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While speaking of difficulty in understanding some passages in
Mr.
Matthew's appendix, Darwin says that "the full force of the principle
of
natural selection" is there, and, in referring to it in a letter
to
Lyell, he adds that "one may be excused in not having discovered
the
fact in a work on Naval Timber!"
Five years after this, another
pre-Darwinian was unearthed, and, like
Patrick Matthew, in unsuspected
company. Dr. W. C. Wells read a paper
before the Royal Society in 1813 on a
White Female Part of whose Skin
resembles that of a Negro, but this was not
published till 1818, when it
formed part of a volume including the author's
famous Two Essays upon
Dew and Single Vision. In his Historical Sketch Darwin
says that Wells
"distinctly recognises the principle of natural selection,
and this is
the first recognition which has been indicated; but he applies it
only
to the races of man, and to certain characters alone.... Of
the
accidental varieties of man, which would occur among the first few
and
scattered inhabitants of the middle regions of Africa, some one would
be
better fitted than the others to bear the diseases of the country.
This
race would consequently multiply, while the others would decrease;
not
only from their inability to sustain the attacks of disease, but
from
their incapacity of contending with their more vigorous
neighbours."
When the simplicity of the long-hidden solution is brought
home, we can
understand Huxley's reflection on mastering the central idea of
the
Origin: "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!" Twelve
years
elapsed before Darwin followed up his world-shaking book with
the
Descent of Man. But the ground had been prepared for its reception
in
the decade between 1860 and 1870. Quoting Grant Allen's able summary
of
the advance of the theory of Evolution in his Charles Darwin: "One
by
one the few scientific men who still held out were overborne by
the
weight of evidence. Geology kept supplying fresh instances of
transitional
forms; the progress of research in unexplored countries
kept adding to our
knowledge of existing intermediate species and
varieties. During those ten
years, Herbert Spencer published his First
Principles, his Biology, and the
remodelled form of his Psychology;
Huxley brought out Man's Place in Nature,
the Lectures on Comparative
Anatomy, and the Introduction to the
Classification of Animals; Wallace
produced his Malay Archipelago and his
Contributions to the Theory of
Natural Selection (Bates, we may here add to
Mr. Allen's list, published
his paper on Mimicry in 1861, and his Naturalist
on the Amazons in
1863); and Galton wrote his admirable work on Hereditary
Genius, of
which his own family is so remarkable an instance. Tyndall and
Lewes had
long since signified their warm adhesion. At Oxford, Rolleston
was
bringing up a fresh generation of young biologists in the new faith;
at
Cambridge, Darwin's old university, a whole school of brilliant
and
accurate physiologists was beginning to make itself both felt and
heard.
In the domain of anthropology, Tylor was welcoming the assistance of
the
new ideas, while Lubbock was engaged on his kindred investigations
into
the Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man.
All
these diverse lines of thought both showed the widespread influence
of
Darwin's first great work, and led up to the preparation of his
second,
in which he dealt with the history and development of the human
race.
And what was thus true of England was equally true of the
civilized
world, regarded as a whole: everywhere the great evolutionary
movement
was well in progress, everywhere the impulse sent forth from the
quiet
Kentish home was permeating and quickening the entire pulse
of
intelligent humanity."
The Origin of Species, as we have seen, was
intended as a rough draft or
preliminary outline of the theory of natural
selection. The materials
which Darwin had collected in support of that theory
being enormous, the
several books which followed between 1859 and 1881, the
year before his
death, were expansions of hints and parts of the pioneer
book. The last
to appear was that treating of The Formation of Vegetable
Mould through
the Action of Worms. It embodied the results of experiments
which had
been carried on for more than forty years, since, as far back as
1837,
Darwin read a paper on the subject before the Geological
Society.
Reference to it recalls a story, characteristic of Darwin's
innate
modesty, told to the writer by the present John Murray. Darwin called
on
the elder Murray (presumably some time in 1880), and after fumbling
in
his coat-tail pocket, drew out a packet, which he handed to Murray
with
the timidity of an unfledged author submitting his first manuscript.
"I
have brought you," he said, "a little thing of mine on the action
of
worms on soil," and then paused as if in doubt whether Murray would
care
to run the risk of bringing out the book! One story leads to
another,
and our second relates to the burial of Darwin in Westminster
Abbey.
Among the signatures of members of Parliament, requesting Dean
Bradley's
consent to Darwin's interment there, was that of Mr. Richard B.
Martin,
partner in the well-known bank of that name, trading under the sign
of
the "Grasshopper." In his history of this old institution Mr. John
B.
Martin prints the following letter, which was received on the 27th
of
April, 1882, the day after Darwin's funeral.--
SIRS--We have this
day drawn a check for the sum of ￡280, which
closes our account with your
firm. Our reasons for thus closing an
account opened so very many years ago
are of so exceptional a kind
that we are quite prepared to find that they
are deemed wholly
inadequate to the result.... They are entirely the
presence of Mr.
