4H 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



is denied be twisted into a " confes- 

 sion " damaging to any scientific doctrine 

 whatsoever? 



The only " confession " Mr. Spencer 

 makes is one which he would have made 

 at any time during the last twenty years, 

 and that is to the effect that his phrase, 

 " the survival of the fittest," is suscep- 

 tible of being understood in a wrong 

 sense, if not to the same extent, at least 

 in the same general way, as Mr. Dar- 

 win's phrase, " natural selection." This 

 confession, however, his Grace of Argyll 

 does not gloat over. It is at this point 

 that he accuses Mr. Spencer of trying 

 to rob philosophy of all dignifying ele- 

 ments. Mr. Spencer feels that to use 

 language asserting or implying conscious 

 purpose or direction when there is no 

 evidence of anything of the kind beyond 

 the vaguest analogy, is undesirable, and, 

 if needlessly done, wrong. His Grace 

 holds, on the contrary, that any sugges- 

 tion of design which we discover in Na- 

 ture should be treasured up and made 

 the most of for purposes of edification. 

 "There are," he says, "as it were, a 

 thousand retinae (in our brains), each 

 set to receive its own special impressions 

 from the external world. They are all 

 needed, but they are not all of equal 

 dignity. Some catch the lesser and oth- 

 ers catch the higher lights of Nature ; 

 some reflect mere numerical order or 

 mechanical arrangement, while others 

 are occupied with the causes and the 

 reasons or purposes of these." This is 

 all very nice, but a cautious person will 

 remember that when we ascend to 

 " causes and purposes and reasons " we 

 do so by virtue of a faculty totally dif- 

 ferent from mere perception — a faculty 

 of the highest possible value when its 

 operations can be checked and its con- 

 clusions verified, but of very doubtful 

 value when it expatiates in regions 

 where check and verification are impos- 

 sible. A hypothetical retina or facet in 

 the brain might conceivably reflect facts 

 or phenomena of an external order ; but 

 how another similar mirror in that organ 



could " reflect " a subjective explanation 

 of the same facts we fail to understand. 

 We fear there is no . retina or facet in 

 our brain that can help us in this par- 

 ticular difliculty. The theory of design 

 in Nature, the duke tells us, is "a high- 

 er intellectual perception." From our 

 point of view it is not a perception of 

 any kind ; it is a synthetical judgment, 

 as fully liable to error as any other syn- 

 thetical judgment, and one that labors 

 under the special disability of being in- 

 capable of verification. 



The fact is, that it is not Mr. Spencer 

 who degrades philosophy ; it is those 

 who seek to impose their own petty con- 

 ceptions upon a universe that must ever 

 transcend human thought. Mr. Spencer 

 does not pretend to be able to think the 

 thoughts of God. Men have pretended 

 and claimed to do this in past times — to 

 know the why and wherefore of the Di- 

 vine actions both in Nature and in human 

 history. But Mr. Spencer has advanced 

 far enough to see that to represent the 

 ultimate power in Nature as having acted 

 thus and thus because, to our apprehen- 

 sion, such a mode of action might plausi- 

 bly explain tlie facts, is at once foolish 

 and irreverent. The Duke of Argyll 

 professes to know that a certain uncouth 

 animal living in Madagascar was fitted 

 by the Deity with ears, teeth, a probe- 

 like finger, and a peculiar claw, all for 

 the purpose of enabling it to feed on the 

 larvae concealed in certain trees. Mr. 

 Spencer only professes to know that an 

 animal of this form does live on larvae, 

 but he does not say that he has dis- 

 covered in the construction and habits 

 of the creature a revelation of Divine 

 purpose. He refrains from such a judg- 

 ment, both from a sense of the inade- 

 quacy of human faculties for discovering 

 purposes higher than human, and be- 

 cause he knows by actual experience 

 that an appearance of order and purpose 

 is often the necessary result of purely 

 mechanical causes. Witness, as Mr. 

 Spencer says, the arrangement of the 

 pebbles on Chesil beach. Mr. Spencer 



