HERBERT SPENCER AND HIS WORK. 449 



most elevated kinds have reached those highly integrated, very- 

 definite, and extremely heterogeneous organizations they possess, 

 through modifications upon modifications accumulated during an 

 immeasurable past if the developed nervous systems of such 

 creatures have gained their complex structures and functions 

 little by little ; then, necessarily, the involved forms of conscious- 

 ness which are the correlatives of these complex structures and 

 functions must have arisen by degrees. And as it is impossible 

 truly to comprehend the organization of the body in general, or 

 of the nervous system in particular, without tracing its successive 

 stages of complication ; so it must be impossible to comprehend 

 mental organization without similarly tracing its stages." * 



As in The Principles of Biology the general truths of life were 

 interpreted through the fundamental laws of evolution, so, there- 

 fore, in The Principles of Psychology the general facts and prob- 

 lems of mind are elucidated in the same way. The work opens 

 with a consideration of data and inductions, and then given the 

 psychical shock which Mr. Spencer distinguishes as the primordial 

 and unresolvable element, or ultimate unit, of consciousness 

 proceeds to trace the evolution of intelligence, stage by stage, 

 through reflex action, instinct, memory, reason, the feelings, and 

 the will. This progress is then exhibited as part of evolution at 

 large ; the phenomena belonging to the intellectual, as contradis- 

 tinguished from the emotional life, are examined in detail ; and 

 the ultimate question of the relation between thought and things 

 between subject and object is raised and dealt with. Finally, 

 a number of extremely suggestive chapters are devoted to corol- 

 laries concerning the expression of feeling, sociality and sym- 

 pathy, egoistic, ego-altruistic, and altruistic sentiments, and the 

 evolution of sesthetic activities and gratifications all these 

 matters being of great importance in the synthetic system as 

 developing that special part of human psychology upon which 

 sociology and ethics must rely for their foundations. 



With the way thus prepared, Mr. Spencer enters upon what, 

 quantitatively considered, represents by far the largest portion of 

 his undertaking the application of the laws of evolution to 

 the phenomena of society. The Principles of Sociology as actu- 

 ally completed exhibit the only important departure of the author 

 from the prospectus issued thirty-six years ago ; for the volume 

 in which linguistic, intellectual, moral, and aesthetic progress 

 was to have been traced out, is left unwritten. Sundry of the 

 more momentous questions connected with these phases of human 

 development, however, are touched upon in other parts of the 

 system, and the hiatus is, therefore, by no means a serious one. 



* Principles of Psychology, 129. 

 VOL. L 34 



