MASTER NEGA TIVE NO . 92 -80598 MICROFILMED 1992 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project" Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States - Title 17, United States Code - concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material... Columbia University Library reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. A UTHOR : MACPHERSON, HECTOR TITLE: HERBERT SPENCER PLACE: LONDON DATE: 1900 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC MirROF ORM TARHRT Master Negative # Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record Restrictions on Use: 192Sp3 BM MACPHBRSON. HBCTOR CARSBWELL. 1851-1924. H«rb«rt Spencer; the man tnd hit work, by Hector Hic- pherton... London: Chapmin and Hall, Ltd., 1900. ▼ii, 227 p. I9}cm. 1 Imperfect: t.-p. mutilated 613083A. I. Spencer, Herbert, 1820-1903. u ilMiiiriiiiiMia ■■■■■rtlaiMMIiMlH TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO: jiX FILM SIZE: 5S^2!1?^___ IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA^uk) IB IIB ^ ^ DATE FILMED:_i.J.:^r:: INITIALS,,?^: />• C- HLMEDBY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODBRIDGE. CT~ " n-i 1%= Lmb Association for Information and image {Management 1100 Wayne Avenue. Suite 1100 Silver Spring. Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 Centimeter 12 3 4 8 m|im]mjim IN liiiiliinliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiil 10 iiiliii 11 Im 12 13 14 15 mm iiliiiiliiiilimliiiii TTT Inches 1.0 U. bku. 1.4 2.5 2.2 2.0 1.8 1.6 I.I 1.25 TTT MflNUFfiCTURED TO flllM STfiNDPRDS BY APPLIED IMAGE, INC. % ^>^^ W\J ''"y I tntljfCitpofBrtugork UBRAK.Y ci « ..>•. 1 ^ c*. 1 •If).. ! ■ HERBERT SPENCER HERBERT SPENCER THE MAN AND HIS WORK BY HECTOR MACPHERSON Author of • Thomas Carlyle * and * Adam Smith * • - • • - •••! ••• • • • •• • • • • •••:.•••. • •••••• • • ••••• ,, • • • • • • • • , :•• ••'. ; •:• • • • :•; ••. • • •.: • • • . ... • • • • • •• • • • • ••• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ■ LONDON CHAPMAN AND HALL ' LIMITED 1900 PREFACE • " • - - - i • # # # V V # * • • • • • 1. • • • • « • • • • • • •• • • • • • • • • • • • " Idinburgh : T. and A. Cohstabii, Printers to Her Majesty .,0 A PHILOSOPHIC thinker of the first rank is always known by the amount of literature which his writings call forth. Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Hegel— these in their respective spheres were epoch-makers. From the philosophic germs which they scattered have sprung whole libraries of controversial literature. In like manner Mr. Herbert Spencer has paid the penalty of his great philosophic fame. As an epoch-maker, he, too, has had to pass through the fire of hostile criticism. For a great number of years his philo- sophy has been the battle-ground of controversialists who, differing in many ways among themselves, have united in their attempts to discredit a system of thought which threatened to destroy long- cherished opinions and stereotyped beliefs. One result of this has been that to the general public the Synthetic Philosophy, embedded as it has been in the works of critics, has necessarily appeared in 2^B451 VI O Hill IS Jiilt i or^ HiIN UHiXl a fragmentary form. My object in writing this book lias been to present to the general reader Spencerism in lucid, coherent shape. Nothing can take the place of Mr. Spencer's own writings, but mastery of these demands an amount of leisure and philosophic enthusiasm which are by no means widespread. Until after the first negotiations had been entered upon for the publication of this work Mr. Spencer was unaware that it was in contemplation, but since he has been informed of my design I have had his approval. I must add that Mr. Spencer has not seen a sentence of this work before publication, either in manuscript or in proof. He has been anxious that I should not be influenced by any criticisms he might pass. He has taken a kindly interest in the undertaking, and responded to my request for certain materials. The book is by no means a slavish re- production of Mr. Spencer's writings. Taking my stand upon the fundamental ideas of the Synthetic Philosophy, I have used them in my own way to interpret and illustrate the great evolutionary process. While, therefore, Mr. Spencer has been in full sympathy with the aim of the book, he does not stand committed to the detailed treatment of the subject. The work has indeed been a labour Vll PREFACE of love. Should it induce the reader to study Spencerism as expounded by the master himself, my reward will be ample. I should be lacking in gratitude did I not express my obligations to the elaborate work of Mr. John Fiske, entitled Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy. No student of Spencer can afford to neglect Mr. Fiske's book, which it would be difficult to rival in point of lucidity and intellectual ability. I am also indebted to Professor Hudson of California for his admirable book. Introduction to the Philo- sophy of Herbert Spencer. In the philosophic and economic parts of the book, I have drawn upon a few paragraphs in my Thomas Carlyle and Adam Smith. Knowledge of a philosopher's system of thought is greatly helped by knowledge of the philosopher himself, and in this respect I have been exceedingly fortunate. The recollection of my personal relations with Mr. Spencer will ever be to me a priceless possession. HECTOR MACPHERSON. Edinburgh, April 1900. CONTENTS CHAP. I. EARLY LIFE, . • • . n. INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT, HI. EVOLUTION OF THE EVOLUTION THEORY, IV. PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS, V. THE COSMOS UNVEILED, VI. THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE Vn. THE EVOLUTION OF MIND, VIII. THE ECONOMIC EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY, IX. THE POLITICAL EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY, X. THE ETHICAL EVOLUTION OP SOCIETY, XI. THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION ' • • XII. THE PHILOSOPHIC ASPECT OP SPENCERISM, Xin. THE RELIGIOUS ASPECT OF SPENCERISM, PACE 1 17 38 52 64 82 103 122 143 165 185 106 210 CHAPTER I EARLY LIFE Carlyle has remarked that the history of the world is in the main the history of its great men. There is profound truth in the saying, though in his anti- pathy to a purely scientific treatment of civilisation Carlyle used his great man theory in fantastic and misleading fashion. The intellectual contribution which each century makes to the progress of the world takes its hue from the dominating influence of its leading thinkers. True greatness is epoch- making. If we wish to discover the place of a thinker in the great evolutionary chain, we must apply the epoch-making test. The mind of the great man is like an overflowing reservoir which makes for itself new channels and fertilises hitherto unknown tracts of thought. Or to use a biological simile, the sociological effects produced by the great man resemble the changes caused in the fauna and flora of a country by the introduction of a new species. Think of the impoverishment which history would sustain by the obliteration of the names, say, \ 2 HERBERT SPENOER of Paul, Augustine, Calvin. Those thinkers not only unlocked new forces in their day and generation, but even yet from their tombs they hold sway over the minds of countless thousands. Their specula- tions formed the creeds of centuries, and their passionate and yearning musings upon human life and destiny find echo in the souls of some of the noblest of earth's sons. When the long night of authority and credulity was drawing to a close, when the sun of inquiry was dawning above the horizon, great thinkers arose who, from the moun- tain-tops of science, foresaw the meridian glory of the Age of Reason. After the splendid work of Mr. John Morley, it is superfluous to dwell upon the achievements in the cause of enlightenment of the intellectual heroes of the Revolution epoch. The great constructive systems of the past had not only fallen before the assault of Reason, but had become cumberers of the ground. The decaying creeds of the past not only impeded the progress of thought, but were a barrier to social amelioration. Paths had to be cut through the jungle, and, in the name of humanity, abuses hoary with the sanctity of re- ligion had to be attacked. For the pioneering work accomplished, humanity is everlastingly debtor to the bold thinkers of the Revolution epoch. Not content with the work of destruction, they set themselves to the task of construction. Humanity EARLY LIFE 3 cannot live on negation. Through the writings of Voltaire, Diderot, and the Encyclopaedists may be detected attempts to formulate a conception of man and his destiny which would take the place of the theologic conception which in pre-scientific times had done duty for ages as man's attempt to solve the problem of Existence; indeed the idea of the Encyclopcedia rose out of the feeling that destruction needed to be supplanted by painstaking attempts to attain to a comprehensive, coherent theory of life, in which humanity would find at once intellectual satisfaction and emotional har- mony. Out of dissatisfaction with mere negation grew not only the Encijclopccdia, but the imposing systems of Holbach and Helvetius. The time was not ripe for imposing philosophic systems, for the simple reason that knowledge of the universe and man had not gone far enough to be organised on a scientific basis. No system can endure which rests on premature generalisations and unverified speculations ; unconsciously the Rationalists of the Revolution imported into their creed-making the unreliable methods of the Theologians. Still tLeir failure on the constructive side should not lessen our admiration for the splendid work they did as liberators of humanity. They loosened the hold of decaying creeds; they cleared the dense forest of thought; they pointed the way to the promised land of mental freedom and social progress. HBRBBRT SPENCER After the French Revolution had spent its force, progressive thinkers became alive to the purely destructive nature of that movement on the in- tellectual side. Among them was Oomte — a thinker whose great merits have not had adequate re- cognition. Oomte had the true sign of greatness — intellectual vision. He was not content, like Hume and analytic thinkers generally, to resign himself to the gloom of the forest, or to smother the ever-recurring thoughts of man and his destiny in the petty butterfly attractions of an Epicurean philosophy. His great ambition was to provide a path and an ideal by which humanity w^ould march boldly on to the expansive uplands and heights of truth. Oomte's methods were distasteful to his English readers. His colossal egoism, his prefer- ence for mediaeval modes of thought, and his disparagement of individual liberty and reason, set on edge the critical teeth of many who sympathised with his high-souled endeavours. Destructive critics like Huxley used Comte in order to make sport for the Philistines. The fatal blow to Oomte's influence I came from the new idea of Evolution, which wrecked his philosophic system as it did the systems of Buckle and Mill. All three thinkers found themselves stranded because of their inability to incorporate the new views which were to revolutionise philoso- phical as well as scientiflc thought. Still, in spite of the ridicule of Huxley and the contemptuous EARLY LIFE 5 treatment accorded to him in France and England, Comte deserves to be held in remembrance as a thinker of fine calibre, prophetic vision, fertile thought, and massiveness of mind. The dominating idea of the last half of the nine- teenth century is Evolution — an idea so far-reaching in its influence, so mesmeric in its power, that at its touch all other ideas crystallise round it and, as if by magic, yield to its potent sway. The thinker with whom history will imperishably associate the idea of Evolution is Herbert Spencer. Perhaps in no sphere has the influence of the Evolution theory been more indirectly potent than in biography. So long as man was treated as an extra-mundane creation there was a natural tendency to concen- trate attention upon the dramatic and incalculable side of his nature. Emphasis was laid upon the inner psychical factors to the exclusion of those physical conditions which play such a prominent part in human development. Great men, in the language of Carlyle, were messengers of the Eternal — messengers who so dominated their environment as to bafOie all attempts at explanation and classi- fication. Ignorance of the law of evolution natur- ally led to an unintelligent hero-worship which blinded the intellect to the subtle relations existing between man and his surroundings. Herbert Spencer changed all that. His Principles of Biology fore- shadowed a conception of biography in which the 6 HERBERT SPENCER great man would no longer be viewed as an incom- prehensible incarnation of supernatural energy, but as the product of certain interpretable forces. Between the average man and the great man the difference is mainly this— the one remains passive, while the other, as has been already said, reacts upon his environment, thereby unlocking new forces and giving a fresh impetus to progress. In coming to the study of Herbert Spencer, we cannot do better than use for purposes of biographic inter- pretation his own far-reaching principles. Before seeking to understand Spencer the philosopher, it is necessary to understand Spencer the man. A critical estimate can only lay claim to completeness when a picture is given of the philosopher as influenced by his age as well as dominating his age. If the title of great is due to those rare souls who have scaled the heights of human thought, and from the Pisgah summit have pointed the way to intellectual horizons uudiscoverable by ordinary mortals, upon the brow of Herbert Spencer must be placed the never-fading wreath of immortality. Herbert Spencer was born at Derby on 27th April 1820. Spencer, like Mill, owed much to his father, but the educational methods pursued were very different indeed. James Mill had an almost fanatical belief in education. One of the tenets of the eighteenth-century philosophy was the modilia- Mlity of human nature, and the value of systematic EARLY LIFE 7 training. James Mill put his son into training at the earliest possible moment ; and for years subjected him to a severe course of mental discip- line. The elder Spencer, in his own way as intel- lectually independent as James Mill, took a more rational view of education. He did not deem it . the highest wisdom to force children into an artificial groove; he preferred to trust to the spontaneity of nature. In his view cramming of the memory with bits of detached knowledge was of little value compared with thorough mental individuality. Being a teacher by profession, the elder Spencer was in a position to give full sway to his ideas. To this, and not, as has been supposed, to delicate health, was it that young Spencer was somewhat backward in his early education. He was seven years of age before he could read. In due^ course the boy was sent to a training day-school, but his progress was not particularly satisfactory. He did not take kindly to the routine of school life. He is described as having been restless, inattentive, and by no means pliable. In all lessons in which success depended upon mechanical methods, such as learning by rote, young Spencer did not show to advantage. Knowledge^ of the fragmentary kind he did not readily assimilate ; it was only when his ob- serving and reasoning faculties were called into play that intellectual progress was discernible. Nature appealed to him more forcibly than books. Science 8 HERBERT SPENCER in his youthful days exercised over him a special charm. One of his favourite occupations is said to have been ' the catching and preserving of insects and the rearing of moths and butterflies from egg through larva and chrysalis to their most developed forms/ To his domestic surroundings, more