Physiological Selection and the Origin of Species

Abstract

THE Duke of Argyll's letter about organic evolution, published in your last week's issue (p. 335), calls for a few remarks, as it is very misleading, and bespeaks some misconceptions on the part of the writer. He has evidently read his own views into the two articles on organic evolution contributed by Spencer to the April and May numbers of the Nineteenth Century. In those articles Spencer makes no “admission”; what he says there with respect to natural selection has been held by him for the last twenty-six years. He does not deny that the natural operations denoted by natural selection do constitute an operating cause in the evolution of species. Only, he goes deeper: he, with his characteristic truly philosophic insight, sees in natural selection a proximate cause; sees behind it the primordial operations of forces of nature which rendered natural selection possible, and supplied it with a point-d'appui. Then he assigns use and disuse as another cause in the origination of species. Now all this is not a “declaration against” what your correspondent pleases to call “Mechanical Philosophy,” but is a part and parcel of it. It is rather a “declaration against” all sorts of teleological philosophy. Let him remember also that Spencer's philosophy is the acknowledged philosophy of evolution; and he may rest assured that, even if the theory of natural selection as a cause in the genesis of species be proved untrue, that philosophy will still stand opposed to any philosophy that will attempt to bring back “Mind” as one of the causes of organic evolution.