Part 4 (2/2)
Spencer's philosophy has won fewer friends than any other. It consists chiefly of a rehash of Mansel's rehash of Hamilton's ”Philosophy of the Conditioned,” and has hardly raised its head since John Mill so effectively demolished it. If criticism of our human intellectual const.i.tution is needed, it can be got out of Bradley to-day better than out of Spencer. The latter's way of reconciling science and religion is, moreover, too absurdly _naf_. Find, he says, a fundamental abstract truth on which they can agree, and that will reconcile them.
Such a truth, he thinks, is that _there is a mystery_. The trouble is that it is over just such common truths that quarrels begin. Did the fact that both believed in the existence of the Pope reconcile Luther and Ignatius Loyola? Did it reconcile the South and the North that both agreed that there were slaves? Religion claims that the ”mystery”
is interpretable by human reason; ”Science,” speaking through Spencer, insists that it is not. The admission of the mystery is the very signal for the quarrel. Moreover, for nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand the sense of mystery is the sense of _more-to-be-known_, not the sense of a More, _not_ to be known.
But pa.s.s the Unknowable by, and turn to Spencer's famous law of Evolution.
”Science” works with several types of ”law.” The most frequent and useful type is that of the ”elementary law,”--that of the composition of forces, that of gravitation, of refraction, and the like. Such laws declare no concrete facts to exist, and make no prophecy as to any actual future. They limit themselves to saying that if a certain character be found in any fact, another character will co-exist with it or follow it. The usefulness of these laws is proportionate to the extent to which the characters they treat of pervade the world, and to the accuracy with which they are definable.
Statistical laws form another type, and positively declare something about the world of actuality. Although they tell us nothing of the elements of things, either abstract or concrete, they affirm that the resultant of their actions drifts preponderantly in a particular direction. Population tends toward cities; the working cla.s.ses tend to grow discontented; the available energy of the universe is running down--such laws prophesy the real future _en gros_, but they never help us to predict any particular detail of it.
Spencer's law of Evolution is of the statistical variety. It defines what evolution means, and what dissolution means, and a.s.serts that, although both processes are always going on together, there is in the present phase of the world a drift in favor of evolution. In the first edition of ”First Principles” an evolutive change in anything was described as the pa.s.sage of it from a state of indefinite incoherent h.o.m.ogeneity to a definite coherent heterogeneity. The existence of a drift in this direction in everything Mr. Spencer proves, both by a survey of facts, and by deducing it from certain laws of the elementary type, which he severally names ”the instability of the h.o.m.ogeneous,”
”the multiplication of effects,” ”segregation,” and ”equilibration.”
The two former insure the heterogeneity, while ”segregation” brings about the definiteness and coherence, and ”equilibration” arrests the process, and determines when dissolutive changes shall begin.
The whole panorama is resplendent for variety and inclusiveness, and has aroused an admiration for philosophy in minds that never admired philosophy before. Like Descartes in earlier days, Spencer aims at a purely mechanical explanation of Nature. The knowable universe is nothing but matter and motion, and its history is nothing but the ”redistribution” of these ent.i.ties. The value of such an explanation for scientific purposes depends altogether on how consistent and exact it is. Every ”thing” must be interpreted as a ”configuration,” every ”event” as a change of configuration, every predicate ascribed must be of a geometrical sort. Measured by these requirements of mechanics Spencer's attempt has lamentably failed. His terms are vagueness and ambiguity incarnate, and he seems incapable of keeping the mechanical point of view in mind for five pages consecutively.
”Definite,” for example, is hardly a physical idea at all. Every motion and every arrangement of matter is definitely what it is,--a fog or an irregular scrawl, as much so as a billiard ball or a straight line. Spencer means by definiteness in a thing any character that makes it arrest our attention, and forces us to distinguish it from other things. The word with him has a human, not a physical connotation. Definite things, in his book, finally appear merely as _things that men have made separate names for_, so that there is hardly a pretence of the mechanical view being kept. Of course names increase as human history proceeds, so ”definiteness” in things must necessarily more and more evolve.
”Coherent,” again. This has the definite mechanical meaning of resisting separation, of sticking together; but Spencer plays fast and loose with this meaning. Coherence with him sometimes means _permanence in time_, sometimes such _mutual dependence of parts_ as is realized in a widely scattered system of no fixed material configuration; a commercial house, for example, with its ”travellers”
and s.h.i.+ps and cars.
An honestly mechanical reader soon rubs his eyes with bewilderment at the orgy of ambiguity to which he is introduced. Every term in Spencer's fireworks s.h.i.+mmers through a whole spectrum of meanings in order to adapt itself to the successive spheres of evolution to which it must apply. ”Integration,” for instance. A definite coherence is an Integration; and examples given of integration are the contraction of the solar nebula, the formation of the earth's crust, the calcification of cartilage, the shortening of the body of crabs, the loss of his tail by man, the mutual dependence of plants and animals, the growth of powerful states, the tendency of human occupations to go to distinct localities, the dropping of terminal inflexions in English grammar, the formation of general concepts by the mind, the use of machinery instead of simple tools, the development of ”composition” in the fine arts, etc., etc. It is obvious that no one form of the motion of matter characterizes all these facts. The human ones simply embody the more and more successful pursuit of certain ends.
In the second edition of his book, Mr. Spencer supplemented his first formula by a unifying addition, meant to be strictly mechanical.
”Evolution,” he now said, ”is the progressive integration of matter and dissipation of motion,” during which both the matter and the motion undergo the previously designated kinds of change. But this makes the formula worse instead of better. The ”dissipation of motion” part of it is simple vagueness,--for what particular motion is ”dissipated”
when a man or state grows more highly evolved? And the integration of matter belongs only to stellar and geologic evolution. Neither heightened specific gravity, nor greater ma.s.siveness, which are the only conceivable integrations of matter, is a mark of the more evolved vital, mental, or social things.
