It was a motley collection, these social Darwinists, and Mr Hermans has enough on his plate to find the common denominator. The risk appears of a portrait gallery of eminent Victorians, however ably painted; therefore the author at regular intervals takes up stock to determine what can really be called social Darwinistic. (…) Mr Hermans makes us notice a number of important personalities, with their theories, who for a long time have been in everyone’s black book.

Hermans gives us an elaborate and very thorough overview of the ideas of these ‘social Darwinists’, who succeeded in misapproprating the theory of evolution for their personal political interests…. [His] most readable study offers a fascinating sampling of these thinkers and men of action from the late nineteenth century, all under the spell of expected downfall.