Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/847

Rh in general, both the concept and the word, that we owe to Mr. Spencer; and Mr. Clodd's book brings into strong relief the actual relations existing in this respect between Herbert Spencer himself and his predecessors or contemporaries.

The genesis of the idea in his own mind Mr. Spencer has illustrated by a series of extracts from his original volume of Essays, published previously to The Origin of Species, and therefore necessarily independent of any Darwinian impulse. The series of extracts thus selected he has permitted Mr. Clodd to print entire, and with them the abstract supplied to Prof. Youmans. These summaries I will not still further summarize; it must suffice here to note, for the benefit of those who have never considered dates in this matter, that the chronology of the subject is roughly as follows: In 1859 (almost 1860, for it was in the end of November) Darwin brought out The Origin of Species. Before that period Mr. Spencer had published (among others) the following distinctly evolutionary works: In 1850, Social Statics, in which the idea of human evolution was clearly foreshadowed; in 1852, an article in the Leader on The Development Hypothesis (from which I have quoted a passage already), where the evolution of species of plants and animals was definitely set forth; in 1854, an article in the British Quarterly Review, on The Genesis of Science, where intellectual evolution was distinctly mapped out; in 1855, The Principles of Psychology (first form), where mental evolution is fully formulated, and the development of animals from a common origin implied at every step; in 1857, an article in the Westminster Review, on Progress, its Law and Cause, where the conception of evolution at large was finally attained (though not quite in the full form which it afterward assumed). From all of these, but especially the last, grew up the idea of the System of Synthetic Philosophy, the first programme of which was drawn up in January, 1858, nearly two years before the appearance of The Origin of Species. Thus so far is it from being true that Mr. Spencer is a disciple of Darwin that he had actually arrived at the idea of organic evolution and of evolution in general, including cosmic evolution, planetary evolution, geological evolution, organic evolution, human evolution, psychological evolution, sociological evolution, and linguistic evolution, before Darwin had published one word upon the subject.

To some people, in saying all this, I may seem to be trying to belittle Darwin. Not at all. You do not belittle a great man by giving him full credit for what he did, and none for what he did not do. You do not belittle Virgil by showing that he was not the powerful magician the middle ages thought him; nor do you belittle Bacon by proving that he did not write Othello and Hamlet. Nobody has a greater respect for Bacon, I believe, than Dr. Abbott;