CHAP, viii EVOLUTION SPENCER 8 5 



Yet perhaps there is rather more underneath the 

 surface, whether well founded or ill. 



First, as to dissolution. Dissolution is by no 

 means of equal importance, in Spencer's systema- 

 tising of knowledge, with evolution. At times, 

 theoretically, he may co-ordinate the two ; but nine- 

 tenths of his energy is spent in showing how nature 

 weaves her web ; barely one-tenth is allotted to the 

 process of unpicking the fabric and resolving it again 

 into its threads. In one form dissolution has a place 

 in the system of nature as we know it, viz. in the law 

 of death, which is so general in the organic world. 

 But surely it needs no argument to prove that dis- 

 solution, taken in this sense, does not counterbalance 

 evolution, or even neutralise it pro tanto. Death is 

 an element in the evolving system of organic life. 

 Darwin has taught us to regard death as the great 

 implement by which progress is secured through the 

 weeding out of the less fit and vigorous forms. 

 Weismann has conjectured that the habit of dying a 

 natural death, however originated, may have been a 

 direct advantage to the mortal species, clothed as 

 a species with perpetual youth, in contrast with rudi- 

 mentary or hypothetical species of living creatures 

 which were potentially immortal. 1 But, apart from 

 such questions, we know that death is accompanied by 

 reproduction, and is balanced by it, and that the great 

 evolutionary differentiation of plants and animals from 

 the one-celled type has gone on in the midst of death. 

 Surely, then, dissolution is a mere incident or episode 



1 Weismann does not admit that he thinks of a literal struggle be- 

 tween essentially mortal and potentially immortal forms. What then 

 does he mean, he, a hyper-Darwinian? 



