BIOLOGY IN OUR ARTS CURRICULUM. 105 
lation of the rich countries, might sometimes enable the southern 
nations to over-run for a time the northern ones; and so 
numerous complications would arise, not by chance, but by the 
operation of divine laws. 
It follows from these considerations that by the principle of 
selection an isolated nation will develop governmentby discussion ; 
but if, either by the approach of other nations, or by improve- 
ments in the means of communication, the isolation should cease, 
the nation will either become itself a despotism, or it will be 
conquered by a despotism. In all despotisms extrinsic selection 
will check or destroy variation ; and just as an animal with an 
unyielding organisation remains unprogressive, and always liable 
to extinction when the conditions of existence change, so a 
despotic state may advance toa certain point, and must then 
remain stationary; while a nation with representative govern- 
ment will be highly variable, and will continue to progress if it 
remains unconquered. 
Such is an outline of the theory of history as deduced from 
the principle of selection. Turgot was, perhaps, the first to 
demonstrate that history is nota series ‘of cycles, but a single 
continuous progression ; and if Hume had known the principle 
of selection he would, I think, have founded a science of politics ; 
history would have been clear to him instead of, to use his own 
expression, “an inscrutable enigma.” But it is to the late Mr. 
Walter Bagehot that we owe the enunciation of the fertile 
principle, that discussion is to ideas what the struggle for existence 
is to corporeal entities, and that the best ideas are naturally 
selected under a government by discussion: you will find it ably 
developed in his “ Physics and Politics.’* It is not my place to 
apply this theory to the facts of history. I merely bring it 
forward to show you how politics and political history can be 
explained by the principle of selection. No doubt the evolution 
of society by means of this principle has always been going on, 
but it has been going on unconsciously ; we are now conscious of 
it, and hope, by the introduction of methodical intrinsic selection, 
hitherto unknown, to direct its movements. We stand at the 
turning point of a long series of ages; for just as man is dis- 
tinguished from the lower animals by the possession of self- 
consciousness, so are the times before us to be distinguished from 
the times gone past. A new light has fallen upon us, and that 
light has come from the study of biology. “I question,” says 
Professor Jevons, “whether any scientific works which have 
appeared since the ‘ Principia’ of Newton, are comparable in 
importance with those of Darwin and Spencer, revolutionising as 
they do all our views of the origin of bodily, mental, moral, and 
social phenomena.” And Mr. Leslie Stephens also says, “ Mr. 
Darwin’s observations upon breeds of pigeons have had a reaction 
upon the structure of European society.”’{ As the atomic theory 
* International Scientific Series, Vol. II. 
+ ‘* Principles of Science.” 
~ ‘* History of English thought in the Eighteenth Century.”’ 
