254 NATURAL SCIENCE. Oct.. 



"essential to the process of thinking" must be assumed as true 

 provisionally, leaving the assumption of their infallibility to be justified 

 by the " congruity of the results reached through the assumption of 

 them," or by showing that there is an agreement between the 

 experiences they lead us to anticipate and the actual experiences. 

 These ultimate intuitions constitute the "Data of Philosophy"; 

 and they are, first, that fundamental relation between Subject and 

 Object "taken for granted in every act of daily life, and assumed as 

 beyond question in scientific investigations of all orders," secondly, 

 and connected with the foregoing, the primary truth of the 

 " Persistence of Force." Such, then, is the foundation of Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer's System of Philosophy, which he defends against the adverse 

 views of some philosophical authors ^ ; and the same basis is adopted 

 by science. 



In respect to the " fundamental intuitions " mentioned above, it 

 may be observed that these " intuitions " themselves are, according 

 to Mr. Spencer, derived from ancestral experiences, or inherited from 

 the collective experiences of the whole line of organised beings from 

 whom (on the hypothesis of evolution) man is descended. Therefore 

 they are ingrained in the organism, and are ineradicable. 



The careful tracing of one general formula of evolution applicable 

 to the changes undergone by all orders of existences appears to be 

 the chief contribution to the unification of knowledge which Mr. 

 Spencer makes in the " First Principles." The processes of develop- 

 ment which evolution follows in the several realms of inorganic, 

 organic, and super-organic existences, comprising even art and 

 science, are, says Mr. Spencer, analogous in their main stages. 

 Wolff and Von Baer are mentioned as contributing the germ of the 

 formula which Mr. Spencer has developed and applied to existences 

 of all orders, consistently with a previous conviction of the prevalence 

 of " unity of method throughout nature." (" First Principles," 

 PP- 337. 359. etc.) 



Mr. Spencer's first communication on the subject was in the 

 form of an essay published in the Westminster Review for April, 

 1857, under the title, " Progress : its Law and Cause." The formula 

 as given in the " First Principles," p. 396, may be appended : 

 " Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of 

 motion, during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent 

 homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, and during which 

 the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation." 



The condensed shape in which this formula is presented may at 

 first sight convey an inadequate idea of its import, in the absence of 

 examples of its application. It will not, of course, affect the validity 

 of the doctrine of evolution itself, even if some should doubt whether 

 the applicability of the above formula is so universal as is contended. 

 It may be superfluous to remark that the doctrine of evolution merely 

 1 " Principles of Psycliology," vol. ii., pp. 312 et sqq. 



