264 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 



THE INFLUENCE OF SPENCER'S PHILOSO- 

 PHY. 



[translation.] 



Editor Popular Science Monthly : 



SIR : Being a diligent reader of the review 

 which you direct, and which I consider 

 one of the best exponents of scientific prog- 

 ress, and spending a short time in this city, 

 I have read with satisfaction in the number 

 for August the article entitled Mr. Spencer's 

 Place in Philosophy. Only ignorance of the 

 influence which the scientific philosophy of 

 Mr. Spencer is exercising in the modern 

 world, and of the place which philosophy in 

 general occupies in the order of human 

 knowledge, could have permitted the editor 

 of the New York Times to question the posi- 

 tion which the superior intelligence of the 

 English philosopher has conquered. 



While I do not know what the respond- 

 ents of the writer who calls himself "Out- 

 sider" have brought forward, and while I 

 have no books at hand and can only follow 

 the tone of your reply, I hope I may be per- 

 mitted to indicate a few of the points in 

 which specialists in different sciences have 

 been anticipated by Mr. Spencer. 



When he wrote his Principles of Biology, 

 organic chemistry was in its infancy : Ger- 

 hart had not yet occupied himself with the 

 serial classification ; Kekule had not yet dis- 

 cussed the molecular constitution of the 

 carbon compounds ; and the mind of the 

 philosopher was still only occupied with the 

 application of mechanical principles. Never- 

 theless he was able to anticipate the true 

 function of organic carbon and the peculiar 

 chemical properties of nitrogen. Many 

 chemists were not agreed respecting the im- 

 portance to be ascribed to nitrogen in vital 

 reactions. But the inertness of that body ; its 

 strange manner of entering into combination ; 

 the inverse reactions which it provokes ; the 

 variations of its equilibrium with the pro- 

 portions in which it forms part of com- 

 pounds ; the different modes of its behav- 

 ior under the influence of electricity; the 

 personality, as we might say, which it pos- 

 sesses in every reaction ; and, especially, the 

 difficulties which chemists like Schoenbein, 

 Deville, Munst, Marcam, and Berthelot have 

 met in accounting for the method of its en- 

 tering into combinations to form vegetable 

 substances, now proceeding from the air and 

 now from fertilizers all these features Mr. 

 Spencer's paper assigned to this body and 

 illustrated before chemical studies demon- 

 strated them. We will not concern ourselves 

 with the later spectroscopic observations, nor 

 with the discussions, of which the two very 



different spectral systems that nitrogen pre- 

 sents have been the occasion, for they are 

 not in question here. 



Until a recent date, chemists held to a 

 conception of the atom not widely different 

 from that which was accepted in the time of 

 Epicurus, and his atoms were identical with 

 those which Dalton conceived. But Mr. 

 Spencer, before William Crookes had re- 

 solved yttrium into its more simple com- 

 ponents, before he conceived the idea of 

 protyle, had spoken of the physical atoms 

 thai constitute the chemical atom. 



If he who calls himself " Outsider " had 

 read a letter of Mr. Spencer's addressed to 

 the North American Review, which was in- 

 serted at the end of the first volume of the 

 French edition of the Principles of Biology, 

 in which he declared himself against the 

 theory of spontaneous generation, not only 

 as it then existed among students, but also 

 as Haeckel afterward denned it in his theory 

 of perigenesis of the plastidulcs, he would 

 have been convinced that the philosopher had 

 anticipated the results obtained by the latest 

 biological studies and the conceptions of the 

 chemists of to-day on the complexity of or- 

 ganic molecules. 



Mr. Darwin introduced an epoch in the 

 history of thought. But, before the Origin 

 of Species appeared, Mr. Spencer had for- 

 mulated the doctrine of transformism in a 

 manner so universal that the truths demon- 

 strated by Mr. Darwin are seen to be a neces- 

 sary consequence of the laws of evolution. 



The opinions of the philosopher on the 

 constitution and mechanical function of the 

 nervous system, as well as respecting the 

 office which is filled by the system of the 

 great sympathetic in the higher animals, oc- 

 cupy a distinguished place in modern physi- 

 ology. 



In the subjective analysis of thought, 

 Mr. Spencer has reached a point that no 

 one had attained till his time; and his in- 

 controvertible criticism of the concepts of 

 Kant, and of the ideas of time and space, re- 

 veals a profundity of intelligence which was 

 not surpassed in Aristotle. 



His social studies are instructive to the 

 statesmen of the present. Bis criticisms of 

 the parliamentary systems of Europe have 

 modified the ideas of political men. The 

 recrudescence of the military regime, with 

 all its consequences, was foreseen by Mr. 

 Spencer; the exposure of the absurdities 

 of much modern law making by constitut- 

 ed states is his work ; no one has demon- 

 strated as he has done the wonderful power 

 of individual initiative as opposed to the 

 Attila's horse of state intervention ; the 



