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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



idea of evolution in the organic sphere 

 the principle of heredity. He showed 

 that there is an element of truth in both 

 views, and that, while on the one hand 

 all ideas are derived from experience, 

 it is not alone the experience of the in- 

 dividual, but the experience of the race 

 and of ancestral races, by which the men- 

 tal elements become organized, trans- 

 mitted, and augmented in vast time, so 

 that each individual is born with a herit- 

 age of innate and a priori aptitudes and 

 capacities the products of evolution. 

 Thus the philosophical conflict of ages 

 was harmonized in our own time, and 

 the brilliancy of the solution is already 

 tempting some of our ablest thinkers 

 to venture the assertion of rival claims 

 to the honor of having independently 

 reached this great result. But the pri- 

 ority of Herbert Spencer is here im- 

 pregnable, as is unreservedly conceded 

 by the most competent authorities. We 

 quote the last that comes to hand. Dr. 

 Edmund Montgomery, in a masterly se- 

 ries of articles on " Causation and its 

 Organic Conditions," recently contrib- 

 uted to "Mind," thus refers to Spen- 

 cer's enunciation of the principle : 



" Until quite recently I can not de- 

 tect any movement in philosophy con- 

 taining a germ of sufficient power to 

 be capable of effecting by development 

 the deliverance from the constant and 

 almost fruitless see-sawing of the two 

 schools. . . . 



"Suddenly, however, light began to 

 pierce the hitherto immovable darkness. 

 It was Mr. Herbert Spencer who caught 

 one of those rare revealing glimpses 

 that initiate a new epoch in the history 

 of thought. He saw that the evolution 

 hypothesis 'furnishes a solution of the 

 controversy between the disoiples of 

 Locke and Kant.' To us younger think- 

 ers, into whose serious meditations Dar- 

 winism entered from the beginning as 

 a potent solvent of many an ancient 

 mystery, this reconciliation of trans- 

 cendentalism and experientialism may 

 have consistently presented itself as an 



evident corollary from the laws of he- 

 redity. But what an achievement for 

 a solitary thinker, aided by no other 

 light than the penetration of his own 

 genius, before Darwinism w r as current, 

 to discover this deeply-hidden secret of 

 nature which with one stroke disclosed 

 the true relation of innate and acquired 

 faculties, an enigma over which so many 

 generations of philosophers had pon- 

 dered in vain ! " 



We speak far within bounds in say- 

 ing that the book embodying these and 

 kindred views, and recasting the most 

 subtile and complex of the sciences, 

 must be classed with the few great 

 works of the century, the value of 

 which, as a contribution to progressive 

 thought, it is hard to overestimate. 



Had Mr. Spencer done nothing more 

 than to make his powerful contribution 

 to the regeneration of mental philoso- 

 phy, this capital service to the advance 

 of thought should have been honorably 

 signalized by the French Academy a 

 quarter of a century ago. But this re- 

 search only prepared the way for labors 

 of greater magnitude. His system of 

 Psychology, matured in thought in 1853, 

 and written in 1854, shows how early 

 and how firmly he had grasped the 

 principle of evolution at that early time. 

 That he should have been enchained by 

 the new view was inevitable. The sci- 

 ences were full of the raw materials of 

 the inquiry, and evidence rapidly accu- 

 mulated that a common process of un- 

 folding transformation may be traced 

 through all orders of phenomena. It 

 was while writing the "Psychology" 

 that Mr. Spencer first reached the con- 

 viction that evolution is a universal law 

 of the course of nature. So vast and 

 so pregnant an idea could not fail to 

 have an all-determining influence upon 

 his future course of thought. He saw 

 that the scientific elucidation of this 

 grand generalization, the discovery of 

 the causes and conditions of the univer- 

 sal process, and the comprehensive ap- 

 plication of the principle to the reor- 