It is obvious that the facts of which Spencer here gives so clumsy an account could all have been set down more simply. First there is solar, and then there is geological evolution, processes accurately describable as integrations in the mechanical sense, namely, as decrease in bulk, or growth in hardness. Then Life appears; and after that neither integration of matter nor dissipation of motion play any part whatever. The result of life, however, is to fill the world more and more with things displaying _organic unity_. By this is meant any arrangement of which one part helps to keep the other parts in existence. Some organic unities are material,--a sea-urchin, for example, a department store, a civil service, or an ecclesiastical organization. Some are mental, as a ”science,” a code of laws, or an educational programme. But whether they be material or mental products, organic unities must _acc.u.mulate_; for every old one tends to conserve itself, and if successful new ones arise they also ”come to stay.” The human use of Spencer's adjectives ”integrated,” ”definite,”
”coherent,” here no longer shocks one. We are frankly on teleological ground, and metaphor and vagueness are permissible.
This tendency of organic unities to acc.u.mulate when once they are formed is absolutely all the truth I can distill from Spencer's unwieldy account of evolution. It makes a much less gaudy and chromatic picture, but what there is of it is exact.
Countless other criticisms swarm toward my pen, but I have no heart to express them,--it is too sorry an occupation. A word about Spencer's conception of ”Force,” however, insists on being added; for although it is one of his most essential, it is one of his vaguest ideas.
Over all his special laws of evolution there reigns an absolutely general law, that of the ”persistence of force.” By this Spencer sometimes means the phenomenal law of conservation of energy, sometimes the metaphysical principle that the quant.i.ty of existence is unalterable, sometimes the logical principle that nothing can happen without a reason, sometimes the practical postulate that in the absence of any a.s.signable difference you must call a thing the same. This law is one vast vagueness, of which I can give no clear account; but of his special vaguenesses ”mental force” and ”social force” are good examples.
These manifestations of the universal force, he says, are due to vital force, and this latter is due to physical force, both being proportionate to the amount of physical force which is ”transformed”
into them. But what on earth is ”social force”? Sometimes he identifies it with ”social activity” (showing the latter to be proportionate to the amount of food eaten), sometimes with the work done by human beings and their steam-engines, and shows it to be due ultimately to the sun's heat. It would never occur to a reader of his pages that a social force proper might be anything that acted as a stimulus of social change,--a leader, for example, a discovery, a book, a new idea, or a national insult; and that the greatest of ”forces” of this kind need embody no more ”physical force” than the smallest. The measure of greatness here is the effect produced on the environment, not a quant.i.ty antecedently absorbed from physical nature. Mr. Spencer himself is a great social force; but he ate no more than an average man, and his body, if cremated, would disengage no more energy. The effects he exerts are of no nature _of releases_,--his words pull triggers in certain kinds of brain.
The fundamental distinction in mechanics between forces of push-and-pull and forces of release is one of which Mr. Spencer, in his earlier years, made no use whatever. Only in his sixth edition did he show that it had seriously arrested his attention. In biology, psychology, and sociology the forces concerned are almost exclusively forces of release. Spencer's account of social forces is neither good sociology nor good mechanics. His feeble grasp of the conception of force vitiates, in fact, all his work.
But the task of a carper is repugnant. The ”Essays,” ”Biology,”
”Psychology,” ”Sociology,” and ”Ethics” are all better than ”First Principles,” and contain numerous and admirable bits of penetrating work of detail. My impression is that, of the systematic treaties, the ”Psychology” will rank as the most original. Spencer broke new ground here in insisting that, since mind and its environment have evolved together, they must be studied together. He gave to the study of mind in isolation a definitive quietus, and that certainly is a great thing to have achieved. To be sure he overdid the matter, as usual, and left no room for any mental structure at all, except that which pa.s.sively resulted from the storage of impressions received from the outer world in the order of their frequency by fathers and transmitted to their sons. The belief that whatever is acquired by sires is inherited by sons, and the ignoring of purely inner variations, are weak points; but to have brought in the environment as vital was a master stroke.
I may say that Spencer's controversy over use-inheritance with Weismann, entered into after he was sixty, seems to me in point of quality better than any other part of his work. It is genuine labor over a puzzle, genuine research.
Spencer's ”Ethics” is a most vital and original piece of att.i.tude-taking in the world of ideals. His politico-ethical activity in general breathes the purest English spirit liberty, and his attacks on over-administration and criticisms on the inferiority of great centralized systems are worthy to be the textbooks of individualists the world over. I confess that it is with this part of his work, in spite of its hardness and inflexibility of tone, that I personally sympathize most.
Looking back on Mr. Spencer as a whole, as this admirably truth-telling ”Autobiography” reveals him, he is a figure unique for quaint consistency. He never varied from that inimitable blend of small and vast mindedness, of liberality and crabbedness, which was his personal note, and which defies our formulating power. If an abstract logical concept could come to life, its life would be like Spencer's,--the same definiteness of exclusion and inclusion, the same bloodlessness of temperament, the same narrowness of intent and vastness of extent, the same power of applying itself to numberless instances. But he was no abstract idea; he was a man vigorously devoted to truth and justice as he saw them, who had deep insights, and who finished, under terrible frustrations from bad health, a piece of work that taken for all in all, is extraordinary. A human life is greater than all its possible appraisers, a.s.sessors, and critics. In comparison with the fact of Spencer's actual living, such critical characterization of it as I have been at all these pains to produce seems a rather unimportant as well as a decidedly graceless thing.
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