Chapter VII: Part IV: Modern Evolution (6)

We have seen that speculation about the universe had its rise in Ionia. After centuries of discouragement, prohibition, and, sometimes, actual persecution, it was revived, to advance, without further serious arrest, some three hundred years ago. A survey of the history of philosophies of the origin of the cosmos from the time of the renascence of inquiry, shows that the great Immanuel Kant has not had his due. As remarked already, he appears to have been the first to put into shape what is known as the nebular theory. In his General Natural History and Theory of the Celestial Bodies; or an Attempt to Account for the Constitution and the Mechanical Origin of the Universe upon Newtonian Principles, published in 1775, he "pictures to himself the universe as once an infinite expansion of formless and diffused matter. At one point of this he supposes a single centre of attraction set up, and shows how this must result in the development of a prodigious central body, surrounded by systems of solar and planetary worlds in all stages of development. In vivid language he depicts the great world-maelstrom, widening the margins of its prodigious eddy in the slow progress of millions of ages, gradually reclaiming more and more of the molecular waste, and converting chaos into cosmos. But what is gained at the margin is lost in the centre; the attractions of the central systems bring their constituents together, which then, by the heat evolved, are converted once more into molecular chaos. Thus the worlds that are lie between the ruins of the worlds that have been and the chaotic materials of the worlds that shall be; and in spite of all waste and destruction, Cosmos is extending his borders at the expense of Chaos."

Kant's speculations were confirmed by the celebrated mathematician, Laplace. He showed that the "rings" rotate in the same direction as the central body from which they were cast off; sun, planets, and moons (those of Uranus excepted) moving in a common direction, and almost in the same plane. The probability that these harmonious movements are the effects of like causes he calculated as 200,000 billions to one.

The observations of the famous astronomer, Sir William Herschel, which resulted in the discovery of binary or double stars, of star-clusters, and cloud-like nebulæ (as that term implies) were further confirmations of Kant's theory. And such modifications in this as have been made by subsequent advance in knowledge, notably by the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy (the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace being based on gravitation alone), affect not the general theory of the origin of the heavenly bodies from seemingly formless, unstable, and highly-diffused matter. The assumption of primitive unstableness and unlikeness squares with the unequal distribution of matter; with the movements of its masses in different directions, and at different rates; and with the ceaseless redistribution of matter and motion. For all changes of states are due to the rearrangement of the atoms of which matter is made up, resulting in the evolution of the seeming like into the actual unlike; of the simple into the more and more complex, till--speaking of the only planet of whose life-history we can have knowledge--with the cooling of the earth to a temperature permitting of the evolution of living matter, the highest complexity is reached in the infinitely diverse forms of plants and animals. Therefore, as our knowledge of matter is limited to the changes of which we assume it to be the vehicle, it would seem that science reduces the Universe to the intelligible concept of Motion.

Since the great discovery by Kirchoff, in 1859, of the meaning of the dark lines that cross the refracted sun-rays, the spectroscope has come as powerful evidence in support of the nebular theory, while the photographic plate is a scarcely less important witness. The one has demonstrated that many nebulæ, once thought to be star-clusters, are masses of glowing hydrogen and nitrogen gases; that, to quote the striking communication made by the highest authority on the subject, Dr. Huggins, in his Presidential Address to the British Association, 1891, "in the part of the heavens within our ken, the stars still in the early and middle stages of evolution exceed greatly in number those which appear to be in an advanced condition of condensation." The other, recording infallible vibrations on a sensitive plate, and securing accurate registration of the impressions, reveals, as in Dr. Roberts's grand photograph of the nebula in Andromeda, a central mass round which are distinct rings of luminous matter, these being separated from the main body by dark rifts or spaces. To quote Dr. Huggins once more, "We seem to have presented to us some stage of cosmical Evolution on a gigantic scale."

The great fact that lies at the back of all these confirmations of the nebular theory is the fundamental identity of the stuff of which the universe is made; a fact which entered into the prevision of the Ionian cosmologists. Dr. Huggins says that "if the whole earth were heated to the temperature of the sun, its spectrum would resemble very closely the solar spectrum."

In referring to this, there may be carrying of "owls to Athens," but that re-statements may sometimes be needful has illustration in Lord Salisbury's Presidential Address to the British Association, 1894, wherein the assumed absence of oxygen and nitrogen in the sun's spectrum is adduced as an argument against the theory of the common origin of the bodies of the solar system. Speaking of the predominant proportion of oxygen in the solid and liquid substances of the earth, and of the predominance of nitrogen in our atmosphere, his lordship asked, "if the earth be a detached bit whisked off the mass of the sun, as cosmogonists love to tell us, how comes it that, in leaving the sun, we cleaned him out so completely of his nitrogen and oxygen that not a trace of these gases remains behind to be discovered even by the searching vision of the spectroscope?" If Lord Salisbury had consulted Dr. Huggins, or some foreign astronomer of equal rank, as Dunér or Scheiner, he would not have put a question exposing his ignorance, and unmasking his prejudice. These authorities would have told him that when a mixture of the incandescent vapours of the metals and metalloids (or non-metallic elementary substances, to which class both oxygen and nitrogen belong), or their compounds, is examined with the spectroscope, the spectra of the metalloids always yield before that of the metals. Hence the absence of the lines of oxygen and other metalloids, carbon and silicon excepted, among the vast crowd of lines in the solar spectrum. Then, too, in extreme states of rarefaction of the sun's absorbing layer, the absorption of the oxygen is too small to be sensible to us.