R. B. Martin at Westminster Abbey, not merely as giving
sanction to
the same as an individual, but appearing as one of the
deputation
from a Society which has especially become the indorser
and
sustainer of Mr. Darwin's
theories.
---- &
Co.
The accordance of a resting-place to Darwin's remains among
England's
illustrious dead in that Valhalla, was an irenicon from Theology to
one
whose theories, pushed to their logical issues, have done more than
any
other to undermine the supernatural assumptions on which it is
built.
Not that Darwin was a man of aggressive type. If he speaks on the
high
matters round which, like planet tethered to sun, the spirit of
man
revolves by irresistible attraction, it is with hesitating voice
and
with no deep emotion. A man of placid temper, in whom the
observing
faculties were stronger than the reflective, he was content to
collect
and co-ordinate facts, leaving to others the work of pointing out
their
significance, and adjusting them, as best they could, to this or
that
theory. It would be unjust to say of him what John Morley says
of
Voltaire, that "he had no ear for the finer vibrations of the
spiritual
voice," but we know from his own confessions, what limitations
hemmed in
his emotional nature. The Life and Letters tells us that he was
glad,
after the more serious work and correspondence of the day were over,
to
listen to novels, for which he had a great love so long as they
ended
happily, and contained "some person whom one can thoroughly love, if
a
pretty woman, so much the better." But strangely enough, he lost
all
pleasure in music, art, and poetry after thirty. When at school
he
enjoyed Thomson, Byron, and Scott; Shelley gave him intense delight,
and
he was fond of Shakespeare, especially the historical plays; but in
his
old age he found him "so intolerably dull that it nauseated
me."
This curious and lamentable loss of the higher æsthetic
tastes
is all the odder, as books on history, biographies, and
travels
(independently of any scientific facts which they may contain),
and
essays on all sorts of subjects, interest me as much as ever
they
did. My mind seems to have become a kind of machine for
grinding
general laws out of large collections of facts, but why this
should
have caused the atrophy of that part of the brain alone on which
the
higher tastes depend I cannot conceive. A man with a mind
more
highly organised or better constituted than mine would not,
I
suppose, have thus suffered; and, if I had to live my life again,
I
would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some
music
at least once every week, for perhaps the parts of my brain
now
atrophied would thus have been kept active through use. The loss
of
these tastes is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be
injurious
to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character,
by
enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.
It is often said
that a man's religion concerns himself only. So far as
the value of the
majority of people's opinions on such high matters
goes, this is true; but it
is a shallow saying when applied to men whose
words carry weight, or whose
discoveries cause us to ask what is their
bearing on the larger questions of
human relations and destinies to
which past ages have given answers that no
longer satisfy us, or that
are not compatible with the facts discovered.
Whatever silence Darwin
maintained in his books as to his religious opinions,
intelligent
readers would see that unaggressive as was the mode of
presentments of
his theory, it undermined current beliefs in special
providence,
with its special creations and contrivances, and therefore in
the
intermittent interference of a deity; thus excluding that
supernatural
action of which miracles are the decaying stock
evidence.
Nor could they fail to ask whether the theory of natural
selection by
"descent with modification" was to apply to the human species.
And when
Darwin, already anticipated in this application by his more
daring
disciples, Professors Huxley and Haeckel, published his Descent
of
Man, with its outspoken chapter on the origin of conscience and
the
development of belief in spiritual beings, a belief subject to
periodical
revision as knowledge increased, it was obvious that the
bottom was knocked
out of all traditional dogmas of man's fall and
redemption, of human sin and
divine forgiveness. Therefore, what Darwin
himself believed was a matter of
moment. His answers to inquiries which
were made public during his lifetime
told us that while the varying
circumstances and modes of life caused his
judgment to often fluctuate,
and that while he had never been an atheist in
the sense of denying the
existence of a God, "I think," he says, "that
generally (and more and
more as I grow older) but not always, an agnostic
would be the most
correct description of my state of mind." The chapter on
Religion,
although a part of the autobiography, is printed separately in the
Life
and Letters. As the following quotation shows, it is interesting
as
detailing a few of the steps by which Darwin reached that
suspensive
stage.
Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox,
and I remember
being heartily laughed at by several of the officers
(though
themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an
unanswerable
authority on some point of morality. I suppose it was the
novelty of
the argument that amused them. But I had gradually come by
this
time--i. e., 1836 to 1839--to see that the Old Testament was no
more
to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos. The
question,
then, continually rose before my mind, and would not be
banished--is
it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the
Hindoos
he would permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu,
Siva,
etc., as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament?
This
appeared to me utterly incredible.
By further reflecting that
the clearest evidence would be requisite
to make any sane man believe in
the miracles by which Christianity
is supported--and that the more we know
of the fixed laws of Nature
the more incredible do miracles become--that
the men at that time
were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost
incomprehensible
by us, that the Gospels can not be proved to have been
written
simultaneously with the events, that they differ in many
important
details, far too important, as it seems to me, to be admitted as
the
usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses: by such reflections as
these,
which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as
they
influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as
a
divine revelation. The fact that many false religions have
spread
over large portions of the earth like wildfire had some weight
with
me.
