SPENCER AND EVOLUTION. 35 



"Physiology of Laughter," which appeared the same year in Macmil- 

 lan's Magazine, was a contribution to nervous dynamics from the point 

 of view that bad been taken in the " Principles of Psychology." Even 

 in Mr. Spencer's discussion of " Parliamentary Reforms, their Dan- 

 gers and Safeguards" [Westminster Review, 1860), the question is 

 dealt with on scientific grounds ultimately referring to the doctrine of 

 Evolution. It was its general purpose to show that the basis of polit- 

 ical power can be safely extended only in proportion as political func- 

 tion is more and more restricted. It was maintained in an earlier 

 essay that representative government is the best possible for that 

 which is the essential office of a government the maintenance of 

 those social conditions under which every citizen can carry on securely 

 and without hindrance the pursuits of life and that it is the worst 

 possible for other purposes. And in continuation of this argument it 

 was here contended that further extension of popular power should be 

 accompanied by a further restriction of state duty a further special- 

 ization of state function. In the essay on " Prison Ethics," contrib- 

 uted to the British Quarterly Review in July, 1860, a special question 

 is very ably dealt with in the light of those biological, psychological, 

 and sociological principles which belong to the Evolution philoso- 

 phy. The principle of moral Evolution is asserted and the concomi- 

 tant unfolding of higher and better modes of dealing with criminals. 



"We have now passed in rapid review the intellectual work of Mr. 

 Spencer for nearly twenty years, and have shown that, though appar- 

 ently miscellaneous, it was, in reality, of a highly methodical charac- 

 ter. Though treating of many subjects, he was steadily engaged with 

 an extensive problem which was resolved, step by step, through the 

 successive discovery of those processes and principles of Nature which 

 constitute the general law of Evolution. Beginning in 1842 with the 

 vague conception of a social progress, he subjected this idea to sys- 

 tematic scientific analysis, gave it gradually a more definite and com- 

 prehensive form, propounded the principles of heredity and adapta- 

 tion in their social ap plications, recognized the working of the prin- 

 ciple of selection in the case of human beings, and affiliated the concep- 

 tion of social progress upon the more general principle of Evolution 

 governing all animate Nature. Seizing the idea of increasing hetero- 

 geneity in organic growth, he gradually extended it in various direc- 

 tions. When the great conception, thus pursued, had grown into a 

 clear, coherent, and well-defined doctrine, he took up the subject of 

 psychology, and, combining the principle of differentiation with that 

 of integration, he placed the interpretation of mental phenomena 

 upon the basis of Evolution. We have seen that two years after the 

 publication of the "Psychology," or in 1857, Mr. Spencer had arrived 

 at the law of Evolution as a universal principle of Nature, and worked 

 it out both inductively as a process of increasing heterogeneity and 



