What served to bring back the Englishman's wandering senses was the rumbling of heavy wheels and the crack of a great whip, as a cart laden with hay and drawn by six mules approached him from the direction of Toledo.

The driver of the team was an old soldier, as indeed were most of the Castilians at this time, and knew how to handle wounded men. With great care and a multitude of oaths he lifted Conyngham on to his cart and proceeded with him to Madrid.

From The Nineteenth Century.

difficult subjects of inquiry. Such, preeminently, are the problems presented by the nature and history of organic life. I propose, therefore, in this paper to accept Mr. Spencer's method, and to examine what light can come from it on this most intricate of all subjects.

The leading idea of Mr. Spencer's article is to assert and insist upon a wide distinction between the "natural selection" theory of Darwin and the general theory of what Mr. Spencer calls "organic evolution." He insists and reiterates that even if Darwin's special theory of natural selection were disproved and abandoned, the more general doctrine of organic evolution would remain unshaken. I entirely agree in this discrimination between

BURY ON EVOLUTION.

PART I.

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Mr. Herbert Spencer contributed this review in November, 1895, an article entitled "Lord Salisbury on Evolution." The occasion of it arose out of the brief and passing, but pungent, comments on the Darwinian the ory, which formed part of Lord Salisbury's presidential address to the British Association at Oxford in 1894. In so far as that article is merely a reply to Lord Salisbury, it is not my intention here to come between the distinguished disputants. But, like every thing from Mr. Spencer's pen, it is full of highly significant matter on the whole subject to which it relates. It takes a much larger view of the problems of biology than is generally taken, and it deals with them by a method which is excellent, so far as he goes, and which we can all take up and follow farther than the point at which he stops. Nor is his paper less instructive because he does stop in the application of his method just where it ought to be most continuously and rigorously applied. The method of Mr. Spencer is to insist on a clear definition of the words and phrases used in our biological data and speculations. No method could be more admirable than this. It is one for which I have myself a great predilection, and have continually used in all

must demand a farther advance ou the same lines-an advance which Mr. Spencer has not made, and which does not appear to have occurred to him as required. Not only is Darwin's special theory of natural selection quite separable from the more general theory of organic evolution, but also Mr. Spencer's special version and understanding of organic evolution is quite separable from the general doctrine of development, with which, nevertheless, it is habitually confounded. It is quite as true that even if Mr. Spencer's theory of organic evolution were disproved and abandoned, the general doctrine of development would remain unshaken, as it is true that organic evolution would survive the demolition of the Darwinian theory of natural selection.

The great importance of these discriminations lies in this-that both the narrow theory of Darwin, and also the wider idea of organic evolution, have derived an adventitious strength and popularity from elements of conception which are not their own-elements of conception, that is to say, which are not peculiar to them, but common to them and to a much larger conceptiona much wider doctrine-which has a much more indisputable place and rank in the facts of nature, and in the universal recognition of the human mind.

Let us, therefore, unravel this entanglement of separable ideas much more completely than Mr. Spencer has done in the article before us. And for this purpose let us begin at the bottomwith the one fundamental conception which underlies all the theories and speculations that litter the ground before us. That conception is simply represented by the old familiar word, and the old familiar idea-development. It is the conception of the whole world, in us and around us, being a world full of changes, which to-day leave nothing exactly as it was yesterday, and which will not allow to-morrow to be exactly as to-day. It is the conception of some things always coming to be, and of cther things always ceasing to be-in endless sequences of cause and of effect. It has this great advantage-that it is not a mere doctrine nor a theory, nor an hypothesis, but a visible and undoubted fact. Nobody can deny or dispute it. Nowhere has it been more profoundly expressed and described, in its deepest meanings and significance, than in the words of that great metaphysician-whoever he may be-who wrote the Epistle to the Hebrews, when he describes the universe as a system in which "the things which we see were not made of things that do appear." That is to say, that all its phenomena are due to causes which lie behind them, and which belong to the Invisible. Nor can we even conceive of its being otherwise. The causes of things-whatever these may be-are the sources out of which all things come, or are developed. What these causes are has been the great quest, and the great incentive to inquiry, since human thought began. But there never has been any doubt, or any failure, on the part of man to grasp the universal fact that there is a natural sequence among all things, leading from what has been to what is, and to what is to be. Whether he could apprehend or not the processes out of which these changes arise, he has always recognized the existence of such processes as a fact.

One might almost suppose from much of the talk we have had during

the last thirty years about development, that nobody had ever known or dwelt upon this universal fact until Lamarck and Darwin had discovered it. But all their theories, and, indeed, all possible theories which may supplant or supplement them, are nothing but guesses at the details of the processes through which causation works its way from innumerable small beginnings to innumerable great and complicated results. Every one of these guesses may be wrong in whole, or in essential parts, but the universal facts of development in nature remain certain and as obvious as before.

