422 THE BIOCOSMOS HISTORICAL. 



with the People or the Folk-soul of the period. 

 It may be said that in the nineteenth century 

 the World's Spirit had become evolutionary, 

 and that on the other hand the People's Spirit 

 was ready for the impress which was also its 

 own. Darwin was the one who had the gift of 

 uttering- the timely message from God to Man 

 (to employ the religious phrasing of this mat- 

 ter). Still Darwin is not the whole of Evo- 

 lution, nor is Evolution the whole of the Uni- 

 verse. 



It has been already remarked that there was 

 something insular in the theory of Natural 

 Selection, and that England alone through its 

 social and mental condition could have called 

 forth such a doctrine. The fittest and the un- 

 fit seem engirdled in a ring of sea, and the 

 struggle for existence takes place. Natural 

 Selection implies the sinking of the unselected 

 under the waves of being, while the selected 

 species rises and floats on the surface like an 

 island, like England. Civilisation is indeed 

 saved by the survival of the fittest, yet its tri- 

 umph is ever accompanied by the awful trag- 

 edy of the unfit. Now Darwin, an English- 

 man and so an islander, catches up this key- 

 note of his time and people and of his pecu- 

 liar locality, and starts to applying it to the 

 whole life of Nature. But why just he, this 

 individual? What experience does lie pass 



