EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



things. These lines Spencer discovered and named. 

 Furthermore, he showed why these lines and none 

 other are followed. Of course, he had to build 

 upon something, and most fortunate it was that, 

 before he began his work, there had already been 

 rendered probable the great generalization, one of 

 whose founders Lord Kelvin is still alive. The 

 laws by which phenomena change Spencer founded 

 upon a rock, indeed the doctrine of the conserva- 

 tion of energy and it is of not a little interest that 

 the element radium, which was for a little while 

 supposed to invalidate this law, has turned out to 

 be a perfect demonstration of evolution in a realm 

 where none but the thorough-going Spencerian had 

 thought to find it. 



But this demonstration of the laws and causes 

 of change was a much less important matter than 

 the demonstration implicit in it of the fact that 

 change is universal. For the old static conception 

 of the Cosmos, with its hopeless and baseless dog- 

 mas, such as the assertion that human nature is 

 the same in all ages, Spencer, more than all his 

 contemporaries and predecessors put together, has 

 given us the dynamic view, which has revealed a 

 new heaven and a new earth. Everywhere the 

 static view, whether of suns, societies, or any 

 other existence whatever, has had to yield to the 

 dynamic view, by which ''change, though not 

 decay, in all around we see" to modify the fine 

 old hymn. Whether or not Spencer knew more of 

 Heraclitus than he would read in his friend Lewes 's 

 14 



