Page:Philosophical Review Volume 15.djvu/169

151 An examination from this point of view of the two opposed types of philosophy known as evolutionism and absolutism will disclose the real interdependence of the half-truths for which they respectively stand. Evolutionism, as embodied in Spencer's philosophy, seeks to explain the complex in terms of the simple, what is in terms of what no longer exists. It derives the definite from the indefinite, the coherent from the incoherent, the heterogeneous from the homogeneous. But evolution thus interpreted conducts us back ultimately through less and less complex modes of existence until we come to a hypothetical beginning which must be simply zero. Viewed in this way, it would appear that the marvelous variety of the universe as we know it to-day has developed out of primitive nebulous haze or finally from an absolutely simple beginning which is in no way different from a blank nothing. At the absolute beginning of things, from the point of view of a purely mechanical theory of evolution, being equals nothing. To this result we are forced if we look alone on that aspect in which it appears that the later, more highly differentiated, have unfolded from the earlier less complex types of being.

Such we might suppose would have been the method by which Spencer arrived at his conclusion that the ultimate nature of the universe is essentially unknowable. But, as a matter of fact, he develops an entirely different line of argument, completely overlooking this most natural basis for the doctrine. He grounds his philosophy of the Unknowable on the epistemological theory of the relativity of knowledge. And instead of recognizing the nihilistic implication of his mechanical conception of evolution, he inconsistently postulates the instability of the homogeneous. That is, he postulates diversity in the primal unity with which he starts the evolutionary process, whereas, on his own presuppositions, he is logically entitled only to an abstract and therefore empty unity. It is not so strange, therefore, that he finally takes out of the bag what he originally put in.

But apart from the inconsistencies in Spencer's particular system, the mechanical theory of evolution is indefensible on general grounds, whenever in the form of an agnostic naturalism it purports to give a philosophy of nature. It is impossible to