erbert Spencer.... Many and prolonged were the battles we
fought on this topic.... I took my stand upon two grounds: first, that
up to that time the evidence in favour of transmutation was wholly
insufficient; and, secondly, that no suggestions respecting the causes
of the transmutations assumed ... were in any war adequate to explain
the phenomena. Looking back at the state of knowledge at that time, I
really do not see that any other conclusion was justifiable."[25]

And Prof. Raphael Meldola, in a lecture on Evolution wherein he compares
the impression left by each of these great founders of that school upon
the current of modern thought, says: "Through all ... his [Spencer's]
writings the underlying idea of development can be traced with
increasing depth and breadth, expanding in 1850 in his 'Social Statics'
to a foreshadowing of the general doctrine of Evolution. In 1852 his
views on organic evolution had become so definite that he gave public
expression to them in that well-known and powerful essay on 'The
Development Hypothesis.' ... In the 'Principles of Psychology,' the
first edition of which was published in 1855, the evolutionary principle
was dominant. By 1858--the year of the announcement of Natural Selection
by Darwin and Wallace--he had conceived the great general scheme and had
sketched out the first draft of the prospectus of the Synthetic
Philosophy, the final and amended syllabus [being] issued in 1860. The
work of Darwin and Spencer from that period, although moving along
independent lines, was directed towards the same end, notwithstanding
the diversity of materials which they made use of and the differences in
their methods of attack; that end was the establishment of Evolution as
a great natural principle or law."[26]

In this connection it is especially interesting to note how near Spencer
had come to the conception of Natural Selection without grasping its
full significance. In an article on a "Theory of Population" (published
in the _Westminster Review_ for April, 1852) he wrote: "And here,
indeed, without further illustration, it will be seen that premature
death, under all its forms and from all its causes, cannot fail to work
in the same direction. For as those prematurely carried off must, in the
average of cases, be those in whom the power of self-preservation is the
least, it unavoidably follows that those left behind to continue the
race must be those in whom the power of self-preservati