Herbert Spencer 131 



he thus claims to have reconciled the two schools of thought, 

 namely, those who assert and those who deny the derivation 

 of all our ideas exclusively from sensation and experience. 

 As is manifest, however, he gives the substantial victory 

 entirely to the sensists, and denies to all ideas any higher 

 origin than mere incipient sentiency. It is plain, then, that 

 the old battle has to be fought again on new ground, and no 

 argument can be henceforth admitted as valid until it has 

 stood the test of examination in the Hght of the theory of 

 evolution. 



The effect which this theory has had on philosophy is 

 small compared with that which may be yet to come. Its 

 most modern advocates, such as Dr. Bastian, are not content 

 with driving back ' experience ' to the lowest forms of animal 

 or even of vegetable life, but teach that one physical process 

 of change — redistribution of matter and motion — results suc- 

 cessively in chemical integration and aggregation, the forma- 

 tion of organisms, life, feeling, thought, memory, love, and 

 will. Even Professor Tyndall, in spite of his opposition to 

 Dr. Bastian, is fundamentally at one with him, and speaks of 

 the genius of Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Raffaele, as 

 latent and potentially existing in the fires of the Sun, and 

 being the ultimate outcome of an unconscious primeval mist. 



Mr. Spencer exhibits to his readers the evolutionary 

 theory (as understood by the school which identifies man 

 with brutes) in its most attractive and most persuasive form. 

 All, probably, that can well be said for it by any one is said 

 by him; every objection that can be made against it by 

 those who do not share the views advocated in this Review 

 seems to have been foreseen and replied to with a wealth of 

 illustration and a force of logic hardly to be exceeded. If 

 therefore he fails, the theory he so ably advocates is indeed 

 discredited. If it can be shown that his whole system 

 reposes upon fatal and fundamental error, the same defect, of 