than to his formal school training, the boy was indebted for his mental development. His father and uncles were men of pronounced individualities, bold thinkers on religion, politics, and social questions generally. In the family circle young Spencer heard all the topics of the day discussed with free- dom and boldness. Such an atmosphere was fatal to that hereditary reliance upon authority character- istic of average middle-class homes. Moreover, the boy was early taught to think for himself in matters religious by the exampfe of dissent which he witnessed weekly in his own home. His parents were originally Methodists, but his father had a preference for the Quakers, while his mother re- mained true to the Wesleyan persuasion. On Sun- day mornings young Spencer attended the Quakers' meeting with his father, and in the evening he accompanied his mother to the Methodist chapel. Thus early the future philosopher had to reckon with the personal equation, the domestic bias in matters theological. There is nothing in Mr. Spencer's writings to show that religion had ever EARLY LIFE 9 ,. taken vital hold of him, as it did some of his noted contemporaries. Mill has left on record how he grew up outside of religious influences. His father deliberately kept him from contact with religion on its emotional and ceremonial side. In that case Miirs detachment of mind on religious questions was intelligible; but, in regard to Spencer, the curious thing was that, while moving in the midst of religious influences, he seems to have remained totally unaffected by them. One would have ex- pected to find him, like George Eliot, under the sway of those spiritual ideals and impulses which were inseparably associated with middle-class Evangelicalism in the first half of the century. In conversation I once asked Mr. Spencer if, like George Eliot, he had first accepted the orthodox creed, then doubted, and finally rejected it. His reply was that to him it never appealed. It was not a case of acceptance and rejection: his mind lay outside of it from the first. In many ways both Mill and Spencer would have found their philosophic influence broadened and deepened had they, in their early days, shared in the spiritual experiences of their contemporaries. Those thinkers who, under the domination of youth- ful enthusiasm, have endeavoured to realise super- natural ideals and, under emotional fervour, to strike the note of ascetic sanctity, receive an almost intuitive insight into the deeper religious problems 10 HERBERT SPENCER of the age — an insight denied those who come to the study of religious psychology with the footrule of the logician and the weighing-scales of the statistician. Many students who have long since broken away from the bonds of orthodoxy, and whose minds now soar into the ampler air of speculative freedom, will be ready to admit that in dealing with religion the minds of both Mill and Spencer work under serious limitations, due to their lack of spiritual receptivity in early days. To this lack of receptivity must be traced the error into which Mr. Spencer fell in his First Principles in supposing that science and religion would find a basis of agreement in recognition of the Unknowable. The terms proposed by science resemble those of the husband who suggested to the wife, as a basis of future harmony, that he should take the inside of the house and she the outside. When young Spencer readied his thirteenth year, the question of his future came up for serious con- sideration. It was deemed wise to trust him to the educational care of his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Spencer, perpetual curate at Hinton, near Bath. The Rev. Mr. Spencer was a Radical in politics, a temperance advocate, an anti-corn law agitator, and an enthusiastic advocate of all measures relating to the welfare of the people— a man, in brief, whose life was shortened by unsparing devotion to ideals which are now recognised as realisable, but which I EARLY LIFE 11 then were treated as the products of a Quixotic mind. The reverend gentleman, himself a dis- tinguished graduate of Cambridge, naturally set himself to qualify his nephew for a university career. His nephew's mind, however, was not cast in the university mould. In his interesting biographic sketch of Herbert Spencer, Professor Hudson sums up very concisely the progress made during this period: 'The course of study now pursued was somewhat more regular and definite than had been the case at home; and the dis- cipline was of a more rigorous character. But save for this the uncle's method and system did not materially differ from those to which young Spencer had been accustomed while under his father's roof. Once again his successes and his failures in the various studies which he now took up were alike significant. In the classic languages to which a portion of his time was daily given very little progress was made. The boy showed neither taste nor aptitude in this direction ; rules and vocabularies proved perpetual stumbling-blocks to him ; and what little was with difficulty committed to memory was almost as soon forgotten. But while for studies of this class there was shown an inaptitude almost astounding, a counterbalancing aptitude was exhibited for studies demanding a different kind of ability— constructive and co-ordinating power rather than a memory for unconnected details. In mathe- 12 HERBERT SPENCER EARLY LIFE 13 matics and mechanics such rapid advancement was made that he soon placed himself in these depart- ments abreast of fellow-students much older than himself. What was noticeable, too, was his early Mbit of laying hold of essential principles, and his ever-growing tendency towards independent analysis and exploration.* Close study of his nephew's mind led the Rev. Mr. Spencer to abandon the idea of a university career. It has been represented that his uncle was emphatic upon the necessity of a university training, and only reluctantly gave up the idea in consequence of the nephew's obstinacy ; but I have it on Mr. Spencer's authority that this was not the case. In his own words : ' There was no dispute. My uncle gave up the idea when he saw that I was unfit.' That is to say, it became clear to the Rev. Mr. Spencer that the mind of his nephew was of a type which could not be fitted into the university mould. He saw that it would follow a bent of its own, and would not be forced into conventional channels. Much has been said of the loss which Spencer has sustained through exclusion from the atmosphere and training of university life. In dealing with exceptional minds, whose evolution is pre-determined along original lines by innate capacity and genius, no good purpose .is served by appealing to general rules, which from jthe nature of the case can deal only with the fexpected and the calculable, not with those out- Standing individualities which defy the ordinary laws of averages and probabilities. One drawback certainly was attached to Spencer's exclusion from university life. He was compelled to face not only a hostile public, but the insidious opposition of university cliques, who could not bear to see a new thinker of commanding power step forward into the intellectual arena without the hall-mark of uni- versity culture. Had Spencer been the centre of an admiring group of university disciples, his system would have come into vogue much earlier ; it would, in other words, have become fashionable. As it was, after the gradual decay of home-made philoso- phies, Hegel became the idol of university circles, and Spencer was left, a voice crying in the wilder- ness. Notwithstanding all this, Spencer gained more | than he lost by missing the conventional university training. However reluctant the Rev. Mr. Spencer was to abandon his deeply-cherished design, he admitted in after-years that in following the prompt- ings of nature his nephew had acted wisely. He doubtless saw that the very qualities which unfitted his nephew for the routine of a classical curriculum were precisely the qualities which gave him his great superiority in science and philosophy, A grinding in dead languages and a saturation in old- world methods and ideas might have seriously checked the faculties for observation and massive generalisation which, when left to develop naturally, W, 14 HERBERT SPENOER have made their possessor an unrivalled king in quite a new intellectual sphere, in which stand in unique conjunction the widest speculative thought and unparalleled analytic power. The abandonment of the university design led to a period of uncertainty as to young Spencer's future. He returned home. The practical outlook seemed vague and uncertain. In the absence of any well-defined plan, his father secured him an assistantship in a school. The teaching profession was one in which Spencer might well have shone provided the curriculum were framed on a rational and scientific basis. As a teacher he would have found himself out of sympathy with modern systems, and sooner or later his career would have been cut short. One quality invaluable in a teacher he possessed in a pre-eminent degree-that of luminous exposition. Those who have had the privilege of conversing with Mr. Spencer have been at once struck with the marvellous lucidity of his handling of the most abstruse topics. Into ordinary con- versation he carries the habits of thought and exposition which other men usually leave behind in the study. There is no pedantry, no formalism : sweep of thought, clearness in statement, fertility of illustration, and lucidity of exposition, are wedded to conversational charm. This expository power struck John Stuart Mill forcibly in his first inter- view with Spencer. A friend of Mill once told me EARLY LIFE 15 r i of Mill's admiration for Spencer's power of present- ing a full-orbed view of his subject in language at once precise and luminous. It is plain that Spencer would have made an ideal teacher. How- ever, circumstances rather than design cut short his pedagogic career. In the autumn of 1837 young Spencer, whose early bent was towards science, especially on the mathematical and mechanical sides, received and accepted an offer from the resident engineer of the London division of the London and Birmingham railway, then in process of construction. For a year and a half he worked in London as a civil engineer, and subsequently, for two and a half years, on the Birmingham and Gloucester railway. During this time he showed his interest in the intellectual side of his profes- sion by contributing several papers to the Civil Engineer Journal, and his inventive faculties found scope in the invention of a little instru- ment called the velocimeter, for calculating the speed of locomotive engines. Again his life- plan was destined to be changed. After eight years at civil engineering, young Spencer "wasT brought face to face with a crisis by the disasters which followed upon the great railway mania. In the reaction which followed, Spencer, with other young men similarly situated, suffered. The demand for new railways fell off, and consequently the de- mand for civil engineers. At the age of twenty-six 16 HERBERT SPENCER Spencer had to begin the world afresh. He re- turned to his home in Derby. Meanwhile Spencer's mind had been branching out in other quarters besides civil engineering. He was musing upon political philosophy and science. In 1812 he con- tributed to a paper called The Nonconformist a series of articles on 'The Proper Sphere of Government.' These, after due season, appeared later in pamphlet form. In his home retreat at Derby his mind was still further matured by reading and thinking. Man, however, does not live by thought alone, so it behoved Spencer to turn Ms attention to the bread-and-butter side of life. 'He cast his eyes toward journalism, and after a miseeHaneous period he was, in 1848, in his own words, 'invited to take the position of sub-editor of the Economist newspaper.' This post he held till 1853. In London he got his feet on the first rung of the ladder of fame. The history of his long, toilsome, and heroic ascent is mainly the record of the various stages of his mind in the conception and elaboration of that vast system of thought with which his name is imperishably associated. I ^n A. "^'^ •4 CHAPTER II INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT While engaged in the work of a civil engineer, and before he settled in London, Spencer was quietly pondering over the great intellectual problems of the time. Naturally he was led by his fondness for science to study the highest authorities in the vari- ous departments. At the age of twenty he began to study Lyell's Principles of Geology, Without demur he accepted the development as opposed to the special creation theory of the earth and man, though like the rest of his contemporaries he could not trace the process in its detail, nor understand its nature. In order to follow the evolution of young Spencer's mind it will be necessary to describe the intellectual environment in which it moved in those early days. The early years of the century were years of great fermentation, theological, philosophic, political, and social. The practical energies of the nation, freed from the great strain of the continental wars, found new outlet in the spheres of commerce and B f X' HERBERT SPENOER industry. Scientific study of nature, no longer tabooed by theology, demonstrated its utility by an imposing record of inventions and discoveries, whose influence on the national prosperity was at once dramatic and all-embracing. Such a transformation of the industrial and social order could not take place without exerting a potent influence upon the higher thought of the time. Science, which in the practical sphere had achieved colossal triumphs, and given man power over nature, could not but be greatly influenced by the new forces which it had called into existence. Science, as the worker of miracles, became the idol of the hour : at its shrine the popular as well as the cultured intelligence of the day worshipped fervently. The printing-press teemed with books for the diffusion of useful knowledge, while to the more highly cultured the British Association, established in the first half of the century, proved itself a veritable Mecca. The union between science and industry had one effect- discoveries, inventions, and theories came pell-mell, to the utter confusion of the methodical thinker' with his desire to reduce his intellectual knowledge to something like order. In the whirl of practical details, thought in the wide and comprehensive sense was paralysed ; the wood could not be seen for the trees. In the midst of the jubilation over the advance of discovery, in the midst of the eulogiums over the material victories which Science INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 19 had brought in its train, there were those who remembered that man does not live by facts alone, those who are ever ready to string facts on the thread of philosophic or scientific generalisations. Since the days of Bacon and his Novum Organum, thinkers have cherished the ambition to discover knowledge by the slow but sure methods of science, and to weave that knowledge into one comprehensive whole. It soon became evident that a new theory of man and his relation to the Universe was following in the wake of science and its discoveries. In Scotland, the theological spirit, much as it wished, could not prevent the reading public from being influenced by such books as Combe's Constitution of Man, and' the famous Vestiges of Creation. On the Continent the same spirit of scientific inquiry and theorising was abroad. This desire of science not to remain content with looking upon nature as a huge museum in which the highest aim was duly to ticket and label phenomena, found expression in Humboldt's f Cosmos, which appeared in 1845. About the same time appeared WhewelFs History and Philosophy of the Induetive Sciences, which was intended to be the continuation of the work of Bacon ' renovated 1 according to our advanced intellectual position and office.