² The seminal work is Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism American Thought,[1944],rev. edn. (Boston, 1955).

³ My interpretation of Spencer parallels that of J.D.Y. Peel's Herbert Spencer: the Evolution of a Sociologist (London, 1971), although the argument of chapter 2 was essentially completed before I read this fine study. For more recent treatments see D. Wiltshire, The Social and Political Thought of Herbert Spencer (Oxford, Eng., 1978); and John Offer, "Spencer's Sociology of Welfare," Sociological Quarterly, 31 (1983), 718-52.

⁴ This point is reinforced for British thought in Michael Freeden, The New Liberals (Oxford, Eng. 1978), and in Greta Jones, Social Darwinism and English Thought (Sussex, Eng., 1980); and for American, in Bellomy, "'Social Darwinism' Revisited," Perspectives in American History, n.s. 1 (1984), 1-129. For Continental social thought see notes 60 and 61 below.

⁵ Since eugenics had a "right" and "left" wing, its centrality in post-1890 arguments over social Darwinism qualifies the generalization that the label was primarily a weapon of the left. Eugenicists on the "right" also used it to stigmatize laissez faire. Since these same rightwing eugenicists had an elitist and even antidemocratic agenda, they in a sense "deserved" the social Darwinian label. For this reason, Richard J. Halliday, "Social Darwinism," Victorian Studies, 14 (1971), 389-405 argued for limiting the term to eugenics. The movement, in any case, had a strong left wing. See Diane Paul, "Eugenics and the Left," Journal of the History of Ideas, 45 (1984), 567-90.

⁶ For recent confirmation of this point as concerns racism see Peter J. Bowler, Theories of Human Evolution:A Century of Debate 1844-1944 (Baltimore, 1986). For a definition of social Darwinism that blurs this point see John Greene, "Darwin as a Social Evolutionist," in Greene, Science, Ideology, and World View (Berkeley, 1981), p. 123.

⁷ Forrest McDonald, Novus Ordo Seculorum (Lawrence, Ka, 1985), p. xi-xii.

⁸ Clifford Geertz, "Ideology as a Cultural System," in Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, 1973), pp. 193-233.

⁹ For expansion of the discussion that follows see chapter 5, and my Sociology and Scientism:the American Quest for Objectivity 1880-1940 (Chapel Hill, NC, 1987), chs. 6-7.

¹⁰ [John Morley], "The Five Gas-Stokers", Fortnightly Review , n.s. 19 (1873), 138-41; and Henry Compton, "Class Legislation,"ibid. 205-17.

¹¹ O.W. Holmes, "The Gas Stokers' Strike," in The Mind and Faith of Justice Holmes, ed. Max Lerner (New York, 1943) , pp. 48-51.

¹² Holmes dissent in Plant v Woods [1900], quoted in Samuel J. Konefsky, The Legacy of Holmes and Brandeis (New York, 1957), pp. 23-24. Cf.Vegelahn v. Gunter [1896] in Holmes, Mind and Faith, p. 115.

¹³ Holmes to Lady Pollock, July 2, 1895, Holmes-Pollock Letters, ed. Mark De Wolfe Howe (2 vols.,Cambridge, Mass., 1941), I,58. Also quoted in Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, p. 32.

¹⁴ Holmes, Mind and Faith, pp. 395,356.

¹⁵ Holmes, "The Gas-Stokers," in Mind and Faith , p. 50. Mark De Wolfe. Howe, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: the Proving Years (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), pp. 43-44 misreads Holmes on this latter point in order to make him, in this regard, "a faithful follower" of Spencer. Holmes believed that much legislation had negative effects, but for the practical reason that it shifted burdens from one group or class to others, not as a deduction from the cosmic principle that all actions bring equal reactions. For an explicit statement on this point see Holmes to Laski, September 12, 1916, Holmes-Laski Letters, ed. Mark De Wolfe Howe,(2 vols:Cambridge, MA, 1963),I, 19.

¹⁶Holmes, Mind and Faith, p. 149.

¹⁷ For example, see Daniel Boorstin, "The Elusiveness of Mr. Justice Holmes," New England Quarterly 14 (1941), 478-87.

