Alfred Russel Wallace 



the establishment of Evolution as a great natural principle 

 or law.'" 



In this connection it is especially interesting to note how 

 near Spencer had come to the conception of Natural Selec- 

 tion without grasping its full significance. In an article 

 on a ^^ Theory of Population " (published in the Westmin- 

 ster Review for April, 1852) he wrote : ^^ And here, indeed, 

 without further illustration, it will be seen that premature 

 death, under all its forms and from all its causes, cannot 

 fail to work in the same direction. For as those prema- 

 turely carried off must, in the average of cases, be those in 

 whom the power of self-preservation is the least, it un- 

 avoidably follows that those left behind to continue the 

 race must be those in whom the power of self-preserva- 

 tion is the greatest — must be the select of their generation. 

 So that whether the dangers of existence be of the kind 

 produced by excess of fertility, or of any other kind, it is 

 clear that by the ceaseless exercise of the faculties needed 

 to contend with them, and by the death of all men who 

 fail to contend with ihem successfully, there is ensured a 

 constant progress towards a higher degree of skill, intelli- 

 gence, self-regulation — a better co-ordinance of actions — a 

 more complete life." 



Up to the period of the publication of the ^^ Origin of 

 Species " and the first conception of the scheme of the 

 Synthetic Philosophy there had been no communication 

 between Darwin and Spencer beyond the presentation by 

 Spencer of a copy of his Essays to Darwin in 1858, which 

 was duly acknowledged. But by the time the '' Origin 

 of Species " had been before the public for eight years, 

 the Darwinian principle of selection had become an in- 

 tegral part of the Spencerian mechanism of organic evo- 



* •• The Herbert Spencer Lecture," delivered at the Museum, December 8, 

 1910. (Qarendon Press, Oxford.) 



124 



