346 SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



these I shall treat elsewhere. It may be a question 

 capable of very opposite answers whether the philosophy 

 of history, such as it has been offered in the brilliant 



42. generalisations of Kant, Herder, Hegel, and Buckle, has 



Philosophi- 

 cal theories, really aided the science of history proper ; whereas no 



question can arise as to the indispensable service that 

 has been rendered to historians by the criticism and 

 conjectural emendation of texts and other monuments 

 of 'antiquity. With Darwinism the matter stands dif- 

 ferently : no person who peruses the great and increasing 

 literature of the subject can deny the enormous assist- 

 ance which the philosophical ideas of evolution have 

 rendered to the cause of Darwinism how the latter, 

 when it appeared, found ready made, though then only 

 slightly appreciated, the philosophical canons and terms 

 which were so well fitted to its systematic enunciation 



43. and literary mise en sctne. This was the independent 



Herbert 



spencer. work of Mr Herbert Spencer. The other well-known 



I seemed to he among the sombre 

 grouse ; and then, towards incuba- 

 tion, the characters of the sand- 

 grouse and hemipod stood out be- 

 fore me. Rubbing these away in 

 my downward work, the form of 

 the tinarnou looked me in the face ; 

 then the aberrant ostrich seemed to 

 be described in large archaic char- 



tion. There is, however, no doubt 

 that the principal features of the 

 genetic view of natural phenomena 

 were clearly before his mind as 

 early as 1852, when he wrote his 

 short essay on " The Development 

 Hypothesis " in ' The Leader,' re- 

 published in the first volume of his 

 ' Collected Essays. ' It has been 



acters ; a little while and these j pointed out by Romanes (' Darwin 

 faded into what could just be read and After Darwin,' vol. i. p. 257) 



off as pertaining to the sea-turtle ; 

 whilst underlying the whole the 



that though the attempts towards 

 a genetic conception of organic 



fish in its simplest myxinoid form i nature were numerous, if not 



could be traced in morphological , abundant, before Darwin, yet this 



hieroglyphics." I view only broke through and be- 



1 The part and position which i came dominant on the appearance 



belongs to Mr Herbert Spencer in | of the theory of natural selection, 



the history of evolution as a scien- j He says : " If we may estimate the 



tific doctrine has not yet received I importance of an idea by the change 



due attention or adequate recogni- of thought which it effects, this 



