generalization of the whole field of real knowledge, the co-ordination of all positive science. Theology, Ontology, Cosmogony stand outside both systems—in the void and formless infinite of the Unknown.
Let us turn to define Evolution—a word about which much ambiguity exists. In its narrower sense 'Evolution,' a term not at first used by Darwin, means the morphological and physiological variations of organic beings by the action of natural selection. It then came to be loosely applied to almost any specific theory about the origin and development of things. At one time to doubt such a dogmatic genesis was to risk being charged as an unbeliever in Darwin's great theory of animal transformation. I used to think that Professor Huxley looked on 'Evolution' as the nom de guerre of the Royal Society, or perhaps even of its most eloquent Fellow. But 'Evolution' in the hands of Herbert Spencer meant something quite different: far wider in scope and more philosophic in spirit. Spencer meant by Evolution a theory of the gradual development of all phenomena, cosmical and physical, human and moral, under a set of dominant and coordinate principles. These principles were to form the ultimate generalization of all the Sciences; they had to explain and harmonize them all under a vast clarifying searchlight.
Now Spencer's conception of Evolution, as formulated in his famous propositions, is a Synthesis far wider than any theory of Darwin's, not at all comparable with it, and in general idea even anterior to the theories of Darwin by date of publication. Darwin certainly, and not Spencer, was the originator of the strictly biological law, inductively proved, of the modification of organic beings by natural selection and some other
