INTRODUCTION 



authorship of the play apart — is in the players, 

 their character, their motives, and the tendency of 

 their action. It is impossible to treat these players 

 as automata. Even if automata, those in the audi- 

 ence are not. Hence, where interpretation seems 

 lawful, or comment warranted by the facts, neither 

 will be withheld. 



To give an account of Evolution, it need scarcely 

 be remarked, is not to account for it. No living 

 thinker has yet found it possible to account for 

 Evolution. Mr. Herbert Spencer's famous defini- 

 tion of Evolution as " a change from an inde- 

 finite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent 

 heterogeneity through continuous differentiations 

 and integrations " ^ — the formula of which the 

 Contemporary Reviewer remarked that "the uni- 

 verse may well have heaved a sigh of relief 

 when, through the cerebration of an eminent 

 thinker, it had been delivered of this account of 

 itself" — is simply a summary of results, and 

 throws no light, though it is often supposed to 

 do so, upon ultimate causes. While it is true, 

 as Mr. Wallace affirms in his latest work, that 

 " Descent with modification is now universally 

 accepted as the order of nature in the organic 

 world," there is everywhere at this moment the 

 ^ Data of Ethics^ p. 65. 



