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.