84 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



The Bishop of Winchester upheld the ideal inherent 

 in these two movements as a touchstone to dis- 

 tinguish the vitality and permanence of every current 

 social and political development in civilization. It 

 was a true view which represented an accurate sum- 

 mary of the meaning of history, and it embodied 

 roughly in outline the fundamental law of evolution 

 which lies at the base of Western civilization. 



When with this fact in mind we turn to the 

 further phases of the Darwinian development the 

 interest deepens as the movement mounts towards 

 its culminating phases. The Herbert Spencer 

 Lecture to the University of Oxford in the year 1912 

 was delivered by one of the most distinguished of 

 living exponents of biological evolution namely, 

 Mr. William Bateson, until a short time previously 

 Professor of Biology in the University of Cambridge, 

 and the leader in England of the movement and 

 researches arising out of the Mendelian doctrine of 

 heredity. The title of Mr. Bateson's lecture was 

 Biological Fact and the Structure of Society. This 

 lecture possesses a peculiar interest, and its signi- 

 ficance for the reasons about to be mentioned 

 exceeds even that of Sir Francis Gal ton's lecture in 

 the same series just referred to. In Germany the 

 ruling military class had made the Darwinian 

 doctrine of the efficient individual as he existed in 



