ol of repentance and read his recantation and renunciation
of the doctrine of natural selection and the survival of the fittest;
first doing vicarious penance (unauthorized, however) for Darwin, and
then, in no uncertain terms, for himself. There was no mistaking
Spencer's meaning. His language was explicit. "The phrases (natural
selection and survival of the fittest) employed in discussing organic
evolution," he told his readers, "though convenient and needful, are
liable to mislead by veiling the actual agencies." "The words 'natural
selection,' do not express a cause in the physical sense." "Kindred
objections," he continues, "may be urged against the expression into
which I was led when seeking to present the phenomena in literal terms
rather than metaphorical terms--'the survival of the fittest.' In the
working together of those many actions, internal and external, which
determine the lives and deaths of organisms, we see nothing to which the
words 'fitness' and 'unfitness' are applicable in the physical sense."
And he continues: "Evidently, the word 'fittest' as thus used _is a
figure of speech."_ Had the sun fallen from the heavens the shock to the
followers of Darwin could not have been more stunning than this open
apostasy from the Darwinian faith.

Nor was this all. New surprises were still in store for the faithful who
still clung to the cherished dogma. Now they find their faith itself
assailed, and this, too, by these very selfsame leaders, who had been at
such pains to make them proselytes. There can be little doubt that
misgivings regarding the truth of their claims began to haunt the
champions of the Darwinian hypothesis. They were just then masters of
the whole field of scientific thought. They had brought all science to
the feet of Darwin. The few benighted dissenters who still held out
against the doctrine were looked upon as not worthy even of contempt.
The whole world had adopted the creed of evolution. Was it wantonness
then, or was it conscience, that prompted Huxley in what is now a
historically famous speech, delivered at the unveiling of a statue to
Darwin in the Museum at South Kensington, to openly declare that it
would be wrong to suppose "that an authoritative sanction was given by
the ceremony to the current ideas concerning evolution?" Well might his
hearers be astonished! But they must have held their breath, when they
heard him add boldly and bluntly, in no uncertain tones, that "science