ARISTOTLE AS A BIOLOGIST 7 



occasion when he mentions it, he speaks of it as having 

 been established ' by the investigations of Wolff, Goethe, 

 and Von Baer '.* 



As in former days Descartes, and as Democritus and 

 Epicurus in days of old, so did Spencer find in matter and 

 in motion, or rather in matter and in force, the fabric of 

 a world. He draws a broad picture, confessedly of a 

 mechanical kind, of alternate cosmic rhythms of the Uni- 

 verse, in which as motion is dissipated, so matter cleaves^ 

 from the dispersed and homogeneous into more coherent 

 and more segregated shapes ; until in the turn of the great 

 wheel, a new redistribution of matter and motion takes 

 place, and evolution is inevitably followed by dissolution 

 at its heels ; so the whole present order perishes, exitio 

 terras cum dabit una dies. Nevertheless, so vast is the 

 cosmic rhythm, that again the wheel turns, and the dust 

 and ashes of a Universe are co-ordinated and integrated 

 anew, to make ' another and another frame of things, 

 For ever ! ' 



All the while Spencer recognizes that Space, Time, 

 Motion, and Matter itself are remote from Absolute 

 Reality, and have their source in our own Empiricism. 

 The ' Persistence of Force ' is the only truth which 

 transcends experience ; and what we ultimately mean by 

 the persistence of force is a cause which transcends our 

 conception and our knowledge. 



In his Biology Spencer takes for his keynote his concep- 

 tion of life, as having for its chief characteristic a con- 

 tinuous adjustment of the organism to its environment, 

 of its internal to its external relations. So structure 

 follows upon function and functional need, and hereditary 

 transmission hands on to the next generation the advances 



1 Von Baer himself claimed no priority. ' Dieses Gesetz ist wohl nie 

 verkannt worden,' Zur Entwicklungsgesch. (i), p. 153. 



