1909.] BRYCE— REMINISCENCES OF CHARLES DARWIN. vii 



veloped by the gradual and constant process of experiment suc- 

 ceeding experiment, and reaction followed by reaction. Institu- 

 tions are the result of many efforts after improvement made some- 

 times consciously and sometimes unconsciously. If an experiment 

 succeeds, it is developed further. If it fails, it is dropped and 

 another takes its place. If you look at the Roman Constitution, or 

 at the English Constitution, you will see that either in its mature 

 form represents a regular process of development by a constant series 

 of small changes. That is in the historical sphere, what we mean 

 by evolution. So it has always been known that the stronger races 

 survive and weaker races perish ; that efficient institutions — that is 

 to say, such as are fitted to stand the strain of strife — maintain 

 themselves in the struggle for life, while other and weaker insti- 

 tutions, which do not so well hold men together, and give strength 

 and vigor and vitality to the body politic, disappear. This is one of 

 the lessons of history, and a lesson which men could not but begin 

 to read pretty early. Accordingly the doctrine of evolution in that 

 sense was a doctrine long ago understood, if not always fully 

 and explicitly set forth by historians, and the scientific spirit in 

 historical science seems to be not the daughter of the same spirit 

 in natural science, but the sister, beginning to show itself about the 

 same time. You can fix that roughly at not less than one hundred 

 and fifty years ago, in the first half of the eighteenth century. In 

 the end of the seventeenth century when the Royal Society was 

 founded and more markedly in the eighteenth century the world 

 began to have a critical and analytical spirit, and it spread in all 

 directions and to all subjects. This spirit was already alive and 

 working among the votaries of the historical and modern sciences. 

 It was known to Bentley. Such a book as Wolf's " Prolegomena " 

 to the Iliad is a remarkable example of it. It had begun to be applied 

 to the early Hebrew writings. One finds it in Adam Smith and in 

 Gibbon. Niebuhr was not the first to be inspired by it in dealing 

 with Roman history. This was happening at the very same time, 

 when it was at work in such sciences as physics, chemistry and 

 geology in the days of Black and of Priestley and of Lavoisier 

 and of Hutton, and, let us never forget, when it was exemplified 