"While the genesis of the Solar System, and of countless other systems like it, is thus rendered comprehensible, the ultimate mystery continues as great as ever. The problem of existence is not solved: it is simply removed further back. The Nebular Hypothesis throws no light on the origin of diffused matter; and diffused matter as much needs accounting for as concrete matter. The genesis of an atom is not easier to conceive than the genesis of a planet. Nay, indeed, so far from making the universe a less mystery than before, it makes it a greater mystery. Creation by manufacture is a much lower thing than creation by evolution. A man can put together a machine; but he cannot make a machine develop itself. The ingenious artisan, able as some have been so far to imitate vitality as to produce a mechanical pianoforte player, may in some sort conceive how, by greater skill, a complete man might be artificially produced; but he is unable to conceive how such a complex organism gradually arises out of a minute structureless germ. That our harmonious universe once existed potentially as formless diffuse matter, and has slowly grown into its present organized state, is a far more astonishing fact than would have been its formation after the artificial method vulgarly supposed. Those who hold it legitimate to argue from phenomena to noumena, may rightly contend that the Nebular Hypothesis implies a First Cause as much transcending 'the mechanical God of Paley' as does the fetish of the savage."

This quotation is from an essay on the Nebular Hypothesis, which appeared in the Westminster Review of July, 1858, and which must, therefore, have been written before the eventful date of the reading of Darwin and Wallace's memorable paper before the Linnæan Society. The author of that essay is Mr. Herbert Spencer, and the foregoing extract from it may fitly preface a brief account of his life-work in co-ordinating the manifold branches of knowledge into a synthetic whole. In erecting a complete theory of Evolution on a purely scientific basis "his profound and vigorous writings," to quote Huxley, "embody the spirit of Descartes in the knowledge of our own day." Laying the foundation of his massive structure in early manhood, Mr. Spencer has had the rare satisfaction of placing the topmost stone on the building which his brain devised and his hand upreared. While the sheets of this little book are being passed for press, there arrives the third volume of the Principles of Sociology, which completes Mr. Spencer's Synthetic Philosophy. In the preface to this, the venerable author says:

"On looking back over the six-and-thirty years which I have passed since the Synthetic Philosophy was commenced, I am surprised at my audacity in undertaking it, and still more surprised by 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 overtax of brain in 1855, which, 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 years some exultation would have resulted; but as age creeps on feelings weaken, and now my chief pleasure is in 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."

These words recall a parallel invited by Gibbon's record of his feelings on the completion of his immortal work, when walking under the acacias of his garden at Lausanne, he pondered on the "recovery of his freedom, and perhaps the establishment of his fame," but with a "sober melancholy" at the thought that "he had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion."

HERBERT SPENCER, spiritual descendant--_longo intervallo_--of Heraclitus and Lucretius, was born at Derby on the 27th of April, 1820. His father was a schoolmaster; a man of scientific tastes, and, it is interesting to note, secretary of the Derby Philosophical Association founded by Erasmus Darwin. In Mr. Spencer's book on Education there are hints of his inheritance of the father's bent as an observer and lover of Nature in the remark that, "whoever has not in youth collected plants and insects, knows not half the halo of interest which lanes and hedgerows can assume." He was articled in his seventeenth year to a railway engineer, and followed that profession until he was twenty-five. During this period he wrote various papers for the Civil Engineers' and Architects' Journal, and, what is of importance to note, a series of letters to the Nonconformist in 1842 on The Proper Sphere of Government (republished as a pamphlet in 1844), in which "the only point of community with the general doctrine of Evolution is a belief in the modifiability of human nature through adaptation to conditions, and a consequent belief in human progression." After giving up engineering, Mr. Spencer joined the staff of the Economist, and while thus employed, published, in 1850, his first important book, Social Statics, or the Conditions essential to Human Happiness specified, and the first of them developed. In a footnote to the later editions of this work Mr. Spencer points out a brace of paragraphs in the chapter on General Considerations in which "may be seen the first step toward the general doctrine of Evolution. After referring to the analogy between the subdivision of labour, which goes on in human society as it advances; and the gradual diminution in the number of like parts and the multiplication of unlike parts which are observable in the higher animals; Mr. Spencer says:

"Now, just the same coalescence of like parts and separation of unlike ones--just the same increasing subdivision of function--takes place in the development of society. The earliest social organisms consist almost wholly of repetitions of one element. Every man is a warrior, hunter, fisherman, builder, agriculturist, toolmaker. Each portion of the community performs the same duties with every other portion; much as each slice of the polyp's body is alike stomach, muscle, skin, and lungs. Even the chiefs, in whom a tendency towards separateness of function first appears, still retain their similarity to the rest in economic respects. The next stage is distinguished by a segregation of these social units into a few distinct classes--warriors, priests, and slaves. A further advance is seen in the sundering of the labourers into different castes, having special occupations, as among the Hindoos. And, without further illustration, the reader will at once perceive, that from these inferior types of society up to our own complicated and more perfect one, the progress has ever been of the same nature. While he will also perceive that this coalescence of like parts, as seen in the concentration of particular manufactures in particular districts, and this separation of agents having separate functions, as seen in the more and more minute division of labour, are still going on.

