CHAP, viii EVOLUTION IN SPENCER 75 



identical, not perhaps with Spencer's, but certainly with 

 his disciple Fiske's, " the mere coexistence of innumer- 

 able discrete bodies in the universe, exerting attractive 

 and repulsive forces upon each other." 1 Spencer, per- 

 haps characteristically, prefers to give us vague glimpses 

 of a "homogeneous" though highly "unstable" con- 

 tinuum in space, finite in its dimensions, as the origin 

 of all change. We conclude, therefore ; a cosmic 

 philosophy might perhaps be grounded on a more 

 than Darwinian apotheosis of competition. But no 

 modern has tried to work out such a scheme unless 

 Lotze in one of his paradoxical moods as the candid 

 friend of theism. Fiske might have been tempted in 

 that direction, but was not. Spencer did not even cast 

 one glance towards it. 



Only one part of Darwin's theories is specially 

 important to Spencer the Lamarckian doctrine of use- 

 inheritance. That is the basis of Spencer's reconcilia- 

 tion of Intuitionalism with Empiricism. We modern 

 men possess intuitive knowledge partly of mathe- 

 matical, partly of moral truth simply because our 

 ancestors have had a wide range of experience of 

 mathematical and moral facts, and have been able 

 to impart their principles to us in the shape of innate 

 tendencies to believe tendencies which forestall ex- 

 perience and anticipate its results ; generally with 

 accuracy. Thus Spencer has an answer for many 

 difficulties. What gives conscience its awful authority 

 over the human spirit ? What makes right and wrong 

 so different, psychologically, from a calculation of 

 consequences ? Why, the experience of law-abiding and 

 dutiful generations, whose blood flows in your veins. 

 Again one asks ; what is the hold that the public weal 



1 Cosmic Philosophy, ii. p. 867. 



