Page:A Brief History of Modern Philosophy.djvu/258

 Rh every sphere of phenomena, he nevertheless denies that this concept applies to "the Absolute" itself. c. Philosophy, as unitary knowledge, is in search of a common principle or a general type of all phenomena. Spencer discovers such a principle by the method of induction and analysis, which he afterwards seeks to deduce from a general principle.

The principle which philosophy has been seeking is the principle of evolution. Every phenomenon has come into being, so far as we are concerned, by a process of evolution, and we understand a phenomenon whenever we know its evolution. But what is evolution? There are, according to Spencer, three characteristics by which it can be described. In its simplest forms evolution consists of concentration, a transition from a more attenuated to a more permanent state of coherence. The formation of a pile of sand on the ocean beach is a simple example. The evolution of the solar system (in its primitive phase, as the formation of the primeval nebula) and the earth (by its assuming the spherical form within the original nebula), the growth of an organism by means of assimilating nourishment, the origin of a people from its stems and groups, etc., furnish examples on a larger scale.—Differentiation goes hand in hand with integration, especially on the higher levels. There follows then a transition from a state of greater homogeneity to one of greater heterogeneity. It is not the whole, as such, that differentiates itself; different parts within the whole differentiate themselves from one another and assume definite forms. Thus the various heavenly bodies of the solar system have taken form, and each of the heavenly bodies in turn develop differences between the respective parts of their surfaces and their internal structure as well as between the parts of the surfaces themselves.