But I was very unwilling to give up my belief; I feel
sure of this,
for I can well remember often and often inventing day-dreams
of
old letters between distinguished Romans, and manuscripts
being
discovered at Pompeii or elsewhere, which confirmed in the
most
striking manner all that was written in the Gospels. But I found
it
more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination,
to
invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus
disbelief
crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete.
The
rate was so slow that I felt no distress.
Although I did not
think much about the existence of a personal God
until a considerably later
period of my life, I will here give the
vague conclusions to which I have
been driven. The old argument from
design in Nature, as given by Paley,
which formerly seemed to me so
conclusive, fails, now that the law of
natural selection has been
discovered. We can no longer argue that, for
instance, the beautiful
hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an
intelligent
being, like the hinge of a door by a man. There seems to be no
more
design in the variability of organic beings, and in the action
of
natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. But
I
have discussed this subject at the end of my book on the
Variation
of Domesticated Animals and Plants, and the argument there given
has
never, as far as I can see, been answered.
Without doubt, the
influence of the conclusions deducible from the
theory of Evolution are fatal
to belief in the supernatural. When we say
the supernatural, we mean that
great body of assumptions out of which
are constructed all theologies, the
essential element in these being the
intimate relation between spiritual
beings, of whom certain qualities
are predicated, and man. These beings have
no longer any place in the
effective belief of intelligent and unprejudiced
men, because they are
found to have no correspondence with the ascertained
operations of
Nature.
[Illustration: Herbert Spencer]
2.
_Herbert Spencer._
Contact with many "sorts and conditions of men" brings
home the need of
ceaselessly dinning into their ears the fact that _Darwin's
theory deals
only with the evolution of plants and animals from a common
ancestry.
It is not concerned with the origin of life itself, nor with
those
conditions preceding life which are covered by the general
term_,
Inorganic Evolution. Therefore, it forms but a very small part of
the
general theory of the origin of the earth and other bodies, "as the
sand
by the seashore innumerable," that fill the infinite spaces.
We
have seen that speculation about the universe had its rise in Ionia.
After
centuries of discouragement, prohibition, and, sometimes, actual
persecution,
it was revived, to advance, without further serious arrest,
some three
hundred years ago. A survey of the history of philosophies of
the origin of
the cosmos from the time of the renascence of inquiry,
shows that the great
Immanuel Kant has not had his due. As remarked
already, he appears to have
been the first to put into shape what is
known as the nebular theory. In his
General Natural History and Theory
of the Celestial Bodies; or an Attempt to
Account for the Constitution
and the Mechanical Origin of the Universe upon
Newtonian Principles,
published in 1775, he "pictures to himself the universe
as once an
infinite expansion of formless and diffused matter. At one point
of this
he supposes a single centre of attraction set up, and shows how
this
must result in the development of a prodigious central body,
surrounded
by systems of solar and planetary worlds in all stages of
development.
In vivid language he depicts the great world-maelstrom, widening
the
margins of its prodigious eddy in the slow progress of millions
of
ages, gradually reclaiming more and more of the molecular waste,
and
converting chaos into cosmos. But what is gained at the margin is
lost
in the centre; the attractions of the central systems bring
their
constituents together, which then, by the heat evolved, are
converted
once more into molecular chaos. Thus the worlds that are lie
between
the ruins of the worlds that have been and the chaotic materials of
the
worlds that shall be; and in spite of all waste and destruction,
Cosmos
is extending his borders at the expense of Chaos."
Kant's
speculations were confirmed by the celebrated mathematician,
Laplace. He
showed that the "rings" rotate in the same direction as the
central body from
which they were cast off; sun, planets, and moons
(those of Uranus excepted)
moving in a common direction, and almost in
the same plane. The probability
that these harmonious movements are the
effects of like causes he calculated
as 200,000 billions to one.
The observations of the famous astronomer,
Sir William Herschel, which
resulted in the discovery of binary or double
stars, of star-clusters,
and cloud-like nebulæ (as that term implies) were
further confirmations
of Kant's theory. And such modifications in this as
have been made
by subsequent advance in knowledge, notably by the doctrine of
the
Conservation of Energy (the hypothesis of Kant and Laplace being
based
on gravitation alone), affect not the general theory of the
origin
of the heavenly bodies from seemingly formless, unstable,
and
highly-diffused matter. The assumption of primitive unstableness
and
unlikeness squares with the unequal distribution of matter; with
the
movements of its masses in different directions, and at different
rates;
and with the ceaseless redistribution of matter and motion. For
all
changes of states are due to the rearrangement of the atoms of
which
matter is made up, resulting in the evolution of the seeming like
into
the actual unlike; of the simple into the more and more
complex,
till--speaking of the only planet of whose life-history we can
have
knowledge--with the cooling of the earth to a temperature permitting
of
the evolution of living matter, the highest complexity is reached
in
the infinitely diverse forms of plants and animals. Therefore, as
our
knowledge of matter is limited to the changes of which we assume it
to
be the vehicle, it would seem that science reduces the Universe to
the
intelligible concept of Motion.
