CHAP, ix MR. SPENCERS THREE DOCTRINES 87 



evolved, it is more complex. The bad man is like a 

 clumsy juggler who can barely keep in motion two balls 

 at once; the good man is like a clever juggler who, 

 without sign of effort, can control his half-dozen balls or 

 more. With this is associated the conception of evil 

 and in particular of crime, as atavism. The criminal is 

 a survival or revival of a lower social type ; he cannot 

 bear the stress of civilisation at its present pitch, and so 

 falls back upon "good old rules" and "simple plans." 

 A further implication is plain. So far as this mode of 

 conceiving things is true, moral progress runs parallel 

 with intellectual progress and rests upon it. The 

 criminal breaks down because he is psychologically 

 incompetent. Goodness is wisdom. Perhaps such a 

 position is a wholesome corrective of dangers that beset 

 ordinary ethical thinking. When we have begun by 

 distinguishing between intellectual and moral advance 

 and by insisting that one may be found in separation 

 from the other, we are too apt to let the distinction 

 harden into an absolute contrast. It is well to have our 

 attention recalled from simplicity, as a moral ideal, to 

 the rival claims of wisdom. For ultimately all ideals 

 must converge ; and no sort of goodness can long 

 commend itself which fails to make room for the higher 

 tasks of culture and the finer growths of intellect. If 

 we ask next what is the authority for this view of things 

 as assumed by Spencer ? If Comte may be regarded as 

 appealing to biology, to history, and to a half-psycho- 

 logical half -ethical doctrine of altruism, to what does 

 Spencer here appeal ? We must answer that he appeals 

 to the whole cosmic process. It is a kind of appeal to 

 history, but to history generalised and expanded far 

 beyond the range of the human race. From the unstable 

 homogeneity of the hypothetical nebulous cloud, beyond 



