8 DARWINIAN AND SPENCERIAN 



been recorded in the Autobiography and elsewhere, and 

 are of importance from the present point of view because 

 he has himself explained his failure to realize the full 

 significance of this factor which he came so nearly dis- 

 covering in 1852. Referring to the passage quoted above 

 from his Westminster Review article of that date, he says : — 



' This paragraph shows how near one may be to a great 

 generalization without seeing it. Though ,the process 

 of Natural Selection is recognized, and though it is ascribed 

 a share in the evolution of a higher type, yet the concep- 

 tion must not be confounded with that which Mr. Darwin 

 has worked out with such wonderful skill, and supported 

 by such vast stores of knowledge. In the first place, 

 Natural Selection is here described only as furthering 

 direct adaptation — only as aiding progress by the pre- 

 servation of individuals in whom functionally produced 

 modifications have gone on most favourably. In the 

 second place, there is no trace of the idea that Natural 

 Selection may, by co-operation with the cause assigned, 

 or with other causes, produce divergence of structure ; 

 and of course, in the absence of this idea, there is no 

 implication even that Natural Selection has anything 

 to do with the origin of species. And, in the third place, 

 the aU-important factor of variation — " spontaneous " 

 or incidental as we may otherwise call it — is wholly 

 ignored. Though use and disuse are, I think, much more 

 potent causes of organic modification than Mr. Darwin 

 supposes — though, while pursuing the inquiry in detail, 

 I have been led to believe that direct equilibration has 

 played a more active part even than I had myself at 

 one time thought, yet I hold Mr. Darwin to have shown 

 beyond question that a great part of the facts — perhaps 

 the greater part — are explicable only as resulting from 

 the survival of individuals which have deviated in some 

 indirectly-caused way from ancestral type. Thus the 

 above paragraph contains merely a passing recognition 

 of the selective process, and indicates no suspicion of the 

 enormous range of its effects, or of the conditions under 

 which a large part of its effects are produced.' ^ 



StUl more explicit in the description of his attitude 

 towards Natural Selection are the following extracts from 



1 Principles of Biology, 1867, p. 500, note. 



