Note 533 — Chapter XXVIII

In an article entitled 'Great Men, Great Thoughts, and the Environment,' published in the Atlantic Monthly for October 1880, the reader will find some ampler illustrations of these remarks. I have there tried to show that both mental and social evolution are to be conceived after the Darwinian fashion, and that the function of the environment properly so called is much more that of selecting forms, produced by invisible forces, than producing of such forms,—producing being the only function thought of by the pre-Darwinian evolutionists, and the only one on which stress is laid by such contemporary ones as Mr. Spencer and Mr. Allen.