Volume Xiv Part 3 (2/2)

Any exposition of the ”Synthetic Philosophy” must, of course, begin with the volume ent.i.tled ”First Principles.” In the first part of this preliminary work the author carries a step further the doctrine of the Unknowable put into shape by Hamilton and Mansel. He points out the various directions in which science leads to the same conclusion, and shows that in their united belief in an Absolute that transcends not only human knowledge but human conception lies the only possible reconciliation of science and religion. In the second part of the same book Mr. Spencer undertakes to formulate the laws of the Knowable. That is to say, he essays to state the ultimate principles discernible throughout all manifestations of the Absolute,--those highest generalizations now being disclosed by science, such, for example, as ”the Conservation of Force,” which are severally true, not of one cla.s.s of phenomena, but of _all_ cla.s.ses of phenomena, and which are thus the keys to all cla.s.ses of phenomena.

The conclusions reached in ”First Principles” may be thus summed up: over and over again in the five hundred pages devoted to their formulation, it is shown in various ways that the deepest truths we can reach are simply statements of the widest uniformities in our experiences of the relations of Matter, Motion, and Force; and that Matter, Motion, and Force are but symbols of the Unknown reality. A Power of which the nature remains forever inconceivable, and to which no limits in Time and s.p.a.ce can be imagined, works in us certain effects.

These effects have certain likenesses of kind, the most general of which we cla.s.s together under the names of Matter, Motion, and Force; and between these effects there are likenesses of connection, the most constant of which we cla.s.s as laws of the highest certainty. a.n.a.lysis reduces these several kinds of effects to one kind of effect; and these several kinds of uniformity to one kind of uniformity. The highest achievement of Science is the interpretation of all orders of phenomena as differently conditioned manifestations of this one kind of effect, under differently conditioned modes of this one kind of uniformity. When science has done this, however, it has done nothing more than systematize our experiences, and has in no degree extended the limits of our experiences. We can say no more than before whether the uniformities are as absolutely necessary as they have become to our thought relatively necessary. The utmost possibility for us is an interpretation of the process of things, as it presents itself to our limited consciousness; but how this process is related to the actual process we are unable to conceive, much less to know.

Similarly we are admonished to remember that, while the connection between the phenomenal order and the ontological order is forever inscrutable, so is the connection between the conditioned forms of being and the unconditioned form of being forever inscrutable. The interpretation of all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force is nothing more than the reduction of our complex symbols of thought to the simplest symbols; and when the equation has been brought to its lowest terms, the symbols remain symbols still. Hence the reasonings contained in ”First Principles” afford no support to either of the antagonist hypotheses respecting the ultimate nature of things. Their implications are no more materialistic than they are spiritualistic, and no more spiritualistic than they are materialistic. The establishment of correlation and equivalence between the forces of the outer and the inner worlds serves to a.s.similate either to the other, according as we set out with one or the other. He who rightly interprets the doctrine propounded in ”First Principles” will see that neither the forces of the outer, nor the forces of the inner, world can be taken as ultimate.

He will see that, though the relation of subject and object renders necessary to us the ant.i.thetical conceptions of Spirit and Matter, the one is no less than the other to be regarded as but a sign of the Unknown Reality which underlies both.

In logical order the formulation of ”First Principles” should have been followed by the application of them to Inorganic Nature. This great division of Mr. Spencer's subject is pa.s.sed over, however; partly because, even without it, the scheme is too extensive to be carried out in the lifetime of one man; and partly because the interpretation of Organic Nature, after the proposed method, is of more immediate importance. Before noting how Mr. Spencer applies his fundamental principles to the interpretation of the phenomena of life, it may be well to put before the reader's eye the ”formula of evolution” in the author's own language: ”Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter pa.s.ses from an indefinite, incoherent h.o.m.ogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.” This law of evolution is equally applicable to all orders of phenomena,--”astronomic, geologic, biologic, psychologic, sociologic, etc.,”--since these are all component parts of one cosmos, though disguised from one another by conventional groupings. It is obvious that, so long as evolution is merely established by induction, it belongs, not to philosophy, but to science. To belong to philosophy it must be deduced from the persistence of force. Mr. Spencer holds that this can be done. For any finite aggregate, being unequally exposed to surrounding forces, will become more diverse in structure, every differentiated part will become the parent of further differences; at the same time, dissimilar units in the aggregate tend to separate, and those which are similar, to cl.u.s.ter together (”segregation”); and this subdivision and dissipation of forces, so long as there are any forces unbalanced by opposite forces, must end at last in rest; the penultimate stage of this process ”in which the extremest multiformity and most complex moving equilibrium are established,” being the highest conceivable state. The various derivative laws of phenomenal changes are thus deducible from the persistence of force. It remains to apply them to inorganic, organic, and superorganic existences. The detailed treatment of inorganic evolution is omitted, as we have said, from Spencer's plan, and he proceeds to interpret ”the phenomena of life, mind, and society in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force.”

