EVOLUTION AND SOCIETY 



he designated as quasi-human. And Spencer, after a 

 life spent in developing a grandiose cosmogony in 

 which a belief in free-will had no share, ends his Au- 

 tobiography with the discouraged admission: "That 

 the control exercised over men's conduct by theolog- 

 ical beliefs and priestly agency, has been indispensa- 

 ble." In the light of the collapse of the scientific foun- 

 dations of evolution could anything be more desolate 

 than his concluding estimate of his life's work : "Then 

 behind these mysteries lies the all-embracing mystery 

 — whence this universal transformation which has 

 gone on unceasingly throughout a past eternity and will 

 go on unceasingly throughout a future eternity? And 

 along with this rises the paralysing thought — what 

 if, of all that is thus incomprehensible to us, there 

 exists no comprehension anywhere? No wonder that 

 men take refuge in authoritative dogma I . . . Thus 

 religious creeds, which in one way or other occupy the 

 sphere that rational interpretation seeks to occupy 

 and fails, and fails the more the more it seeks, I have 

 come to regard with a sympathy based on community 

 of need: feeling that dissent from them results from 

 inability to accept the solutions offered, joined with 

 the wish that solutions could be found. "^^ 



Herbert Spencer can certainly be regarded as the 

 founder of the philosophy of monistic evolution. Al- 

 though his ideas have been modified and many of his 



^^Autobiography, vol. II, Conclusion. 



C 327 3 