¹⁸ On the making of the "liberal"Holmes see David A. Hollinger,"The 'Tough-Minded' Justice Holmes, Jewish Intellectuals, and the Making of an American Icon,"in Justice Holmes: Fifty Years Later [title tentative], ed. Robert W. Gordon (Stanford University Press, forthcoming);and G. Edward White, "The Rise and Fall of Justice Holmes," University of Chicago Law Review 39 (1971), 51-77.

¹⁹ Lerner, ed. Mind and Faith, p. 45.

²⁰ See Howe, Holmes: the Shaping Years 1841-1870 (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), pp. 156-57, 220-21.

²¹ For example see Irving Bernstein, "The Conservative Mr. Justice Holmes," New England Quarterly 23 (1950), 435-52.

²² Francis Biddle, Justice Holmes, Natural Law, and the Supreme Court (New York, 1961), p. 8.

²³ Howe, Holmes: the Shaping Years, pp. 156. For Spencer's initial relations to Darwin, see chapter 2 below.

²⁴ Robert Gordon, "Holmes Common Law as Legal and Social Science," Hofstra Law Review 10 (1982), 724, quoting from Holmes, The Common Law, ed. Mark De Wolfe Howe (Boston, 1963), p. 168.

25 Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, p. 121 ; and.Joseph F. Wall, "Social Darwinism and Constitutional Law with special reference to Lochner v. New York,", Annals of Science, 33 (1976), 475.

²⁶ Holmes may indeed have meant only to use Social Statics as an instance of laissez-faire theory. Historians of social Darwinism, however, interpreted the remark literally as proof that "conservative" social Darwinism had made its way into the Supreme Court. See Joseph F. Wall, "Social Darwinism " and comment by David A. Hollinger, Annals of Science, 33 (1976), 465-80.

²⁷H.L. Pohlman, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes and Utilitarian Jurisprudence (Cambridge, Mass. 1984), p. 155.

²⁸ See especially Young, "The Impact of Darwin on Conventional Thought," [1970]; and "Malthus and the Evolutionists," [1969] in Darwin's Metaphor (Cambridge, Eng., 1985) pp. 1-22, 23-55. See also Steven Shapin and Barry Barnes, "Darwinism and Social Darwinism," Natural Order, ed. Shapin and Barnes (Beverly Hills, Calif. 1979), pp. 125-42.

²⁹ Raymond Williams, "Social Darwinism," in The Limits of Human Nature, ed. J. Benthall (London, 1973), pp. 115-130. Instances of this latitudinarianism in north American scholarship can be found in Robert Bierstedt, "The Social Darwinists" [1969] in Bierstedt, Power and Progress (New York, 1974), pp. 98-108; and Michael Ruse, "Social Darwinism: The Two Sources," Albion, 12 (1980), 23.

³⁰ An exception to this trend in British studies is D. Paul Crook, Benjamin Kidd: Portrait of a Social Darwinist (Cambridge, Eng, 1983), the work of an Australian scholar.

³¹ Robert M. Young, "Darwinism is Social," in The Darwinian Heritage, ed. David Kohn (Princeton, 1985), pp. 609-38

³²Richard Hofstadter to author, October 16, 1968.

³³ S. Hatten, [review of D. Paul Crook, Benjamin Kidd], Annals of Science, 43 (1986), 91-97.

³⁴ "Perhaps," because my interpretation relied heavily on a specific body of secondary literature (especially the work of Peter J. Bowler, Derek Freeman, and James Rogers) rather than on specialized analysis of Darwin, Huxley or Wallace. Recent studies that stress the ideological context of Darwin's theory include Sylvan S. Schweber, "The Origin of the Origin Revisited," Journal of the History of Biology, 10, (1977), 229-316, and his "Darwin and the Political Economists," ibid., 13 (1980), 195-289; and Edward Manier, The Young Darwin and His Cultural Circle (Dordrecht, 1978). For a spirited attack on my interpretation of Darwin's social Darwinism see Antonello La Vergata, "Images of Darwin," in The Darwinian Heritage, ed. Kohn, pp. 961-62. La Vergata nonetheless concedes that Darwin was "moderate," and in any case, that my overall thesis does not depend on the finer points of Darwin exegesis. For additional literature see David R. Oldroyd, "How Did Darwin Arrive at His Theory? The Secondary Literature to 1982," History of Science, 22 (1984), 325-61.

