EN.
The Verdict of History.

John Fiske, who, in the seventies of the last century, popularized
Darwinism in the United States, asserts that the scope of evolution is
much wider than the organic field. "There is no subject great or small"
he wrote in _"A Century of Science,"_ "that has not come to be affected
by this doctrine." A development has been recognized in plants,
mountains, oysters, subjunctive moods, and the confederacies of savage
tribes (p. 35). Fiske is one of those defenders of the evolutionistic
philosophy who irritate by reason of their cocksureness. Hear him, in
_"Darwinism and Other Essays_:" "One could count on one's fingers the
number of eminent naturalists who still decline to adopt it"--the
Darwinian hypothesis. That was in 1876. To-day we know that one cannot
on one finger the eminent naturalists of the present century who still
accept it--Haeckel. It is possible that Fiske's extension of the
development theory, along lines laid down by Herbert Spencer, to all
human history, even to "tribal confederacies," is likewise subject to a
revision. Indeed, it would seem that even without special or detailed
knowledge, the failure of human history to conform with this universal
law would be apparent. Consider once more the basic concepts of
Evolution. They are two in number, 1. Everything that is, has been
evolved, having been involved (potentially, as a possibility) in that
which preceded it. Potentially, the feather of the blue-bird was in the
speck of original protoplasm, potentially the flights of Dante's and
Goethe's genius were in the primordial cell. All that has occurred in
history has _developed_ out of antecedents. Furthermore: 2. All that
exists has developed _according to natural laws_. Scientists have given
up the law which Darwin called "Natural Selection," and Spencer himself
cashiered the law which he had called "Survival of the Fittest." But
evolutionists continue to assert that somehow, by the action of certain
laws, that which exists has naturally--there is no need of divine
Providence, overruling the affairs of men,--has naturally been developed
out of its antecedents. And so history is read by the evolutionist. He
sees in all the institutions of civilization, in every department of
culture, in the rise and fall of nations, the progress and decay of
literatures, a result of natural laws, working out the evolution of
human society as it exists to-day.

What, then, is the verdict of his