Philosophic Evolution. 171 



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. 



