io ARISTOTLE AS A BIOLOGIST 



But let me not omit to say a word of Spencer's attitude 

 to ' the insoluble mystery ', of his confessio ignorantis, of 

 his share in that Agnosticism for which Huxley found a 

 name. ' At the utmost extent of his tether/ to borrow 

 words from Locke, ' he sat down in quiet ignorance of those 

 things which he found to be beyond the reach of his 

 comprehension . ' 



By a bold abstraction Spencer puts asunder things that 

 our thought insists shall be conjoined. And, through 

 relation, association, and causation, he carried to their 

 bitter end those theories of empiricism, and of the 

 relativity of knowledge, that were no new thing in 

 philosophy, but had percolated down to him through 

 Mansel and through Hamilton, from Locke and Hume 

 and Kant, through all those who had discussed the 

 possibility of knowledge in itself ; carried them to their 

 bitter end, and stripped them bare of the garments of the 

 old philosophy, of intuition, or of faith, wherewithal they 

 were wont to be clothed. And in so doing it may seem 

 to many of us that he stopped short but a little way along 

 that steep and narrow road, that parvus trames, which is 

 the Pathway from Appearance to Reality. 



Ipse Epicurus obit, decurso lumine vitae ' when the 

 lamp of life ran low'. And so too Spencer died as it 

 were but yesterday full of years and of honour. 

 And to the multitude of friends, disciples, mourners, 

 gathered at his grave, a wise and eloquent man spoke 

 a few noble words. He spoke of Spencer's deep affec- 

 tions and lasting friendships, of the houses that he 

 entered as an habitual guest and honoured friend ; of 

 the magnitude of his task, of his unwearied struggle, and 

 of his joy when his work was done ; of his ' coherent, 

 luminous, conception of the evolution of the world ' ; of 

 his exaltation of man's individual freedom, of the ethical 



