468 Darwinism and Sociology 
the sorting out can be brought about mechanically, simply by the 
action of the environment. In this connection Huxley could with 
good reason maintain that Darwin’s originality consisted in showing 
how harmonies which hitherto had been taken to imply the agency of 
intelligence and will could be explained without any such intervention. 
So, when later on, objective sociology declares that, even when 
social phenomena are in question, all finalist preconceptions must 
be distrusted if a science is to be constituted, it is to Darwin that 
its thanks are due; he had long been clearing paths for it which 
lay well away from the old familiar road trodden by so many theories 
of evolution. 
This anti-finalist doctrine, when fully worked out, was, moreover, 
calculated to aid in the needful dissociation of two notions: that of 
evolution and that of progress. In application to society these had 
long been confounded; and, as a consequence, the general idea 
seemed to be that only one type of evolution was here possible. 
Do we not detect such a view in Comte’s sociology, and perhaps 
even in Herbert Spencer’s? Whoever, indeed, assumes an end for 
evolution is naturally inclined to think that only one road leads to 
that end. But those whose minds the Darwinian theory has en- 
lightened are aware that the transformations of living beings depend 
primarily upon their conditions, and that it is these conditions which 
are the agents of selection from among individual variations. Hence, 
it immediately follows that transformations are not necessarily im- 
provements. Here, Darwin’s thought hesitated. Logically his theory 
proves, as Ray Lankester pointed out, that the struggle for existence 
may have as its outcome degeneration as well as amelioration: 
evolution may be regressive as well as progressive. Then, too— 
and this is especially to be borne in mind—each species takes its 
good where it finds it, seeks its own path and survives as best it 
can. Apply this notion to society and you arrive at the theory of 
multilinear evolution. Divergencies will no longer surprise you. You 
will be forewarned not to apply to all civilisations the same measure 
of progress, and you will recognise that types of evolution may differ 
just as social species themselves differ. Have we not here one of the 
conceptions which mark off sociology proper from the old philosophy 
of history ? 
But if we are to estimate the influence of Darwinism upon socio- 
logical conceptions, we must not dwell only upon the way in which 
Darwin impressed the general notion of evolution upon the minds 
of thinkers. We must go into details. We must consider the 
influence of the particular theories by which he explained the 
mechanism of this evolution. The name of the author of The Origin 