IV.

The first volume of the ”Principles of Biology” consists of three parts, the first of which sets forth the data of biology, including those general truths of physics and chemistry with which rational biology must start. The second part is allotted to the inductions of biology, or, in other words, to a statement of the leading generalizations which naturalists, physiologists, and comparative anatomists have established.

The third and final part of the first volume of the ”Principles of Biology” deals with the speculation commonly known as ”the development hypothesis,” and considers its _a priori_ and _a posteriori_ evidences.

The inductive evidences for the evolutionary hypothesis, as contra-distinguished from the special-creation hypothesis, are dealt with in four chapters. The ”Arguments from Cla.s.sification” are these: Organisms fall into groups within groups; and this is the arrangement which we see results from evolution where it is known to take place. Of these groups within groups, the great or primary ones are the most unlike, the sub-groups are less unlike, the sub-sub-group still less unlike, and so on; and this, too, is a characteristic of groups demonstrably produced by evolution. Moreover, indefiniteness of equivalence among the groups is common to those which we know have been evolved, and to those supposed in the volume before us to have been evolved. There is the further significant fact that divergent groups are allied through their lowest rather than their highest members. Of the ”Arguments from Embryology,” the first is that, when developing embryos are traced from their common starting-point, and their divergencies and re-divergencies are symbolized by a genealogical tree, there is manifest a general parallelism between the arrangement of its primary, secondary, and tertiary branches, and the arrangement of the divisions and subdivisions of Mr. Spencer's cla.s.sifications. Nor do the minor deviations from this general parallelism, which look like difficulties, fail on closer observation to furnish additional evidence; since those traits of a common ancestry which embryology reveals are, if modifications have resulted from changed conditions, liable to be disguised in different ways and degrees, in different lines of descendants. Mr. Spencer next considers the ”Arguments from Morphology.”

Apart from those kins.h.i.+ps among organisms disclosed by their developmental changes, the kins.h.i.+ps which their adult forms show are profoundly significant. The unities of type found under such different externals are inexplicable, except as results of community of descent, with non-community of modification. Again, each organism a.n.a.lyzed apart shows, in the likenesses obscured by unlikenesses of its component parts, a peculiarity which can be ascribed only to the formation of a more heterogeneous organism out of a more h.o.m.ogeneous one. And, once more, the existence of rudimentary organs, h.o.m.ologous with organs that are developed in allied animals or plants, while it admits of no other rational interpretation, is satisfactorily interpreted by the hypothesis of evolution. Last of the inductive evidences are the ”Arguments from Distribution.” While the facts of distribution in s.p.a.ce are unaccountable as results of designed adaptation of organisms to their habitats, they are accountable as results of the compet.i.tion of species, and the spread of the more fit into the habitats of the less fit, followed by the changes which new conditions induce. Though the facts of distribution in time are so fragmentary that no positive conclusion can be drawn, yet all of them are reconcilable with the hypothesis of evolution, and some of them yield strong support,--especially the near relations.h.i.+p existing between the living and extinct types in each great geographical area. Thus of these four categories of evidence, each furnishes several arguments which point to the same conclusion. This coincidence would give to the induction a very high degree of probability, even were it not enforced by deduction. As a matter of fact, the conclusion deductively reached is in harmony with the inductive conclusion. Mr. Spencer has deductively shown that, by its lineage and its kindred, the evolution-hypothesis is as closely allied with the proved truths of modern science as is the antagonist hypothesis, that of special creation, with the proved errors of ancient ignorance. He has shown that, instead of being a mere pseud-idea, it admits of elaboration into a definite conception, so showing its legitimacy as an hypothesis. Instead of positing a purely fict.i.tious process, the process which it alleges proves to be one actually going on around us. To which may be added that the evolution-hypothesis presents no radical incongruities from a moral point of view. On the other hand, the special-creation hypothesis is shown to be not even a thinkable hypothesis, and, while thus intellectually illusive, to have moral implications irreconcilable with the professed beliefs of those who hold it.

