Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/70

60 formula: "Nowadays," he says, "most naturalists are more Darwinian than Mr. Darwin himself." This is most true; and Mr. Herbert Spencer need not be the least surprised. All this happens according to a law. When a great man dies, leaving behind him some new idea—new either in itself or in the use he makes of it—it is almost invariably seized upon and ridden to the death by the shouting multitudes who think they follow him. Mr. Herbert Spencer here directs upon their confusions the searching light of his analysis. He most truly distinguishes Darwin's hypothesis in itself, first from the theory of "organic evolution in general," and secondly from "the theory of evolution at large." This analysis roughly corresponds with the distinctions I have pointed out in the preceding paper; and when he points to the confounding of these distinctions under one phrase as the secret of wide delusions, he has got hold of a clew by which much further unraveling may be done. Guided by this clew, and in the light of this analysis, he brings down Darwin's theory to a place and a rank in science which must be still further offensive to those whom he designates as the "mass of readers." He speaks of it as "a great contribution to the theory of organic evolution." It is in his view a "contribution," and nothing more—a step in the investigation of a subject of enormous complexity and extent, but by no means a complete or satisfactory solution of even the most obvious difficulties presented by what we know of the structure and the history of organic forms. It is no part of my object in this paper to criticise in detail the value of that special conception with which Mr. Herbert Spencer now supplements the deficiencies of the Darwinian theory. He calls it "inheritance of functionally produced modifications," and he makes a tremendous claim on its behalf. He evidently thinks that it supplies not only a new and wholly separate factor, but that it goes a long way toward solving many of the difficulties of organic evolution. Nothing could indicate more strongly the immense proportions which this idea has assumed in his mind than the question which he propounds toward the conclusion of his paper. Supposing the new factor to be admitted, "do there remain," he asks, "no classes of organic phenomena unaccounted for?" Wonderful question, indeed! But at least it is satisfactory to find that his reply is more rational than his inquiry: "To this question, I think it must be replied that there do remain classes of organic phenomena unaccounted for. It may, I believe, be shown that certain cardinal traits of animals and plants at large are still unexplained"; and so he proceeds to the second paper, in which the still refractory residuum is to be reduced.