iv THE EVOLUTIONISM OF SPENCER 389 



the particular mode of subdivision that causes each 

 house to be where it is, each street to run as it does. 

 Now, the cardinal error of Spencer is to take experience 

 already allotted as given, whereas the true problem is 

 to know how the allotment was worked. I agree that 



o 



the laws of thought are only the integration of relations 

 between facts. But, when I posit the facts with the 

 shape they have for me to-day, I suppose my faculties 

 of perception and intellection such as they are in me 

 to-day ; for it is they that portion the real into lots, they 

 that cut the facts out in the whole of reality. There 

 fore, instead of saying that the relations between facts 

 have generated the laws of thought, I can as well claim 

 that it is the form of thought that has determined the 

 shape of the facts perceived, and consequently their 

 relations among themselves : the two ways of expressing 

 oneself are equivalent ; they say at bottom the same 

 thing. With the second, it is true, we give up 

 speaking of evolution. But, with the first, we only 

 speak of it, we do not think of it any the more. For 

 a true evolutionism would propose to discover by 

 what modus vivendi, gradually obtained, the intellect has 

 adopted its plan of structure, and matter its mode of 

 subdivision. This structure and this subdivision work 

 into each other ; they are mutually complementary ; 

 they must have progressed one with the other. And, 

 whether we posit the present structure of mind or the 

 present subdivision of matter, in either case we remain 

 in the evolved : we are told nothing of what evolves, 

 nothing of evolution. 



And yet it is this evolution that we must discover. 

 Already, in the field of physics itself, the scientists who 

 are pushing the study of their science furthest incline 

 to believe that we cannot reason about the parts as we 