* A thinker of the type of Whewell labours under one distinct disadvantage — while he is engaged upon ultimate generalisations, discoveries 20 HERBERT SPENOER are being made which may knock away the founda- tion of his entire cosmical structure. This was precisely the fate of Whe well. As Merz says in his valuable work on European Thought : ' In the year 1857, the date of the publication of the latest editions of Whewell's works, nothing was popularly known of energy, its conservation and dissipation, nothing of the variation of species and the evolution of organic forms, nothing of the mechanical theory of heat or that of gases, of at)3olute measurements and absolute temperature ; c\ en the cellular theory seems to have been popular only in Germany. And yet all the problems denoted by these now popular terms were then occupying, or had for many years occupied, the attention of the leading thinkers of that period. But we find no mention of them in WhewelFs Works.' Still, Whewell did great service to the cause of scientific thought. His was a bold attempt to reduce to something like coherence the confused mass of scientific knowledge. Underlying the book was the idea of the organic unity of the sciences; and if he failed to realise his ideal, the reason lay not in his lack of insight, but in the fact that scientists had not then discovered by observa- tion and experiment the marvellous unity of nature. The next great impetus to scientific thought came from Comte. In the history of scientific thought the name of Auguste Oomte will always occupy an honoured place. It is customary to INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 21 belittle Oomte on account of his vagaries in connection with the Religion of Humanity, but we must not allow his failings to blind us to the great work he did in the sphere of scientific thought. Science, as has been pointed out, had a bewildering effect upon the average mind. Along with the material blessings which came in its train. Science had incidentally come forward as a rival to Theology, as an interpreter of Man and the Universe. In the minds of many people, even thinkers of the calibre of Faraday, the theological and scientific conceptions lived comfortably side by side. But studious readers of the signs of the times had come to the conclusion that Theology and Science were deadly rivals, yet perplexity existed as to how they were related in the history of thought and speculation. It was the merit of Oomte to attempt to show the position which Theology, Metaphysics, and Science hold in the progress of humanity. Whether or not we agree with his famous law of the three stages, this, at least, must be conceded— Oomte by his law has rendered luminous a large tract of history which, in the hands of the average historian, had been a perfect maze. In a rough sort of way we do get a fruitful view of human progress when we say with Oomte that Theology failed in its interpretation of the Universe, because it busied itself with personal causes, while Metaphysics also went wide HERBERT SPENCER of the mark because it dealt in entities, whereas Science has been fruitful in so far as it has confined itself to the study of phenomena on the lines of observation and experiment. In the purely scientific sphere, Comte did great service in his efforts to show that progress does not take place at haphazard, as a superficial student of the history of discoveries and inventions is apt to think, but that through the seemingly aimless growth of science there is traceable a definite law. Before Comte the various sciences were treated as so many distinct branches of man's knowledge of nature. Any classification which existed was of an artificial kind. For this Comte substituted a classification which had the note of organic unity. The sciences, according to him, are six in number: Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Sociology. The merit claimed for this arrangement by Comte is that the order of their classification is the order in which the sciences have been evolved — the order in which they have passed from the theological or meta- physical into the scientific stage. If we wish to learn how far scientific conceptions are gaining ground, we have a fairly reliable method if we apply the Comtean classification. In Mathematics, Astronomy, and Physics, the scientific method pure and simple has long held sway. It is not, however, long since Chemistry and Biology were at the metaphysical stage, with its 'vital principle' and INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 23 such like entities, while in the region of Sociology prayers for success of war, for industrial prosperity, etc., show unmistakable signs of the theological stage. Valuable as was the work of Comte, it was vitiated by one great defect. In his antipathy to the study of causes, he was led to confuse two things which are quite distinct— final or theological, and efficient or mechanical cause. The result of this was that he refused to trace his six sciences to a common root. All attempts to get behind pheno- mena, even to the subtle laws and forces which seemed to be the key to phenomena, were ruthlessly opposed by Comte. As Lester F. Ward, an Ameri- can writer, puts it : ' Among the most lamented of Comte's vagaries is his uncompromising hostility to all the modern hypotheses respecting the nature of light, heat, electricity, etc. He classed all these along with gravitation, and declared that all the efforts expended in the vain search after origin, nature, or cause were simply squandered. These agencies, according to him, were merely phenomena, and were to be studied only as such. The imaginary interstellar ether was an ontological conception or a metaphysical entity to be classed along with phlogiston and all the spirits of the laboratory and the imaginary occupants of the bodies of men, animals, and inanimate objects. The undulatory theory of light was no better than the emission 24 HERBERT SPENOER theory, and both equally vain attempts to know what from the nature of things can not be known. In fact, the domain of the unknowable in Comte's philosophy was enormous in its extent, and when we contemplate the little that was left for man to do we almost wonder how he should have re- garded it worth the labour of writing so large a work. The amonnt of mischief which this one glaring fallacy accomplished for Oomte's system of Positivism, insinuating itself into every chapter, and more or less vitiating the real truths contained in the work, was so great as to give considerable colour to the claim that pure Oomtism, if it could be made to prevail and exert its legitimate influence upon human inquiry in the future, would so far cripple every department of science as to throw it back into mediajval stagnation. For it would strike a fatal blow at all true progress in human know- ledge by crushing out the very spirit of inquiry, and would quench all interest in phenomena them- selves by prohibiting the search after the springs and sources— the causes— of the phenomena which furnish the true life and soul of scientific research.' Oomte failed to realise his ideal, for a reason which explains the slow progress that has hitherto been made in the great task of formulating a scientific philosophy of the Universe. For this two things are needed— vast accumulation of facts and great synthetic power. A scientist with nothing INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 25 but a passion for facts is simply an intellectual hodman, whose relation to the philosophical scientist is that of a bricklayer's labourer to the architect. On the other hand, great speculative power work- ing upon imperfect knowledge leads often to sheer absurdity. Witness Germany with its natural philo- sophy. The ideal condition is one in which fact and theory go hand-in-hand. Oomte came as near as was possible in his day to providing a scientific key to Nature. All that was needed was for Oomte to discover and formulate the law of unity, which, like a golden thread, runs through his six sciences! For logical purposes, it is necessary to treat the various sciences as if they stood for separate in- dependent classes of facts in Nature, but the dis- coveries which were taking place just at the close of Oomte's career substituted the dynamic for the statical conception of Nature. Herbert Spencer profited by the new conception of Nature of which Oomte was unable to take advantage. From the^ point of view of the scientific thinker, the dominat- ing fact of the century may be defined as a new conception of Nature. Until Spencer began to write, the conception of Nature was that of a colossal machine, the various parts of which were speciallv manufactured to fit into their respective places! Unity, of course, there was, but the unity was in the mind of the Supernatural Mechanic, not in the material of which the machine was constructed. 26 HEBBERT SPBNOER Alike in the works of scientists and theologians of the early century, we find a total absence of the ^^^^Sht of organic unity as applied to the Cosmos. Not only did the thinkers of the time fail to hit upon the great fact of the unity of the Cosmos, but they had resigned themselves to the view that it was impossible to make such a discovery. Caught in the meshes of a false philosophic method, the philosophers of the Rational school placed an arbi- trary limit to speculation. MilFs Logic was the text-book of the school. MilFs admiration of Comte MdB explanation in the fact that the great French- man had carried the method of induction in inter- pretation of the Universe to what seemed to be its utmost limit. According to Mill, knowledge resolves itself into a recognition of particulars. What we call a law is simply a recorded observation that phenomena follow each other in a regular order. There is no inherent necessity that phenomena should be inter-related. Comte's law of the sciences determined nothing as to the necessary relations between the six sciences which he named : all that could be said was that the human mind in the course of its progress came to a knowledge of the sciences in the way indicated by Comte. Mill, like Comte, considered that scientific men were going beyond the inductions of experience when they endeavoured to attribute to Nature any kind of inherent regularity and necessity. Hence his remark that in some after INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 27 planet the axiom that two and two make four might not hold. With Mill a scientific philosophy had done its work when it revealed the existence of a number of apparently permanent laws whose inter-relations were undiscoverable, and upon which the regularity of the Cosmos depended. Mill's conception of the world was that of a collection of facts grasped by the mind by virtue of the law of association— facts existing by no inherent necessity, but resting in the last analysis on the arbitrary and the accidental. In our Cosmos these facts exist in one way : else- where the connection might be totally different. Thus, as Taine puts it, the Experiential philosophy, the philosophy which plumed itself upon refusing to go a step beyond Induction, ends in 'an abyss of chance, an abyss of ignorance.' Here we have the explanation of Mill's curious attitude to religion, as revealed" in his posthumous essays. At bottom Mill's conception was that of Theology, with its postulation of an unknown cause which at any time may reveal itself in an arbitrary manner. Mill was bound to admit that things need not necessarily exist in the connection in which we now find them. At any moment the connection might be severed ; consequently he was driven to admit that the question of miracles really turned on the question of evidence. We find the same curious sympathy with theological conceptions in Huxley, who was constantly throwing a sop to the 28 HERBERT SPBNOER theologians, in the admission that he was quite ready to believe the most profound mysteries in religion, if the evidence were forthcoming, on the ground that Science contains as many mysteries as anything to be found in Theology. In other words, Huxley, like Mill, contended that it was not pos- sible to detect in Nature any facts held together by necessity. Comte, Mill, and Huxley never got beyond the interpretative standpoint of Hume, whose Agnosticism, it should be remembered, extended to science as well as to theology. We shall see later that Spencer's contribution to a scientific conception of the Universe consisted in going beyond Hume, Oomte, and Mill, in the direction of including all generalisations under one generalisation, and in supplementing the inductive method by the deduc- tive, thereby demonstrating the necessary and organic unity of the Cosmos. So much for the scientific conceptions of the Universe which were prevalent among advanced thinkers when Spencer began to study science in a broad and comprehensive manner. Along with the scientific was the philo- sophic conception, which also formed one of the factors in his intellectual environment. The French Revolution will always remain a land- mark in modern history. If the student of history desires to understand the lines of modern thought and life, he must go back to that great political and social upheaval. It is a mistake to suppose that the INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 29 Revolution exhausted its influence mainly in the sphei-e of public activity. In all departments its reac lonary effect was felt, and in none more so than m Philosophy. What do we mean by Philosophy ^ The answer to that will be easier when we consider what IS meant by Science. Science has been defined as the systematisation of our knowledge of phe nomena. In a word. Science deals with the modes of existence; Philosophy with the nature of exist- ence. it is clear that the conceptions which Philosophy forms of the nature of existence will react powerfully on the conception which Science wil form of the modes of existence. Assume that Matter is the ultimate fact, and you are logically committed to a materialistic conception of Mind and of Society-a conception which must have far- reachmg influence upon individual and social evolu- tion If we wish, then, to find the key to the deveiopinerit of the nineteenth century, we must go back and try to discover the philosophical concep- tions which dominated the previous era. The apostles of the Age of Reason adopted Materialism werlrrr'^''' '''''• '''''^''' ^^^ ^<^"««eau were Deists, but the influential party in revolutionary circles were undoubtedly Materialists. The creed Rni^t'"! ^""^ ""'' ^^""''^'^ ^^« «"«^«^ed up in Holbach s famous System of Nature, in which every- thing, from the movements of the solar masses to the movements of the soul, was interpreted in 30 HERBERT SPENCER terms of matter. Even before the Revolution the dreariness of the French philosophy struck the highest minds of the time with a kind of despair. Thus Goethe says : ' The materialistic theory which reduces all things to matter and motion appeared to me so grey, so Cimmerian, and so dead, that we shuddered at it as at a ghost.