NEW SYSTEM OF rillLOSOrHY. H 



(Jltimate Scientific Ideas ; lY. The Relativity of all Knowledge ; 

 V. The Reconciliation. 



The second and larger portion of First Principles Mr. 

 Spencer designates " The Laws of the Knowable." By these he 

 understands those fundamental and universal principles reached 

 by scientific investigation, which underlie all phenomena, and 

 are necessary to their explanation. Certain great laws have been 

 established which are found equally true in all departments of 

 nature, and these are made the foundation of his philosophy. 

 The sublime idea of the Unity of the Universe, to which science 

 has long been tending, Mr. Sj)encer has made peculiarly his own. 

 Through the vast diversities of nature he discerns a oneness of 

 order and method, which necessitates but one philosophy of being ; 

 the same principles being found to regulate the course of celes- 

 tial movement, terrestrial changes, and the phenomena of life, 

 mind, and society. These may all be comprehended in a single 

 philosophical scheme, so that each shall thi*ow light wpon the 

 other, and the mastery of one helf) to the comprehension of all. 



To Mr. Spencer the one conception which spans the universe 

 and solves the widest range of its problems — which reaches out- 

 ward through boundless space and back through illimitable time, 

 resolving the deepest questions of life, mind, society, history, and 

 civilization, which predicts the glorious possibilities of the future, 

 and reveals the august method by which the Divine Power work? 

 evermore, — this one, all-elucidatmg 3onception, is expressed by 

 the term Evolution. To this great subject he has devoted his 

 remarkable powers of thought for many years, and stands toward 

 it not only in the relation of an expositor, but also in that of a 

 discoverer. 



The fact that all living beings are developed from a minute 

 structureless germ has long been known, while the law which 

 governs their evolution — that the change is ever from the homo- 

 geneous to the heterogeneous — has been arrived at within a gen- 



