The Duke of Argyll and Mr. Herbert Spencer

Abstract

IN his review of the Duke of Argyll's “Organic Evolution Cross-examined, &c.,” Prof. Meldola describes the Duke as “doing violence to Huxley's teaching,” and asks him “in fairness” to “reperuse” something Huxley has written. After recognising the unfairness he refers to, he might not unfitly have suspected unfairness in the Duke of Argyll's representations of my views: especially considering the absurdities ascribed to me. Yet Prof. Meldola says that the Duke “makes some good points out of Mr. Spencer's change of view with respect to the efficiency of natural selection,” and represents him as making merry “over Mr. Spencer's abandonment of that excellent child of his creation, the term “survival of the fittest.”