706 PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



peculiar to all living things, viz., automatic growth and 

 multiplication beyond the means of subsistence (Malthus' 

 principle), and variation (Darwin). 



It was, however, gradually realised that all these 

 terms involve a principle which cannot be mechanically 

 defined, and that, moreover, the question of origins or 

 genesis, of the beginning of things, had really been 

 forgotten in the more fruitful and absorbing quest of 

 genealogies. In this respect the French term " trans- 

 formation" and the English term "descent" are more 

 adequate than such terms as " origin " and " genesis." 



If, on the one side, the Spencerian scheme of evolu- 

 tion was never adequately and fully applied to cosmical 

 and lifeless phenomena, it was found on the other side 

 that it could no more be applied to the higher stages of 

 organic, mental, and social life without in each case 

 introducing new factors and data, empirically collected. 

 Whilst Spencer showed much ingenuity in preparing for 

 every higher phase the necessary empirical foundation, 

 and in collecting such elementary factors and data as 

 lent themselves to the application of his general scheme, 

 it also became evident that the whole of this process 

 consisted in an atomism of thought, in an analytical 

 process analogous to the atomic view of mechanical 

 physics, and that the final consummation, as already 

 indicated at the conclusion of ' First Principles,' was 

 the conception of an ultimate equilibrium difficult 

 to distinguish from the dead level of monotony and 

 stagnation. In fact, the Spencerian idea of evolution 

 proved to be only applicable to finite regions in which 

 the ultimate equilibrium could again be disturbed 



