Philosophic Evolution. i 7 1 



the universe puts before him, the Spencerian disciple may 

 be imagined to exclaim : What wonderfully oscillating 

 atoms ! how noble ! with what energy and rapidity do 

 they not vibrate ! they are divine ! Venite, adoremus ! As 

 has been said, Mr. Spencer has not adopted this view as 

 his own answer to an imaginary objector ; nevertheless he 

 patronises it as a " comparatively consistent " one, and 

 certainly does not condemn it as nonsense ; yet it is really 

 wonderful how any one man of intelligence should for 

 a moment imagine that any other could think material 

 particles to be one bit more "noble" compared with 

 " mind/' let them perform what gyrations they may, or 

 that they were made even a trifle " higher " by such rest- 

 lessness. This passage reminds us of the Emersonian 

 religion latent in the pious pirouettes of Fanny Ellsler.* 

 Returning to our main subject, we may note yet another 

 curious phenomenon. We refer to the strange contradic- 

 tion presented by the Sensist school, which contains 

 reasoners who ignore reason, and teachers of others, who 

 not content with ignoring their own ego as a substance, 

 fail to appreciate their own passing logical activity. 

 Mr. Spencer and Mr. Lewes, however fundamentally they 

 differ, agree in representing " inference " as really nothing 

 but "association." No doubt the sense-judgment, so to 

 speak, of brutes, is the imagination of unapparent 



* See Contemporary Review, January, 1872, p. 187 ; and " Lessons 

 from Nature," p. 362. 