Since the great discovery by
Kirchoff, in 1859, of the meaning of the
dark lines that cross the refracted
sun-rays, the spectroscope has come
as powerful evidence in support of the
nebular theory, while the
photographic plate is a scarcely less important
witness. The one has
demonstrated that many nebulæ, once thought to be
star-clusters, are
masses of glowing hydrogen and nitrogen gases; that, to
quote the
striking communication made by the highest authority on the
subject, Dr.
Huggins, in his Presidential Address to the British Association,
1891,
"in the part of the heavens within our ken, the stars still in the
early
and middle stages of evolution exceed greatly in number those
which
appear to be in an advanced condition of condensation." The
other,
recording infallible vibrations on a sensitive plate, and
securing
accurate registration of the impressions, reveals, as in Dr.
Roberts's
grand photograph of the nebula in Andromeda, a central mass round
which
are distinct rings of luminous matter, these being separated from
the
main body by dark rifts or spaces. To quote Dr. Huggins once more,
"We
seem to have presented to us some stage of cosmical Evolution on
a
gigantic scale."
The great fact that lies at the back of all these
confirmations of the
nebular theory is the fundamental identity of the stuff
of which the
universe is made; a fact which entered into the prevision of the
Ionian
cosmologists. Dr. Huggins says that "if the whole earth were heated
to
the temperature of the sun, its spectrum would resemble very closely
the
solar spectrum."
In referring to this, there may be carrying of
"owls to Athens," but
that re-statements may sometimes be needful has
illustration in Lord
Salisbury's Presidential Address to the British
Association, 1894,
wherein the assumed absence of oxygen and nitrogen in the
sun's spectrum
is adduced as an argument against the theory of the common
origin of the
bodies of the solar system. Speaking of the predominant
proportion of
oxygen in the solid and liquid substances of the earth, and of
the
predominance of nitrogen in our atmosphere, his lordship asked, "if
the
earth be a detached bit whisked off the mass of the sun, as
cosmogonists
love to tell us, how comes it that, in leaving the sun, we
cleaned him
out so completely of his nitrogen and oxygen that not a trace of
these
gases remains behind to be discovered even by the searching vision
of
the spectroscope?" If Lord Salisbury had consulted Dr. Huggins, or
some
foreign astronomer of equal rank, as Duner or Scheiner, he would
not
have put a question exposing his ignorance, and unmasking his
prejudice.
These authorities would have told him that when a mixture of
the
incandescent vapours of the metals and metalloids (or
non-metallic
elementary substances, to which class both oxygen and nitrogen
belong),
or their compounds, is examined with the spectroscope, the spectra
of
the metalloids always yield before that of the metals. Hence the
absence
of the lines of oxygen and other metalloids, carbon and
silicon
excepted, among the vast crowd of lines in the solar spectrum.
Then,
too, in extreme states of rarefaction of the sun's absorbing layer,
the
absorption of the oxygen is too small to be sensible to us.
"While
the genesis of the Solar System, and of countless other systems
like it, is
thus rendered comprehensible, the ultimate mystery continues
as great as
ever. The problem of existence is not solved: it is simply
removed further
back. The Nebular Hypothesis throws no light on the
origin of diffused
matter; and diffused matter as much needs accounting
for as concrete matter.
The genesis of an atom is not easier to conceive
than the genesis of a
planet. Nay, indeed, so far from making the
universe a less mystery than
before, it makes it a greater mystery.
Creation by manufacture is a much
lower thing than creation by
evolution. A man can put together a machine; but
he cannot make a
machine develop itself. The ingenious artisan, able as some
have been so
far to imitate vitality as to produce a mechanical pianoforte
player,
may in some sort conceive how, by greater skill, a complete man might
be
artificially produced; but he is unable to conceive how such a
complex
organism gradually arises out of a minute structureless germ. That
our
harmonious universe once existed potentially as formless diffuse
matter,
and has slowly grown into its present organized state, is a far
more
astonishing fact than would have been its formation after the
artificial
method vulgarly supposed. Those who hold it legitimate to argue
from
phenomena to noumena, may rightly contend that the Nebular
Hypothesis
implies a First Cause as much transcending 'the mechanical God of
Paley'
as does the fetish of the savage."
This quotation is from an
essay on the Nebular Hypothesis, which
appeared in the Westminster Review of
July, 1858, and which must,
therefore, have been written before the eventful
date of the reading
of Darwin and Wallace's memorable paper before the
Linnæan Society.
The author of that essay is Mr. Herbert Spencer, and the
foregoing
extract from it may fitly preface a brief account of his life-work
in
co-ordinating the manifold branches of knowledge into a synthetic
whole.