"Thus do we find, not only that the analogy between a society and a living creature is borne out to a degree quite unsuspected by those who commonly draw it, but also that the same definition of life applies to both. This union of many men into one community--this increasing mutual dependence of units which were originally independent--this formation of a whole consisting of unlike parts--this growth of an organism, of which one portion cannot be injured without the rest feeling it--may all be generalized under the law of individuation. The development of society, as well as the development of man and the development of life generally, may be described as a tendency to individuate--_to become a thing_. And rightly interpreted, the manifold forms of progress going on around us are uniformly significant of this tendency."

_Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto_: "I am a man and nothing human is foreign to me." This oft-quoted saying of the old farmer in the Self-Tormentor of Terence might be affixed as motto to Herbert Spencer's writings from the tractate on the Proper Sphere of Government to the concluding volume of the Principles of Sociology. For thought of human interests everywhere pervades them; social and ethical questions are kept in the van throughout. Philosophy is brought from her high seat to mix in the sweet amenities of home, in the discipline of camp, in the rivalry of market; and linked to conduct. Conduct is defined as "acts adjusted to ends," the perfecting of the adjustment being the highest aim, so that "the greatest totality of life in self, in offspring, and in fellow-men" is secured, the limit of evolution of conduct not being reached, "until, beyond avoidance of direct and indirect injuries to others, there are spontaneous efforts to further the welfare of others." Emerson puts this ideal into crisp form when he speaks of the time in which a man shall care more that he wrongs not his neighbour than that his neighbour wrongs him; then will his "market-cart become a chariot of the sun."

That humanity is the pivot round which Mr. Spencer's philosophic system revolves is seen in the earliest Essays, and notably in his making mental evolution the subject of the first instalment of his Synthetic Philosophy. For, in the Principles of Psychology, published in 1855, he limits feeling or consciousness to animals possessing a nervous system, and traces its beginnings in the "blurred, undetermined feeling answering to a single pulsation or shock" (as for example, to go no lower down the life-scale, in the medusa or jelly-fish), to its highest form as self-consciousness, or knowing that we know, in man. This dominant element in Mr. Spencer's philosophy secures it a life and permanence which, had it been restricted to explaining the mechanics of the inorganic universe, it could never have possessed. It has been observed how the Darwinian theory aroused attention in all quarters because it touched human interests on every side. And, although less obvious to the multitude, the Synthetic Philosophy, dealing with all cosmic processes as purely mechanical problems, interprets "the phenomena of life (excluding the question of its origin), mind, and society, in terms of matter and motion." Anticipating the levelling of epithets against such apparent materializing of mental phenomena involved in that method, Spencer remarks on the dismay with which men, who have not risen above the vulgar conception which unites with matter the contemptuous epithets "gross" and "brute," regard the proposal to reduce the phenomena of Life, of Mind, and of Society, to a level which they think so degraded. "Whoever remembers that the forms of existence which the uncultivated speak of with so much scorn, are shown by the man of science to be the more marvellous in their attributes the more they are investigated, and are also proved to be in their ultimate natures absolutely incomprehensible--as absolutely incomprehensible as sensation, or the conscious something which perceives it--whoever clearly recognises this truth, will see that the course proposed does not imply a degradation of the so-called higher, but an elevation of the so-called lower. Perceiving, as he will, that the Materialist and Spiritualist controversy is a mere war of words,--in which the disputants are equally absurd, each thinking that he understands that which it is impossible for any man to understand,--he will perceive how utterly groundless is the fear referred to. Being fully convinced that no matter what nomenclature is used, the ultimate mystery must remain the same, he will be as ready to formulate all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force, as in any other terms; and will rather indeed anticipate, that only in a doctrine which recognises the Unknown Cause as co-extensive with all orders of phenomena, can there be a consistent Religion, or a consistent Philosophy."

This is clear enough; yet such is the crass density of some objectors that eighteen years after the above was written, Mr. Spencer, in answering criticisms on First Principles, had to rebut the charge that he believed matter to consist of "space-occupying units, having shape and measurement."

The Principles of Psychology was both preceded and followed by a series of essays in which the process of change from the "homogeneous to the heterogeneous," i. e., from the seeming like to the actual unlike, was expounded. Mr. Spencer tells us that in 1852 he first became acquainted with Von Baer's Law of Development, or the changes undergone in each living thing, from the general to the special, during its advance from the embryonic to the fully-formed state. That law confirmed the prevision indicated in the passages quoted above from Social Statics, and impressed him as one of the three doctrines which are indispensable elements of the general theory of Evolution. The other two are the Correlation of the Physical Forces, or the transformation of different modes of motion into other modes of motion, as of heat or light into electricity, and so forth, in Proteus-like fashion; and the Conservation of Energy, or the indestructibility of matter and motion, whatever changes or transformations these may undergo.

