Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 18.djvu/507

* SPENCER. 435 SPENCER. the process as the passage from the simple to the complex, from the homogeneous to the hetero- geneous, from indetinite homogeneity to definite heterogeneity, and so on. This description of the process brought him into controversy with all those who like metaphysics, and gave him no credit with those who do not. It was at best a vague formula, which might be true or false ac- cording to the definition of the terms and the statement of the facts ; the phrase at least meant nothing more than the facts, and was not ex- planatorj-. In his facts and illustrations, how- ever, Spencer gives a clearer idea of his doctrine than in his abstract formulas intended to cover every type of phenomena in the organic and in- organic kingdoms. These facts, he thinks, show a continuous order of tilings with historical con- nections and relations which suggest a common origin from some ultimate indefinite form of force which he calls matter and motion. Darwin did not pretend to go beyond the extension of a few types in the organic world or to develop their genesis. He was content to demonstrate the origin of species in the organic world and left unsolved and undiscussed the general origin of things — a much larger task. Spencer sought to make intelligible the process of evolution throughout the whole field of nature, and hence the importance of his formula about the 'con- tinuous redistribution of matter and motion,' as embodying the whole system of changes and growths in the cosmos. It was Spencer's antagonism to the doctrine of creationism that caused a complete misunder- standing of what evolution really undertakes to accomplish. The theory of creation was equiv- ocal. It assigned a cause for the origin of phenomena, and it was associated with the con- ception of the miraculous and supernatural. Spencer denied the creational theory and adopted the gradual development of all things in its stead. But what he failed to recognize suffi- ciently, though he sees it at times, is the fact that evolution is the history of origin, not the explanation of it. It determines the law, not the cause of genesis. All that Spencer and his co- adjutors established is the fact that the origin of things was gradual instead of catastroplial. Creationism was so closely associated with the latter conception that the disproof of great breaks in nature carried with it the principle by which every change has to be explained. The transition from species to species may be gradual instead of catastrophal, but this fact does not eliminate the agency of causes, and it was cause that the creationistic theory sought and un- fortunately made catastrophal. It was natural, therefore, when the evolutionists showed that the process was gradual, that creationism should suffer to the same extent, but after all the real conquest was in favor of law instead of caprice in the order of nature^ so that if Spencer and the evolutionists had refused to conceive their problem in opposition to creationism, and had limited themselves to the conception of the his- tory of genesis, they would have escaped con- troversy with the metaphysicians on the one hand and with the theologians on the other. Conceiving evolution, however, as the history rather of events than of c.iuses that originate change, we shall find that Spencer's services to human knowledge can hardly be overestimated. It was a stroke of genius to combine the ideas of the persistence of force, adjustment to en- vironment, and natural selection for the purpose of explaining the relations of all phenomena. It oll'ered a mode of unifying the cosmos which showed identities and relations throughout the whole not before observed. The persistence of force guaranteed the fundamental identity of all reality, in spite of the differences of form which it assumed, while the varieties of composition explained the differences. The conception sup- plies an initial presumption of the variation of a single species to account for the varieties; this once done, the whole problem of evolution is at least historically conceived as intelligible. In the inorganic world it is merely a question of the collocations of matter. In the organic world it is a question both of collocation and of the adjustment of structure and function. In the ethical world the growth is in the form of the substitution of altruism for egoism or selfish- ness. In the political and social worlds the proc- ess is but a repetition of that in the others, ex- cept that we deal with collective as distinct from organic wholes. One law prevails throughout the whole process — the redistribution of matter and motion according to the conditions of the persistence of force. Originally Spencer re- duced life to a fimction of m;itter and motion. But in the last edition of his Biology he admitted that life was an 'unknown force,' a position which involves a complete revolution in his sys- tem as recognizing something more in the world as ultimate than matter and motion. The hypoth- esis of a universal ether and the modification of older views regarding the nature of electrical and magnetic phenomena, with the discovery of a number of forms of energy not suspected a generation ago, threaten to modify greatly the bases of Spencer's system. But they do not disturb the general conception which he formed of the process of evolution, since this is independent of the forces involved and is simply a process of composition and decomposition throughout the cosmos and in all specific forms of reality. It is Spencer's manner of tracing the relations and affinities between the various phenomena of ex- istence that gives his work its interest and has so generally influenced the intelligent public. He knew little of Greek philosophy and less of the modern Kanto-Hegelian movement. The con- sequence was that he began his speculations with science, eschewed the transcendentalism of Ger- man epistemology, and wrote in terms that every intelligent man can understand. The public has not cared whether his abstract formulas were clear or not. or whether they really expressed an explanation. They were impressed with his power of illustration and reference to facts which the}' were willing to use as interpreting his for- mulas, and as his illustrations and analogies depicted such an interesting unity in the course of nature, they were ready to take him as a j)rophet of the new gospel and leave subtleties to the transcendentalists. Spencer will not be for- gotten for a method that supplies a clear con- ception of the unity of all things in terms of facts instead of abstract conceptions, though he was at times too much of a philosopher to avoid the sins which his scientific temperament sought to correct in others. Consult: Hudson, Introduction to the Phi-