lative construction; he was not in sympathy with the idealist metaphysic that had risen to the ascendant in England even before his books were published; the ideas which he elucidated and defended were those which had been distinctive of spiritual thought for many centuries. In his criticisms, on the other hand, he did not restrict himself to the older forms of materialist and sensationalist doctrine; he was prompt to recognise the difference made by more recent scientific views, and he showed no lack of power or effectiveness in dealing with the claims of the philosophy of evolution.

V. HERBERT SPENCER AND THE PHILOSOPHY

OF EVOLUTION

The publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859 marks a turning-point in the history of thought. It had a revolutionary effect upon the view of the world held by educated men similar to that which had been produced more slowly, three centuries before, by the work of Copernicus; on philosophical ideas its influence may, perhaps, be better compared with that of the theory of mechanics chiefly due to Galileo. The latter contributed to philosophy the conception of nature as a mechanical system; Darwin contributed the conception of evolution and, owing largely to his influence, biological ideas gained greater prominence than mathematical in philosophical construction.

The acknowledged leader of the new movement in philosophy was Herbert Spencer. He was born at Derby on 27 April 1820, and his early training was as an engineer. This profession he relinquished at the age of twenty-five. He had previously, in 1842, contributed a series of letters on the Proper Sphere of Government to The Nonconformist, and from 1848 to 1853 he acted as sub-editor of The Economist. In these years he wrote his book Social Statics (1850) and began the publication of longer essays in reviews, among which mention should

his paradox that religion and science can be reconciled by assigning to the latter the region of the knowable and restricting the former to the unknowable. On his view all that we know consists of manifestations of the inscrutable power behind phenomena; and these manifestations depend ultimately upon a single first principlethe persistence of force. Spencer's interpretation of this principle is somewhat flexible and has been attacked by mathematicians and physicists as loose and unscientific. Nevertheless Spencer holds that from it every other scientific principle must be deduced-even the law of evolution itself. He has provided a " formula," or rather definition, of evolution. He defines it as "an integration 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 undergoes a parallel transformation." All phenomena of whatever kind are subject to this law. It is throughout conceived as a law of progress, which will issue in a highest state establishing the extremest multiformity and most complete moving equilibrium." But this stage also cannot be permanent; and Spencer contemplates the history of the universe as a succession of cycles-" alternate eras of evolution and dissolution."

Spencer displayed much ingenuity in fitting organic, mental, and social facts into this mechanical framework. His early training as an engineer seems to have influenced his ideas. He built a system as he might have built a bridge. It was a problem of strains and of the adaptation of material. Regarded thus, the whole problem was mechanical and had to be solved in terms of matter and

motion. His purpose was, as he says, "to interpret the phenomena of life, mind, and society in terms of matter, motion, and force." Hence, life, mind, and society are treated as stages of increasing complexity in phenomena of the same kind, and-so far as this treatment is adhered

to the characteristic functions of each stage are left unexplained. But the method of treatment is supplemented by another in which the facts are dealt with more directly. This is seen especially in psychology, where the subjective aspect" is recognised with only a suggestion of an attempt to deduce it from the objective aspect. Spencer was a keen observer and fertile in his reflections on what he observed. His power of coordinating facts may perhaps be seen at its best in his Psychology and Sociology. His generalisations may be often unsound; but, if we compare these works with earlier and then with later treatises on the same subjects, it is not possible to deny the great stimulus to thought which they gave.

Spencer himself set the greatest store upon his work on ethics. To it, he said, all his other work led up; and this induced him to issue the first part of it-called The Data of Ethics-out of due order and before his Sociology was completed. The first part is undoubtedly the most instructive section of the book as ultimately finished. The facts of morality are regarded as belonging to the same order of evolution as the facts dealt with in previous volumes, being only more special and complicated; full consideration is given to their biological, sociological, and psychological aspects; the respective rights of egoism and of altruism are defended; and the ethics of evolution is distinguished from the utilitarian ethics not by having some other ultimate end than happiness but by its different method and working criterion. Where the author fails is in giving any adequate proof for his assumption that evolution tends to greatest happiness-an assumption upon which his ethical theory depends. And, like all the exponents of the ethics of evolution who have followed him, he does not distinguish clearly between the historical process explained by the law of evolution and the ground of its authority for conduct-if such authority be claimed for it. He finds the standard for right conduct in what he calls "absolute ethics," by which he means a description

of the conduct of fully-evolved man in fully-evolved surroundings. In this state there will be complete adaptation between the individual and his environment; so that, even if action is still possible, no choice of better or worse will remain. The system of absolute ethics is worked out in the succeeding parts of the work, but with very meagre success. Indeed, at the end, the author is fain to admit. that evolution had not helped him to the extent he had anticipated.

In his ethical, and still more in his political, writings we see the supreme value set by Spencer on the individual, and the very restricted functions which he allowed to the state or other organised community of individuals. Perhaps the point is not easy to reconcile with the doctrine of evolution as otherwise expounded by him. But there were two things which seem to have been more fundamental in his thought than evolution itself. One of these has been already referred to as the group of ideas which may be described as mechanism and which is exhibited both in the basis and in the plan of his whole structure. The other is his strong bias towards individualism. If the former may plausibly be connected with his training as an engineer, the origin of the latter may, with still greater probability, be traced to the doctrines current in that circle of liberalism in which he was nurtured. He wrote political essays and a political treatise (Social Statics) before his mind seems to have been attracted by the conception of evolution; and, although in some points he afterwards modified the teaching of that treatise, its essential ideas and its spirit characterise his latest writings on political theory. It showed ingenuity rather than insight on his part to bring them within the grasp of the evolution doctrine; but, in spite of many criticisms, he held steadfastly to his doctrine of what has been called "administrative nihilism."

No other writer rivalled Spencer's attempt at a recon

struction of the whole range of human thought. But many of his contemporaries preceded or followed him in applying the new doctrine of evolution to the problems of life, mind, and society. Some of these were men of science, who felt that an instrument had been put into their hands for extending its frontiers; others were primarily interested in moral and political questions, or in philosophy generally, and evolution seemed to provide them with a key to old difficulties and a new view of the unity of reality. Darwin himself, though he never posed as a philosopher, was aware of the revolutionary effect which his researches had upon men's views of the universe as a whole; what was more important, he made a number of shrewd and suggestive observations on morals and on psychology in his Descent of Man and also in his later volume The Expression of the Emotions. But his contributions were only incidental to his biological work. Others, writing under the intellectual influence which he originated, were concerned more directly with problems of philosophy.

Among these writers the first place may be given to George Henry Lewes, although in his earlier works he was influenced by Comte, not by Darwin. Lewes was a man of marvellous literary versatility as essayist, novelist, biographer, and expositor of popular science. This versatility also marks his work in philosophy. At first Comte's influence was supreme. His philosophical publications began with The Biographical History of Philosophy (18456), a slight and inaccurate attempt to survey a vast field, and apparently designed to show that the field was not worth the tillage; later editions of this work, however, not only greatly increased its extent and removed many blemishes but showed the author's ability to appreciate other points of view than that from which he had started. After an interval he produced books entitled Comte's Philosophy of the Sciences (1853), and Aristotle: a chapter from the history of science (1864). But, for a long time, Lewes had been at work on investigations of a more

S. E. P.

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