6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



u ,,t v ,t brought into thorough working order. Yet, as the pro- 

 of adaptation is still continuing, and is in the nature of things 

 7eI to produce between units and aggregate a state of 

 .,. wrfecl equilibrium, the inevitable if optimistic corollary 

 thai the evil which we deplore will in the end work itself out 



alt ,ther, and that eventually all friction will entirely disap- 



a prophecy which seems to point to a realization of the 



,ua dreams of speculators like Godwin and Condorcet, far 



^omenta upon which it is based are seen to differ from 



own. Finally, all these special changes in man and in 



sietyare regarded as phases only of a process of universal 



jpment or unfolding, which is everywhere conducing, in 



ace to an inherent metaphysical tendency, to the produc- 



q in man, as throughout the whole of the animate creation, of 



more complete individuation and higher and higher types. 



We thus see that, unlike Darwin and Wallace, Mr. Spencer 

 appn (ached the question of general evolution not from the organic 

 but from the super-organic point of view by the way of ethical 

 and sociological investigations. His first conception of develop- 

 ment was in the limited shape of progress of development, that 

 is, of man individually and in society. But Mr. Spencer's was not 

 the mind to rest content with these vague and partial glimpses of 

 1 1 1 tendons truth. Before long he began to work his way round 

 thr< mgh researches of quite a different character, toward the affili- 

 bion of these special and disjointed facts and inferences upon 

 other facts and inferences of wider sweep and meaning. 



His labors upon Social Statics had led him up to a realization 

 of the important truth that beneath all the much-debated ques- 

 tions of morality and society lay the fundamental doctrines of 

 biology and psychology; and that any really scientific or efficient 

 treatment of man as a moral being or social unit must depend upon 

 a thorough study of the problems of life and mind. Full of these 

 ideas he turned with increased enthusiasm to biological and psy- 

 ehologica] Btndies, and to the prosecution of various lines of re- 

 urch in connection with these two subjects a large part, though 

 by no means the whole, of his energies was for some time de- 

 voted. 



The ten years which followed the years between 1850 and 

 I860 (it is well to notice the dates, because, as we shall presently 

 hey have their own importance) were years of great ac- 

 tivity an activity to be measured not so much by their produc- 

 tiveness, though that was sufficiently remarkable, as by the amaz- 

 growth and organization of ideas which took place in them. 

 1'. g this period some twenty-five exhaustive articles from 

 acer's pen were published in the leading organs of liberal 

 t; and in these articles, if we take them in the order of 