In permitting the quotation of the useful abstract of the Synthetic Philosophy which, originally drawn up for the late Professor Youmans, was imbodied in a letter to the Athenæum of 22d of July, 1882, Mr. Spencer was good enough to volunteer the following details to the writer:--

"You are probably aware that the conception set forth in that abstract was reached by slow steps during many years. These steps occurred as follows:--

1850. Social Statics: especially chapter General Considerations.
(Higher human Evolution.)

1852. March. Development Hypothesis, in the Leader. (Evolution of
species, _vid. ante_, p. 111.)

1852. April. Theory of Population, etc., in Westminster Review.
(Higher human Evolution.)

1854. July. The Genesis of Science in British Quarterly Review.
(Intellectual Evolution.)

1855. July. Principles of Psychology. (Mental Evolution in general.)

1857. April. Progress: its Law and Cause: Westminster Review.
(Evolution at large.)

1857. April. Ultimate Laws of Physiology. National Review. (Another
factor of Evolution at large.)

"From these last two Essays came the inception of the Synthetic Philosophy. The first programme of it was drawn up in January, 1858." ...

When seeing Mr. Spencer on the subject of this letter, he took the further trouble to point out certain passages in the essays originally comprised in the one volume edition of 1858 which contain germinal ideas of his synthesis. That they are his selection will add to the interest and value of their quotation, revealing, as perchance they may, a fragment of the autobiography which it is an open secret Mr. Spencer has written.

"That Law, Religion, and Manners are thus related--that their respective kinds of operation come under one generalisation--that they have in certain contrasted characteristics of men a common support and a common danger--will, however, be most clearly seen on discovering that they have a common origin. Little as from present appearances we should suppose it, we shall yet find that at first, the control of religion, the control of laws, and the control of manners, were all one control. However incredible it may now seem, we believe it to be demonstrable that the rules of etiquette, the provisions of the statute-book, and the commands of the decalogue, have grown from the same root. If we go far back enough into the ages of primeval Fetishism, it becomes manifest that originally Deity, Chief, and Master of the Ceremonies were identical" (Essays, vol. i, 1883 edition; Manners and Fashion, p. 65).

"Scientific advance is as much from the special to the general as from the general to the special. Quite in harmony with this we find to be the admissions that the sciences are as branches of one trunk, and that they were at first cultivated simultaneously; and this becomes the more marked on finding, as we have done, not only that the sciences have a common root, but that science in general has a common root with language, classification, reasoning, art; that throughout civilisation these have advanced together, acting and reacting on each other just as the separate sciences have done; and that thus the development of intelligence in all its divisions and subdivisions has conformed to this same law to which we have shown the sciences conform" (Ib. The Genesis of Science, pp. 191, 192).

(In correspondence with this, recognising that the same method has to be adopted in all inquiry, whether we deal with the body or the mind, the following may be quoted from Hume's Treatise on Human Nature.

"'Tis evident that all the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and that, however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another. Even _Mathematics_, _Natural Philosophy_, and _Natural Religion_ are in some measure dependent on the science of MAN, since they lie under the cognisance of men, and are judged of by their powers and qualities.)

"The analogy between individual organisms and the social organisms is one that has in all ages forced itself on the attention of the observant.... While it is becoming clear that there are no such special parallelisms between the constituent parts of a man and those of a nation, as have been thought to exist, it is also becoming clear that the general principles of development and structure displayed in all organised bodies are displayed in societies also. The fundamental characteristic both of societies and of living creatures is, that they consist of mutually dependent parts; and it would seem that this involves a community of various other characteristics.... Meanwhile, if any such correspondence exists, it is clear that Biology and Sociology will more or less interpret each other.

"One of the positions we have endeavoured to establish is, that in animals the process of development is carried on, not by differentiations only, but by subordinate integrations. Now in the social organism we may see the same duality of process; and further, it is to be observed that the integrations are of the same three kinds. Thus we have integrations that arise from the simple growth of adjacent parts that perform like functions; as, for instance, the coalescence of Manchester with its calico-weaving suburbs. We have other integrations that arise when, out of several places producing a particular commodity, one monopolises more and more of the business, and leaves the rest to dwindle; as witness the growth of the Yorkshire cloth districts at the expense of those in the west of England.... And we have yet those other integrations that result from the actual approximation of the similarly-occupied parts, whence results such facts as the concentration of publishers in Paternoster Row, of lawyers in the Temple and neighbourhood, of corn merchants about Mark Lane, of civil engineers in Great George Street, of bankers in the centre of the city" (Essays, vol. iii, 1878 edition; Transcendental Physiology, pp. 414-416).

