IN THE FORM OF EDUCATION AND RELIGION 13 



very numerous minor movements. In every department its influence 

 is felt. 



In the last half of the nineteenth century Herbert Spencer occupied, 

 and still occupies, much attention. It is interesting to note that in 

 his generalizations of science he adopted the agnostic view of his 

 system from Hamilton and Mansell. Back of that view is Hume's 

 skepticism especially with regard to the category of causality, and 

 it would not be difficult to trace his extreme nominalism to the 

 stream of influence that William of Occam set flowing within the 

 church. 



Herbert Spencer's theory of the world resembles in a marked man- 

 ner the doctrine of the Oriental mind that the world-process finally 

 comes to nothing. One after another, things and events appear and 

 then vanish again and all remains as at first. 1 It is a Sisyphus 

 movement with no permanent outcome and no worthy result. It 

 begins with the homogeneous, undifferentiated condition of matter 

 and moves towards heterogeneity, individuality, and complexity of 

 function. Evolution is this process of individualization. But all 

 evolution is to be followed by dissolution, a return to the chaotic and 

 unindividualized state of the homogeneous which Spencer considered 

 to be unstable and, so to speak, impelled to evolution, but which 

 in the end becomes unstable again and seeks its equilibrium 

 in chaos. 



One of the chief leaders of the Aufkldrung has thus returned to 

 Orientalism, and his infinite and eternal is only an unknown and 

 unknowable power --he calls it "unknown and unknowable," 

 though he lets us clearly see that there is a shuttle motion produced 



1 " Evolution," says Spencer, in that concise statement of his system found in 

 his Autobiography, vol. i, pp. 650-652, " Evolution ... is a movement (6) not 

 simply from homogeneity to heterogeneity, but from an indefinite homogeneity 

 to a definite heterogeneity; and this trait of increasing definiteness, which accom- 

 panies 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 an 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. . . . (13) 

 Dissolution is the counter-change which sooner or later every evolved aggregate 

 undergoes. Remaining exposed to surrounding forces that are unequilibriated, 

 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 dis- 

 solution, completing itself during short periods in small aggregates, and in the 

 vast aggregates distributed through space completing itself in periods which are 

 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. . . . (16) That which persists, 

 unchanging in quantity but ever changing in form, under these sensible appear- 

 ances which the Universe presents to us, transcends human knowledge and con- 

 ception, is an unknown and unknowable Power, which we are obliged to 

 recognize as without limit in space and without beginning or end in time." 