* Its downfall was inevitable when the Age of Reason ended in a carnival of diabolism. As George Henry Lewes puts it: 'The reaction against the philosophy of the eighteenth century was less a reaction against a doctrine proved to be incompetent than against a doctrine believed to be the source of frightful immorality. The reaction was vigorous, because it was animated by the horror which agi- tated Europe at the excesses of the French Revolu- tion. Associated in men's minds with the saturnalia of the Terror, the philosophic opinions of Condillac, Diderot, and Cabanis were held responsible for the crimes of the Convention ; and what might be true in those opinions was flung aside with what was false, without discrimination, without analysis, in fierce, impetuous disgust. Every opinion which had what was called a taint of Materialism, or seemed to point in that direction, was denounced as an opinion unnecessary, leading to the destruction of all religion, morality, and government.' In the reaction which followed the French Revolution, we have a vivid illustration of the close connection INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 31 which exists between philosophy and everyday life. The sudden contempt into which Materialism fell may be taken as an instinctive, though irrational, testimony to the intimate relation which exists between abstract thought and concrete life. It may be taken for granted that the conceptions which people form of the Universe and of their relation to it will largely influence the nature of the social bond. Morality and human ideals generally cannot remain unaffected by theories which make Matter or Spirit the root-principle of the great cosmical scheme. In Holbach's System of Nature we have the materialistic theory worked out logically into a com- prehensive ethical and sociological creed. In the famous French Encijclopcedia of Sciences Materialism had formal embodiment as a system of philosophy Nature was viewed simply as a piece of mechanism,* man as the product of a complex molecular arrange- ment, mind the development of animal sensations, morality as a phase of self-interest, religion as a product of emotional hallucination, and government as an ingenious arrangement between despotic kings and designing priests to keep the people in slavery. When the crash came it was natural that the whole scheme of Materialistic Philosophy should totter to the ground. What was to take its place ? Naturally thinkers looked around for a set of first prmciples which would give repose to their minds 32 HERBERT SPENCER as well as stability to the social system. The Catholic section, headed by de Maistre ; the Royalists, inspired by Chateaubriand ; and the Metaphysicians, stimulated by the Eclectic School of Cousin, united their forces against Materialism. For a time Eclecticism held the field, but the work of construc- tion both in France and Britain needed a new set of first principles which neither nation could supply. The constructive principles were imported from Germany. The Germans— Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel— attacked the problem of Existence from the spiritual instead of from the material side. To the Materialists, Frencli and English, of the Revolu- tion school, the Germans said that the great mystery of Being was insoluble by mechanical methods. Reduce Matter, they said, to its constituent atoms and you fail to seize the principle of life ; it evades you like a spirit. With the Germans — especially Hegel— Cosmology and Psychology grew naturally out of Ontology: Nature and Man were incarnations of the Absolute. Coleridge and Car- lyle, in their own peculiar ways, vigorously com- bated the Materialistic Philosophy with its denial of necessary truth, its repudiation of religion, and its substitution of Utilitarianism for a moral sense. What Carlyle and Coleridge did for the cultured class generally Sir William Hamilton did for the purely philosophic section. Though one part of his philosophy— the doctrine of the Relativity of Know- INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 33 ledge— has been used in the interests of Agnosticism, the general drift of his influence was anti-material- istic. How formidable a foe he was may be judged by the elaborate attempt of Mill to discredit Hamilton as an authority. The contrast between the two philosophies is well put by Mill in his essay on Coleridge. Mill says : ' The German-Coleridgian doctrine expresses the revolt of the human mind against the philosophy of the eighteenth century. It is ontological, because that was experimental ; conservative, because that was innovative ; religious, because that was abstract and metaphysical ; poeti- cal, because that was matter-of-fact and prosaic' Political circumstances were soon to lead to a re- vival of the Experiential as opposed to the Intui- tive school, the school of Hume, Diderot, and Mill, as opposed to Kant and his British interpreters. With the peace of 1815 the old despotism, under the name of the Holy Alliance, began to press heavily upon Europe. People forgot the evils of Anarchy under pressure of present despotism. Institutions which were looked upon as refuges from the Revolu- tionary storm were now used as prison-houses for the free spirit of man. A philosophy which tended to prop up existing institutions, to justify existing beliefs, and, when questioned, to fall back upon innate ideas, intuitions of the mind — such a philo- sophy became the natural target of thinkers of reforming proclivities. It was not without reason c 34 HERBERT SPENCER that the political Radicals of the early years of the century were bitter opponents of the Intuitive school. Mill senior, and Bentham, did much to pave the way for the revival of Empiricism, but the philo- sopher of the sect was Jolm Stuart Mill. In Mill's hands Empiricism lost its old fanaticism. So long as a thinker of materialistic tendencies never gets beyond the popular ideas of Matter he will have no difficulty in finding in experience a steadfast ground of certainty. But Mill was too well versed in psychology, was too acute a thinker, to find repose in the materialism of the old school. By sheer stress of logic, Mill was driven close to Hume's position by his definition of Matter as a permanent possibility of sensation, and Mind as a permanent ijossiljility of feeling. Willi such a hesi- tating and uncertain cosmological and psychological creed, it is easy to understand Mill's contention that in science there is no such thing as necessary truth; in ethics no such thing as moral intuition; and in politics no such thing as authoritative belief: over every department hangs a cloud of uncertainty. In his remarkably suggestive book on British philo- sophy, Professor Masson puts this characteristic of Mill's whole philosophy very well when he says : ' Mr. Mill's logic corresponds with what the science of logic could alone be consistently with his funda- mental psychological principle. It could not be like the old logic and Hamilton's logic, a science of the INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 35 necessary laws of thought, but only a science of the method of quest after experimental truth or probability. So in his fine essay on liberty the radical idea is that one can never be surer of any- thing, be it even the forty-seventh proposition of the first book of Euclid, than in proportion as the chances of contradiction are exhausted; and the high value set thus upon human freedom, and even upon eccentricity of thought and action, seems to be grounded on the conviction that the human race can never know what it may attain to in the shape either of knowledge or of power, until it has sent out a rush of the largest number of individual energies simultaneously, and with the least restraint from law or custom, in all directions. As for the essay on Utilitarianism, it is expressly a restatement of Paley's and Bentham's theory of expediency as the sole possible foundation of morals, but with a suggestion of this higher and more exquisite defini- tion of expediency characteristic of Mr. Mill, that it means the largest possible amount of pleasure, and the least possible amount of pain, not to you or me or this age or all mankind only, but to the sum-total of sentient existence. In short, if I am not mistaken, Mr. Mill's writings prove that if he thinks of any one particular mode of thought among his contemporaries as being more than any other chargeable with the total mass of obstruction, fallacy, and misery that yet rolls in the heart of 36 society, as being more than any other the False God or Baal or Moloch of the human mind — it is the theory of necessary beliefs.' In all this Mill was thoroughly consistent. Having failed to discover any inherent necessity in the Cosmos, he was unable to find any such necessity in the mind of man. Effective enough in its polemic against the reigning Intuitionalism as represented by Hamilton, Empiricism, even in the hands of an acute thinker like Mill, was incapable of returning satisfactory answers to the fundamental problems of Psychology. In regard to the root-question, that relating to the constitution and function of the mind. Mill remained virtually at the position of Locke. Witli Mill, as with Locke, the mind was a blank sheet of |)aper, upon which, by means of the law of association, experience was duly registered and transformed into coherent knowledge. In such a system there was no room for a priori ideas ; all was traceable to experience. 80 far good, but experience showed that in the mind certain beliefs impressed themselves with an intuitive force and an absoluteness which found no explanation in the experience of the individual. The axioms of geometry and of causality were not reached by the individual through a purely inductive process. How were these to be explained? Before Empiricism could give a rational answer to this question it had to come under the transforming influence of the INTELLECTUAL ENVIRONMENT 37 evolutionary idea. In Psychology as in Cosmology Spencer's contribution was so original as to trans- form the old Experiential system of Mill, and bring to an end the long-standing feud between the Intuitionalists and the Experientialists. That will be explained in all detail later. Meanwhile, it was necessary, in order to understand the revolu ion worked by Spencer in philosophy, to have a clear conception of the problems which came before him for solution. CHAPTER III EVOLUTION OF THE EVOLUTION THEORY It is a mistake to suppose that wlien he began his studies Spencer set himself consciously and deliberately to discover the unifying root of Nature's multiform manifestations. At first his mind was mainly directed to cpestions of a politico-social nature. In the early years of the century, political thinkers were greatly exercised about Government, its nature and limits. Brought up in a democratic circle, inheriting the traditions of Lil)eralism on the side of religious dissent and political Radicalism, it was natural that Spencer's early thoughts should run in a sociological direction. Ever in search of first principles, it was also natural that he should endeavour to seek the scientific basis of Govern- ment. As the earliest products of his thinking, his letters on The Proper Sphere of Government, pub- lished in the Nonconformist newspaper in 1842, and republished in pamphlet form in 1843, demand attention. In these letters we find emphatic insistence on the view that social phenomena con- 88 EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION THEORY 39 form to invariable laws : the ethical progress of man a& due to social discipline, the spontaneous nature of society, with a consequent discourage- ment of 5tate interference and control. Not satis- fied with his treatment of the subject, Mr. Spencer resolved to deal with it on a more comprehensive scale. la 1850 appeared Social Statics, the object of which was to base his practical views of the nature and scope of Government on a coherent set of first I rinciples. At a later stage of the present work, wien dealing with Sociology, an attempt will be made to show the nature of Spencer's con- tributions to political science as compared with the speculations of previous thinkers from Locke to Mill. Meanwhile, in tracing the evolution of Mr. Spencer's mind, it is necessary to point out that in Social Statics are to be found the germs of those pregnant speculations which were to lead to the far-reaching cosmical generalisation which, like a magnet, gathers to itself the scattered detached fragments of scientific thought. In Social Statics we find Mr. Spencer giving expression to his dissatisfaction with the prevailing school of political thought, with which he was, on the practical side, in close sympathy— namely, the Utilitarian school. He felt that on the philosophic side Utilitarianism, as defined by Bentliam and his followers, lacked theoretic stability. Spencer set himself to ask and answer the questions— What is 40 HERBERT SPENOER society ? and What are the relations between man the unit and society the mass ? I„ harmony with their fundamental principle, the Utilitarians founded their conception of society on Induction. Men they recognised, all made happiness the goal of their endeavour. Society is composed of .umbers of men m search of haj.piness ; consequently the highest type of society would be one in waich the greatest number of its members enjoyed the greatest amount of liapi)iness. Here, as in science and philosophy, the school of Ben ham and Mill displayed the • arbitrary, nature of heir fundamental principle. No atteiirpt' was iJicicle to demonstrate the iiere^snrv nnn,. .*• Kof,,,^^ • 1. . . "t-tcbsaiy connection oetween individual um] a/^/w..? i general hiws of I fp Mqh ,i.oo • , . sutical standpoint. Human nature was treated after the Btyle of the eighteenth century philo- sophers as a stable product. Human nature is everywhere the same, summed up the eighteenth cen ury point of view. The evils of society were Held to be due to bad governments. Let legisla- tion aim at the greatest happiness of the greatest Biimber, and all will go well. Now such a mode of reasoning did not commend itself to Spencer He argued that before an all-embracing social law can be legislatively formulated, we must first dis- cover what society is, and how man the unit stands related to society. We must not rest content with EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION THEORY 41 induction: we must discover the necessary bond between the unit and the mass. And when that is accomplished, we may be in a position to deduce the necessary laws of that relationship. Manifestly at the outset an answer had to be given to this question — Is society a natural or an artificial pro- duct? The rationalist thinkers of the eighteenth century favoured the view that society was an artificial product. Rousseau, with his famous theory of a state of nature, simply gave expression in exaggerated form to the idea generally entertained that society was largely the result of manufacture, of deliberate design, too often the outcome of base motives. Governments held an exaggerated importance in the minds, not only of the eighteenth century thinkers, but also of the school of Philosophic Radicals— the Mills and the Benthams. Even John Stuart Mill, in his book on Representative Govern- ment, shows traces of this view by his constant anxiety lest, in the absence of political checks and counterchecks, society should proceed along wrong lines. Society, until Spencer wrote his Social Statics, was viewed almost exclusively from the political side. Spencer changed the point of view from the political to the biological. It is a common objection to the Spencerian system of thought that it is simply a revival in modern times of the a priori methods of the Schoolmen — a kind of \ 42 HERBERT SPENOER < i / materialistic Hegelism in whicli facts are made to fit a preconceived tlieoretic framework. Nothing could be further from the truth. I confess myself to have held some such view. With many others I supposed that Spencer had started consciously with a vast cosmical theory, and had then explored the realm of science for illustrations and verifica- tions. In conversation Mr. Spencer assured me that such was not the case. He began with fact ; he stuck by the inductive process ; and it was only at a certain stage of his scientific exploration that the thought flashed across his mind that the law of biological and social evolution is a universal process, traceable in the cosmical changes and in the latest results of civilisation. But we do not need to rely upon conversation on this point. In one of his essays, Reasons for Dissenting from M. Comte, there is an interesting autobiographic statement. In reply to those who classed him erroneously as a follower of Oomte, Spencer says : ' And now let me point out that which really has exercised a profound influence over my course of thought. The truth which Harvey's embryological inquiries first dimly indicated, which was afterwards more clearly per- ceived by Wolff, and which was put into a definite ^shape by Von Baer — the truth that all organic development is a change from a state of homo- geneity to a state of heterogeneity— this it is from which very many of the conclusions which I now EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION THEORY 43 hold have iudircctly resulted, lu Social Statics there is everywhere mauifestcd a dominaut belief in the evolution of man and of soeiety. There is also iiiauifcsled the belief that this evolution is in both cases determined by the incidence of conditions —the actions of circumstances. And there is further, in the sections already referred to, a recognition of the fact that organic ami social evolution conform to the same law. Falling anud beliefs in evolutious of viirious orders, everywhere determined by natural causes (beliefs again disidayed in the Thconj of Poimlaiion and in the Principles of PsJ/c/io/or/./y), the formula of Von Baer set up a process of organi- sation. The extension of it to other kinds of phenomena than those of individual and social bodies is traceable through successive stages. It may be seeu in the last paragraph of an essay^ou The Fhilosophii of Stijle, published iu October 1852; again in an essay on Manners ami Fashion, pub- lished in Ai)ril 1851; and then in a comparatively advanced form in an essay on Froaress: Its Laiu (lud Cause, i)ul)lished in April 1857. Afterwards there came the recognition of the neetl for modifying Von Baer's formula by including the trait of iu- I creasing dellniteness; next, the inquiry into those . general laws of force from which this universal transformation necessarily results; next, the de- duction of these from the ultimate law of the persistence of force ; next, the perception that there ::-^!Ss;qse- 44 IIERBEUT SPKXCER I. ia every wiicrc a i>roco.ss of JJissolutiou conii»lcmcntiiry to that of Evolution; iiiid lliuilly, the dctcnninatiou of the conditions under whieh Evolution and Dis- solution occur, ^riic Hliation of tlicsc results is, I think, tolerably manifest. 