476 
can be placed upon them.” He fully admits that “the 
evidence in favour of this fact has gone on steadily grow 
ing, quite independently of the assistance which was thus 
so largely lent to it by the distinctively Darwinian theory 
of its method.” He feels that “we must have some 
reasonable assurance that a fact is a fact before we 
endeavour to explain it.” But if we are perfectly con 
vinced that Organic Evolution is a fact, I fail to see how 
any argument as to the law which dominated the process 
can strengthen a conviction which is already strong enough 
“to stand upon its own feet” in face of the most adverse 
criticism. 
It is true, historically, that it was this theoretical expla 
nation of the method which first set him (Darwin) seriously 
to enquire into the evidences of evolution as a fact; but it 
is scarcely true to say that “ the evidence of evolution as 
a fact has from the first been largely derived from testing 
Darwin’s theory concerning its method”; for, as we have 
already shown, the arguments for Organic Evolution were 
stated by Mr. Robert Chambers fifteen years before the 
appearance of The Origin of Species, and, therefore Mr. Fiske 
is not justified in saying that Mr. Darwin “was the first 
to marshal the arguments from classification, embryology, 
morphology, and distribution, and thus fairly to establish 
the fact that there has been a derivation of higher forms 
from lower.” * 
It is true that the battle for Organic Evolution was 
fought and won by those who held Darwinian opinions. 
The special Darwinian hypothesis may have aided in this 
conflict without being on that account necessarily true. I 
am inclined to think that the simplicity of the theory, and 
the possibility of stating it in language which could be 
Cosmic Philosophy, vol. ii., pp. j-S.