In erecting a complete theory of Evolution on a purely
scientific
basis "his profound and vigorous writings," to quote Huxley,
"embody
the spirit of Descartes in the knowledge of our own day." Laying
the
foundation of his massive structure in early manhood, Mr. Spencer
has
had the rare satisfaction of placing the topmost stone on the
building
which his brain devised and his hand upreared. While the sheets of
this
little book are being passed for press, there arrives the third
volume
of the Principles of Sociology, which completes Mr. Spencer's
Synthetic
Philosophy. In the preface to this, the venerable author
says:
"On looking back over the six-and-thirty years which I have passed
since
the Synthetic Philosophy was commenced, I am surprised at my
audacity
in undertaking it, and still more surprised by its completion. In
1860
my small resources had been nearly all frittered away in writing
and
publishing books which did not repay their expenses; and I was
suffering
under a chronic disorder, caused by overtax of brain in 1855,
which,
wholly disabling me for eighteen months, thereafter limited my work
to
three hours a day, and usually to less. How insane my project must
have
seemed to onlookers, may be judged from the fact that before the
first
chapter of the first volume was finished, one of my nervous
breakdowns
obliged me to desist.
"But imprudent courses do not always
fail. Sometimes a forlorn hope
is justified by the event. Though, along with
other deterrents, many
relapses, now lasting for weeks, now for months, and
once for years,
often made me despair of reaching the end, yet at length the
end is
reached. Doubtless in earlier years some exultation would have
resulted;
but as age creeps on feelings weaken, and now my chief pleasure is
in my
emancipation. Still there is satisfaction in the consciousness
that
losses, discouragements, and shattered health have not prevented
me
from fulfilling the purpose of my life."
These words recall a
parallel invited by Gibbon's record of his
feelings on the completion of his
immortal work, when walking under the
acacias of his garden at Lausanne, he
pondered on the "recovery of his
freedom, and perhaps the establishment of
his fame," but with a "sober
melancholy" at the thought that "he had taken an
everlasting leave of an
old and agreeable companion."
HERBERT SPENCER,
spiritual descendant--_longo intervallo_--of Heraclitus
and Lucretius, was
born at Derby on the 27th of April, 1820. His father
was a schoolmaster; a
man of scientific tastes, and, it is interesting
to note, secretary of the
Derby Philosophical Association founded by
Erasmus Darwin. In Mr. Spencer's
book on Education there are hints of
his inheritance of the father's bent as
an observer and lover of Nature
in the remark that, "whoever has not in youth
collected plants and
insects, knows not half the halo of interest which lanes
and hedgerows
can assume." He was articled in his seventeenth year to a
railway
engineer, and followed that profession until he was twenty-five.
During
this period he wrote various papers for the Civil Engineers'
and
Architects' Journal, and, what is of importance to note, a series
of
letters to the Nonconformist in 1842 on The Proper Sphere of
Government
(republished as a pamphlet in 1844), in which "the only point
of
community with the general doctrine of Evolution is a belief in
the
modifiability of human nature through adaptation to conditions, and
a
consequent belief in human progression." After giving up
engineering,
Mr. Spencer joined the staff of the Economist, and while thus
employed,
published, in 1850, his first important book, Social Statics, or
the
Conditions essential to Human Happiness specified, and the first
of
them developed. In a footnote to the later editions of this work
Mr.
Spencer points out a brace of paragraphs in the chapter on
General
Considerations in which "may be seen the first step toward the
general
doctrine of Evolution. After referring to the analogy between
the
subdivision of labour, which goes on in human society as it
advances;
and the gradual diminution in the number of like parts and
the
multiplication of unlike parts which are observable in the
higher
animals; Mr. Spencer says:
"Now, just the same coalescence of
like parts and separation of unlike
ones--just the same increasing
subdivision of function--takes place in
the development of society. The
earliest social organisms consist almost
wholly of repetitions of one
element. Every man is a warrior, hunter,
fisherman, builder, agriculturist,
toolmaker. Each portion of the
community performs the same duties with every
other portion; much as
each slice of the polyp's body is alike stomach,
muscle, skin, and
lungs. Even the chiefs, in whom a tendency towards
separateness of
function first appears, still retain their similarity to the
rest in
economic respects. The next stage is distinguished by a segregation
of
these social units into a few distinct classes--warriors, priests,
and
slaves. A further advance is seen in the sundering of the labourers
into
different castes, having special occupations, as among the Hindoos.
And,
without further illustration, the reader will at once perceive,
that
from these inferior types of society up to our own complicated and
more
perfect one, the progress has ever been of the same nature. While
he
will also perceive that this coalescence of like parts, as seen in
the
concentration of particular manufactures in particular districts,
and
this separation of agents having separate functions, as seen in the
more
and more minute division of labour, are still going on.
"Thus do
we find, not only that the analogy between a society and a
living creature is
borne out to a degree quite unsuspected by those who
commonly draw it, but
also that the same definition of life applies to
both. This union of many men
into one community--this increasing mutual
dependence of units which were
originally independent--this formation of
a whole consisting of unlike
parts--this growth of an organism, of which
one portion cannot be injured
without the rest feeling it--may all be
generalized under the law of
individuation. The development of society,
as well as the development of man
and the development of life generally,
may be described as a tendency to
individuate--_to become a thing_. And
rightly interpreted, the manifold forms
of progress going on around us
are uniformly significant of this
tendency."
_Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto_: "I am a man and
nothing
human is foreign to me." This oft-quoted saying of the old farmer in
the
Self-Tormentor of Terence might be affixed as motto to Herbert
Spencer's
writings from the tractate on the Proper Sphere of Government to
the
concluding volume of the Principles of Sociology. For thought of
human
interests everywhere pervades them; social and ethical questions
are
kept in the van throughout. Philosophy is brought from her high seat
to
mix in the sweet amenities of home, in the discipline of camp, in
the
rivalry of market; and linked to conduct. Conduct is defined as
"acts
adjusted to ends," the perfecting of the adjustment being the
highest
aim, so that "the greatest totality of life in self, in offspring,
and
in fellow-men" is secured, the limit of evolution of conduct not
being
reached, "until, beyond avoidance of direct and indirect injuries
to
others, there are spontaneous efforts to further the welfare of
others."
Emerson puts this ideal into crisp form when he speaks of the time
in
which a man shall care more that he wrongs not his neighbour than
that
his neighbour wrongs him; then will his "market-cart become a chariot
of
the sun."
That humanity is the pivot round which Mr. Spencer's
philosophic system
revolves is seen in the earliest Essays, and notably in
his making
mental evolution the subject of the first instalment of his
Synthetic
Philosophy. For, in the Principles of Psychology, published in
1855, he
limits feeling or consciousness to animals possessing a nervous
system,
and traces its beginnings in the "blurred, undetermined
feeling
answering to a single pulsation or shock" (as for example, to go
no
lower down the life-scale, in the medusa or jelly-fish), to its
highest
form as self-consciousness, or knowing that we know, in man.
This
dominant element in Mr. Spencer's philosophy secures it a life
and
permanence which, had it been restricted to explaining the mechanics
of
the inorganic universe, it could never have possessed. It has
been
observed how the Darwinian theory aroused attention in all
quarters
because it touched human interests on every side. And, although
less
obvious to the multitude, the Synthetic Philosophy, dealing with
all
cosmic processes as purely mechanical problems, interprets
"the
phenomena of life (excluding the question of its origin), mind,
and
society, in terms of matter and motion." Anticipating the levelling
of
epithets against such apparent materializing of mental phenomena
involved in
that method, Spencer remarks on the dismay with which men,
who have not risen
above the vulgar conception which unites with matter
the contemptuous
epithets "gross" and "brute," regard the proposal to
reduce the phenomena of
Life, of Mind, and of Society, to a level which
they think so degraded.
"Whoever remembers that the forms of existence
which the uncultivated speak
of with so much scorn, are shown by the
man of science to be the more
marvellous in their attributes the more
they are investigated, and are also
proved to be in their ultimate
natures absolutely incomprehensible--as
absolutely incomprehensible
as sensation, or the conscious something which
perceives it--whoever
clearly recognises this truth, will see that the course
proposed does
not imply a degradation of the so-called higher, but an
elevation of
the so-called lower. Perceiving, as he will, that the
Materialist
and Spiritualist controversy is a mere war of words,--in which
the
disputants are equally absurd, each thinking that he understands
that
which it is impossible for any man to understand,--he will perceive
how
utterly groundless is the fear referred to. Being fully convinced
that
no matter what nomenclature is used, the ultimate mystery must
remain
the same, he will be as ready to formulate all phenomena in terms
of
Matter, Motion, and Force, as in any other terms; and will rather
indeed
anticipate, that only in a doctrine which recognises the Unknown
Cause
as co-extensive with all orders of phenomena, can there be a
consistent
Religion, or a consistent Philosophy."
This is clear
enough; yet such is the crass density of some objectors
that eighteen years
after the above was written, Mr. Spencer, in
answering criticisms on First
Principles, had to rebut the charge that
he believed matter to consist of
"space-occupying units, having shape
and measurement."
The Principles
of Psychology was both preceded and followed by a series
of essays in which
the process of change from the "homogeneous to the
heterogeneous," i. e.,
from the seeming like to the actual unlike, was
expounded. Mr. Spencer tells
us that in 1852 he first became acquainted
with Von Baer's Law of
Development, or the changes undergone in each
living thing, from the general
to the special, during its advance
from the embryonic to the fully-formed
state. That law confirmed the
prevision indicated in the passages quoted
above from Social Statics,
and impressed him as one of the three doctrines
which are indispensable
elements of the general theory of Evolution. The
other two are the
Correlation of the Physical Forces, or the transformation
of different
modes of motion into other modes of motion, as of heat or light
into
electricity, and so forth, in Proteus-like fashion; and the
Conservation
of Energy, or the indestructibility of matter and motion,
whatever
changes or transformations these may undergo.
In permitting
the quotation of the useful abstract of the Synthetic
Philosophy which,
originally drawn up for the late Professor Youmans,
was imbodied in a letter
to the Athenæum of 22d of July, 1882, Mr.