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It is a bad thing, at least for a time, when the undoubtedness of a great general conception such as this-of the continuity of causation and of the gradual accumulation of its effectsgets hooked on (as it were) in the minds of theorists to their own little fragmentary fancies as to particular modes of operation. But it is a worse thing still when this spurious and accidental affiliation becomes so established in the popular mind that men are afraid not to accept the fancies lest they should be thought to impugn admitted and authoritative truths. Yet this is exactly what has happened with the Darwinian theory. The very word development was captured by the Darwinian school as if it belonged to them alone, and the old familiar idea was identified with theories with which it had no necessary connection whatever. Develop ment is nowhere more conspicuous than in the history of human inventions; the gun, the watch, the steamengine, have all passed through many stages of development, every step in which is historically known. So it is with human social and political institutions, when they are at all advanced. But this kind and conception of development has nothing whatever to do with the purely physical conceptions involved in the Darwinian theory. The idea, for example, of one suggestion arising out of another in the constructive mind of man, is a kind of development absolutely different from the idea of one specific kind of organic

form of structure without the directing agency of any mind at all. Our full persuasion of the perfect continuity of causation does not compel us to accept, even for a moment, the idea of any particular cause which may be obviously incompetent, far less such as may be conspicuously fantastic. Nor-and this is often forgotten does the most perfect continuity of causes involve, as a necessary consequence, any similar continuity in their visible effects. These effects may be sudden and violent, although the previous working has been slow and even infinitesimally gradual. In short, the general idea of development is a conception which remains untouched whether we believe, or do not believe, in hypotheses which profess to explain its steps.

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Mr. Spencer, then, adopts an excellent method when he insists upon discriminations such as these between very different things jumbled together and concealed under loose popular phrases. But, unfortunately, he fails to pursue this method far enough. There is great need of the farther application of it to his own language. He tells us that Darwinism is to be care. fully distinguished from what he calls "Organic evolution." Darwinism defines in the phrases of its author. But organic evolution he does not define so as to bring out the special sense in which he himself always uses it. On the contrary he employs words to define organic evolution which systematically confound it with the general idea of development, whilst concealing this confusion under a change of name. The substitution of the word evolution for the simpler word development has, in this point of view, an unmistakable significance. I do not know of any real difference between the two words, except that the word development is older and more familiar, whilst evolution is more modern, and has been more completely captured and appropriated by a particular school. But Darwin's theory is quite as distinctly and as definitely a theory of organic evolution as the theory of which Mr. Spencer boasts

winism should be abandoned. Both these theories are equally hypotheses as to the particular processes through which development has held its way in that department of nature which we know as organic life. But it is quite possible to hold, and even to be certain, that development has taken place in organic forms, without accepting either Darwin's or Mr. Spencer's explanation of the process. They both rest-as we shall see upon one and the same fundamental assumption; and they are both open to one and the same fundamental objection-viz., the incompetence of them both to account for, or to explain, all the phenomena, or more even than a fraction of the facts, with which they profess to deal.

In order to make this plain we have only to look closely to the peculiarities of the Darwinian theory, and ascertain exactly how much of it, or how little of it, is common to the theory which Mr. Spencer distinguishes by the more general title of organic evolution. Darwin's theory can be put into a few very simple propositions-such as these: All organisms have offspring. These offspring have an innate and universal tendency to variation from the parent form. These variations are indeterminate-taking place in all directions. Among the offspring thus varying, and between them and other contemporary organisms, there is a perpetual competition and struggle for existence. The variations which happen to be advantageous in this struggle-from some accidental better fitting into surrounding conditions-will have the benefit of that advantage in the struggle. They will conquer and prevail; whilst other variations, less advantageous, will be shouldered out-will die and disappear. Thus step by step, Darwin imagined, more and more advantageous varieties would be continually produced, and would be perpetuated by hereditary transmission. By this process, prolonged through ages of unknown duration, he thought it was possible to account for the origin of the millions of specific forms which now constitute the

organic world. For this theory, as we all know, Darwin adopted the phrase natural selection. It was an admirable phrase for giving a certain plausibility and vogue to a theory full of weaknesses not readily detected. It spread over the confused and disjointed bones of a loose conception the ample folds of a metaphor taken from wholly different and even alien spheres of experience and of thought. It resorted to the old, old, Lucretian expedient of personifying nature, and lending the glamour of that personification to the agency of bare mechanical necessity, and to the coincidences of mere fortuity.

