CHAP, ix MR. SPENCER'S THREE DOCTRINES 95 



Spencer here appeal ? We must answer that he ap- 

 peals to the whole cosmic process. It is a kind of 

 appeal to history, but to history generalised and ex- 

 panded far beyond the range of the human race. 

 From the unstable homogeneity of the hypothetical 

 nebulous cloud, beyond which thought can discover 

 no deeper foundations in the abyss of the past, thence 

 on to the present, all things, as they have evolved, 

 have grown ever more and more complex ; let us too 

 join the onward march ; let our minds expand and 

 ramify and interweave their forces ; let us grow ever 

 better and better by growing ever more and more 

 elaborate and intricate in our behaviour ! An im- 

 pressive appeal, if you have any sort of religious 

 faith, theistic or even pantheistic. If " all things are 

 working together for good," then the behaviour of 

 " all things " may well furnish a type for our own 

 conduct. But, apart from the assumptions of reli- 

 gious faith, it hardly seems possible that so abstract 

 a formula as "growing complexity " should command 

 the reverence of the human conscience. And one is 

 driven to ask whether conscience has not its own 

 tests ? And whether Spencer's appeal does not 

 carry its own limited cogency just upon this account, 

 because it has been examined, and, in a sense, coun- 

 tersigned by conscience? Whatever may be the 

 philosophy of conscience, the voice of conscience 

 does not wait for authority from evolutionary doc- 

 trine or from any other outside critic, before telling 

 us, and that in no faltering tones, that goodness is 

 wise, that sin is foolish, and that wisdom, which is 

 one name for goodness, demands from us progress, 

 both intellectual and moral. 



