SOCIAL EVOLUTION 75 



DARWINISM IN THE THEOEY OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION 1 



Bx FEANKLIN H. GIDDINGS, LL.D. 



REVOLUTIONIZING as the life work of Charles Darwin was in 

 the fields of biology and psychology, one may donbt if his 

 writings disturbed the intellectual peace anywhere more profoundly 

 than in the " Sweet Jerusalem " of pre-Darwinian social philosophy. 

 Borrowing a shocking thought from the Eev. Thomas Eobert Malthus, 

 Mr. Darwin, in due course of time, gave it back to Malthusians and 

 Godwinites, to Bicardians and Euskinites, to Benthamites and Owenites, 

 with a new and terrific voltage. 



Nine years before " The Origin of Species " was published, Herbert 

 Spencer, in the concluding chapters of " Social Statics," had offered an 

 explanation of society in terms of a progressive human nature, adapting 

 itself to changing conditions of life. These chapters are the germ of 

 that inclusive conception and theory of evolution which were elabo- 

 rated in the ten volumes of the " Synthetic Philosophy." Five years 

 later, or four years before " The Origin of Species " saw the light, Mr. 

 Spencer, in the first edition of his " Principles of Psychology," set forth 

 an original interpretation of life, including mental and social life, as 

 a correspondence of internal relations to external relations, initiated 

 and directed by the external relations. Finally, in April, 1857, Mr. 

 Spencer published, in The Westminster Review, his epoch-marking 

 paper on " Progress : Its Law and Cause," in which his famous law of 

 evolution was partially formulated, and evolution was declared to be 

 the process of the universe and of all that it contains. 



Mr. Spencer thus had seen evolution in its whole extent, as adapta- 

 tion and differentiation. He had not yet mentally grasped the uni- 

 versal redistribution of energy and matter, wherein every finite aggre- 

 gate of material units, radiating energy into surrounding space, or 

 absorbing energy therefrom, draws itself together in order-making 

 coherence, or distributes itself abroad in riotous disintegration. That 

 universal equilibration, which in fact is the beginning and the end of 

 evolution, was the aspect of the world which in thought Mr. Spencer 

 arrived at last of all. 



It is not given to any one human intellect to discover all truth, and 

 there is more in evolution than even Mr. Spencer perceived, either at 

 the beginning of his great work, or in the fulness of his powers. Intent 

 upon the broader aspects of cosmic transformation, his mind did not 



1 A lecture in the course on " Charles Darwin and his Influence on Science," 

 delivered at Columbia University, April 16, 1909. 



