Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/75

Rh changes." In thinking of a plant, for example, we must cease to speak of its living or dying. "We must exclude all the ideas associated with the words life or death." What we do know, physically, is thus defined: "That there go on in the plant certain interdependent processes in presence of certain aiding or hindering influences outside of it; and that in some cases a difference of structure or a favorable set of circumstances allows these interdependent processes to go on for longer periods than in other cases." How luminous! Milton spoke of his own blindness as "knowledge at one entrance quite shut out." But here we have a specimen of the verbal devices by which knowledge at all entrances may be carefully excluded. Life is certain "interdependent processes." Yes, certainly. But so is death. And so is everything else that we know of or can conceive. The words devised by Mr. Herbert Spencer to represent the "purely physical" view of life and death, are words which present no view at all. They are simply a thick fog in which nothing can be seen. Except in virtue of this character of general opacity, they are wholly useless for Mr. Spencer's own purpose as well as for every other. He seeks to exclude mind. But he fails to do so. He seems to think that when he has found a collocation of words which do not expressly convey some particular idea, he has therein found words in which that idea is excluded. This is not so. Words may be so vague and abstract as to signify anything or nothing. If under the word "fitness" human ideas of adjustment and design are apt to insinuate themselves, assuredly the same ideas not only may, but must, be comprehended under such a phrase as "interdependent processes." Painting, for example, is an interdependent process, and both in its execution and results its interdependence lies in purely physical combinations of visible and touchable materials. Yet Sir Thomas Lawrence spoke with literal truth when he snubbed a (Questioner as to the mechanics of his art by telling him that he mixed his colors with brains. The whole of chemical science consists in the knowledge of interdependent processes which are (what we call) purely physical, while the whole science of applied chemistry involves those other interdependent processes which involve the co-operation of the human mind and will.

We have, then, in this new phrase a perfect specimen of one favorite method of Mr. Herbert Spencer in his dealing with such subjects; and the weapon of analysis which he turns so successfully against his own old phrase when he wishes to abandon it, can be turned with equal success not only against all substitutes for it, but against the whole method of reasoning of which it was an example. The verbal structures of definition which