174 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



now assumes evolution as his starting-point. Spencer was 

 the first to point out the fact of mental evolution : and he 

 did so several years before the publication of the Origin of 

 Species. His work at that time appeared so novel and revo- 

 lutionary that it was almost universally ignored. And it is 

 now nearly as much ignored, because the particular kind of 

 evolution which he suggested is not that favoured by the 

 present generation of biologists. We forget that the whole 

 basis of modern psychology was provided by Spencer ; we 

 remember only the comparatively trivial points in which we 

 now think he was wrong. In short, Spencer is not read now, 

 because his scientific work is done : his most revolutionary 

 doctrines have become the tamest of platitudes. But his 

 influence has been enormous. He was one of the three or four 

 Victorians who stood out as the great protagonists of science, 

 and induced a degree of public respect for science which before 

 had never been dreamt of. He only did one piece of actual 

 experimental work : it dealt with the " Circulation and the 

 Formation of Wood in Plants," and formed the subject of a 

 paper read before the Linnean Society on March i, 1866. 

 With this exception, the whole of his work was in the sphere 

 of thought and literature. He was offered the Fellowship of 

 the Royal Society in 1874, but refused it, as he did nearly 

 every other honour proposed to him. His reputation by that 

 time was made, and he undoubtedly felt hurt that recognition 

 did not come to him from learned bodies until he had estab- 

 lished himself with the public, and no longer suffered from the 

 absence of academic distinctions. His will provides that, after 

 the execution of certain literary work (still in preparation), 

 his property shall pass absolutely to several of the leading 

 scientific societies. The time for carrying out this provision 

 should now be drawing near. 



The past six months have witnessed the publication of a 

 number of works on Relativity, the interest in which continues 

 unabated. The most important of these, from the popular 

 standpoint, are Relativity : the Special and the General 

 Theory, by Albert Einstein, translated by Robert W. Lawson 

 (Methuen & Co., Ltd.) ; and Space, Time, and Gravitation, by 

 Prof. Eddington, published by the Cambridge University 

 Press. The latter book branches into Philosophy, with a 

 chapter " On the Nature of Things," from which we infer with 

 regret that the Nature of Things is only destined to be under- 

 stood by mathematicians. Another important work from the 

 Cambridge University Press is The Concept oj Nature, by Prof. 

 A. N. Whitehead, containing his Tarner Lectures delivered at 

 Trinity College in November 191 9. It forms a compan on 

 book to his Enquiry Concerning the Principles oj Natural Know- 



