EVOLUTION AND SOCIETY 



verse. But specific criticism is not worth the effort of 

 making.'^ 



There is a definite and fundamental difference of 

 opinion among Evolutionists as to whether there is 

 continuity of development of the psychical nature of 

 man. Spencer and Haeckel see no break, and insist on 

 the transformation and equivalence of physical en- 

 ergy and mental and spiritual processes. Huxley, on 

 the other hand, believes in a break in the law of evolu- 

 tion by natural selection when man attained self- 

 consciousness, and Fiske is careful to avoid the as- 

 sumption that physical energy is transformed into 

 mental processes. They thus believe in two lines of 

 evolution, or that there is a discontinuity between 

 biology and psycholog)^ 



If we omit the evolution of man from the lower 

 animals, which is purely a matter of guess, and begin 

 the study of society at the point where, however prim- 

 itive his state may have been, the individual can be 

 clearly recognized as a man, we can proceed with 

 some sureness, as we have records which give us a con- 



22 It might be well to emphasize the fact that this law applies to 

 physical phenomena as well as those connected with life. It should, 

 since it is a law of matter and motion, be more easily criticised by a 

 physicist than by a biologist because as a law of life it would in- 

 volve first the question whether life is a function of matter and 

 motion. It would not be rash to say that no physicist could ever 

 agree that it in any sense can be coordinated to any known laws 

 or phenomena of physics. A fundamental law of physics is that 

 matter is always definite, is always coherent, and is always hetero- 

 geneous. If Spencer's statement about motion means anything it is 

 an erroneous reference to Lord Kelvin's law of the dissipation of 

 energy. 



C 331 3 



