Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/135

Rh agency, therefore, by which the best literature of the day and of all days should be brought home to people's hearts through the tones of a sympathetic human voice could not fail, in course of time, to produce very beneficial effects both mental and moral. Within the household itself nothing is more humanizing than good reading (aloud); and this would be promoted by such public readings and such instruction as we have in view. We hear not infrequently of gifts of a million dollars or more to a single university; and we think it is time that something should be done for those who have no opportunity to become very learned, but whose minds might by proper effort be attuned to what is best in literature, and thus raised above the dreary level of commonplace ideas and petty personal concerns.

of years ago, as some of our readers will remember, a book was published under the title of From the Greeks to Darwin, in which the history of the doctrine of evolution was sketched, or at least purported to be sketched, from the earliest times down to our own day. The most remarkable thing about the book was that, of set purpose, it ignored the greatest thinker on evolutionary lines that the world had ever seen; we mean, of course, Herbert Spencer. This omission was duly noticed in our columns at the time, and there is no need to go over the ground again. What we wish to say to-day is that, if Mr. Spencer's position in relation to the doctrine of evolution needed any vindication, it has received it in ample measure in Mr. Edward Clodd's recently published book, Pioneers of Evolution, and in the article by Mr. Grant Allen contributed to the Fortnightly Review and republished in our last number. No one can read either the one or the other without feeling that to discuss evolution in its broader aspects without making due mention of Spencer is like narrating the discovery of America with but slight mention of Columbus. To Mr. Spencer we owe a rational and systematic statement of the doctrine of universal evolution; to Darwin we owe an original and lucid explananationexplanation [sic] of the natural process by which species are modified and new species formed. The latter was indeed a most solid and substantive piece of work, but it did not furnish the general formula of evolution, which but for the labors of Herbert Spencer would still be to seek. It was Darwin himself who said of Spencer: "I suspect that hereafter he will be looked upon as by far the greatest living philosopher in England; perhaps equal to any that have lived."

We feel how times have changed when to be recognized as a potent contributor to the establishment of the doctrine of evolution is one of the highest honors, if not the highest honor, which a philosophical thinker can enjoy. When Darwin published his Origin of Species, and for some years later, his name was cast out as evil; to-day it is difficult to keep an admiring public from claiming for him the authorship of that much wider scheme of evolution for which Mr. Spencer properly stands sponsor. The record, however, is very clear, and no one needs to be in error as to the respective achievements of the two men. Both have done great work for the intellectual emancipation of mankind, and the names of both will go down with glory to posterity.