Selection means the choice of a living agent. The skilful breeders of doves, and dogs, and horses, were, in this phrase, taken as the type of nature in her production and in her guidance of varieties in organic structure. Darwin did not consciously choose this phrase because of these tacit implications. He was in all ways simple and sincere, and he no more meant to impose upon others than on himself when he likened the operations of nature in producing new species to the foreseeing skill of the breeder in producing new and more excellent varieties in domestic animals. Nevertheless, as a fact, this implication is indelible in the phrase, and has always lent to it more than half its strength, and all its plausibility. Darwin was led to it by an intellectual instinct which is insuperable -viz., the instinct which sees the highest explanations of nature in the analogies of mental purpose and direction. The choice by Darwin of the phrase natural selection was in itself an excellent example of its only legitimate meaning. He did not invent either the idea or the phrase of selection. He found it existing and familiar. He took it from the literature of the farmyard and of the stable. He told Lyell that it was constantly used in all books of breeding. It was his own intellectual nature that made the choice, selecting it out of old materials. These materials were gathered out of the experience of human life, and out of the nearest analogies of that natural sys

tem of which man is the highest visible exponent. But Darwin neither saw nor admitted its implications. The great bulk of his admirers were not only in the same condition of mind, but rejoiced in his theory for the very reason that it rested mainly on the idea of fortuity, or of mechanical necessity, and excluded altogether the competing idea of mental direction and design. In this they were more Darwinian than Darwin himself. He assumed, indeed, that variations were promiscuous and accidental; but he did so avowedly only because he did not know any law directing and governing their occurrence. His fanatical followers went farther. They have assumed that on this question there is nothing to be known, and that the rule of accident and of mechanical necessity had forever cluded the agency of mind.

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Let us now ask of ourselves the question, Which of those two elements in Darwin's theory-the element of accident and of mechanical necessity, or the element of a directing agency in the path of variation-has best stood the test of thirty years' discussion, and thirty years of closer observation? Can there be any doubt on this? Year after year, and decade after decade, have passed away, and as the reign of terror which is always established for a time to protect opinions which have become a fashion, has gradually abated, it has become more and more clear that mere accidental variations, and the mere accidental fitting of these into external conditions, can never account for the definite progress of adjustment and adaptation along certain lines which is the most prominent of all the characteristics of organic development. It would be as rational to account for the poem of the "Iliad," or for the play of "Hamlet," by supposing that the words and letters were adjusted to the conceptions by some process of "natural selection" as to account, by the same formula, for the intricate and glorious harmonies of structure with functions in organic life.

It has been seen, moreover, more and more clearly, that whilst that branch

of his theory which rested on fortuity was obviously incompetent, that other branch of it which claimed affiliation with the directing agency of mind and choice was as incompetent as its strange ally. Selection, as we know it, cannot make things; it can only choose among materials already made and open to the exercise of choice. Therefore selection, whether by man or by what men are pleased to call nature, can never account for the origin of anything. Then, other flaws, equally damaging to the theory, have been, one after another, detected and exposed. There are a multitude of structures in which no utility can be detected, but in which, nevertheless, development has certainly held its way, steadily, and often with marvellous results. Nor is it less certain that there are some characteristics of many organisms which can be of no use whatever to themselves, but are of immense use to other organisms which find them nutritive and delicious to devour or valuable to domesticate and enslave. In short, men have been more and more coming to perceive that, as Agassiz once wrote to me in a private letter, "the phenomena of organic life have all the wealth and intricacy of the highest mental manifestations, and none of the simplicity of purely mechanical laws." What, then, is Mr. Spencer's own verdict on the Darwinian theory of natural selection? He confesses at once that it gives no explanation of some of the phenomena of organic life. But he specifies one example which makes us doubt whether in his mouth the admission is of any value. The effects of use and disuse on organs are, he says, not accounted for. The example is surely a bad one as any measure, or even as any indication, of the quality and variety of biological facts which altogether outrun the ken of Darwinism. In my opinion, it is no example at all because natural selection is so vague and metaphorical in its implications that it may be made to cover and include quite as good an explanation of the effects of disuse as of a thousand

1 P. 740.

other familiar facts. Organs, when fit and ready for use, are strengthened by healthy exercise. Organs, on the other hand, of the same kind, are weakened and atrophied by long-continued disuse. This is a familiar fact. What can be more easy than to translate this general fact into Darwinese phraseology? Nature has a special favor for organs put to use. She strengthens them more and more by a process falling well under the idea of natural selection. In like manner, nature deals unfavorably with organs which are allowed to be idle and inactive. She places them at a disadvantage, and they tend to perish.

The truth is that the phrase natural selection and the group of ideas which hide under it, is so elastic that there is nothing in heaven or on earth that by a little ingenuity may not be brought under its pretended explanation. Darwin in 1859-60 wondered "how variously" his phrase had been "misunderstood." The explanation is simple: it was because of those vague and loose analogies which are so often captivating. It is the same now, after thirtysix years of copious argument and exposition. Darwin ridiculed the idea which some entertained that naturai selection "was set up as an active power or deity;" yet this is the very conception of it which is at this moment set up by the most faithful high priest in the Darwinian Cult. Professor Poulton of Oxford gives to natural selection the title of "a motive power" first discovered by Darwin. This development is perfectly intelligible. Nature is the old traditional refuge for all who will not see the work of creative mind. Everything that iseverything that happens-is, and happens naturally. Nature personified does, and is, our all in all. She is the universal agent, and at the same time the universal product. What she does she may easily be conceived as choosing to do, or selecting to be done, out of countless alternatives before her. Then we have only to shut our eyes, blindly or conveniently, to the absolute difference between the idea of merely