6 DARWINIAN AND SPENCERIAN 



view may be held concerning his attitude with respect to 

 this question, there can be no doubt that his mind was 

 given a bias towards development as a principle at this 

 •early stage in his career. Through all his subsequent 

 writings the underlying idea of development can be 

 traced with increasing depth and breadth, expanding in 

 1850 in his Social Statics to a foreshadowing of the general 

 doctrine of Evolution.^ In 1852 his views on organic 

 evolution had become so definite that he gave public 

 expression to them in that well-known and powerful 

 essay on The Development Hypothesis, first published in 

 The Leader. In the Principles of Psychology, the first 

 edition of which was published in 1855, the evolutionary 

 principle was dominant. By 1858 — ^the year of the 

 announcement of Natural Selection by Darwin and 

 Wallace — he had conceived the general scheme and had 

 sketched out the first draft of the prospectus of the 

 Synthetic Philosophy, the final and amended syllabus 

 having been issued in i860. The_work of Darwin and 

 Spencer from that period, although moving along inde- 

 pendent lines, was directed towards the same end, not- 

 withstanding the diversity of the materials which they 

 made use of and the differences in their methods of 

 attack ; that end was the establishrnent of Evolution I 

 as a great natural principle or law. ' 



This very brief epitome will make it clear that as an 

 Evolutionist Spencer stands in an absolutely independent 

 position. Up to the period of the publication of the Origin 

 of Species and the conception of the scheme of the Synthetic 

 Philosophy there had been no contact of thought between 

 the two founders of the new doctrine beyond the presenta- 

 tion by Spencer of a copy of his Essays to Darwin in 1858, 

 which present was duly acknowledged and, apparently, 

 in such laudatory terms that Spencer has withheld the 

 letter from publication.^ He was absent from London on 

 that memorable ist of July, 1858, when the papers of 



' ' Filiation of Ideas,' p. 541. 



' See Darwin's Life and Letters, vol. ii, p. 141. 



