SOCIOLOGY. 1 7 



Perhaps the most effective and appreciative criticism that has ever 

 appeared of Mr. Herbert Spencer's system was th-it given by the hite 

 Professor W. Stanley Jevons, whose untimely death is still fresh in 

 our memories. In an article entitled "John Stuart Mill's Philosophy 

 Tested" iuthe "Contemporary Review" for November. 1879, he said : — 

 " To me the Spenceriau Philosophy presents itself in its main features 

 as unquestionably true ; indeed it is already difficult to look back and 

 imagine how philosophers could have denied of the human mind and 



actions what is obviously true of the animal races generally 



Paley pointed out how many beautiful contrivances there are in the 

 human form tending to our benefit. Spencer has pointed out that the 

 Universe is one deep-laid framework for the production of such 

 beneficent contrivances. Paley called upon us to admire such 

 exquisite inventions as a hand or an eye. Spencer calls upon us 

 to admire a machine, which is the most comprehensive of all 

 machines, because it is ever engaged in inventing beneficial inven- 

 tions ad iiijinitum. According to Mill we are little self-dependent 

 gods fighting with a malignant and murderous power called Nature, 



sure one would think to bo worsted in the struggle According 



to Spencer, as I venture to interpret his theory, we are the latest 

 manifestation of an all-prevailing towards the good, — the happy. 

 Creation is not yet concluded, and there is no one of us who may not 

 become conscious in his heart that he is no automaton, no mere lump 

 of protoplasm, but the Creature of a Creator."* 



" To Monsieur Comte," the author of the " Positive Philosophy," 

 says Mr. Herbert Spencer, " is due the credit of having set forth, with 

 comparative defiuiteness, the connection between the science of life and 

 the science of society." He maintained that a knowledge of all the 

 facts connected with the growth and development of individual man 

 must be understood before the facts of the growth and development of 

 aggregates of men — in other words, of societies — could be correctly 

 understood. In his classification of the sciences he therefore placed 

 Biology before Sociology. 



For a very admirable opinion of the value of the teaching of Soci- 

 ology under many of its aspects, I cannot resist quoting the observations 

 of one of the most distinguished of living philosophers and exponents of 

 the Doctrine of Evolution. In that memorable Address, which many 

 of us had the good fortune to listen to, from Professor Huxley in the 

 Town Hall on the occasion of the opening of this noble College on the 

 1st of October, 1880, he said at the conclusion : — " Within these walls 

 the future employer and the future artizan may sojourn together for 

 awhile, and carry through all their lives the stamp of the influence 

 then brought to bear on them. Hence, it is not beside the mark to 

 remind you that the prosperity of industry depends, not merely upon 

 the ennobling of the individual character, but upon a third condition, 

 namely, a clear understanding of the conditions of social life on the 



* "Contemporary Review," November, 1879. 'John Stuart Mill's Philosophy 

 Tested, by Professor W. Stanley Jevous,' pp. 537-8. 



