34 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In October, 1858, he published in the Medico- Chirurgical Review 

 a criticism on Prof. Owen's " Archetype and Homologies of the Ver- 

 tebrate Skeleton," which was written in furtherance of the doctrine 

 of Evolution, and to show that the structural peculiarities which are 

 not accounted for on the theory of an archetypal vertebra, are ac- 

 counted for on the hypothesis of development. In January of the 

 next year, there appeared in the same review a paper on " The Laws 

 of Organic Form," already referred to, the germ of which dated back 

 to 1851, and which was a further elucidation of the doctrine of Evo- 

 lution, by showing the direct action of incident forces in modifying 

 the forms of organisms and their parts. In April, 1859, appeared in 

 the British Quarterly Revieio an article on " Physical Education," in 

 which the bearing of biological principles upon the management of 

 children in respect to their bodily development is considered. It 

 insists upon the normal course of unfolding, versus those hindrances to 

 it which ordinary school regulations impose ; it asserts the worth of 

 the bodily appetites and impulses in children, which are commonly so 

 much thwarted ; and contends that during this earlier portion of life, 

 in which the main thing to be done is to grow and develop, our edu- 

 cational system is too exacting " it makes the juvenile life far more 

 like the adult life than it should be." The essay " What Knowledge 

 is of most -Worth " was printed in the Westminster Review for July, 

 1859. This argument is familiar to the public, as it has been many 

 times republished, but what is here most worthy of note is that, in 

 criticising the current study of history, it defines with great distinct- 

 ness the plan of the " Descriptive Sociology," the first divisions of 

 which are now just published, and form the comprehensive and sys- 

 tematic data upon which the Principles of Sociology are to be based. 



An argument on " Illogical Geology " was contributed in July, 

 1859, to the Universal Revieio >, which, although nominally a criticism 

 of Hugh Miller, was really an attack upon the prevalent geological 

 doctrine which asserted simultaneity in the systems of strata in dif- 

 ferent parts of the earth. His view, which was at that time heresy, 

 is now coming into general recognition. In the Medico -Chirurgical 

 Review for January, 1860, Mr. Spencer published a criticism on Prof. 

 Bain's work, "The Emotions and the Will," designed to show that the 

 emotions cannot be properly understood and classified without study- 

 ing them from the point of view of Evolution, and tracing them up 

 through their increasing complications from lower types of animals to 

 higher. The essay on the " Social Organism " appeared at the same 

 time in the Westminster Revieio, in which it was maintained that soci- 

 ety, consisting of an organized aggregate, follows the same course of 

 Evolution with all other organized aggregates increasing in mass and 

 showing a higher integration not only in this respect but also in its 

 growing solidarity; becoming more and more heterogeneous in all its 

 structures and more and more definite in all its differentiations. The 



