HERBERT SPENCER 39 
1. His whole system is formal, abstract and logical. Bergson 
characterizes his evolution theory as false because it “‘ consists in 
cutting up present reality already evolved, into little bits no less 
evolved, and then recomposing it with these fragments, thus 
positing in advance everything that is to be explained.” ! Pro- 
fessor Bowne delighted to speak of his method of confusing logical 
classification with genetic order, as the “fallacy of the universal.” ? 
2. His explanation is essentially mechanistic. He endeavors 
to interpret the complexities of psychical and social life in 
terms adequate to describe only movements of lifeless matter. 
Mackintosh shows how inadequate is his theory to explain or- 
ganization, consciousness and history,’ and Sir Arthur Thomson, 
while recognizing that Spencer was using mere symbols to express 
the workings of the unknown reality, points out that these 
symbols are entirely inadequate to represent the genesis of life 
and mind. ‘No one can doubt,” he says, ‘‘that development is 
progressive differentiation, but it is rather a realization of a com- 
plex inheritance of materialized potentialities than a change from 
an incoherent, indefinite homogeneity to a coherent, definite 
heterogeneity.”4 The mechanical laws of multiplication of 
effects, of rhythm ® and of the tendency to equilibrium are thus 
entirely inadequate to explain social evolution. 
3. Spencer’s assumption of an inherent tendency to develop- 
ment in the cosmos together with his belief in use-inheritance and 
natural selection, render his explanation much easier than is 
really the case. The first assumption is hyper-scientific, the 
second has been all but disproven and the third has been ques- 
tioned so seriously in its application to, social progress that his 
general theory has been greatly weakened. 
4. His emphasis on the importance of economic factors has 
been accentuated since; but he failed to appreciate the distinc- 
tion between uneconomic and economic competition; i.e., 
between the competition that is destructive of human energy and 
1 Creative Evolution, pp. xiii, xiv. Cf. also pp. 364-391. 
* Class Lectures. 3 Ob. cit., p. 91. 
4 Herbert Spencer, p.115. Cf. also pp. 103, 140, 211, 212. 
5 For criticism of his use of law of rhythm, see Schiller, “Herbert Spencer,” 
Encyclopedia Brit., xiii ed. 
