542 Edward Livingston Youmans. 



* 



which Mr. Darwin calls " Natural Selection, and Mr. Spen- 

 cer calls " Survival of the Fittest," were recognized before 

 Mr. Darwin's time : what he did, as I have already ex- 

 plained, was to show how this principle may aid in giving 

 rise to new species from pre-existing species. The princi- 

 ple is a part of the great theory of Evolution, and has a 

 philosophic importance exactly in proportion to the valid- 

 ity of that larger system of doctrine to which it is tribu- 

 tary as an element. Not only has Mr. Darwin never 

 taken up the general question of Evolution, but it was not 

 his aim to explain even the evolution of species in terms of 

 ultimate principles that is, in terms of the redistribution 

 of matter and motion. Yet it is in this way that all proxi- 

 mate principles, including Natural Selection, have to be 

 expressed before the final interpretation is reached. This 

 mode of dealing with the subject the analysis of it into 

 those primary principles from which all the proximate 

 principles are derived, and the reduction of the various 

 phases of transformation to a single law, which is the only 

 thoroughly scientific method of its treatment, belongs to 

 Mr. Spencer alone. As to his following Mr. Darwin, we 

 have already seen that, long before the Origin of Species 

 was published, Mr. Spencer had reached the proof of Evo- 

 lution as a universal law ; had traced its dependence upon 

 the principle of the persistence of force ; had resolved it 

 into its ultimate dynamical factors ; had worked out many 

 of its important applications ; had made it the basis of a 

 system of Philosophy ; and had shown that it furnishes a 

 new starting-point for the scientific interpretation of hu- 

 man affairs. And for this vast constructive work Mr. 

 Spencer was indebted solely to his own genius. Referring 

 to the subject of Evolution, in a lecture before the Royal 

 Institution, Prof. Huxley said : " The only complete and 

 systematic statement of the doctrine with which I am ac- 

 quainted is that contained in Mr. Herbert Spencer's System 



