differences-a doctrine in accordance with the observed facts of nature, and not, like the alternative theory, incompatible with the law of probability.

It is undeniable that for certain instances the Mendelian statement of the proportion in which parental characters are inherited takes rank as an established fact, and it is equally unquestionable that the same generalization puts the possibility of the permanence of sports, or 'discon tinuous variations,' in an entirely new light. It is also true that Mendel's interpretation of the facts observed by him reaches a very high degree of probability; but the extent to which the Mendelian relation will be found to hold, and the number of species, if any, which owe their origin under natural conditions to the occurrence of sports or mutations, must be admitted to be still in doubt. Meanwhile, it is important to note that neither the Mendelian nor the de Vriesian conception gives any countenance to the Lamarckian doctrine of the transmissibility of acquired characters, and that the mutationist account of the origin of species can by no means dispense with the distinctively Darwinian principle of selection. Probably enough has been said to shew that the weakness of the mutationist theory consist chiefly in the practical ignoring of adaptation. When the almost universal prevalence throughout organic nature of exact adjustment to conditions is once fairly recognized, the theories of de Vries are seen to lose their plausibility. The teleology of Darwin is not the teleology of Paley, but both writers are entitled to the credit of having done much in their several ways to rehabilitate the doctrine of final

causes.

When, turning from the branches of natural knowledge with which Darwin was especially concerned, and from which he drew the facts on which his theory was based, we attempt to estimate the scope and limitations of the influence which his presentment of evolutionary process has undoubtedly exercised in the several spheres of sociology, psychology, and ethics, we find ourselves confronted with questions by no means ripe for solution. Professor Karl Pearson has done good service by pointing out that under present social

conditions civilized society recruits itself from below, the rate of reproduction of the industrial classes being far greater than that of the professional classes. If we can assume with Professor Pearson that the industrial classes are not on the average as intelligent as the professional classes and that the distinction is not entirely one of education,' the result is somewhat disquieting. Here is an example of an arresting social fact which has been arrived at by a strict observance of Darwinian method.

Approach the problem as we will,' says Professor Pearson, 'the conclusion forced upon us is ever the same, the physically inferior, the mentally slow, are not naturally more fertile than the stronger in body and mind, but they are in our community to-day the more fertile, and the process of deterioration . . . is in progress. The moment we suspend the full vigour of natural selection, the moment we artificially correlate fertility with any defect of physique or intelligence, we start that downward movement.'

This is the state of things disclosed by the demonstration that our death-rate, birth-rate and marriage-rate are all alike selective. Darwinism has indicated the danger; can it suggest the remedy? We are here on difficult ground; but now that we have it absolutely proved that the birthrate has become artificial in an individualistic and antisocial way,' we cannot but welcome any organized endeavour 'to study the causes of this change, to create a strong public opinion, a new moral sense, on this cardinal factor of national welfare.' These are the declared objects of the 'Eugenic' movement chiefly identified with the names of Galton and Pearson, and here it cannot be denied that the principles laid down by Darwin may find a practical application of the highest social importance.

'It is now acknowledged,' says Professor Ellwood, 'by all scientific students of philanthropy and scientific social workers that there is a biological element in the social problems of crime, pauperism, and other forms of degeneracy which is amenable to control only through selection. The theory of evolution by selection, in other words, has brought a great hope into the world

that human misery in its worst forms may itself be subject to control... It may well be that future ages will look back to Darwin as marking, not merely a new view of organic nature, but a turning-point in the history of the race in its control over human nature and over the problem of collective human life.'

In psychology Darwin has done much to foster the functional and genetic rather than the analytic study of the subject. His somewhat artless discussion of mental qualities manifested in the lower animals may raise a smile in the skilled psychologist; there is nevertheless no reasonable doubt that his method was correct, and his results in the main to be relied on. Many questions remain open the rise of consciousness, the emergence of intelligence, the development of the mathematical, philosophical, musical and other artistic capacities. What, if any, is the relation of natural selection to these phenomena of organic existence? We do not yet know, any more than we know what life itself is; but the mere fact that the question can be asked has acted as a powerful stimulus to inquiry and an immense aid to the systematizing of knowledge. It is true that in general philosophy, in history and in sociology, no less than in biology, the idea of evolution had been broached long before Darwin began his investigations. But the transforming and quickening power of Darwin's methods and principles of interpretation produced outside the biological sphere an effect which, although for the most part indirect, was scarcely less remarkable than the revolution that he was the means of bringing about in the more immediate objects of his study. Professor Creighton, of Cornell University, has written ably of the influence of Darwinian conceptions in the field of logic.