Spencer was good enough to
volunteer the following details to the
writer:--
"You are probably
aware that the conception set forth in that abstract
was reached by slow
steps during many years. These steps occurred as
follows:--
1850.
Social Statics: especially chapter General
Considerations.
(Higher human Evolution.)
1852. March.
Development Hypothesis, in the Leader. (Evolution of
species,
_vid. ante_, p. 111.)
1852. April. Theory of Population, etc., in
Westminster Review.
(Higher human Evolution.)
1854.
July. The Genesis of Science in British Quarterly
Review.
(Intellectual Evolution.)
1855. July. Principles
of Psychology. (Mental Evolution in general.)
1857. April. Progress:
its Law and Cause: Westminster Review.
(Evolution at
large.)
1857. April. Ultimate Laws of Physiology. National Review.
(Another
factor of Evolution at large.)
"From these last
two Essays came the inception of the Synthetic
Philosophy. The first
programme of it was drawn up in January, 1858." ...
When seeing Mr.
Spencer on the subject of this letter, he took the
further trouble to point
out certain passages in the essays originally
comprised in the one volume
edition of 1858 which contain germinal ideas
of his synthesis. That they are
his selection will add to the interest
and value of their quotation,
revealing, as perchance they may, a
fragment of the autobiography which it is
an open secret Mr. Spencer
has written.
"That Law, Religion, and
Manners are thus related--that their respective
kinds of operation come under
one generalisation--that they have in
certain contrasted characteristics of
men a common support and a common
danger--will, however, be most clearly seen
on discovering that they
have a common origin. Little as from present
appearances we should
suppose it, we shall yet find that at first, the
control of religion,
the control of laws, and the control of manners, were
all one control.
However incredible it may now seem, we believe it to be
demonstrable
that the rules of etiquette, the provisions of the statute-book,
and the
commands of the decalogue, have grown from the same root. If we go
far
back enough into the ages of primeval Fetishism, it becomes
manifest
that originally Deity, Chief, and Master of the Ceremonies
were
identical" (Essays, vol. i, 1883 edition; Manners and Fashion, p.
65).
"Scientific advance is as much from the special to the general as
from
the general to the special. Quite in harmony with this we find to be
the
admissions that the sciences are as branches of one trunk, and that
they
were at first cultivated simultaneously; and this becomes the
more
marked on finding, as we have done, not only that the sciences have
a
common root, but that science in general has a common root with
language,
classification, reasoning, art; that throughout civilisation
these have
advanced together, acting and reacting on each other just
as the separate
sciences have done; and that thus the development of
intelligence in all its
divisions and subdivisions has conformed to this
same law to which we have
shown the sciences conform" (Ib. The Genesis
of Science, pp. 191,
192).
(In correspondence with this, recognising that the same method has
to be
adopted in all inquiry, whether we deal with the body or the mind,
the
following may be quoted from Hume's Treatise on Human
Nature.
"'Tis evident that all the sciences have a relation, greater or
less,
to human nature; and that, however wide any of them may seem to
run
from it, they still return back by one passage or another.
Even
_Mathematics_, _Natural Philosophy_, and _Natural Religion_ are in
some
measure dependent on the science of MAN, since they lie under
the
cognisance of men, and are judged of by their powers and
qualities.)
"The analogy between individual organisms and the social
organisms
is one that has in all ages forced itself on the attention of
the
observant.... While it is becoming clear that there are no such
special
parallelisms between the constituent parts of a man and those of
a
nation, as have been thought to exist, it is also becoming clear
that
the general principles of development and structure displayed in
all
organised bodies are displayed in societies also. The
fundamental
characteristic both of societies and of living creatures is, that
they
consist of mutually dependent parts; and it would seem that
this
involves a community of various other characteristics.... Meanwhile,
if
any such correspondence exists, it is clear that Biology and
Sociology
will more or less interpret each other.
"One of the
positions we have endeavoured to establish is, that
in animals the process of
development is carried on, not by
differentiations only, but by subordinate
integrations. Now in the
social organism we may see the same duality of
process; and further, it
is to be observed that the integrations are of the
same three kinds.
Thus we have integrations that arise from the simple growth
of adjacent
parts that perform like functions; as, for instance, the
coalescence of
Manchester with its calico-weaving suburbs. We have other
integrations
that arise when, out of several places producing a particular
commodity,
one monopolises more and more of the business, and leaves the rest
to
dwindle; as witness the growth of the Yorkshire cloth districts at
the
expense of those in the west of England.... And we have yet
those
other integrations that result from the actual approximation of
the
similarly-occupied parts, whence results such facts as the
concentration
of publishers in Paternoster Row, of lawyers in the Temple
and
neighbourhood, of corn merchants about Mark Lane, of civil engineers
in
Great George Street, of bankers in the centre of the city"
(Essays,
vol. iii, 1878 edition; Transcendental Physiology, pp.
414-416).