But, divested of technicalities, and summarized in words to be "understanded of the people," the following quotation from the Essay on Progress: Its Law and Cause, gives the gist of the Synthetic Philosophy:

"We believe we have shown beyond question that that which the German physiologists (Von Baer, Wolff, and others) have found to be the law of organic development (as of a seed into a tree, and of an egg into an animal), is the law of all development. The advance from the simple to the complex, through a process of successive differentiations (i. e., the appearance of differences in the parts of a seemingly like substance), is seen alike in the earliest changes of the Universe to which we can reason our way back; and in the earlier changes which we can inductively establish; it is seen in the geologic and climatic evolution of the Earth, and of every single organism on its surface; it is seen in the evolution of Humanity, whether contemplated in the civilised individual, or in the aggregation of races; it is seen in the evolution of Society in respect alike of its political, its religious, and its economical organisation; and it is seen in the evolution of all those endless concrete and abstract products of human activity which constitute the environment of our daily life. From the remotest past which Science can fathom, up to the novelties of yesterday, that in which Progress essentially consists, is the transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous" (Essays, vol. i, 1883, p. 30).

To this may fitly follow the "succinct statement of the cardinal principles developed in the successive works," which Mr. Spencer, as named above, prepared for Professor Youmans.

1. Throughout the universe in general and in detail there is an unceasing redistribution of matter and motion.

2. This redistribution constitutes evolution when there is a predominant integration of matter and dissipation of motion, and constitutes dissolution when there is a predominant absorption of motion and disintegration of matter.

3. Evolution is simple when the process of integration, or the formation of a coherent aggregate, proceeds uncomplicated by other processes.

4. Evolution is compound, when along with this primary change from an incoherent to a coherent state, there go on secondary changes due to differences in the circumstances of the different parts of the aggregate.

5. These secondary changes constitute a transformation of the homogeneous into the heterogeneous--a transformation which, like the first, is exhibited in the universe as a whole and in all (or nearly all) its details; in the aggregate of stars and nebulæ; in the planetary system; in the earth as an inorganic mass; in each organism, vegetal or animal (Von Baer's law otherwise expressed); in the aggregate of organisms throughout geologic time; in the mind; in society; in all products of social activity.

6. The process of integration, acting locally as well as generally, combines with the process of differentiation to render this change not simply from homogeneity to heterogeneity, but from an indefinite homogeneity to a definite heterogeneity; and this trait of increasing definiteness, which accompanies the trait of increasing heterogeneity, is, like it, exhibited in the totality of things and in all its divisions and subdivisions down to the minutest.

7. Along with this redistribution of the matter composing any evolving aggregate there goes on a redistribution of the retained motion of its components in relation to one another; this also becomes, step by step, more definitely heterogeneous.

8. In the absence of a homogeneity that is infinite and absolute, that redistribution, of which evolution is one phase, is inevitable. The causes which necessitate it are these--

9. The instability of the homogeneous, which is consequent upon the different exposures of the different parts of any limited aggregate to incident forces.

The transformations hence resulting are--

10. The multiplication of effects. Every mass and part of a mass on which a force falls subdivides and differentiates that force, which thereupon proceeds to work a variety of changes; and each of these becomes the parent of similarly-multiplying changes; the multiplication of them becoming greater in proportion as the aggregate becomes more heterogeneous. And these two causes of increasing differentiations are furthered by--

11. Segregation, which is a process tending ever to separate unlike units and to bring together like units--so serving continually to sharpen, or make definite, differentiations otherwise caused.

12. Equilibration is the final result of these transformations which an evolving aggregate undergoes. The changes go on until there is reached an equilibrium between the forces which all parts of the aggregate are exposed to and the forces these parts oppose to them.

Equilibration may pass through a transition stage of balanced motions (as in a planetary system) or of balanced functions (as in a living body) on the way to ultimate equilibrium; but the state of rest in inorganic bodies, or death in organic bodies, is the necessary limit of the changes constituting evolution.

13. Dissolution is the counter-change which sooner or later every evolved aggregate undergoes. Remaining exposed to surrounding forces that are unequilibrated, each aggregate is ever liable to be dissipated by the increase, gradual or sudden, of its contained motion; and its dissipation, quickly undergone by bodies lately animate, and slowly undergone by inanimate masses, remains to be undergone at an indefinitely remote period by each planetary and stellar mass, which since an indefinitely distant period in the past has been slowly evolving; the cycle of its transformations being thus completed.

14. This rhythm of evolution and dissolution, completing itself during short periods in small aggregates, and in the vast aggregates distributed through space completing itself in periods immeasurable by human thought, is, so far as we can see, universal and eternal--each alternating phase of the process predominating now in this region of space and now in that, as local conditions determine.

15. All these phenomena, from their great features down to their minutest details, are necessary results of the persistence of force under its forms of matter and motion. Given these as distributed through space, and their quantities being unchangeable, either by increase or decrease, there inevitably result the continuous redistributions distinguishable as evolution and dissolution, as well as all these special traits above enumerated.

16. That which persists unchanging in quantity, but ever changing in form, under these sensible appearances which the universe presents to us, transcends human knowledge and conception--is an unknown and unknowable power, which we are obliged to recognise as without limit in space and without beginning or end in time.

