442 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ganic, organic, pliysical, vital, psydiioal, social, liave to be inter- 

 preted. 



In order to deprive the law of evolution, hereupon formulated, 

 of any merely empirical character, Mr. Spencer shows at length 

 that there are all-pervading principles underlying the all-per- 

 vading process. But of this reduction of inductive results to the 

 deductive form we shall find it more convenient to speak pres- 

 ently when we come to deal with the general method of the 

 Spencerian philosophy. Our immediate concern is to understand 

 a little more clearly what we mean by evolution.* 



We have already stated the matter in a broad and general 

 way. Dissolution is disintegration ; evolution is integration. 

 But this definition takes note only of the primary element in the 

 evolutionary process. Evolution means always an integration of 

 matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, or, in other words, 

 increasing coherence to definiteness ; but it commonly implies 

 much more than this. We must recognize the secondary changes 

 by which this primary change is habitually complicated before 

 the formula of evolution can be set down as complete. 



These secondary changes are indeed the most conspicuous char- 

 acteristics of the evolutionary process ; and it is not surprising, 

 therefore, that it was from these that Mr. Spencer started, that it 

 was with these that he remained for a long time preoccupied, 

 that it was these which he first defined in philosophic terminol- 

 ogy. A simple plan for us to adopt in the present exposition will 

 be to follow him very rapidly along the line of investigation by 

 which the full law of evolution was gradually reached. 



Approaching, as he did, the general problem of things by way 

 of ethical and sociological inquiries, Mr. Spencer found himself 

 confronted at the outset by the special fact of the development of 

 man individually and in society that is, with the fact of prog- 

 ress. What, then, is progress ? This was the specific question to 



* It is, of course, a necessary corollary from the doctrine of the rhythm of motion that 

 the processes of evolution and dissolution are continually in conflict, locally and generally : 

 and in no theory of the evolution of things whether we consider individual existences, or 

 aggregates of such, or the total aggregate that we call the cosmos is it possible, therefore, 

 to leave the process of dissolution out of the account. Individuals die, organisms disinte- 

 grate, societies collapse, races and civilizations are extinguished ; while we are bound to 

 acknowledge that for our earth itself, and the system of which it forms a part, and the 

 uuiverse in its entirety, the hour of dissolution must at length be sounded the disinte- 

 grating force must finally begia to undo the work of eons upon eons of slow and gi'adual 

 integration. In the life and death of a gnat we find a tiny symbol of the pulsations that 

 produce the rise and decay of worlds. But in our own system and on our planet, however 

 certain the ultimate course of things may seem to be, the process of evolution has long 

 predominated, and still predominates, over the process of dissolution ; and it is upon the 

 former process, therefore, that we fix attention, though the rhythm of motion and the flux 

 of existence reveal themselves wherever we look. 



