, indeed a tragic counterstroke, 

 which may be applied to nature and to man 

 also, the latter becoming in the talk of the 

 day the submerged half, more or less. Now 

 Darwin lived and wrought in the very hey- 

 dey of England's Political Economy with its 

 doctrine of ever-decreasing means of human 

 subsistence. Thus death through starvation 

 continually looked the English people in the 

 face ; they beheld fate stealthily creeping upon 

 them in the lack of the supply of food. Some 

 would survive, the strong, the rich, the capa- 

 ble, in general the fittest; the rest would sink 

 beneath the wave. Human Society in Eng- 

 land was one colossal example of Natural Se- 

 lection, which surged before and around Dar- 

 win everywhere who, bearing in his soul the 

 strong impress of the fact, took it and applied 

 it to all Nature. Undoubtedly the air which 

 he breathed was full of it, he heard the echo 

 of it on all sides from the statesman and the- 

 orist to the bitter shout of anguish always ris- 

 ing out of the hearts of the poor. The social 