Pa.s.sing from the evidence that Evolution has taken place to the question--How has it taken place?--Mr. Spencer finds in known agencies and known processes adequate causes of its phenomena. In astronomic, geologic, and meteorologic changes, ever in progress, ever combining in new and more involved ways, we have a set of inorganic factors to which all organisms are exposed; and in the varying and complicated actions of organisms on one another we have a set of organic factors that alter with increasing rapidity. Thus, speaking generally, all members of the Earth's flora and fauna experience perpetual rearrangements of external forces. Each organic aggregate, whether considered individually or as a continuously existing species, is modified afresh by each fresh distribution of external forces. To its pre-existing differentiations new differentiations are added; and thus that lapse to a more heterogeneous state, which would have a fixed limit were the circ.u.mstances fixed, has its limits perpetually removed by the perpetual change of the circ.u.mstances. These modifications upon modifications, which result in evolution, structurally considered, are the accompaniments of those functional alterations continually required to re-equilibrate inner with outer actions. That moving equilibrium of inner actions corresponding with outer actions, which const.i.tutes the life of an organism, must either be overthrown by a change in the outer actions or must undergo perturbations that cannot end until there is a readjusted balance of functions and correlative adaptation of structures. But where the external changes are either such as are fatal when experienced by the individuals, or such as act on the individuals in ways that do not affect the equilibrium of their functions, then the readjustment results through the effects produced on the species as a whole: there is indirect equilibration. By the preservation in successive generations of those whose moving equilibria are less at variance with the requirements, there is produced a changed equilibrium completely in harmony with the requirements.

Even were this the whole of the evidence a.s.signable for the belief that organisms have been gradually evolved, Mr. Spencer holds that the belief would have a warrant higher than is possessed by many beliefs which are regarded as established. As a matter of fact, however, the evidence is far from exhausted. At the outset of the first volume of ”Principles of Biology,” it was remarked by the author that the phenomena presented by the organic world as a whole cannot be properly dealt with apart from the phenomena presented by each organism in the course of its growth, development, and decay. The interpretation of either cla.s.s of phenomena implies interpretation of the other, since the two are in reality parts of one process. Hence the validity of any hypothesis respecting the one cla.s.s of phenomena may be tested by its congruity with phenomena of the other cla.s.s. In the second volume of ”The Principles of Biology,” Mr.

Spencer pa.s.ses to the more special phenomena of development, as displayed in the structures and functions of individual organisms. If the hypothesis that plants and animals have been progressively evolved be true, it must furnish us with keys to these special phenomena. Mr.

Spencer finds that the hypothesis does this, and by doing it gives numberless additional vouchers for its truth. It is impossible for us here to review, even in outline, the extensive field traversed in the second volume of ”Principles of Biology.” We would not omit, however, to direct attention to the interesting conclusion reached by Mr. Spencer toward the close of the volume with regard to the future of the human race considered from the viewpoint of the possible pressure of population upon subsistence. He points out that in man all the equilibrations between const.i.tution and conditions, between the structure of society and the nature of its members, between fertility and mortality, advance simultaneously towards a common climax. In approaching an equilibrium between his nature and the ever-varying circ.u.mstances of his inorganic environment, and in approaching an equilibrium between his nature and all the requirements of the social state, man is at the same time approaching that lowest limit of fertility at which the equilibrium of population is maintained by the addition of as many infants as there are subtractions by death.

V.

Next in logical order and in order of publication come the two volumes collectively ent.i.tled ”The Principles of Psychology.” In these volumes an attempt is made to trace objectively the evolution of mind from reflex action through instinct to reason, memory, feeling, and will, from the interaction of the nervous system with its environment.