But, divested of technicalities, and summarized in words to
be
"understanded of the people," the following quotation from the Essay
on
Progress: Its Law and Cause, gives the gist of the Synthetic
Philosophy:
"We believe we have shown beyond question that that which the
German
physiologists (Von Baer, Wolff, and others) have found to be the law
of
organic development (as of a seed into a tree, and of an egg into
an
animal), is the law of all development. The advance from the simple
to
the complex, through a process of successive differentiations (i.
e.,
the appearance of differences in the parts of a seemingly
like
substance), is seen alike in the earliest changes of the Universe
to
which we can reason our way back; and in the earlier changes which
we
can inductively establish; it is seen in the geologic and
climatic
evolution of the Earth, and of every single organism on its surface;
it
is seen in the evolution of Humanity, whether contemplated in
the
civilised individual, or in the aggregation of races; it is seen in
the
evolution of Society in respect alike of its political, its
religious,
and its economical organisation; and it is seen in the evolution
of all
those endless concrete and abstract products of human activity
which
constitute the environment of our daily life. From the remotest
past
which Science can fathom, up to the novelties of yesterday, that
in
which Progress essentially consists, is the transformation of
the
homogeneous into the heterogeneous" (Essays, vol. i, 1883, p.
30).
To this may fitly follow the "succinct statement of the
cardinal
principles developed in the successive works," which Mr. Spencer,
as
named above, prepared for Professor Youmans.
1. Throughout the
universe in general and in detail there is an
unceasing redistribution of
matter and motion.
2. This redistribution constitutes evolution when
there is a predominant
integration of matter and dissipation of motion, and
constitutes
dissolution when there is a predominant absorption of motion
and
disintegration of matter.
3. Evolution is simple when the process
of integration, or the formation
of a coherent aggregate, proceeds
uncomplicated by other processes.
4. Evolution is compound, when along
with this primary change from an
incoherent to a coherent state, there go on
secondary changes due to
differences in the circumstances of the different
parts of the
aggregate.
5. These secondary changes constitute a
transformation of the
homogeneous into the heterogeneous--a transformation
which, like the
first, is exhibited in the universe as a whole and in all (or
nearly
all) its details; in the aggregate of stars and nebulæ; in the
planetary
system; in the earth as an inorganic mass; in each organism,
vegetal or
animal (Von Baer's law otherwise expressed); in the aggregate
of
organisms throughout geologic time; in the mind; in society; in
all
products of social activity.
6. The process of integration, acting
locally as well as generally,
combines with the process of differentiation to
render this change
not simply from homogeneity to heterogeneity, but from an
indefinite
homogeneity to a definite heterogeneity; and this trait of
increasing
definiteness, which accompanies the trait of increasing
heterogeneity,
is, like it, exhibited in the totality of things and in all
its
divisions and subdivisions down to the minutest.
7. Along with
this redistribution of the matter composing any evolving
aggregate there goes
on a redistribution of the retained motion of its
components in relation to
one another; this also becomes, step by step,
more definitely
heterogeneous.
8. In the absence of a homogeneity that is infinite and
absolute, that
redistribution, of which evolution is one phase, is
inevitable. The
causes which necessitate it are these--
9. The
instability of the homogeneous, which is consequent upon the
different
exposures of the different parts of any limited aggregate to
incident
forces.
The transformations hence resulting are--
10. The
multiplication of effects. Every mass and part of a mass on
which a force
falls subdivides and differentiates that force, which
thereupon proceeds to
work a variety of changes; and each of these
becomes the parent of
similarly-multiplying changes; the multiplication
of them becoming greater in
proportion as the aggregate becomes more
heterogeneous. And these two causes
of increasing differentiations are
furthered by--
11. Segregation,
which is a process tending ever to separate unlike
units and to bring
together like units--so serving continually to
sharpen, or make definite,
differentiations otherwise caused.
12. Equilibration is the final result
of these transformations which an
evolving aggregate undergoes. The changes
go on until there is reached
an equilibrium between the forces which all
parts of the aggregate are
exposed to and the forces these parts oppose to
them.
Equilibration may pass through a transition stage of balanced
motions
(as in a planetary system) or of balanced functions (as in a
living
body) on the way to ultimate equilibrium; but the state of rest
in
inorganic bodies, or death in organic bodies, is the necessary limit
of
the changes constituting evolution.
13. Dissolution is the
counter-change which sooner or later every
evolved aggregate undergoes.
Remaining exposed to surrounding forces
that are unequilibrated, each
aggregate is ever liable to be dissipated
by the increase, gradual or sudden,
of its contained motion; and
its dissipation, quickly undergone by bodies
lately animate, and
slowly undergone by inanimate masses, remains to be
undergone at an
indefinitely remote period by each planetary and stellar
mass, which
since an indefinitely distant period in the past has been
slowly
evolving; the cycle of its transformations being thus
completed.
14. This rhythm of evolution and dissolution, completing
itself
during short periods in small aggregates, and in the vast
aggregates
distributed through space completing itself in periods
immeasurable by
human thought, is, so far as we can see, universal and
eternal--each
alternating phase of the process predominating now in this
region of
space and now in that, as local conditions
determine. |
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