254 The Evolution Hypothesis. 



Spencer founds his philosophy on a dynamic law 

 whose applicability throughout all time is founded on 

 the first principles underlying experience. Reject 

 these and the whole structure falls to pieces. But 

 first principles are on his hypothesis functions of the 

 nervous organization, formed by interaction of nerve 

 and environment. Now the formative period, during 

 which the human organization has been evolved, is 

 but a span, and the environment whose incident forces 

 have shaped it, is but a hand-breadth in the limitless 

 universe. Myriad forces are continually playing around 

 the nerve tissue ; of these some, perhaps, the largest 

 part, are imperceptible and unknowable. The adapta- 

 tions of the organism are only adjusted to such of them 

 as may tend to further or hinder its organic life. 

 But evolutionism is not narrowed to the adjustments 

 and experiences of the human organism in its environ- 

 ment, in so far as these bear relation to its mainten- 

 ance in life. It proposes to embrace the whole 

 movement of manifested force. It reaches back to a 

 condition antecedent to the origin of any organic 

 form, covers the whole extent of inorganic matter, and 

 undertakes to recount the past and forecast the future 

 of all concrete being. Yet its only basis is the record 

 of ancestral experiences in the fixed structures of the 

 brain. 



If the central ganglia are not a true and complete 

 record of the past in the law of its immeasurable 

 movement, Mr. Spencer has no foundation for his 