³⁵ Young, "Darwinism is Social," pp. 618-19, 628.

³⁶ Cf. Jones, Social Darwinism, pp.56-57 with my treatment pp. 50-52. For my review of Jones' book see Victorian Studies, 25 (1982), 250-51

³⁷ Ibid., pp. 193-95.

³⁸ Referring specifically to Irvin G. Wyllie, "Social Darwinism and the Businessman," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 103 (1959), 629-35.

³⁹ Bellomy, "'Social Darwinism' Revisited," p. 26.

⁴⁰ Young, "Darwinism is Social," p. 623.

⁴¹ Howard L. Kaye, "The Myth of Social Darwinism," Contemporary Sociology 11 (1982), 274-75.

⁴² Peter Filene, "An Obituary for the Progressive Movement," American Quarterly, 22 (1970), 20-34.

⁴³ On corporatism, see R. Jeffrey Lustig, Corporate Liberalism (Berkeley, Calif. 1982); and Ellis Hawley, "The Discovery and Study of 'Corporate Liberalism,'" Business History Review, 52 (1978), 309-20.

⁴⁴ For this latter charge see La Vergata, "Images of Darwin," in The Darwinian Heritage, ed. Kohn, p. 961.

⁴⁵ See Burton J. Bledstein, The Culture of Professionalism (New York, 1976), p. 122 makes a similar point with reference to my thesis.

⁴⁶ Lester F. Ward, [review of Sumner, Social Classes], Glimpses of the Cosmos, 6 vols., (New York, 1913-18), 3: 301-05. Much of Richard Hofstadter's evidence of social Darwinism among academic social scientists was actually a by-product of this professional infighting. See Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, ch. 8.

⁴⁷ Bellomy, "'Social Darwinism' Revisited," pp. 63-74. I find implausible, however, the suggestion (p. 63) that the paucity of Darwinian rhetoric prior to the 1890s reflected a reluctance on the part of speakers to burden lay audiences with the technicalities of modern biology.

⁴⁸ Hamilton Cravens, The Triumph of Evolution (Philadelphia, 1978).

⁴⁹For the literature here, see Bellomy, "'Social Darwinism' Revisited," p. 63, n. 186.

⁵⁰ R. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace (New York, 1981), pp. 21-22.

⁵¹ See also Theodore D. Bozeman, Protestants in an Age of Science (Chapel Hill, N.C. 1977); S. Guralnick, "Geology and Religion before Darwin," ISIS, 68 (1972), 529-43; and Herbert Hovencamp, Science and Religion in America 1800-60 (Philadelphia, 1978).

⁵² David Hull, "Charles Darwin and Nineteenth-Century Philosophers of Science," in Foundations of Scientific Method, ed. Ronald N. Giere and Richard S. Westfalls (Bloomington, Ind., 1972), pp. 115-32.

⁵³ See Bernard J. Norton, "Karl Pearson and Statistics," Social Studies of Science, 8 (1978), 3-34.

⁵⁴ Talcott Parsons, The Structure of Social Action (New York, 1937), pp. 113-17. Since Parsons branded the result "social Darwinism" there is fitting irony in the fact that he too has been so labelled by recent scholars. See also Brian Mackenzie, "Darwinism and Positivism as Methodological Influences," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 12 (1976), 330-37. For the more general legacy of Darwin to behaviorism see Robert Boakes, From Darwin to Behaviourism (Cambridge, Eng. 1984). This is not to deny that Darwin also led in other directions in sociology. See, for example, R.W. Beeson, "Symbolic Interaction and Its Darwinian Foundations," Sociology and Social Research, 65 (1981), 259-79.

⁵⁵ For example, see Edward A. Purcell, The Crisis of Democratic Theory (Lexington, Ky. 1973); Cravens, Triumph of Evolution; and Bannister, Sociology and Scientism.

⁵⁶ The foregoing is based on J.R. Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies (Cambridge, Eng. 1978).

⁵⁷ David Hollinger, "The Knower and the Artificer," American Quarterly 39 (1987), 37-55.

⁵⁸ See Purcell, The Crisis of Democratic Theory, and Bannister, Sociology and Scientism.

