EVOLUTION II 



however, be surmised that Spencer's treatment, however 

 powerful, would not have carried the naturalists of that 

 period much beyond the Lamarckian position. If a thebry 

 of organic evolution in which a true working mechanism 

 had been suggested failed to carry conviction to scientific 

 workers, stiU less is it likely that any effect would have 

 been produced by a theory which assumed an inadequate 

 mechanism. Huxley, who was on terms of personal 

 friendship with Spencer, has told us that he remained 

 unconvinced until the enunciation of the Darwinian 

 theory : — 



' I took my stand upon two grounds, : firstly, that, up to 

 that time, the evidence in favour of transmutation was 

 wholly insufficient; and, secondly, that no suggestion 

 respecting the causes of the transmutation assumed, which 

 had been made, was in any way adequate to explain the 

 phenomena. Looking back at the state of knowledge 

 at that time, I really do not see that any other con- 

 clusion was justifiable.' ^ 



' At this stage in the history of Evolution it becomes 

 more distinctly evident that Darwin and Spencer had 

 [approached the subject with different types of mind, and 

 jwere, so to speak, addressing different audiences. Both 

 had set out from data furnished by living , organisms, 

 his observations upon geographical distribution and 

 geological succession having first led Darwin to question 

 the current belief in the immutability of species. Spencer 

 had taken for his raw material the super-organic pheno- 

 mena resulting from the complex activities displayed 

 by human aggregates. From the time of their public 

 advocacy 6f Evolution as a principle the .two pioneers 

 also pursued different paths. The first volume of the 

 Synthetic Philosophy, First Principles, was published in 

 1862, and the revised edition in 1867. The first volume 

 of the first edition of the Principles of Biology, the work 

 which might, naturally be expected to bring into most 

 intimate comparison the methods of the two founders, 



* Darwin's Life and Letters, vol. ii, p. 188. 