All that is comprised in the dozen volumes which, exclusive of the minor works and the Sociological Tables, form the great body of the Synthetic Philosophy, is the expansion of this abstract. The general lines laid down in that Philosophy have become a permanent way along which investigation will continue to travel. The revisions which may be called for will not affect it fundamentally, being limited to details, more especially in the settlement of the relative functions of individuals and communities, and cognate questions. Into these we cannot enter here. Suffice it, that to those who have the rare possession of sound mental peptics, no more nutritive diet can be recommended than is supplied by First Principles and the works in which its theses are developed. For those who, blessed with good digestion, lack leisure, there is provided in a convenient volume the excellent epitome which Mr. Howard Collins has prepared.

The prospectus of the then proposed issue of the series of works which, beginning with First Principles, ends with the Principles of Sociology (1862-1896), was issued by Mr. Spencer in March, 1860. Through his courtesy the writer has seen the documents which prove that the first draft of that prospectus was written out on the 6th of January, 1858, and that it was the occasion of an interesting correspondence between Mr. Spencer and his father--mainly in the form of questions from the latter--during that month. The record of these facts is of some moment as evidencing that the scheme of the Synthetic Philosophy took definite shape in 1857. Therefore, the Theory of Evolution, dealing with the universe _as a whole_, was formulated some months before the publication of the Darwin-Wallace paper, in which only _organic evolution_ was discussed. The Origin of Species, as the outcome of that paper, showed that the action of natural selection is a sufficing cause for the production of new life-forms, and thus knocked the bottom out of the old belief in special creation.

The general doctrine of Evolution, however, is not so vitally related to that of natural selection that the two stand or fall together. The evidence as to the connection between the succession of past life-forms which, regard being had to the well-nigh obliterated record, has been supplied by the fossil-yielding rocks; and the evidence as to the unbroken development of the highest plants and animals from the lowest which more and more confirms the theory of Von Baer; alike furnish a body of testimony placing the doctrine of Organic Evolution on a foundation that can never be shaken. And, firm as that, stands the doctrine of Inorganic Evolution upon the support given by modern science to the speculations of Immanuel Kant.

There is the more need for laying stress on this because recent discussions, revealing divided opinions among biologists as to the sufficiency of natural selection as a cause of all modifications in the structure of living things, lead timid or half-informed minds to hope that the doctrine of Evolution may yet turn out not to be true. It is in such stratum of intelligence that there lurks the feeling, whenever some old inscription or monument verifying statements in the Bible is discovered, that the infallibility of that book has further proof. For example, until the present year, not a single confirmatory piece of evidence as to the story of the Exodus was forthcoming from Egypt itself. Even the inscription which has come to light does not, in the judgment of such an expert as Dr. Flinders Petrie, supply the exact confirmation desired. But let that irrefragable witness appear, and while the historian will welcome it as evidence of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, thus throwing light on the movements of races, and adding to the historical value of the Pentateuch; the average orthodox believer will feel a vague sort of satisfaction that the foundations of his belief in the Trinity and the Incarnation are somehow strengthened.

3. _Thomas Henry Huxley._

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY was born at Ealing, on the 4th of May, 1825. Montaigne tells us that he was "borne between eleven of the clock and noone," and, with like quaint precision, Huxley gives the hour of his birth as "about eight o'clock in the morning." Speaking of his first Christian name, he humorously said that, by curious chance, his parents chose that of the particular apostle with whom, as the doubting member of the twelve, he had always felt most sympathy.

Concerning his father, who was "one of the masters in a large semi-public school" (the father of Herbert Spencer, it will be remembered, was also a schoolmaster), Huxley has little to say in the slight autobiographical sketch reprinted as an introduction to the first volume of the Collected Essays. On that side, he tells us, he could find hardly any trace in himself, except a certain faculty for drawing, and a certain hotness of temper. "Physically and mentally," he was the son of his mother, "a slender brunette, of an emotional and energetic temperament." His school training was brief and profitless; his tastes were mechanical, and but for lack of means, he would have started life in the same profession which Herbert Spencer followed till he forsook Messrs. Fox's office for journalism. So, with a certain shrinking from anatomical work, Huxley studied medicine for a time under a relative, and in his seventeenth year entered the Charing Cross Hospital School as a student. In those days there was no instruction in physics, and only in such branch of chemistry as dealt with the nature of drugs. _Non multa, sed multum_, and what was lacking in breadth was, perhaps, gained in thoroughness. Huxley had as excellent a teacher in Wharton Jones as the latter had a promising pupil in Huxley, and in working with the microscope, the evidence of that came in his discovery of a certain root-sheath in the hair, which has since then been known as "Huxley's layer."

Up to the time of his studentship, he had been left, intellectually, altogether to his own devices. He tells us that he was a voracious and omnivorous reader, "a dreamer and speculator of the first water, well endowed with that splendid courage in attacking any and every subject which is the blessed compensation of youth and inexperience." Among the books and essays that impressed him were Guizot's History of Civilization; and Sir William Hamilton's essay On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned which he accidentally came upon in an odd volume of the Edinburgh Review. This, he adds, was "devoured with avidity," and it stamped upon his mind the strong conviction "that on even the most solemn and important of questions, men are apt to take cunning phrases for answers; and that the limitation of our faculties, in a great number of cases, renders real answers to such questions, not merely actually impossible, but theoretically inconceivable." Thus, before he was out of his teens, the philosophy that ruled his life-teaching was taking definite shape.

