364 CREATIVE EVOLUTION ichap. 



thought is due to that very cause. However far Spencer 

 may seem to be from Kant, however ignorant, indeed, he 

 may have been of Kantianism, he felt, nevertheless, at 

 his first contact with the biological sciences, the direction 

 in which philosophy could continue to advance without 

 laying itself open to the Kantian criticism. 



But he had no sooner started to follow the path than he 

 turned off short. He had promised to retrace a genesis, 

 and, lo! he was doing something entirely different. His 

 doctrine bore indeed the name of evolutionism; it claimed 

 to remount and redescend the course of the universal 

 becoming; but, in fact, it dealt neither with becoming 

 nor with evolution. 



We need not enter here into a profound examination of 

 this philosophy. Let us say merely that the usual device of the 

 Spencerian method consists in reconstructing evolution with 

 fragments of the evolved. If I paste a picture on a card and 

 then cut up the card into bits, I can reproduce the picture 

 by rightly grouping again the small pieces. And a child 

 who working thus with the pieces of a puzzle-picture, and 

 putting together unformed fragments of the picture finally 

 obtains a pretty colored design, no doubt imagines that he 

 has produced design and color. Yet the act of drawing 

 and painting has nothing to do with that of putting to- 

 gether the fragments of a picture already drawn and al- 

 ready painted. So, by combining together the most simple 

 results of evolution, you may imitate well or ill the most 

 complex effects; but of neither the simple nor the complex 

 will you have retraced the genesis, and the addition of 

 evolved to evolved will bear no resemblance whatever to 

 the movement of evolution. 



Such, however, is Spencer's illusion. He takes reality 

 in its present form; he breaks it to pieces, he scatters 

 it in fragments which he throws to the winds; then he 