'J'lic process has heeu one of continuous development set up by the addition of Von Baer\s law to a number of others that were in harmony willi it/ In Applcton's Popitlay Scii'iicc Monthlij for Feb- ruary 1897, there aiipeared an article on Mr. Spencer, by Professor Hudson of California, in which the evolution of Mr. Spencer's mind is minutely traced, by the aid of an iiiiportant letter on the subject from Mr. Spencer himself. Professor Hudson says: 1 am foruinate in having before me as I write a letter in whieh he was kind enough to outline for me the imj.ortant stages in liis progress toward the great doctrines of tlie synthetic pliilosophy. If, in following Lis account and in occasionally reproducing, as I shall \ enture to do, his own words, I am force'll to touch ogain upon points already brought out, this will scarcely be deemed ground for regret, since the slight rei.etition involved will serve per- haps to throw the whole subject into clearer relief. The simple nucleus of his philosophic system first made its a!)pearance in Soeitd Sialics, where, in the chapter entitled ** General Considerations," mention is made of the biological truth that low types of animals are composed of many like parts not mutu- EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION THEORY 45 :/ ally dependent, while higher animals are composed of parts that are unlike and are mutually dependent This, he writes, "was an induction which I had reached in the course of biological studies — mainly, I fancy, while attending Professor Oweifs lectures on the Vertebrate Skeleton." With this was joined the statement that the same is true of societies, "which begin with many like parts not mutually dependent, and end with many like parts that are mutually dependent." This also was an induction. ' " And then in the joining of these came the induction that the individual organism and the social organism followed this law." Thus the radical conception of the entire system took shape before Mr. Spencer had become acquainted with Von J3aer*s law, which, as we have seen, did not occur till two years later. This law, though applying to the unfolding of the individual only, had none the less its use. In fur- nishing the expression '* from homogeneity to lietero- j geneity," it i)rcsented a more convenient intellectual • implement. " By its luevity and its applicability to all orders of phenomena, it served for thinking much better than the preceding generalisation, which contained the same essential thought." The essays which ftillowcd Social Sialics were marked hy the eslal»lishni('iit of various Hcparate inductions in which oilier groups of i)lienomena were brought under tliis large princii»le, while in the first edition of the rsycholocjif, not oidy was the same principle '46 shown to comprehend mental phenomena, but there was also recognised the primary law of evolution — integration and increase of definiteness. What followed may best be given in Mr. Spencer's own words : " Then it was that there suddenly arose in me the conception that the law which I had separately recognised in various groups of phenomena was a universal law applying to the whole Cosmos : the many small inductions were merged in the large inductions. And only after this largest induction had been formed did there arise the question — Why? Only then did I see that the universal cause for the universal transformations was the multiplication of effects, and that they might be deduced from the law of the multiplication of effects. The same thing happened at later stages. The generalisation which immediately preceded the publication of the essay on Profjress: Its Laiv ami Cause — the instability of the homogeneous — was also an induction. So was the direction of motion and the rhythm of motion. Then having arrived at these derivative causes of the universal transformation, it presently dawned upon me (in consequence of the recent promulgation of the doctrine of the conservation of force) that all ' these derivative causes were sequences from that universal cause. The question had, I believe, arisen, Why these several derivative laws? and that came as the answer. Only then did there arise the idea of developing the whole of the universal transforma- EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION THEORY 47 tion from the persistence of force. So you see the process began by being inductive and ended by being deductive ; and this is the peculiarity of the method followed. On the one hand, I was never content with any truth remaining in the inductive form. On the other hand, I was never content with allowing a deductive interpretation to go unverified by reference to the facts." ' The cautious method of induction employed is evident from this extract, and is a suflacient answer to those who twit Mr. Spencer with dealing purely in hypotheses. Mr. Spencer's great originality will be found to consist in the unique manner in which he has combined the two processes, inductive and deductive. He has taken away the reproach of empiricism from scien- tific thought, and the reproach of vague theorising from philosophic thought. Thus slowly and uncon- sciously was Mr. Spencer drawn on to the path of his great discovery. His studies in biological and social science, as has been shown, led him to formu- late a law of change and progress, which he suddenly discovered to be the law of all change and progress. Notwithstanding Mr. Spencer's protests against ^ being classed as a Oomtist, the impression still largely prevails that in aim and method Spencerism and Positivism are fundamentally alike. That they are fundamentally different will be evident from comparison of the two systems. With Spencer the task of philosophy was to search for the unifying 48 HERBERT SPENCER EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION THEORY 49 I root of the Cosmos. The task of the scientist is to discover the widest generalisations in particular divisions of tiic Cosmos. He formulates the laws of mechanics, of chemistry, of biology, psychology, and sociology. Is it possible to go beyond these generalisations? Is it possible still further to combine the generalisations of science under one supreme generalisation, without abandoning the methods of induction and deduction ? Are the great divisions of phenomena arbitrary divisions, the result of the principle of the division of labour? Or is it possible to proceed still further, and sliow that the various sciences represent separate yet closely related stages in the development of the Cosmos — stages which are not arbitrary departments devised by man for intellectual convenience, but parts of one all-embracing process? In other words, is the Cosmos from star to soul pervaded by one law, or must w^e be content with the view that a rigorous analysis brings us down to a number of Permanent Causes or Laws which cannot be re- duced to an ultimate unity ? Comte held distinctly by the view that all attempts to reduce phenomena to a single law were chimerical. Such attempts he declared to be as futile as the old theological theorisings about a First Cause. Man's business, according to Comte, 'is to analyse accurately the circumstances of phenomena, and to connect them by the natural relations of succession and resem- blance.' Failing to distinguish between final and efficient Causes, Comte unwittingly put an arbitrary limit to human inquiry. Content with noting the order of phenomena, he denied with scorn the right of the intellect to seek for the cosmical causes of phenomena. In harmony with his view Comte treated with contempt the cell doctrine, which, even while he was writing, was revolutionising physiological science ; he tabooed all inquiries into the origin of the human race, he was hostile to all hypothesis about the nature of heat, light, electri- city. Because Theology in its search for origins had taken the wrong road, he would prohibit the search altogether, forgetful of the fact that knowledge which limits itself to the mere noting of co- existences and resemblances among phenomena remains at the empirical stage. On the other hand, the Spencerian philosophy rests upon the possibility of framing, in relation to the Cosmos as a whole, a generalisation which shall be verifiable in detail. According to Spencer, the duty of Philosophy is, taking its stand upon the widest truths formulated by Science, to form a generalisation which shall link all phenomena into one organic whole. Comte denied the possibility of any such universal Syn- thesis. He included in one sweeping condemnation philosophies of the Cosmos as well as theologies of the Cosmos. Manifestly Spencerism and Comtism cannot be in fundamental agreement when Comte \l 50 HERBERT SPENCER ( passionately denoimces precisely the speculative methods and results which have constituted the life-work of Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer was not indebted for his fundamental ideas to Comte, for the simple reason that not only had Comte no fundamental ideas about the Cosmos, l)ut he de- nounced as metaphysicians or theologians; iii disguise all who ventured to foriiiulatc sueli iileas. In short, Spencer could not be indebted to Comte for his philosophy of the Cosmos, because Comte had no philosophy of the Cosmos : he put it forward as his chief title to fame that he luid none. But, it will be said, Comte claimed to be the author of the Positivist Philosophy. It will not do, in order to establish the originality of Mr. Spencer' to assert that Comte was no i)iiilosoi)her, in face of the fact that it is as a philosopher that he is known to history. Within certain definitely prescribed limits Comte was a iihilosopher, and deserves credit for producing uew and fruitful conceptions of great value ; but tlieir value is historical and sociological, not cosraical. Banishing the idea of efficient cause, Comte quite logically was brought to a full stop at his six sciences. Beyond these he could not go. Here induction had completed its work, and all that an empirical philosophy could do was to show the historic relation between the sciences, and organise them in a social direction. This constituted Comte's originality. Having dis- EVOLUTION OF EVOLUTION THEORY 51 missed as futile all inquiries into causes which lay beyond the methods of the museum and the laboratory, having relegated ultimate laws to the re-ion of the Unknown, Comte was compelled to organise his philosophy round Humanity instead of the Cosmos. All speculations which had no direct relation to human well-being were placed by him in the same category as theology. Such a contracted view of man's intellectual capabilities gradually transformed his philosophy into a religion in which intelligence was discouraged and authority elevated to the front rank as a factor in human progress. Conclusive evidence has been adduced to show that Mr. Spencer's conception of philo- sophy is fundamentally different from that of Comte. Spencer's view of causation, with his insistence upon the necessary co-relations of pheno- mena as distinguished from customary association, marks off his system completely from the Em- piricism of Hume, Mill, and Comte, while his sociological like his cosmical conceptions have nothing in common with the Positivist system; in fact, the two systems agree only in their acceptance of those ideas which are held by all scientific thinkers, as opposed to theological con- ceptions of Man and the Universe. Meanwhile, before proceeding to study Mr. Spencer the philosopher, a few pages may fitly be devoted to Mr. Spencer the man. \ \ PERSONAL OHARAOTBRISTIOS 53 CHAPTER IV PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS The ten years from 1850, when he published his first book, Social Statics, till 1860, when he issued the prospectus of his Synthetic Philosopluj, were fruitful to Mr. Si)encer both socially and intellectu- ally. Although his writings were not popular, they brought him into notice in circles where high think- ing was sure to be appreciated. The intervals of leisure enjoyed while on the staff of the Economist Mr. Spencer utilised in contributing to the leading reviews, notably the Westminster, which at that time had as sub-editor Mary Ann Evans, destined later to take the world by storm as George Eliot. In the Life of George Eliot are to be found a number of interesting references to the rising philosopher. In a letter to Mr. Bray about the end of September 1851, George Eliot writes : ' On Friday we had Foxton, Wilson, and some other nice people, among others a Mr. Herbert Spencer, who has just brought out a large work on Social Statics, which Lewe« pronounces the best book he has seen on the subject.' In another letter to the Brays a year after she says : ' I went to the opera on Saturday, at Covent Garden, with my " excellent friend Herbert Spencer," as Lewes calls him. We have agreed that there is no reason why we should not have as much of each other's society as we like. He is a good, delightful creature, and I always feel better for being with him.' Writing to Miss Sara Hennell, she expresses herself thus: 'My brightest spot, next to my love of old friends, is \ the deliciously calm netv friendship that Herbert Spencer gives me. We see each other every day, and have a delightful camaraderie in everything. But for him my life would be desolate enough.' Again: 'Herbert Spencer dined with us to-day — looks well, and is brimful of clever talk as usual. His volume of Essays is to come out soon. He is just now on a crusade against the notion of Species.' But perhaps the most interesting reference is to be found in the extract from the diary of George Henry Lewes, under date January 28, 1859 : ' Walked along