In 1845, he won his M. B. London with honours in anatomy and physiology, and after a few months' practice at the East End, applied, at the instance of his senior fellow-student, Mr. (afterwards Sir) Joseph Fayrer, for an appointment in the medical service of the Navy. At the end of two months he was fortunate enough to be entered on the books of Nelson's old ship, the Victory, for duty at Haslar Hospital. His official chief was the famous Arctic Explorer, Sir John Richardson, through whose recommendation he was appointed, seven months later, assistant surgeon of the Rattlesnake. That ship, commanded by Captain Owen Stanley, was commissioned to survey the intricate passage within the Barrier Reef skirting the eastern shores of Australia, and to explore the sea lying between the northern end of that reef and New Guinea. It was the best apprenticeship to what was eventually the work of Huxley's life--the solution of biological problems and the indication of their far-reaching significance. Darwin and Hooker had passed through a like marine curriculum. The former served as naturalist on board the Beagle when she sailed on her voyage round the world in 1831; the latter as assistant-surgeon on board the Erebus on her Antarctic Expedition in 1839. Fortune was to bring the three shoulder to shoulder when the battle against the theory of the immutability of species was fought.

During his four-years' absence Huxley, in whom the biologist dominated the doctor, made observations on the various marine animals collected. These he sent home to the Linnæan Society in vain hope of acceptance. A more elaborate paper to the Royal Society, communicated through the Bishop of Norwich (author of a book on birds, and father of Dean Stanley), secured the coveted honour of publication, and on Huxley's return in 1850 a "huge packet of separate copies" awaited him. It dealt with the anatomy and affinities of the Medusæ, and the original research which it evidenced justified his election in 1851 to the fellowship of the society whose presidential chair he was in after years to adorn. He would seem to have won the blue ribbon of science _per saltum_. Probably, so far as their biological value is concerned, nothing that he did subsequently has surpassed his contributions to scientific literature at that period; but if his services to knowledge had been limited to the class of work which they represent, he would have remained only a distinguished specialist. Further recognition of his well-won position came in the award of the society's royal medal. But fellowships and medals keep no wolf from the door, and Huxley was a poor man. After vain attempts to obtain, first, a professorship of physiology in England, and then a chair of natural history at Toronto (Tyndall was at the same time an unsuccessful candidate for the chair of physics in the same university), a settled position was secured by Sir Henry de la Beche's offer of the professorship of palæontology and of the lectureship on natural history in the Royal School of Mines, vacated by Edward Forbes. That was in 1854. Between that date and the time of his return Huxley had contributed a number of valuable papers on the structure of the invertebrates, and on histology, or the science of tissues. But these, while adding to his established qualifications for a scientific appointment, demand no detailed reference here. With both chairs there was united the curatorship of the fossil collections in the Museum of Practical Geology, and these, with the inspectorship of salmon fisheries, which office he accepted in 1881, complete the list of Huxley's more important public appointments. He surrendered them all in 1885, having reached the age at which, as he jocosely remarked to the writer, "Every scientific man ought to be poleaxed." Perhaps he dreaded the conservatism of attitude, the non-receptivity to new ideas, which often accompany old age. But for himself such fears were needless. He was never of robust constitution; in addition to the lasting effects of an illness in boyhood, Carlyle's "accursed Hag," dyspepsia, which troubled both Darwin and Bates for the rest of their lives after their return from abroad, troubled him. Therefore, considerations of health mainly prompted the surrender of his varied official responsibilities, the loyal discharge of which met with becoming recognition in the grant of a pension. This secured a modest competence in the evening of life to one who had never been wealthy, and who had never coveted wealth. To Huxley may fitly be applied what Faraday said of himself, that he had "no time to make money." And yet, to his abiding discredit, the present editor of Punch allowed his theological animus, which had already been shown in abortive attempts in the pages of that "facetious" journal to appraise a Roman Catholic biologist at the expense of Huxley, to further degrade itself by affixing the letters "L. S. D." to his name in a character-sketch.

His public life may be said to date from 1854. The duties which he then undertook included the delivery of a course of lectures to working men every alternate year. Some of these--models of their kind--have been reissued in the Collected Essays. Among the most notable are those on Our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature. At the outset of his public career lecturing was as distasteful to him as in earlier years the trouble of writing was detestable. But mother wit and "needs must" trained him in a short time to win the ear of an audience. One evening in 1852 he made his début at the Royal Institution, and the next day he received a letter charging him with every possible fault that a lecturer could commit--ungraceful stoop, awkwardness in use of hands, mumbling of words, or dropping them down the shirt front. The lesson was timely, and its effect salutary. Huxley was fond of telling this story, and it is worth recording--if but as encouragement to stammerers who have something to say--at what price he "bought this freedom" which held an audience spellbound. How he thus held it in later years they will remember who in the packed theatre of the Royal Institution listened on the evening of Friday, 9th of April, 1880, to his lecture On the Coming of Age of the Origin of Species.

