HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS WORK. 447 



as General Philosophy. The nine following volumes of the sys- 

 tem are devoted to Special Philosophy that is, to the task of 

 carrying these universal truths, as an organon, forward into the 

 particular phenomena which form the subject-matter of biology, 

 psychology, sociology, and ethics, and of interpreting such par- 

 ticular phenomena by them. 



Strictly speaking, of course, at the very opening of this serial 

 undertaking a large gap remains unfilled, since the application of 

 the fundamental principles already established should first of all 

 be made to inorganic Nature. But this great division is passed 

 over entirely, "partly," to quote the words of the prospectus, 

 " because, even without it, the scheme is too extensive ; and j^artly 

 because the interpretation of organic Nature after the proposed 

 method is of more immediate importance." We thus enter at 

 once, in The Principles of Biology, the field of organic life ; the 

 purpose of the two volumes composing this work being, as stated 

 in the preface, "to set forth the general truths of biology as illus- 

 trative of and as interpreted by the laws of evolution." Due 

 notice should be taken of the phrase here employed " the general 

 truths of biology." To write a detailed and exhaustive treatise 

 on the subject was manifestly no part of Mr. Spencer's plan, 

 which called only for such a co-ordination and synthesis of funda- 

 mental principles as, expressed in terms of the universal laws of 

 the redistribution of matter and motion, and finally affiliated 

 upon the ultimate truth, the persistence of force, would present in 

 broadest outline the science of life. 



From the historical point of view no part of this masterly 

 work is of greater interest than the closing division of the first 

 volume, in which Mr. Spencer, after dismissing the special-crea- 

 tion theory of things as untenable, displays at length the a 'priori 

 and a posteriori evidences of organic evolution. To appreciate 

 the full significance of his arguments, it is necessary to remember 

 that at the time when the chapters containing them were written, 

 the doctrine of development was currently regarded, even by the 

 large body of naturalists, as a more or less fantastic hypothesis. 

 But while thus presenting the case for evolution in its inductive 

 and deductive aspects, Mr. Spencer did much more than this. He 

 showed that the processes observable in the world of organic life 

 are but phases of the universal cosmical processes formulated in 

 First Principles ; and that thus the deepest laws of morphological 

 and physiological development are, deductively viewed, necessary 

 corollaries from the doctrines already established. Even the Dar- 

 winian principle of natural selection (or, as Mr. Spencer called 

 it, the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence) is ex- 

 hibited as falling into its place as a single manifestation of a far 

 wider law the law of equilibration. 



