Principles of western civilisation

II PROJECTED EFFICIENCY 49

must have been, not simply the benefit of the individual, nor even of his contemporaries, in a mere struggle for existence in the present, but a larger advantage, probably always far in the future, to which the individual and the present alike were subordinated. This extended view taken of the operation of the law of Natural Selection, and the consequent shifting into a region no longer bounded by the conception of advantage to existing individuals of the end towards which Natural Selection works, marks the departure we are considering. As the co-author of the Darwinian hypothesis saw, writing seven years after, the range of the law of Natural Selection had begun to be extended into a new sphere.’

This was, however, only the example which served to strongly emphasise the nature of the transition which had begun. The idea, to which clear and simple expression had here been given, was to become the connecting and underlying principle in a many-sided movement in biology in which, as we are beginning to perceive, all the tendencies in modern thought are likely, sooner or later, to become involved.?

* Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, speaking of the exceeding interest of Professor Weismann’s essay, mentions that the idea had occurred to himself some twenty years before. It had been briefly noted down at the time, but subsequently forgotten. See Darwinism, p. 437 (note). The idea as jotted down was published by the editors as a footnote to the English translation of the Weismann essay on the Duration of Life (see Essays, vol. i. p: 23):

* This movement is a good example of the great importance in modern scientific research of the discovery of principles as a cause of progress. Romanes has remarked that his own observation led him to the conclusion that in recent times progress in biological science had been not so much marked by the march of discovery ger se as by the altered views of method which the march has involved. The tendency at one time had been to trust simply to the collection of facts. Now it was beginning to be seen that it was the discovery of causes or principles to which the collection of facts led that was the ultimate object of scientific quest (Darwin, and after Darwin, vol. i., Intro.)

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