NEW SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY. XVU 



Bors Huxley and Tyndall, being leaders in their respective de- 

 partments, and being also men of general culture and philosopliic 

 insight, I think that, joining their impressions with my own, I am 

 justified in saying that the scientific world of England is wholly 

 uninfluenced by Comte. Such small influence as he has had here 

 has been on some literary men and historians — men who were at- 

 tracted by the grand achievements of science, who were charmed 

 by the plausible system of scientific generalizations put forth by 

 Comte, with the usual French regard for symmetry and disregard 

 for fact, and who were, from their want of scientific training, 

 unable to detect the essential fallaciousness of his system. Of 

 these the most notable example was the late Mr. Buckle. Besides 

 him, I can name but seven men who have been in any appreciable 

 degree influenced by Comte ; and of these, four, if not five, arc 

 scarcely known to the public." 



Mr. Spencer's philosophical series is published by D. Appleton 

 & Co., New York, in quarterly parts (80 to 100 pages each), by 

 subscription, at two dollars a year. " First Principles'''' is issued 

 in one volume, and four parts of Biology have appeared. We 

 subjoin some notices of his philosophy from American and English 

 reviews. 



From the National Quarterly Beview (American.) 



Comte thus founded social science, and opened a path for 

 future discoverers ; but he did not perceive, any more than pre- 

 vious inquirers, the fundamental law of human evolution. It was 

 reserved for Herbert Spencer to discover this all-comprehensive 

 law which is found to explain alike all the phenomena of man's 

 history and all those of external nature. This sublime discovery, 

 that the universe is in a continuous process of evolution from the 

 homogeneous to the heterogeneous, with which only Newton's 

 law of gravitation is at all worthy to be compared, underlies not 

 only physics, but also history. It reveals the law to which social 

 changes confonn. 



From the Christian Examiner. 

 Reverent and bold — reverent for truth, though not for tlia 