In 1856 Huxley visited the glaciers of the Alps with Tyndall, the result appearing in their joint authorship of a paper on Glacial Phenomena in the Philosophical Transactions of the following year. But this was a rare interlude. What time could be wrested from daily routine was given to the study of invertebrate and vertebrate morphology, palæontology, and ethnology, familiarity with which was no mean equipment for the conflict soon to rage round these seemingly pacific materials when their deep import was declared. The outcome of such varied industry is apparent to the student of scientific memoirs. But a recital of the titles of papers contributed to these, as e. g., On Ceratodus, Hyperodapedon Gordoni, Hypsilophodon, Telerpeton, and so forth, will not here tend to edification. The original and elaborate investigations which they embody have had recognition in the degrees and medals which decorated the illustrious author. But it is not by these that Huxley's renown as one of the most richly-endowed and widely-cultured personalities of the Victorian era will endure. They might sink into the oblivion which buries most purely technical work without in any way affecting that foremost place which he fills in the ranks of philosophical biologists both as clear-headed thinker and luminous interpreter.

In this high function the publication of the Origin of Species gave him his opportunity. That was in 1859. As with Hooker and Bates, his experiences as a traveller, and, more than this, his penetrating inquiry into significances and relations, prepared his mind for acceptance of the theory of descent with modification of living forms from one stock. Hence the mutability, as against the old theory of the fixity, of species.

In the chapter On the Reception of the Origin of Species, which Huxley contributed to Darwin's Life and Letters, he gives an interesting account of his attitude toward that burning question. He says--

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"I think that I must have read the Vestiges (see p. 119) before I left England in 1846, but if I did the book made very little impression upon me, and I was not brought into serious contact with the 'species' question until after 1850. At that time I had long done with the Pentateuchal cosmogony which had been impressed upon my childish understanding as Divine truth with all the authority of parents and instructors, and from which it had cost me many a struggle to get free. But my mind was unbiassed in respect of any doctrine which presented itself if it professed to be based on purely philosophical and scientific reasoning.... I had not then and I have not now the smallest _a priori_ objection to raise to the account of the creation of animals and plants given in Paradise Lost, in which Milton so vividly embodies the natural sense of Genesis. Far be it from me to say that it is untrue because it is impossible. I confine myself to what must be regarded as a modest and reasonable request for some particle of evidence that the existing species of animals and plants did originate in that way as a condition of my belief in a statement which appears to me to be highly improbable....

"And by way of being perfectly fair, I had exactly the same answer to give to the evolutionists of 1851-58. Within the ranks of the biologists of that time I met with nobody, except Dr. Grant, of University College, who had a word to say for Evolution, and his advocacy was not calculated to advance the cause. Outside these ranks the only person known to me whose knowledge and capacity compelled respect, and who was at the same time a thoroughgoing evolutionist, was Mr. Herbert Spencer, whose acquaintance I made, I think, in 1852, and then entered into the bonds of a friendship which I am happy to think has known no interruption. Many and prolonged were the battles we fought on this topic. But even my friend's rare dialectic skill and copiousness of apt illustration could not drive me from my agnostic position. I took my stand upon two grounds: firstly, that up to that time the evidence in favour of transmutation was wholly insufficient; and secondly, that no suggestion respecting the causes of the transmutation assumed which had been made was in any way adequate to explain the phenomena. Looking back at the state of knowledge at that time, I really do not see that any other conclusion was justifiable.

"As I have already said, I imagine that most of those of my contemporaries who thought seriously about the matter were very much in my own state of mind--inclined to say to both Mosaists and Evolutionists 'A plague on both your houses!' and disposed to turn aside from an interminable and apparently fruitless discussion to labour in the fertile fields of ascertainable fact. And I may therefore further suppose that the publication of the Darwin and Wallace papers in 1858, and still more that of the Origin in 1859, had the effect upon them of the flash of light, which to a man who has lost himself in a dark night suddenly reveals a road which, whether it takes him straight home or not, certainly goes his way. That which we were looking for and could not find was a hypothesis respecting the origin of known organic forms which assumed the operation of no causes but such as could be proved to be actually at work. We wanted, not to pin our faith to that or any other speculation, but to get hold of clear and definite conceptions which could be brought face to face with facts, and have their validity tested. The Origin provided us with the working hypothesis we sought. Moreover, it did the immense service of freeing us for ever from the dilemma--refuse to accept the creation hypothesis, and what have you to propose that can be accepted by any cautious reasoner? In 1857 I had no answer ready, and I do not think that any one else had. A year later we reproached ourselves with dulness for being perplexed by such an inquiry. My reflection, when I first made myself master of the central idea of the Origin was 'How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!' I suppose that Columbus's companions said much the same when he made the egg stand on end. The facts of variability, of the struggle for existence, of adaptation to conditions, were notorious enough, but none of us had suspected that the road to the heart of the species problem lay through them, until Darwin and Wallace dispelled the darkness, and the beacon-fire of the Origin guided the benighted."