CHAP, vin EVOLUTION IN SPENCER 83 



What then is evolution, that key to the whole 

 knowable universe, as stated in Spencer's own sys- 

 tem ? What are its great laws, or what are the prop- 

 erties manifested by " matter and motion " as the 

 subjects of evolutionary change ? 



There is one word which may state sufficiently for 

 our purposes what is meant in Spencer by evolution 

 the word complexity. Evolution means growing com- 

 plexity ; more complex is more evolved. Whatever 

 technicalities are unfolded in the successive definitions 

 given in the course of the volume upon First Prin- 

 ciples, they do not carry us beyond this contrast of 

 the simple and the complex. They are drawn up 

 " in terms of matter and motion," which means that 

 the details of the definitions apply to inorganic 

 matter or to the physical basis of life, but cease to 

 bear any meaning in psychology and sociology, 

 in what Mr. Spencer calls " superorganic " evolu- 

 tion. It may plausibly be held that, as knowledge 

 advances, thought grows continually more complex, 

 though it may be questioned with something more 

 than plausibility whether it is possible in ultimate 

 analysis to resolve the complex of consciousness into 

 isolated presentations even if we throw them into 

 the region of the subconscious. Complex grows 

 more complex as knowledge advances, but complex is 

 complex, not simple, in the very first manifestation of 

 knowledge. Evolution, then, may be applied to mind 

 as well as to matter in the sense of growing com- 

 plexity; but what shall we make of the statement 

 that there is an integration of matter and concomitant 

 dissipation of motion, during which the matter passes 

 from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite 



