iv.j THE EVOLUTIONISM OF SPENCER 365 



"integrates" these fragments and "dissipates their move- 

 ment." Having imitated the Whole by a work of mosaic, 

 he imagines he has retraced the design of it, and made the 

 genesis. 



Is it matter that is in question? The diffused elements 

 which he integrates into visible and tangible bodies have 

 all the air of being the very particles of the simple bodies, 

 which he first supposes disseminated throughout space. 

 They are, at any rate, "material points," and consequently 

 unvarying points, veritable little solids: as if solidity, 

 being what is nearest and handiest to us, could be found 

 at the very origin of materiality! The more physics pro- 

 gresses, the more it shows the impossibility of representing 

 the properties of ether or of electricity — the probable base 

 of all bodies — on the model of the properties of the matter 

 which we perceive. But philosophy goes back further 

 even than the ether, a mere schematic figure of the re- 

 lations between phenomena apprehended by our senses. 

 It knows indeed that what is visible and tangible in things 

 represents our possible action on them. It is not by divid- 

 ing the evolved that we shall reach the principle of that 

 which evolves. It is not by recomposing the evolved 

 with itself that we shall reproduce the evolution of which 

 it is the term. 



Is it the question of mind? By compounding the 

 reflex with the reflex, Spencer thinks he generates instinct 

 and rational volition one after the other. He fails to see 

 that the specialized reflex, being a terminal point of evo- 

 lution just as much as perfect will, cannot be supposed 

 at the start. That the first of the two terms should have 

 reached its final form before the other is probable enough ; 

 but both the one and the other are deposits of the evolution 

 movement, and the evolution movement itself can no more 

 be expressed as a function solely of the first than solely 



