EVOLUTION AND SOCIETY 



ble matter, is the fact that the Evolutionists based 

 their doctrine on the laws of physics, yet, as I have 

 shown, they were pathetically ignorant of the facts 

 and laws of physics. To the long and disastrous list of 

 errors to be found in Huxley and modern biologists 

 we may add Spencer's categorical statement that the 

 forces which we class as vital and mental are trans- 

 formable and equivalent to the physical forces/" In 

 the first place, Spencer cannot distinguish between the 

 ideas of force and energy; and in the second place, 

 every physicist will deny this transformation and 

 equivalence, on the ground that it is contrary to the 

 law of the conservation of energy, since, until some- 

 one can show that thought is due to the positions of 

 atoms, mental force is not in any sense a mechanical 

 force. Even his ardent pupil, Fiske, could not sub- 

 scribe to this statement, but Fiske himself is as lack- 

 ing in a knowledge of physics as was Spencer. 



Fiske was keen to show that the facts of physics 

 fitted into the doctrine of evolution. He gives as an 

 important evidence: "Galileo proved, by reasoning 

 upon direct observations, that all motion is naturally 

 rectilinear and not circular."^^ The slightest acquaint- 

 ance with the history of physics should have con- 

 vinced him that Galileo was engaged in destroying 

 the Aristotelian notion of any natural motion, and 

 that his reasoning was contrary to observation since 

 there are no bodies which move uniformly in a straight 



'^- First Principles, ■pp. 203-21. 



13 Cosmic Philosophy, vol. I, p. 157. 



C 323 3 