the Thames towards Kew to meet Herbert Spencer, who was to spend the day with us, and we chatted with him on matters personal and philosophical. I owe him a debt of gratitude. My acquaintance with him was the brightest ray in a very dreary, wasted period of my life. I had given up all ambition whatever, lived from hand to mouth, and thought the evil of each day sufficient. The stimulus of / 54 HERBERT SPENCER PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 55 II his intellect, especially during our long walks, roused my energy once more, and revived my dormant love of science. His intense theorising tendency was contagious, and it was only the stimulus of a theory which could then have induced me to work. I owe Spencer another and deeper debt. It was through him that I learned to know Marian-to know her was to love her-aud since then my life has been a new birth. To her I owe all my prosj.eiity and all my happiness. God bless her.' In regard to the concluding rema-ks, rumour has it that Lewes supplanted Spencer in the affections of George Eliot. This is not the case. Mr. Spencer's relations with George Eliot from first to last rested on the basis of friendshij) pure and simple. The reference by Lewes to Mr. Spencer's theoris- ing tendency needs to be supplemented by reference to his passion for facts. He is efjually removed from the hodmen of science who are content to throw down before their readers a confused mass of facts, and the fantastic theorists who weave cosmic speculations out of their inner consciousness. It is said of Cuvier that from the examination of a bone he could in his mind construct the entire animal. To Spencer a fact is valuable in so far as it enables him to place it in organic relation with other facts in an interpretative scheme of thought. He possesses an instinctive insight into the value of facts The combination in his mind of philosophic and scientific qualities, strange as it may seem, has somewhat retarded his fame. The philosopher who soars into cloudland blames Mr. Spencer for his utilitarian habits of thought, his constant reference to reality, and his resolute refusal to take imaginative flights. The men of science, on the other hand, are quite willing to admit his philosophic powers, but they are jealous of a thinker who has assimilated the results of science without having gone through the usual apprenticeship in the museum and the laboratory. Rather than frankly admit that in Mr. Spencer's mind the philosophical and scientific tendencies are uniquely blended, his opponents pursue a policy of detraction, with the hope of discrediting his influ- ence as a speculative thinker and as a master of scientific method. Reference has already been made to Mr. Spencer's great expository power. In regard to this Dr. Hooker once remarked, ' He talks like a book.' It is not to be supposed, however, that there is any- thing like pedantry in his conversation. He is as far as possible removed from the conventional conception of a philosopher, who is supposed to be so wedded to abstract meditation as to be in social life the embodiment of dreary dulness. There is nothing of the dry-as-dust about Mr. Spencer. I remember how agreeably surprised I was with my first meeting with the great man. I had expected to meet a grave and somewhat awe-inspiring philosopher, whose mind 56 HERBERT SPENCER was so absorbed in study of the Cosmos as to make him impatient of the trivialities of ordinary mortals. Instead, I found myself in presence of a bright, vivacious personality, a man of generous impulses, very much at home among the actualities of life, and withal brimful of humour. There is no assump- tion of superiority in Mr. Spencer's conversation. It is racy, pointed, vigorous. His criticisms of contemporary writers arc calm, suggestive, and penetrative; and, great as is his fame, he never poses as an oracle, or, in Carlylean style, assumes pontifical airs. How far he is removed from every- thing like this is well illustrated by an incident which occurred at a London dinner-party. The hostess had invited a friend specially to meet Mr. Spencer. The guest found himself seated beside an elderly gentleman, to whom he addressed the usual commonplaces. During the evening he was aston- ished to hear the elderly gentleman addressed across the table as Mr. Spencer. In surprise he turned to liim and exclaimed, 'Are you really Mr. Herbert Spencer?' Mr. Spencer, smiling blandly, and no doubt with a merry twinkle in his eye, quietly replied that lie was. Until considerations of health forbade him, Mr. Spencer delighted in the social side of life. Daily he used to visit the Athenaeum Club, not to study, but to enjoy a game of billiards, of which he was passionately fond. There he would be found with his coat off, as intent upon scoring a i\ PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 57 victory against his opponent as he is in wrestling with a controversialist in the philosophic arena. But after all, the interest in Mr. Spencer's life is of an intellectual kind. As Emerson says : ' Great geniuses have the shortest biographies. They live in their writings.' Specially does this hold of Mr. Spencer, whose seclusion, apart from indifferent health, was necessitated by the formidable philo- sophic scheme which he had mapped out for him- self. In 1860, when forty years of age, he published the prospectus of a colossal scheme, namely, a new theory of the Cosmos, from its earliest nebular manifestations to its highest development in man and civilisation— a scheme bold in theoretic conception, and, considering Mr. Spencer's state of health, seemingly Quixotic in practical design. From this time onward the history of his life is mainly the history of a series of heroic en- deavours, culminating in heroic achievement. How heroic were these endeavours will be made clear when the whole circumstances are fully considered. In addition to indifferent health— the result of a nervous breakdown consequent on over-work — Mr. Spencer had to face the fact that he had dedicated his life to an ideal in the realisation of which both adequate remuneration and fame must ! at best have been remote results. In an age when the main springs of human activity are largely con- ventional, when great deeds are done from desire 58 HERBERT SPENCER of immediate tangible reward, Mr. Spencer set the bright example of a career wholly devoted to universal ends, imblemished by that infirmity of noble minds— thirst for popular applause. With a determination positively heroic, an energy positively superhuman, the quiet, self-centred thinker set himself to wrestle with the great mysteries of Existence, undeterred by the chilly dreariness of the study, and untempted by the glittering allurements of the market-place. In his evidence given before the Copyright Commission, Mr. Spencer affords the reader a glimpse of the hard, stiflf, lonely battle that had to be fought, uncheered by sympathy, and un- relieved by public approval. The autobiographic portion of his evidence runs as follows : ' I published my first work. Social StaticSj at the end of 1850. Being a philosophical work, it was not possible to obtain a publisher who would undertake any responsibility, and I published it at my own cost. The edition consisted of 750 copies, and took fourteen years to sell. In 1855 I published the Prineiples of Psijcliology, There were 750 copies. I gave away a considerable number of copies, and the remainder— I suppose about 650— sold in twelve and a half years. I afterwards, in 1857, published a series of Essays, and, warned by previous results, I printed only 500 copies. That took ten and a half years to sell. Towards 1860 I began to publish a System of Philosophy. I decided upon the plan of PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 59 issuing to subscribers in quarterly parts, and to the public in volumes when completed. Before the initial volume, First Principles, was published, I found myself still losing. During the issue of the second volume, Principles of Biology, 1 was still losing. In the middle of the third volume I was still losing so much that I found I was frittering away all that I possessed. I found that in the course of fifteen years I had lost nearly £1200— adding interest, more than £1200,— and as I was evidently going on ruining myself, I issued to the subscribers a notice of cessation. . . . After the issue of the notice, property came to me in time to prevent the cessation. My losses did not continue very long after that. The tide turned, and my books began to pay. They were repaid in 1874— that is to say, in twenty-four years after I began I retrieved my position.' In addition he spent nearly £3000 in Sociological Tables. That is to say, in the cause of truth Mr. Spencer for twenty - four years worked without fee or reward. His solitary intellectual labours were utterly ignored by the public, and in spite of that he laboriously and heroically toiled up the steep ascent of philosophy. In all this there is a grandeur quite Miltonic. In the midst of the general neglect Mr. Spencer had the sympathy of a number of philosophic thinkers, who knew his real worth. A number of American admirers, hearing of his deter- Ill' I 1 60 HERBERT SPENCER mination to stop the series, forwarded to Mr Spencer throiigh Mr. Yoiimans, his devoted adherent and friend, a purse of money and a gold watch. The money, with characteristic high-mindedness, he accepted as a public trust for public ends. John Stuart Mill, I am informed, also stepped into the breach. He recognised in Mr. Spencer a new thinker of unique calibre, and with magnanimity far removed from jjersonal rivalry, he offered Mr. Spencer a large sum to enable liim to carry out his great undertaking. Mr. Si)encer declined the offer, while fully appreciating the spirit in which it was made. The financial difficulty solved, Mr. Spencer had another difficulty to face, whicli proved to be a life- long one™-namely, chronic ill-health. In spite of all obstacles he has the satisfaction of knowing that the work mapped out forty years ago has been accomplished. In dignified strain he thus records his impressions in the concluding volume of his great undertaking: 'On looking back on the six- and- thirty years which have passed since the Synthetic Philosophtj was commenced, I am sur- prised at mj audacity in undertaking it, and still more surprised at its completion. In 1860 my small resources had been nearly all frittered away in writing and publishing books which did not repay their expenses ; and I was suffering under a chronic disorder, caused by over-tax of the brain, which, f PERSONAL OHARAOTERISTIOS 61 wholly disabling me for eighteen months, thereafter limited my work to three hours a day, and usually to less. How insane my project must have seemed to onlookers may be judged from the fact that before the first chapter of the first volume was finished, one of my nervous breakdowns obliged me to desist. But imprudent courses do not always fail. Sometimes a forlorn hope is justified by the event. Though, along with other deterrents, many relapses, now lasting for weeks, now for months, and once for years, often made me despair of reaching the end, yet at length the end is reached. Doubtless in earlier days some exultation would have resulted, but as age creeps on feelings weaken, and now my chief pleasure is my emancipation. Still there is satisfaction in the consciousness that losses, discouragements, and shattered health have not prevented me from fulfilling the purpose of my life.' Though Mr. Spencer had finished his life-task, though in the process age had crept upon him and his physical energies had become weaker, yet were his philosophic powers unimpaired, his mental vision undimmed, and his intellectual strength unabated. Finding London life distracting, he retired to Brighton, where, in comparative solitude, he was enabled, as far as considerations of health would admit, to round off his great work by bringing it abreast of modern thought. His First Principles^ \ HERBERT SPENOER containing tlie groundwork of the system, needed little or no attention ; but in Biology great strides had been made since his Principles were published, and Mr. Spencer set himself to publish a new and revised edition. The Principles of Psijeholocjy, too, stood in need of revision. The book had borne the brunt of recent attacks from the new Hegelian school which had sprung up in Oxford and Glasgow. These attacks had to be met, and in this and kindred tasks Mr. Spencer found his leisure at Brighton amply occupied. Along with the feeling of satisfaction at the completion of his task was the feeling of gratification at the steady advance of his fame and influence. In America, where Mr. Spencer first received recognition, his influence has been deep and far-reaching. Even to a greater extent than in England his works have moulded the religious and philosophic thought of tlie New World. On the Continent his books have been translated by enthusiastic disciples, and among Oriental thinkers, in India and Japan, the bold and massive generalisations of the Spencerian philosophy have found a congenial home. Following in the footsteps of philosophic fame have come offers of worldly honour, which Mr. Spencer has steadily refused. To a thinker whose triumphs have been won, not in the stifling atmosphere of personal ambitions, but in the ample region of pure intel- lectual discovery, the conventional honours of the PERSONAL OHARAOTERISTIOS 63 world seem pale and shadowy. So far as con- ventional distinctions are concerned, Mr. Spencer prefers to end life as he began— a devoted, austere worshipper of truth, removed alike from the distrac- tions of the market-place and the allurements of social distinction. \ THE COSMOS UNVEILED 65 CHAPTER V THE COSMOS UNVEILED A COMMON Charge against Mr. Spencer is that he is a Materialist. Again and again he has repudiated the term, but explanation and denial do little to stem the current of misrepresentation. The root error made by those who accuse the Spencerian philosophy of being materialistic is due to failure to distinguish between a comprehensive generalisa- tion of the Universe resting upon the data of science, and a philosophic interpretation of that generalisation. Now, there are two ways in which the Universe may be viewed, as natural and super- natural, mechanical, or rather dynamical, and spiritual. The supernatural or spiritual view has been condemned by history as sterile in the region of fact, and fantastic, not to say superstitious, in the region of interpretation. Progress in the ac- quiring of exact knowledge dates from the time when the mechanical view of the world was substi- tuted for the spiritual. When Newton substituted his conception of gravitation for the angelic theory 01 \ of planetary movements, he introduced into the study of the world a mechanical element verifiable in terms of force. Did this constitute Newton a Materialist? When Darwin substituted for the spiritual theory of special creations the dynamical conception of a struggle between organisms for a definite amount of life-sustaining forces, was he necessarily a Materialist ? Now, what Spencer has done is simply to fuse the separate generalisations of science into one all-embracing generalisation. His ^ life-work has been to trace the evolutionary process from star to soul, always, observe, scientifically in- terpretable in terms of force. Every man of science must be a Materialist when dealing with tangible modes of existence and their verifiable laws. The charge of Materialism would be valid if Mr. Spencer contended that for the ultimate explanation of the Universe all that was needed was the mechanical forces with which men of science deal. Now, Mr. Spencer repudiates as earnestly as his de- \ tractors the view that force — which on the mechanical side is the final word of the scientific conception of the world — is the final word of the philosophic conception. To the philosophical scien- f tist force is