BOOKS RELATING TO THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION. From the Nation, February 18, 1875. ⁶⁰

A correspondent asks for information on books relating to the development or evolution theory, especially for the book “which is not too partisan or too technical, but gives the facts and reasoning with reference to it on both sides.” From a literature which has in the past fifteen years grown into an extensive department of bibliography, we ought to be able, if this were possible in any subjects of discussion, to select the book which fulfills these requisites. Yet it would be vain to seek, even in Germany, for one which surpasses in these qualities the foundation and first of the series, namely, Darwin’s “Origin of Species,” in which, and especially in the last edition, 1872, all the scientific objections that have been urged against the theory, as it is held by Darwinians, are more clearly put and fairly considered than in any treatise we could name. In no work on a subject of which the scientific evidence is essentially technical, is the fault of technicality less obtrusive; and in late editions this is still further remedied by a glossary of scientific terms. But before we can clearly characterize other books on this subject, it is necessary to make a grand division of the department into books that are strictly (like Darwin’s), or predominantly, scientific and inductive; and those that treat their subject as a part, or as the foundation even (like Mr. Spencer’s series), of general speculative philosophy, and in connection with theology and religion. Darwin’s books have been improperly characterized as speculative. This is true of them only in the sense in which incompletely verified scientific hypotheses are called speculative; in the sense in which Newton’s astronomy was,

until completely, or very nearly, verified; or (by a fairer instance) Newton’s optics, which, in a main point, is not verified, but reversed. Speculative philosophy is properly metaphysics, and proceeds deductively from axioms, like Plato’s or Kant’s, or Mr. Spencer’s later form of a priori philosophy, which he professes to found, in part, on the empirical facts of heredity, and thus give it a scientific basis. ⁶¹ It is to the subjects of Darwin’s books, and not to his opinions or treatment, that the term speculative is applicable, if at all; and so far as it is applicable as a reproach, it applies equally, or even more, to the opinions of his opponents. His mode of treatment is strictly scientific, Newtonian, or “positive”; nowhere dealing with disputed axioms, or with deductions from axioms laid down as a priori valid and as if they were not disputed; nowhere considering scientific theses as either favorable or unfavorable to general philosophical or religious conclusions, except, of course, where religious teaching, in having prejudged these questions on other than scientific grounds, is presumed to have exceeded by obiter dicta its proper jurisdiction. With the great majority, however, of writers on this subject the names of Darwin and Spencer are closely associated; though to more than one Aristotelian master, and to many scientific students of the subjects, no two names are more widely separated by essential differences of method. Mr. Spencer has lately put forward the claim that his method is justified by Newton’s precepts and practice. But, according to the judgment of the more immediate followers of Newton, the leading physicists of to-day, this claim is not substantiated.

The dispute is, however, quite aside from the reality of the distinction which, for bibliographical purposes, we here lay down. One of the requisitions of our correspondent is not fulfilled by any book of the properly speculative division. We venture to assert that in no department of speculative philosophy, either expository or historical, do treatises exist which fairly present the facts and arguments on both sides. This virtue is possible only within the limits which scientific, Newtonian, or “positive” method imposes; and within his own proper department of natural science every expert authority is a positivist, whether on other subjects he denies, or ignores, or only

waives the disputed axioms. The essential characteristic of properly speculative as distinguished from scientific method is, that the former seeks to expel doubt by the furcular force of the dilemma that unless one accepts as having universal validity certain axioms, which it is true are only illustrated, not verified by inductive evidences, one is not entitled to hold any beliefs at all with any certainty. Choice axioms are therefore presented, illustrated, and a universology is deduced from them. True scientific virtue, on the other hand, is to balance evidences, and to bring doubts to civil terms; to resist the enthusiasm of these aggressive axioms, and to be contented with the beliefs which are only the most probable, or most authentic on strictly inductive grounds. Now in the proper scientific theory of “evolution”—unhappily so called, as confounding it with a different mode of treatment, when any of the successive preceding names, “descent with modification,” “derivation,” “development,” or “transmutation” would on this score have been better, notwithstanding a temporary disrepute in the name—the scientific evidence is in great measure technical, and a considerable part of what has accumulated in the past fifteen years is buried from the general reader in monographs of scientific publications. Essays and discourses in exposition of Darwinism or natural selection are far too numerous; the majority being better calculated to make the author shudder than to illuminate what is best got from a careful reading of his original treatise. Among brief and good essays we may mention Professor Huxley’s little books on the “Origin of Species,” and “Man’s Place in Nature”; Mr. Wallace’s collection of essays with the title of “Natural Selection” (though some of these are too speculative to come under the head of natural science); and Mr. Mivart’s “Genesis of the Species,” which though learned in biological science, is in many parts too speculative or un-Newtonian to be mentioned under this head. We may add a little book called the “Philosophy of Evolution,” by B. T. Lowne, published in 1873, by Van Voorst, London, which received one of the Actonian prizes of the Royal Institution for 1872. This is mainly scientific, though it touches on the general philosophical or speculative bearings of the subject. Of works more unequivocally of the speculative class, Mr. Spencer’s generally, but more especially his “Biology,” deserve a first place. We should not, however, in this case, as we do in Mr. Darwin’s, recommend the original so much as a recently published exposition, which, under the title of “Cosmic Philosophy,” is given by Mr. John Fiske. In this book, the disciple far surpasses the master in readableness and skill of exposition. Of a large subdivision of the speculative class—the books whose aim is practical and religious, and opposed to theories of evolution—no one has come to our notice which fairly presents the exact points or the scientific arguments of the theory as it is now generally held by naturalists, and few of them apparently deem it essential to their aim to do so. Finally, we may add to the scientific division of books on the subject a recent edition of Darwin’s “Descent of Man,” renewed by the fiery ordeal of criticism to which the first edition was subjected, and perfected, so far as scientific fairness and method can go, by the author’s unbounded patience of thought and research.