82 FROM COMTE TO BENJAMIN KIDD PART n 



of the earth. Apart from use-inheritance, indeed, 

 one does not see how the evolution of mind is ever to 

 be made decently intelligible, unless because " intelli- 

 gence " was in the beginning a " casual variation " of 

 small amount and the stupider specimens died out, 

 etc., etc! That explanation will never fail those 

 whom it can satisfy. 



* Except on this point of use-inheritance, Spencer is 

 hardly to be regarded as Darwinian in his thinking. 

 Natural selection has hardly influenced his statement. 

 I do not mean that he refuses help from the doctrine, 

 when he finds help offered incidentally, in the bio- 

 logical or historical region. He is too good a tacti- 

 cian to do that. But Professor D. G. Ritchie seems 

 quite unwarranted in explaining Spencer's laissez 

 faire individualism by his bigoted attachment to the 

 doctrine of natural selection by struggle. Far from 

 that ; Spencer's golden age of individualism lies in 

 the future, in a period of equilibrium ; but if struggle 

 is all-important, such a period can never arise. Over 

 against Darwin's conception of many organisms 

 competing with each other, Spencer sets up a pic- 

 ture of one great peaceful process. Mr. Leslie 

 Stephen tells us we ought perhaps to regard human- 

 ity as a single organism ; Spencer seems almost to 

 regard the whole of the universe as one great organic 

 growth. Embryology shows him the simple, almost 

 homogeneous cell differentiating itself and growing 

 complex ; it is the same process Spencer traces in the 

 universe, though he states it in terms barely of 

 " matter and motion." * 



1 Spencer has admitted his indebtedness to von Baer, the embry- 

 ologist, for the idea to which he has given so wide an extension. 