l)ut a symbol: in his view atoms and energies have only a relative value. Indeed, so impressed is Mr. Spencer with the inadequacy of the Materialist theory that in his First Principles and his Pstjcliologij, he says that it is more rational ;i THE COSMOS UNVEILED 67 00 HERBERT SPENCER to conceive the ultimate principle of Existence in terms of Mind than Matter. But wliat the actual Eaturc of the one ruaiity is Mr. Spencer docs not undertake to say. Once for all let it be understood that Spenecrism stands on its own merits as the philosoijliy of tJie Kuuwable, and as tlie only organ- ised body of thought which has its roots in ex- perience and is a guide to tlie understanding of life, both tiieoretically and [iractically. Those who choose to identify Spencerism with Materialism are simi)ly blinding themselves witli a dust-cloud of their own raising. It tends greatly to clear the ground for the com- prehension of the Spencerian pliilosophy if we re- member that it cuts itself off entirely from the old meta|)hysical attempts to solve the absolute mystery of existence. In his First Principles Spencer adopts and improves the Hamiltonian de- monstration of the relativity of knowledge, holding that, from tlie constitution of the human mind, knowledge of noumena is impossible. From this it follows that Spencer restricts pliilosophy to the unilicatiou of Knowledge, the reduction of pheno- mena to one ultimate law. If the Universe is not a chaos the laws which underlie phenomena must be related, and when traced back must merge into one another as the branches of a tree merge in the trunk and the trunk in the root. Mr. Spencer's task was to find the root-principle of phenomenal 1^ existence. Some one has said that to 'a thinker capable of comprehending it from a single point of view, the Universe would present but a single fact, but one all-comprehensive truth.' Everything depends upon the point of view. From the point of view of the supernaturalist the Universe need not necessarily seem a single fact, one all-com- prehensive truth. The unifying principle may well be not in the Universe, but in the mind of the Creator. So far indeed from the Universe testifying to its own unity, or being the manifestation of one all-comprehensive truth, supernaturalists have always postulated the necessity of a revelation as interpreter of the Universe. Then again, if we take a mechanical view of the Universe, we do not readily arrive at the idea of unity. Between the various parts of a machine there may be no necessary, inevitable connection. For unity we must go to the mind of the constructor of the machine. So long as the purely mechanical con- ception of the Universe obtained sway over the minds of philosophers there was no getting beyond Positivism, with its theory that nothing can be known beyond co-existences and sequences. Mill's intellectual helplessness before the problem, his belief that there was no inherent necessity at the heart of things — instance his declaration that in other worlds two and two might make five,— had their origin in the unconscious hold which the old ' . * . } « 60 HERBERT SPENCER to conceive the ultimate principle of Existence in terms of Mind than Matter. But what tiie actual nature of the one reality is Mr. Spencer does not undertake to say. Once for all let it be understood tliat Spencerism stands on its own merits as the philosophy of tlie Knowable, and as the only organ- ised body of thought which has its roots in ex- perience and is a guide to the understanding of life, botli tlieoretically and practically. Those who choose to identify Spencerism with Materialism are simply blinding themselves with a dust-cloud of their own raising. It tends greatly to clear the ground for the com- prehension of the Spencerian philosophy if we re- member that it cuts itself off entirely from the old metaphysical attempts to solve the absolute mystery of existence. In his First Principles Spencer adopts and improves the Hamiltonian de- monstration of the relativity of knowledge, holding that, from the constitution of the human mind, knowledge of noumena is impossible. From this it follows that Speucer restricts philosophy to the unilication of Knowledge, the reduction of pheno- mena to one ultimate law. If the Universe is not a chaos the laws which underlie phenomena must be related, and when traced back must merge into one another as the branches of a tree merge in the trunk and the trunk in the root. Mr. Spencer's task was to find the root-principle of phenomenal THE COSMOS UNVEILED 67 existence. Some one has said that to *a thinker capable of comprehending it from a single point of view, the Universe would present but a single fact, but one all-comprehensive truth.' Everything depends upon the point of view. From the point of view of the supernaturalist the Universe need not necessarily seem a single fact, one all-com- prehensive truth. The unifying principle may well be not in the Universe, but in the mind of the Creator. So far indeed from the Universe testifying to its own unity, or being the manifestation of one all-comprehensive truth, supernaturalists have always postulated the necessity of a revelation as interpreter of the Universe. Then again, if we take a mechanical view of the Universe, we do not readily arrive at the idea of unity. Between the various parts of a machine there may be no necessary, inevitable connection. For unity we must go to the mind of the constructor of the machine. So long as the purely mechanical con- ception of the Universe obtained sway over the minds of philosophers there was no getting beyond Positivism, with its theory that nothing can be known beyond co-existences and sequences. Mill's intellectual helplessness before the problem, his belief that there was no inherent necessity at the heart of things— instance his declaration that in other worlds two and two might make five,— had their origin in the unconscious hold which the old 68 THE COSMOS UNVEILED 69 mechanical conception of the Universe had upon his mind. The demonstration of the essential and necessary unity of the Cosmos was only made possible when the dynamical was substituted for the mechanical point of view. The dynamical point of view in- volved the idea of growth, as against manufacture. When the Universe began to be viewed as a dynamic process rather than as a manufactured product, the way was opened for treating phenomena as some- thing more than co-existences and sequences — as necessary links in a great cosmical chain. Mani- festly we must get a clear grasp of the dynamic conception of the Universe before we can under- stand the law of its evolution. Meanwhile from a purely scientific standpoint all that is necessary is recognition of the fact tliat the two great generalisations known as the Nebular theory and the Conservation of Force have made the dynamic theory of Matter the necessary basis of a study of tlie Cosmos. The scientific philosopher who deals with phenomena with a view to their unification must necessarily start with Existence when it comes before liim in concrete, material fashion. Now, in tracing the Universe, science can get no further back than the nebula, or world-stuff. According to the nebular theory the matter which composes the solar system once existed in a diffused state. The problem is to discover the laws by \ which from a diffused nebulous state, Matter has increased in concentration and complexity so as to result in the world we now see. Along with the Nebular theory goes the doctrine of the Conserva- tion of Force, which, interpreted, means that the Matter of the Universe is a fixed quantity, and is capable of endless transformations. Viewed thus, the Universe is one fact, the result of one great cosmic process ^namely, the Redistribution of Matter and Motion. When Spencer came upon the scene, he found the path of discovery cleared by the three great generalisations-^the universal law o Gravitation, the Nebular theory, and the doctrine of the Conservation or Persistence of Force. These three isolated generalisations Spencer fused into one by his theory of Evolution. Newton formulated the law of Gravitation, Kant and Laplace used it to explain the origin of stellar and planetary systems and Spencer, combining this with the doctrine of the Persistence of Force, was led to discover the law of the entire cosmical process from star to ^oul. As has been well said, ' the idea embraced in the word Evolution as employed by Spencer is by far the nearest approach ever yet made to the conception of an absolutely universal and cosmical ^^The problem before Mr. Spencer was this: Given a Universe composed of a fixed quantity of Matter and Motion, conceived in harmony with the 70 HERBERT SPENCER Newtonian law of Gravitation as manifesting co- existent forces of attraction and repulsion, to trace the process by which the Cosmos evolved from its nebulous to its present stale. Spencer's starting- point is the Persistence of Force, on the ground that, reduced to its ultimate analysis, our concep- tion of Matter rests upon ' forces standing in certain correlations/ When we say that Force is per- sistent, we are simply declaring that the Force in the Universe is constant — is never increased or diminished. This belief rests upon something deeper than a scientific induction : it is a psycho- logical necessity. If Force came into existence and went out of existence, the Universe would be, not a Cosmos, but a Chaos. If Force was liable to sudden creation and annihilation, reasoning w^ould f be impossible, because reasoning is simply the classi- fication of the relations among Forces. Scientific induction as well as abstract reasoning could not exist unless the forces of Nature persisted— that is, continued to exist. The great universal fact of the Redistribution of Matter and Motion is no arbitrary fact, but follows naturally from the Persistence of Force. It needs little reflection to see that, if Force is persistent, the relatiolis among forces must also persist : the one is a corollary of the other. In the one as in the other, scientific induction and psychological necessity are in entire harmony. When we say that the relations among forces per- | i i n Iilllll lfl l'l l ' THE COSMOS UNVEILED 71 sist, we are simply postulating the law of Nature's uniformity, which is the essential basis of all scientific procedure. As Mill puts it, the uniformity of the laws of Nature is the major premise of all inductions. This belief has a deeper root than is indicated in the old Experiential and Positive philo- sophies. Hume, Mill, and Comte traced our con- ception of Nature's uniformity to Experience. Hume got no further than custom, and Mill never could reach anything better in the way of certainty. Comte's whole philosophy, resting as it does on the idea of recording co-existence« and sequences, entirely ignored the element of necessity in our conception of Nature's uniformity. According to Spencer, the belief in the uniformity of Nature is something more than the outcome of experience: it is a necessity of thought, which unconsciously we bring with us to the interpreting of experience, and without which experience itself could not be under- stood so as to be made the foundation of scientific certainty. Moreover, the Spencerian conception of Force and its relations throws a flood of light upon the idea of Cause and its teleological implication. Reduced to its ultimate analysis, ' our belief in the necessity and universality of causation is the belief that every manifestation of force must be preceded and succeeded by some equivalent manifestation.' That is to say, between cause and effect a natural and necessary relation exists. How far-reaching is / 72 HERBERT SPENCER the law of the persistence of relations among forces may be gathered from a remark made by Stallo in his suggestive book, Concepts of Modern Phijsics, where, without reference to Mr. Spencer at all, he says : ' The real existence of things is co-extensive with their qualitative and quantitative determina- tions. And both are in their nature relations, quality resulting from mutual action, and quantity being simply a ratio between terms neither of which is absolute. ... It may be observed in this connec- tion that not only the law of causality, the conserva- tion of energy, and the indestructibility of matter so called, have their root in the relativity of all objective reality — being indeed simply different aspects of this relativity,— but that Newton's first and third laws of motion, as well as all laws of least action in mechanics (including Gauss's laws of movement under least constraint), are but corol- laries from the same principle. And the fact that everything is, in its manifest existence, but a group of relations and reactions, at once ac- counts for Nature's inherent teleology.' From this point of view, the laws of Nature are not exter- nally imposed upon Matter, but are necessarily evolved along with the evolution of phenomena — are, in fact, from the scientific standpoint, generalised descriptions of Nature's actions and reactions. Another corollary that flows from the Persistence prn- ■ - - T niiiaiiiiBBiiiiiii BiiiiiifTT" THE COSMOS UNVEILED 73 of Force is the transformation and equivalence of ^ forces. If the force in the Universe is a definite fixed quantity, it is evident that forces do not cease to exist when they elude the senses. Changed in form, force must reappear. This corollary from the Persistence of Force has had abundant illustration by science. Thanks to the labours of Meyer, Joule, Grove, and Helmholtz, science is now able to formulate, as a fundamental law of Nature, the transformation and equivalence of forces. Helm- holtz has described the process with such lucidity that his words may fitly be quoted: 'If a certain quantity of mechanical work is lost, there is obtained, as experiments made with the object of determining the point show, an equivalent quantity of heat, or instead of this, of chemical force ; and conversely, when heat is lost, we gain an equivalent quantity of chemical or mechanical force; and again, when chemical force disappears, an equivalent of heat or work ; so that in all these interchanges between various inorganic natural forces, working force may indeed disappear in one form, but then it reappears in exactly equivalent quantity in some other form: it is thus neither increased nor diminished, but remains in exactly the same quantity.' The attempt to extend the law of the transformation and equivalence of forces to organic processes met with stubborn resistance. It was feared that the reduction of the organic processes, 74 HERBERT SPENCER with the mysteries of life and growth, to the play of mechanical forces would lead straight to Materialism; consequently for a time an entity called vital forcx^ was involved in order to combat the coming danger. In his First Principles, Spencer in his usual lucid and convincing manner shows tliat through all Nature's i)rocesses, organic and super-organic us well as inorganic, the law of the transformation and equivalence of forces holds good. Two other corollaries from the Persistence of Force refer to the direction of Motion and the rhythm of Motion. Motion, as Spencer shows by numerous and striking illustrations drawn from all pirts of Nature, always follows the line of least resistance. Whether he is dealing with the move- ments of the planets, the forces which go to explain the condensation and evaporation of clouds, the nutritive and mechanical processes of organic nature, or the economic forces of society, Spencer is able to verify the great all-comprehensive truth that Motion follows the line of least resistance. It is the same with the truth that Motion is rhythmi- cal. Mr. Spencer's treatment of this section is specially profound. It is difficult to know which to admire most— the clearness of his analysis of the complex phenomena witli wliich he deals, or the brilliancy of his power of generalisation. So impressed have some of his contemporaries been