Subjectively, mental states are a.n.a.lyzed, and it is contended that all of them--including those primary scientific ideas, the perceptions of matter, motion, s.p.a.ce, and time, a.s.sumed in the ”First Principles”--can be a.n.a.lyzed into a primitive element of consciousness, something which can be defined only as a.n.a.logous to a nervous shock. These perceptions have now become innate in the individual. They may be called--as Kant called s.p.a.ce and time--forms of intuition; but they have been acquired empirically by the race, through the persistence of the corresponding phenomena in the environment, and from the acc.u.mulated experiences of each individual being transmitted in the form of modified structure to his descendants. This principle of heredity is one of the laws by which individuals are connected with one another into an organic whole; and we thus pa.s.s to what Spencer calls superorganic evolution, implying the co-ordinated actions of many individuals, and giving rise to the science of sociology.

It is this science which Mr. Spencer undertakes to expound in the three volumes ent.i.tled the ”Principles of Sociology.” The first of these volumes presents a statement of the several sets of factors entering into social phenomena. These factors are, first, human ideas and feelings considered in their necessary order of evolution; secondly, surrounding natural conditions; and, thirdly, those ever-complicating conditions to which society itself gives origin. Under the caption ”The Inductions of Sociology,” are set forth the general facts, structural and functional, gathered from a survey of societies and their changes; in other words, the empirical generalizations that are arrived at by comparing different societies, or successive stages of the same societies. The author then examines the evolution of governments, general and local, as this is determined by natural causes; their several types and metamorphosis; their increasing complexity and specialization, and the progressive limitation of their functions. From political the author turns to ecclesiastical organization. He traces the differentiation of religious government from secular; its successive complications and the multiplication of sects; the growth and continued modification of religious ideas, as caused by advancing knowledge and changing moral character; and the gradual reconciliation of these ideas with the truths of abstract science. A good deal of s.p.a.ce is devoted to what the author calls ceremonial organization, by which he means that third kind of government which, having a common root with the others, and slowly becoming separate from and supplementary to them, serves to regulate the minor actions of life. Finally, Mr. Spencer discusses industrial organization; that is to say, the development of productive and distributive agencies, considered in its necessary causes, comprehending not only the progressive division of labor and the increasing complexity of each industrial agency, but also the successive forms of industrial government as pa.s.sing through like phases with political government.

Many pages would be requisite adequately to describe the result of the inquiries prosecuted by Mr. Spencer during some twenty years, and embodied in the three volumes ent.i.tled ”Principles of Sociology.” The ultimate conclusions reached, however, may be summed up in a few paragraphs. It is the author's final conviction that, if the process of evolution, which, unceasing throughout past time, has brought life to its present height, continues throughout the future, as we cannot but antic.i.p.ate, then, amid all the rhythmical changes in each society, amid all the lives and deaths of nations, amid all the supplantings of race by race, there will go on that adaptation of human nature to the social state which began when savages first gathered together into hordes for mutual defence,--an adaptation finally complete. Mr. Spencer foresees that many will think this a wild imagination. Though everywhere around them are creatures with structures and instincts which have been gradually so moulded as to subserve their own welfares and the welfares of their species, yet the immense majority ignore the implication that human beings, too, have been undergoing in the past, and will undergo in the future, progressive adjustments to the lives imposed on them by circ.u.mstances. There are a few, nevertheless, who think it rational to conclude that what has happened with all lower forms must happen with the highest forms,--a few who infer that among types of men those most fitted for making a well-working society will hereafter, as heretofore, from time to time, emerge and spread at the expense of types less fitted, until a fully fitted type has arisen.

It is, at the same time, conceded that the view thus suggested cannot be accepted without qualification. If we carry our thoughts as far forward as palaeolithic implements carry them back, we are introduced, not to an absolute optimism, but to a relative optimism. The cosmic process brings about retrogression, as well as progression, where the conditions favor it. Only amid an infinity of modifications, adjusted to an infinity of changes of circ.u.mstances, do there now and then occur some which const.i.tute an advance: other changes, meanwhile, caused in other organisms, usually not const.i.tuting forward steps in organization, and often const.i.tuting steps backward. Evolution does not imply a latent tendency to improve everywhere in operation. There is no uniform ascent from lower to higher, but only an occasional production of a form, which, in virtue of greater fitness for more complex conditions, becomes capable of a longer life of a more varied kind. And, while such higher type begins to dominate over lower types, and to spread at their expense, the lower types survive in habitats or modes of life that are not usurped, or are thrust into inferior habitats or modes of life in which they retrogress.

