ate by a quotation the view that the central idea in Darwinism
is correlated with contemporary social evolution. "The substitution
of Darwin for Paley as the chief interpreter of the order of nature is
currently regarded as the displacement of an anthropomorphic view by a
purely scientific one: a little reflection, however, will show that
what has actually happened has been merely the replacement of the
anthropomorphism of the eighteenth century by that of the nineteenth.
For the place vacated by Paley's theological and metaphysical
explanation has simply been occupied by that suggested to Darwin and
Wallace by Malthus in terms of the prevalent severity of industrial
competition, and those phenomena of the struggle for existence which the
light of contemporary economic theory has enabled us to discern, have
thus come to be temporarily exalted into a complete explanation
of organic progress." (P. Geddes, article "Biology", "Chambers's
Encyclopaedia".) It goes without saying that the idea suggested by
Malthus was developed by Darwin into a biological theory which was then
painstakingly verified by being used as an interpretative formula, and
that the validity of a theory so established is not affected by what
suggested it, but the practical question which this line of thought
raises in the mind is this: if Biology did thus borrow with such
splendid results from social theory, why should we not more deliberately
repeat the experiment?

Darwin was characteristically frank and generous in admitting that the
principle of Natural Selection had been independently recognised by
Dr W.C. Wells in 1813 and by Mr Patrick Matthew in 1831, but he had no
knowledge of these anticipations when he published the first edition
of "The Origin of Species". Wells, whose "Essay on Dew" is still
remembered, read in 1813 before the Royal Society a short paper entitled
"An account of a White Female, part of whose skin resembles that of a
Negro" (published in 1818). In this communication, as Darwin said, "he
observes, firstly, that all animals tend to vary in some degree, and,
secondly, that agriculturists improve their domesticated animals by
selection; and then, he adds, but what is done in this latter case
'by art, seems to be done with equal efficacy, though more slowly, by
nature, in the formation of varieties of mankind, fitted for the country
which they inhabit.'" ("Origin of Species" (6th edition) page xv.)
Thus Wells had the clear idea of