THE COSMOS UNVEILED 75 with the marvellous power exhibited in this section that one of them, a writer of great repute, has declared that Mr. Spencer's treatment of the rhythm of Motion 'oilers one of the most brilliant examples of strict philosophic thinking which the world has yet produced.' Like the other corollaries, direction of Motion and the rhythm of Motion are shown to be necessary deductions from the Per- sistence of Force. In regard to the former Mr. Spencer says: 'When we seek a warrant for the assumption that of two conflicting forces that is the greater which produces motion in its own direction, we find no other than the consciousness that such part of the greater force as is unneutralised by the lesser must produce its effect — the consciousness that the residuary force cannot disappear, but must manifest itself in some equivalent change— the con- sciousness that force is persistent.' In regard to rhythm Mr. Spencer also shows that the inductive truth that all motion is rhythmical rests on the deductive fact that all motion 7niist necessarily be rhythmical : ' The force embodied as a momentum in a given direction cannot be destroyed ; and if it eventually disappears, it reappears in the reaction of the retarding body, which begins afresh to draw the now arrested mass back from its aphelion. . . . Thus, then, rhythm is a necessary characteristic of all motion. Given the co-existence everywhere of antagonistic forces— a postulate which, as we have 76 HERBERT SPENCER seen, is necessitated by the form of our experience —and rhythm is an inevitable corollary from the persistence of force.' Obviously, we have only got part of the way to the construction of a philosophy in showing that all phenomena rest upon one law— the Persistence of Force and its corollaries. This is only to show the unity of phenomena, but how are we to explain the diilerence? It is essential to trace the One in the Many ; it is equally essential to trace the rise and progress of the Many. Mr. Spencer had now to show how the Universe as a cosmlcal product resulted from these laws— in other words, he had to formulate the process by which phenomena assume their varied forms in obedience to the law of the Persistence of Force. What was wanted was a formuhi which would cover the pro- cess manifested by i)licuoiiieua in all their mutual actions and inter-actions, from the earliest nebulous existence to the highest products of civilisation. The law of that process discovered by Mr. Spencer lie calls tlie law of Evolution. At the end of a long inquiry, worked out brilliantly by means of the inductive method, Mr. Spencer reaches the law of the great cosmic process. The redistribution of Matter and Motion which results in the formation of an aggregate, Mr. Spencer calls by the name of Evolution; the redistribution which results in the decay and dissipation of an aggregate he terms Dissolution. Evolution is defined as an integration THE COSMOS UNVEILED 77 I wt of Matter and concomitant dissipation of Motion, during which the Matter passes from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity, and during which the retained Motion goes through a parallel transformation. This law holds true of all existences whatsoever. For convenience we divide phenomena into sections —astronomic, geologic, biologic, psychologic, socio- logic ; but the process of Evolution is one and its law is one. Evolution of the parts goes on along with evolution of the whole. Not only is Evolution one in principle, but one in fact. We are still, however, in the region of induction. John Stuart Mill would remind us that no number of inductions can establish a necessary law. For any- thing induction can tell us, there may not be any necessary connection between facts. They may be found within our experience existing in a regular order, but as to the necessity of that order induc- tion is silent. Unless, therefore, Mr. Spencer's attempt at a great cosmic philosophy was to prove abortive, it was essential that he should not only show how the cosmic process takes place, but also why it takes place in one form and could not possibly take place in another. In other words, he had to deduce the great world-transformations from the Persistence of Force. Induction and Deduction had, so to speak, to join hands before Knowledge was unified and Philosophy had reached its goal. Takmg 78 HERBERT SPENOER THE COSMOS UNVEILED 79 liis stand upon the great cosmical fact of which all other facts are merely phases— namely, the redistri- bution of Matter and Motion, as shown to follow necessarily from the transformation and equivalence of force, along the line of least resistance, and in rhythmical direction— Spencer had to show that the process which results in the formation of aggregates necessarily means a process of evolution from a state of indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a state of definite coherent heterogeneity. It is now a fact generally accepted by men of science that the planetary system at its origin was an immense nebulous mass at the stage of comparative homo- geneity—a stage which, however, was necessarily being departed from by the attractive force of Matter. Motion towards local centres of gravity would set up heterogeneities in the masses, which, being subject to unlike forces, would be rapidly differentiated. In the course of the redistribution of Matter and Motion the homogeneous nebulous fluid, under the operation of strictly mechanical principles, was bound to become heterogeneous. The same process is traceable in the solar system, in tlie geologic and organic history of the earth, and in civilisation. Not only the Universe, but all things in it, have advanced from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous state. The instability of the homo- geneous is greatly increased by another principle, which acts with all the force of mechanical necessity — namely, the multiplication of effects: one cause produces many effects. To this is due the diversity which we find in Nature. So far we have traced the passage of the homo- geneous to the heterogeneous, from the simple to the complex, as being the result of sheer mechanical neces- sity, but no reason has been given why the hetero- geneity should proceed in an orderly definite manner. If there were only instability of the homogeneous and multiplicity of effects, the Universe might well be a chaos. To what is the orderliness of Nature due ? Still adhering to the principle of mechanical neces- sity, Mr. Spencer shows that like forces produce like results, unlike forces unlike results, and thus along with the passage of aggregates from the uni- form to the multiform there also proceeds a change from indefiniteness to deflniteness of parts. As has been well said: 'Segregation, or the clustering of the like and separation of the unlike parts under the action of forces capable of moving them, produces the deflniteness and individuality of things.' Under the influence of mechanical law the process of the redistribution of Matter and Motion, being the result of antagonistic forces, must reach a point where the forces balance, producing upon us the feeling of harmony or equilibrium in Nature. In its com- pleteness the law of Evolution is presented in- ductively and verified deductively from the law of the Persistence of Force, which moves along the 80 HERBERT SPENOER THE COSMOS UNVEILED 81 line of least resistance in a rhythmical direction, producing integration by loss of Motion and orderly differentiation, owing to the instability of the homo- geneous, the multiplicity of effects, and segregation, resulting in a balance of forces, called equilibration. When the balance is overthrown l)y an increase of Motion, then disintegration begins, followed by incoherent indefinite heterogeneity, ending in Dis- solution. By tracing Nature's processes to their cosmical root Mr. Spencer has unified phenomena, and in the act has, of course, unified Knowledge. In his view the Universe is a complex unity which, when reduced to its ultimate analysis, is seen to be one fact— the Redistribution of Matter and Motion, all phenomena being complex aspects of that one fact. The object of Mr. Spencer's numerous works is to trace the law of evolution through the various branches of phenomena, organic, super-organic, psychologic, and sociologic, and by means of it to unify and interpret phenomena. Mr. Spencer makes no attempt to give an absolute explanation of the Universe. His aim has been to show in what manner the earth with all its life has been evolved, to trace the cosmical process, to unify phenomenal knowledge, not to dispel mystery or answer ques- tions of the Absolute and Infinite. In his First Principles Mr. Spencer has applied his formula to the evolution of the earth from its nebulous to its present stage ; but to bring his scheme of philosophy within reasonable compass, he has merely outlined the inorganic evolution, reserving his strength for the development of life to which the Principles of Biology are devoted. H A F T E II V I THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE Whatever be the ultimate philosophic value of Comte's famous law of the three stages, to the student of scientific thought it is of great utility. He learns the close connection that exists between metaphysical conceptions and scientific discoveries. If discovery has been slow, tlie reason is due perhaps more to a wrong method of metaphysical interpreta- tion than to actual scientific exploration. Facts have lain around the man of science in abundance, but he has remained blind to their significance, simply because his mind was filled with conceptions which belong to the metapliysical stage of thought. At the metaphysical stage, tlie mind in its search for causes finds a resting-i>hice in entities or abstrac- tions. Instead of being content with a formula which describes all phases of phenomena— a kind of intellectual shorthand — the mind personifies the process, and converts the final result into an initial, dominating, all -controlling agent. In all regions of phenomena the belief in entities 82 THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 83 has retarded the progress of knowledge. Light, heat, electricity, magnetism— each in turn has been conceived not as the result of certain conditions, but as a mysterious principle controlling the con- ditions. A good example of this is associated with Stahl's doctrine of phlogiston, which he used to explain the theory of combustion. Stahl supposed that all combustible substances contained a common element, which he called the Fire Principle. The discovery of the doctrine of the Conservation and Transformation of Forces brought to an end, in the realm of physics and chemistry, the despotic sway of entities, of personified abstractions. But if they no longer govern, they reign in somewhat languid and ornamental fashion. No man of science takes entities into account when dealing with physical and cliemical phenomena, but in common speech their influence may still be traced. In the popular mind Gravitation, for instance, is thought of as the cause of bodies tending to approach one another, instead of being simply the name of an observed fact. Chemical aflSnity, too, is thought of as the cause of the combination of gases, whereas, like Gravitation, it is the generalised description of a natural process. In one realm, that of Biology, entities not only reign, but govern. So despotically do metapliysical abstractions rule in Biology that they have been the most formidable opponent to the application of \ 84 HBRBBRT SPENCER THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 85 fclie Evolution theory to life and its multiform manifestations. Just as formerly men of science spoke of a Heat Principle and a Fire Principle, so now they speak of a Vital Principle. It may be surmised that as metaphysical conceptions have been driven out of the purely mechanical and chemical spheres, they must ultimately be banished from the higher and more complex world of organic life. The surmise is transformed into a confident expectation when it is discovered that the meta- physical view of phenomena is the result of a natural infirmity of thought, which can only be cured by a rigorous application of scientific and philosophic analysis. That infirmity of thought is well expressed by James Hinton when he remarks upon the fact ' that the processes of Nature are studied by us in an inverse order: we see effects before we see causes.' He illustrates this as follows: 'Let us conceive that, instead of having invented steam- engines, men had met with them in nature as objects for their investigation. What would have been the most obvious character of these bodies? Clearly their power of acting — of moving. This would have become familiar as a "Property" or endowment of steam-engines long before the part played by the steam had been recognised ; for that would have required careful investigation and a knowledge of some recondite laws, mechanical, chemical, pneumatic. Might it not then have happened that motion might have been taken as a peculiar characteristic belonging to the nature of the engine ? and when after a long time the expan- sion of the steam coincident with this motion was detected, might it not have been at first regarded as consequence and not as cause ? ' Under these / circumstances it would seem the most natural thing in the world to trace the complex activity of the steam-engine to a Locomotive Principle. How inadequate as an explanation of biological phenomena is the principle of Vital Force is admir- ably shown by Mr. Spencer in his remarkable chapter, 'The Dynamic Element in Life,' in the new edition of his Principles of Biology, Those who write down Mr. Spencer as a Materialist will find him in that chapter quite at one with the Idealist in admitting the mystery of Life, and the impossibility of conceiving it to stand in the relation of effect to purely mechanical causes. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that there is some- tliing specially inscrutable about life. The inscruta- bility is the same in kind as that which belongs to Existence as a whole. The fall of a stone is quite as inexplicable as the activity of an organism. It is just as impossible to conceive how a stone falls as how an organism moves. As Mr. Spencer observes, neither Newton nor any one else has been able to conceive how the molecules of matter in the stone are affected not only by the molecules of matter in 86 HERBERT SPENCER the adjacent part of the Earth, but by those forming parts of its mass eight thousand miles off, which severally exercise tlieir influence without impedi- ment from intervening molecules ; and still less can we conceive how every molecule of matter in the sun ninety-two millions of miles off has a share in controlling the movements of the Earth. Still less can we conceive the physical process by which electric impulses are transmitted from one place to another. The ultimate reason of any phenomenon is unknown ; the fact we know, and the law of the fact we can discover. For the evolutionist the one practical question in biology is not, Can the mystery of life be explained ? but, Can the processes of life be traced, and the complex phenomena reduced to something like unity? In other words, Will the Spencerian formula of Evolution, as a movement from tlie simplex to the complex through successive integrations and differentiations, cover not only the* purely mechanical side of Nature, but also those processes known as living ? Anti-evolutionists deny tlie application of Mr. Spencer's formula to biology on the ground that between non-living and living matter there is a great gulf, which cannot be bridged by a theory that postulates the unity and continuity of all Nature's processes. In their view living matter is so unique that by no conceivable process could it be evolved from non-living matter : a special creative THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE 87 If