EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



amplification elsewhere as in the Principles of 

 Psychology the academic opponents of Spencer 

 have never stickled at misrepresentations which 

 cannot possibly be explained without an assump 

 tion of either wilful misinterpretation or sheer stu 

 pidity. In his article &quot;Metaphysics,&quot; written for 

 the Encyclopedia Britannica but the other day, 

 Professor Case, of Oxford, classes Spencer under 

 the heading &quot; Materialistic tendencies,&quot; and demon 

 strates to his own satisfaction that Spencer was a 

 materialist without knowing it, though no reader 

 of First Principles could possibly avoid or, one 

 would think, could possibly forget that fine say 

 ing about &quot;A mode of being as much transcending 

 intelligence and will as these transcend mere me 

 chanical motion.&quot; I offer no explanation of this 

 remarkable feat of Professor Case; but this is not 

 because there is none to offer. 



It is a curious but perfectly intelligible fact that 

 the opponents of Spencer, when they have attempt 

 ed to refute him, have confined themselves to this 

 small section of his work a section upon which 

 the validity of the synthetic philosophy does not 

 and obviously cannot depend. Among scientists, 

 of course, he has no opponents, except upon de 

 tails in different spheres of expert knowledge. The 

 great mass of his work is concerned with a unifica 

 tion of science this last word being used in the 

 wide and only defensible sense. But this is ob 

 viously outside the sphere of writers such as T. 

 H. Green, James Ward, Bradley, Case, and Caird. 



332 



