MODERN EVOLUTION. 



187 



Synthetic Philosophy. For, in the Principles of 

 Psychology, pubHshed in 1855, he limits feeling or 

 consciousness to animals possessing a nervous sys- 

 tem, and traces its beginnings in the " blurred, 

 undetermined feeling answering to a single pulsation 

 or shock " (as for example, to go no lower down 

 the life-scale, in the medusa or jelly-fish), to its 

 highest form as self-consciousness, or knowing that 

 we know, in man. This dominant element in Mr. 

 Spencer's philosophy secures it a life and permanence 

 which, had it been restricted to explaining the 

 mechanics of the inorganic universe, it could never 

 have possessed. It has been observed how the Dar- 

 winian theory aroused attention in all quarters 

 because it touched human interests on every side. 

 And, although less obvious to the multitude, the 

 Synthetic Philosophy, dealing with all cosmic pro- 

 cesses as purely mechanical problems, interprets 

 " the phenomena of life (excluding the question of 

 its origin), mind, and society, in terms of matter 

 and motion." Anticipating the levelling of epithets 

 against such apparent materializing of mental phe- 

 nomena involved in that method, Spencer remarks 

 on the dismay with which men, who have not risen 

 above the vulgar conception which unites with mat- 

 ter the contemptuous epithets " gross " and " brute," 

 regard the proposal to reduce the phenomena of Life, 

 of Mind, and of Society, to a level which they think 

 so degraded. " Whoever remembers that the forms 

 of existence which the uncultivated speak of with so 