'From the standpoint of science,' he thinks, 'the most obvious and important indirect result of Darwin's discovery is the confidence which it furnished in the fruitfulness of the method of tracing origins in all fields of inquiry. In the process of becoming, Darwin's procedure showed, things progressively define and specify themselves through their positive and negative relations to other things. In the impetus thus given to the evolutionary method, there was strengthened and extended the

influence of an instrument of analysis whose full power and significance has scarcely yet been realised.'

The effects of Darwin's thought are traced by this writer in the works of the Pragmatists, who, as he says, approach the problems of logic from the psychological point of view, and derive their working conceptions from the biological formulation of evolution rather than from postKantian idealism. Even more unmistakeable is the influence of Darwin upon the logic and epistemology of Professor Mark Baldwin, whose theory of 'genetic modes,' though sharply criticized by Creighton from the latter's idealistic standpoint, appears to us to convey the suggestion of a very fertile line of interpretation, and to furnish a wholesome corrective of the narrow mechanical or atomistic view of the universe which so long bore sway in the intellectual history of Europe. Relics of this latter conception persist in some of those who accept the results of Darwin's thought without recognizing the consequences to which they legitimately lead; but there can be little doubt that under the powerful solvent brought to bear by the modern evolutionary doctrine as interpreted by Darwin, the mechanical theorya mode of thought which, as Aubrey Moore has well shewn, has been fraught with disastrous effects upon politics, philosophy, and religion alike—is ultimately destined to melt away and disappear. The great significance of Professor Baldwin's contribution to the philosophical side of the problem lies in his vindication of teleology, not of the human type, working individually and tentatively against nature,' but as the outcome of mind in the larger sense of a principle whose mode of operation is in and through the reign of natural law.' And this mode of operation involves, as he further shews, the enlargement of the category of causation by the importation of the idea of dynamic, genetic, qualitative change. Mechanical causation, physical energetics-these are the poorest and least interesting facts of nature. Nature achieves novelties; there is, qualitatively speaking, more in the effect than there is in the cause.' Paradoxical as this may seem, it is justified in the light of organic evolution. The mechanical conceptions' are fruitful

in science; but along with the processes which these concepts generalize, go the dynamic, genetic, evolutionary modes of condition and consequent, which are equally actual and, in a comprehensive philosophy, infinitely more far-reaching and significant.' Under the influence of Darwin and all that Darwin stands for, the conception of growth has for good and all replaced that of mechanism. In theology, the deathknell of Deism has been sounded, and the way is left open for the recognition of divine Power, transcendent indeed and Personal, but likewise immanent and energizing.

It is as yet too soon for an estimate of the influence of Darwin's theory upon the problems of ethics. In spite of all that has been written by Spencer, Wallace, Galton and Bagehot, the difficulty still remains, as was so forcibly pointed out by Huxley in his memorable 'Romanes Lecture,' of stating the history of moral development in terms that should be compatible with both ethical' and 'cosmic' evolution. Huxley, not being able to bring himself to regard the ethical' and 'cosmic' processes as other than antagonistic, gave up the problem as insoluble. Up to a certain point, there is little difficulty in tracing, on Darwinian lines, a basis for morals in the needs of a community. Professor Drummond, in his Ascent of Man, laboured, not altogether without success, to establish a similar foundation in the relation of maternity as it obtains in the mammalia or kingdom of the mothers.' But such basis, when found, must be admitted to be a narrow one on which to rear the ethical fabric in its entirety, and it may well be doubted whether Darwinism has really done much more than touch the fringe of the ethical question. At the same time, the hope would seem to be justified that further study of the problem in its dynamical and genetic rather than its instrumental' aspects may lead, as in other departments, to further and more definite results.

Evolution, as we have seen, is no more a new thing in history than in biology. But here again the Darwinian touch was needed to justify the conception of human history as the record of a process of elimination and survival.' 'None of us until Darwin came,' as the President of Yale