64 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



catcli tlie accents of confession saying : " We have been shutting 

 our eyes to the deepest truth, keeping them open only to others 

 which were comparatively superficial. We have been trying 

 to conceal this by the invention of misleading phrases — full of 

 loose analogies, of vague and deceptive generalities." 



Most unfortunately, however, the special peculiarity of Mr. 

 Spencer's introspection appears to be that it is the lower intel- 

 lectual faculties which are calling the higher to account. The 

 merit of Darwin's phrase lay in its elasticity — in its large ele- 

 ments of metaphor taken from the phenomena of mind. Mr. 

 Spencer's phrase had been carefully framed, he tells us, to get 

 rid of these. His great endeavor was to employ in the interpre- 

 tation of Nature only those faculties which see material things 

 and the physical forces. Those other faculties which see the ad- 

 justments of these to purpose — to the building up of structures 

 yet being imperfect, and to the discharge of functions yet lying 

 in the future — it was his desire to exclude or silence. This was 

 his aim, but he now sees that he has failed. In spite of him the 

 higher intellectual perceptions have claimed admittance, and 

 have actually entered. He now calls on the humbler faculties 

 to challenge this intrusion, and to assert, their exclusive right to 

 occupy the field. The "survival of the fittest" had been con- 

 structed to be their fortress. But the very stones of which it is 

 built — the very words by which the structure is composed — are 

 themselves permeated with the insidious elements which they 

 were intended to resist. The " survival of the fittest " is a mere 

 redoubt open at the back, or a fort which can be entered at all 

 points from an access underground. And so, like a skillful 

 general, Mr. Spencer has ordered a complete evacuation of the 

 works. 



But in giving up this famous phrase Mr. Spencer does not 

 give up his purpose — which, indeed, is one of the main purposes 

 of his philosophy— namely, to birild up sentences and wordy 

 structures which shall eliminate, as far as it is possible to do so, 

 all those aspects of natural phenomena which are human, that is 

 to say, those aspects which reflect at all an intellectual order 

 analogous with or related to our own. " I have elaborated this 

 criticism," he says, " with the intention of emphasizing the need 

 for studying the changes which have gone on, and are ever go- 

 ing on, in organic bodies from an exclusively physical point of 

 view." * And so, new formulae are constructed to explain, and 

 to illustrate how this is to be done. " Survival " suggesting the 

 "human view" of life and death, must be dismissed. How, 

 then, are they to be described ? They are " certain sets of phe- 

 nomena." Their true physical character is " simply groups of 

 * Page 751. (" Popular Science Monthly," vol. xxix, p. 56.) 



