Abstract
HAD I read Mr. Spencer's reply to the Duke of Argyll in 1888, I should have been even more astonished than the writer of the “Counter Criticism,” that the Duke should have sanctioned the publication of his essays in their present form without a word of warning to his readers, that Mr. Spencer had not only not sanctioned but had explicitly denied the interpretation which the Duke had forced upon his analysis of the term “survival of the fittest.” Any person would conclude from the first essay that Mr. Spencer had altogether abandoned this term, and (by implication) the factor of organic evolution expressed by it. I am sure that biologists will be generally glad to have it again authoritatively from Mr. Spencer himself that he is still so far Darwinian. He will also bear with me, I hope, when I point out that the mass of literature which the working man of science has to digest at the present time is so great that very few have time to seek light in the pages of the current magazines. Certainly we do not turn to these publications as a rule for information on scientific questions, and, I am bound to add, that the principles which determine the selection of writers on scientific subjects for such magazines have always appeared to me to be a profound mystery. It is not mere flattery when I state that we are in the habit of regarding Mr. Spencer's magazine contributions in the light of “preliminary notices,” and that we always look forward to having them in a collected form at some later period.
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MELDOLA, R. The Duke of Argyll and Mr. Herbert Spencer. Nature 59, 269 (1899). https://doi.org/10.1038/059269a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/059269a0
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