EDITOR'S TABLE. 



553 



an j one even moderately acquainted 

 with the course of modern thought can 

 hardly fail to know that these things 

 are so ; and it is difficult to understand 

 how a writer vouched for by the Times 

 as a person of very superior acquire- 

 ments could have managed to remain 

 ignorant of them. Possibly he is one of 

 those "specialists 1 ' whose information 

 is so very special that virtually they 

 may be said to go about with blinkers 

 over their eyes that shut out all side 

 views. But in that case the man who 

 wears the blinkers should not constitute 

 himself a judge of what he does not and 

 can not see. 



Another objection which our critic 

 raised was that the laws of evolution 

 embodied in Mr. Spencer's system had 

 never served as the basis for prediction, 

 and so far lacked full confirmation. This 

 criticism was singularly pointless. Pre- 

 diction, in the sense understood in the 

 sciences say of astronomy and chemistry, 

 is not to be expected in connection with 

 a general system of philosophy — the aim 

 of which is to correlate diverse phenom- 

 ena under a few very general laws. In 

 another sense Mr. Spencer's system does 

 lend itself to prediction, inasmuch as it 

 has traced for us the laws of develop- 

 ment of the individual mind and of so- 

 ciety, and so far enabled us to anticipate 

 what would fall under our observation in 

 newly discovered societies — could there 

 be such — given one or two leading facts 

 as to their environment and the stage of 

 civilization they had reached. We credit 

 the science of geology with a power of 

 prediction when the geologist in an Old 

 Red-sandstone country is able to say posi- 

 tively that there is no use in prospect- 

 ing there for coal. Why not allow the 

 evolutionist equal credit if he is able to 

 say beforehand of a given community 

 that the mathematical faculty will be 

 found to be very feebly developed in 

 it, but that the poetic may be found 

 to have made some advance ; or if, tak- 

 ing two widely separated stages of a na- 

 tion's history, he is able in a general way 



to fill in the intervening course of events, 

 very much as Mendeleef describes a cer- 

 tain set of elements yet to be discovered? 



•When Mr. Spencer says, " With the 

 repression of militant activities and de- 

 cay of militant organizations will come 

 amelioration of political institutions 

 as of all other institutions," he makes 

 a prediction founded on the general 

 principles of his system — a predic- 

 tion in which many who take their 

 ideas from poetry and romance might 

 not be disposed to concur. It remains 

 to be seen whether the evolutionist is 

 right, or whether those are right who 

 hold that without war the higher civic 

 and personal virtues would decline and 

 wither. The difference between the 

 two opinions is that the one is founded 

 on a long course of study, and is cor- 

 related with a multitude of established 

 facts ; while the other is rather a mat- 

 ter of sentiment than of reasoned con- 

 viction. 



We do not intend, however, to pur- 

 sue further a controversy which was 

 carried on to considerable length in the 

 columns of the Times, and which de- 

 veloped so much of sympathy with, and 

 so little of decided opposition to, Spen- 

 cer as to cause the editor of that paper 

 to exclaim, " Where are the foes of 

 Spencer?" and to express his surprise 

 at the backwardness of certain persons, 

 who are supposed to regard the doctrine 

 of evolution as false and dangerous in 

 the extreme, in availing themselves of 

 the opportunity of stating and defending 

 their convictions. It remains but to say 

 that the value of the synthetic philoso- 

 phy is not bound up with the accuracy 

 of every scientific or historical state- 

 ment its author may have made, nor yet 

 with the absolute solidity of his meta- 

 physics. It is a great colligation of the 

 laws of life and development. It teach- 

 es us to understand the world and hu- 

 man society, and gives to every one who 

 studies it a superior power of discern- 

 ment in many fields of observation. 

 The evolutionist can predict in this sense 