⁵⁹ For discussions of "modernism" as here used, see Daniel Joseph Singal, The War Within: From Victorian to Modernism Thought in the South, 1919-1945 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982), pp. 3-10, and his "Modernist Culture in America" American Quarterly 39 (1987), 7-26; Morris Dickstein, Gates of Eden (New York, 1977), passim; and Lewis Perry, Intellectual Life in America (New York, 1984), pp. 328-33. Hollinger, "The Knower and the Artificer," rightly argues that "scientism" was but an extreme instance of "cognitivism." He also distinguishes "canonical modernism" from"modernism" in a broader sense, the latter embracing a tension between these two modes of confronting modernity.

⁶⁰ For example, James A. Field, "American Imperialism," American Historical Review, 83 (1978), 644-68; Thomas C. Kennedy, "Homer Lea and the Peacemakers," Historian, 45 (1983), 473-96; and Frank Ninkovich, "Theodore Roosevelt: Civilization as Ideology," Diplomatic History, 10 (1986), 221-45. Although each of these deals with so-called "external" (international) social Darwinism, each takes an approach similar to the one I am suggesting. For revisionist views of William Graham Sumner see Norman E. Smith, "William Graham Sumner as a Social Darwinist," Pacific Historical Review, 22 (1979), 32-47; and Donald K. Pickens, "Scottish Common Sense Philosophy and Folkways," Journal of Thought, 22 (1987), 39-44.

⁶¹ Linda L. Clark, Social Darwinism in France (University of Alabama, 1984), pp. 63, 66, 179. The book grew from a thesis completed at the University of North Carolina in 1968.

⁶² Alfred Kelly, The Descent of Darwin: the Popularization of Darwinism in Germany, 1860-1914 (Chapel Hill, 1981). See also Hans-Gunther Zmarzlik, "Social Darwinism in Germany," in Republic to Reich: the Making of the Nazi Revolution, ed. Hajo Holborn (New York, 1972); T. Benton, "Social Darwinism and Socialist Darwinism in Germany, 1860 to 1900," Revista di filosophia 22-23 (1982), 79-121; and Niles R. Holt, "Liberal Social Darwinism," ms. in my possession.

⁶³ Bowler, Theories of Evolution, pp. 97, 213, 224.

⁶⁴ W.J. Sollas, Ancient Hunters (1911), quoted ibid. p. 226.

⁶⁵ Elizabeth Allen, et al., "Against 'Sociobiology'," New York Review of Books, 22 (Nov. 13, 1975), 18, 43-44; Edward O. Wilson, "For Sociobiology," ibid., (December 11, 1975) pp. 60-61.

⁶⁶ For example, see Marshall Sahlins, The Use and Abuse of Biology (Ann Arbor Michigan, 1976), pp. 93-107; Young, "Darwinism is Social," pp. 624-27; and Barry Schwartz, The Battle for Human Nature (New York, 1986), pp. 46, 91. Charges of social Darwinism have also punctuated the I.Q. controversy: see Stephen Jay Gould, "Racist Argument and the IQ," Race and IQ, ed. Ashley Montagu, p. 145, cited in Bellomy, "'Social Darwinism' Revisited," p. 15.

⁶⁷ Martin Bressler, "Biological Determinism," Sociobiology and Human Politics, ed. Elliott White (Lexington, Mass., 1981); Wilson, "Biology and the Social Sciences," Daedalus, 106 (1977), p. 139, n. 34. See also Richard D. Alexander, Darwinism and Human Affairs (Seattle, Wash., 1979), p. 233.

⁶⁸ Howard L. Kaye, The Social Meaning of Modern Biology (New Haven, 1985). Quotation is from p. 157.

⁶⁹ Allan Chase, The Legacy of Malthus (New York, 1977), pp. 516-25.

⁷⁰ Robert B. Reich, "Ideologies of Survival: The Return of Social Darwinism," New Republic (27 September, 1982), 32-37; and Walter Mondale, New York Times, February 22, 1983, quoted in Bellomy, "'Social Darwinism' Revisited," p. 15. See also Sidney Lens, "Blaming the Victims: 'Social Darwinism' is Still the Name of the Game," The Progressive, 44 (August, 1980), 27-28. Regular readers of the New York Times Op-Ed page may furnish their own examples.

⁷¹ Wilson, "For Sociobiology," p. 61