Mr. Spencer's examination of ”The Principles of Sociology” has led him to the belief that what holds with organic types must hold also with types of society. Social evolution throughout the future, like social evolution throughout the past, must, while producing, step after step, higher societies, leave outstanding many lower. Varieties of men adapted here to inclement regions, there to regions that are barren, and elsewhere to regions unfitted, by ruggedness of surface or insalubrity, for supporting large populations, will, in all probability, continue to form small communities of simple structures. Moreover, during future compet.i.tions among the higher races, there will probably be left, in the less desirable regions, minor nations formed of men inferior to the highest; at the same time that the highest overspread all the great areas which are desirable in climate and fertility. But while the entire a.s.semblage of societies thus fulfils the law of evolution by increase of heterogeneity,--while within each of them contrasts of structure, caused by differences of environments and entailed occupations, cause unlikenesses implying further heterogeneity, we may infer that the primary process of evolution--integration--which, up to the present time, has been displayed in the formation of larger and larger nations, will eventually reach a still higher stage, and bring yet greater benefits. As when small tribes were welded into great tribes, the head chief stopped inter-tribal warfare; as, when small feudal governments became subject to a king, feudal wars were prevented by him,--so, in time to come, a federation of the highest nations, exercising supreme authority (already foreshadowed by occasional agreements among ”the Powers”), may, by forbidding wars between any of its const.i.tuent nations, put an end to the re-barbarization which is continually undoing civilization.

When, eventually, this peace-maintaining federation has been formed, Mr.

Spencer looks for effectual progress towards that equilibrium between const.i.tution and conditions,--between inner faculties and outer requirements,--implied by the final stage of human evolution. Adaptation to the social state, now perpetually hindered by anti-social conflict, may then go on unhindered; and all the great societies, in other respects differing, may become similar in those cardinal traits which result from complete self-owners.h.i.+p of the unit, and from exercise over him of nothing more than pa.s.sive influence by the aggregate. On the one hand, by continual repression of aggressive instincts and by continual exercise of feelings which prompt ministration to public welfare, and, on the other hand, by the lapse of restraints gradually becoming less necessary, there will be produced, in Mr. Spencer's forecast, a kind of man so const.i.tuted that, while fulfilling his own desires, he will fulfil also the social needs. Already, small groups of men, s.h.i.+elded by circ.u.mstances from external antagonisms, have been moulded into forms of moral nature so superior to our own that the account of their goodness almost savors of romance; and it is reasonable to infer that what has even now happened on a small scale may, under kindred conditions, ultimately happen on a large scale. Prolonged studies, showing among other things the need for certain qualifications above indicated, but also revealing facts like that just named, have not caused our author to recede from the belief expressed nearly fifty years ago that ”the ultimate man will be one whose private requirements coincide with public ones. He will be that manner of man who, in spontaneously fulfilling his own nature, incidentally performs the functions of a social unit; and yet is only enabled so to fulfil his own nature by all others doing the like.”

Before taking leave of the ”Principles of Sociology,” we should caution the reader against a misconception that might seem, at first sight, to find some warrant in the following remark of a sympathetic reviewer: ”Like Aristotle, he [Mr. Spencer] has had to delegate large portions of his work to be done for him by others.” As our author has himself pointed out in ”Facts and Comments,” the reviewer's reference will be rightly interpreted by those who know that the work delegated by Aristotle to others was simply the _collection_ of materials for his Natural History, not the cla.s.sification of those materials, much less the drawing of inductions from them. As not one reader in ten knows this, however, wrong impressions are likely to be made by the reviewer's remark. Mr. Spencer's name being especially a.s.sociated with the ”Synthetic Philosophy,” the sentence quoted will suggest to many the thought that large portions of that work were written by deputy. This, of course, the reviewer did not mean to say. The work to which he referred is ent.i.tled ”Descriptive Sociology, or groups of sociological facts, cla.s.sified and arranged by Herbert Spencer, compiled and abstracted by David Duncan, Richard Scheppig and James Collier,” eight parts of which have thus far appeared. Knowing that he should be unable to read all the works of travel and history containing the facts he should need when dealing with the science of society, Mr. Spencer engaged these gentlemen--first one, then two, then three--to read up for him and arrange the extracts they made in a manner prescribed. With much material he had himself acc.u.mulated in the course of many years, our author incorporated a much larger amount of material derived from the compilations just mentioned when writing the ”Principles of Sociology.”

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