MODERN SCIENCE. 141 



Having said this much, we have to add that Darwin had 

 exceptional advantages in fulfilling the task he undertook. 

 A five years' cruise round the world (1831-6) as naturalist 

 on board the Beagle a Government vessel bound on a 

 voyage of exploration enabled him to acquire a unique 

 training as an observer, a unique experience as an analyst, as 

 well as a unique collection of specimens for the solution of 

 biological problems. With the study of Erasmus Darwin, 

 Lamarck, Malthus, and their successors ; with the uniformi- 

 tarianism of Lyell ; with the general evolution of Herbert 

 Spencer, he was fully equipped, and had actually the whole 

 subject-matter of his "Origin of Species/ 7 If he was 

 vehemently attacked at first a fact which drew universal 

 attention on him and militated for him thereby in the end 

 he also had the good-will, and even the assistance of men 

 enjoying European reputation Lyell, Wallace, Haeckel, 

 Hooker, Herbert Spencer. To Herbert Spencer, Darwin is 

 indebted for the expression of "survival of the fittest/' which 

 describes more tersely and clearly than " natural selection " 

 the great Darwinian principle. To the organising and 

 systematising mind of Herbert Spencer, too, devolved the 

 task of working out the metaphysical and psychological 

 aspects of evolution, and of adding to Darwinism the force of 

 his application of the evolutionary method to sociology, to 

 the origin of societies, to the origin and growth of languages, 

 of worship, of customs, manners, institutions, industry, 

 religious polity, political government. Herbert Spencer will 

 always be considered as the greatest philosopher of evolu- 

 tionism, but Darwin will remain its central pillar, because 

 what other people suspected, suggested, intimated, discussed, 

 and argued, he was the first to prove by observing, experi- 

 menting, demonstrating so that " popular instinct which 

 regards Darwinism and Evolution as somewhat synonymous, 

 is in a certain degree justified." Darwin's work forms the 

 keystone of the evolutionary system, and " supports it by the 

 mass of evidence it has accumulated." His task was to bring 

 evolution from the clouds to our door-step. But to Herbert 

 Spencer alone we owe the entire philosophical conception and 

 fabric of evolution as a " cosmical process," one and con- 



