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dency to integration, which gives relative permanency to its 
transitory phases. This law he makes to extend to every 
thing which exists and to every event which occurs; to beings 
material, vital, spiritual ; to every occurrence or change which 
befalls them ; to the gathering of the cosmical masses, and the 
falling of a sparrow ; to the suggestion of every thought, and 
the inspiration of every emotion : it even holds of the subtle 
relations which underlie all science, and declares that these 
are first evolved by manifold experience, then hardened in the 
brain by the repeated blendings or consentient activities of 
many brain-cells, and finally transmitted as the necessary 
forms and regulators of the psychical — i.e., cerebral — activities 
of subsequent generations. The system thus perfected has 
been expounded in more or less detail by not a few zealous 
disciples, who have now and then sought to apply it with 
greater exactness than their master. It has been accepted in 
part by some who would hesitate to assent to it as a whole, 
but who nevertheless confidingly reason as though the formulas 
of evolution were the ready solution of many a problem, and 
find in continuity, heredity, and development the keys which 
open many a lock. It is not essential to follow it in detail in 
order to judge of its characteristic peculiarities. We are only 
concerned to show that the metaphysics which makes such 
magnificent claims, and in one sense lias reached such mag- 
nificent proportions, is essentially physiological in its funda- 
mental conceptions. This is distinctly asserted by Mr. Spencer 
himself. 
“ And now let me point out that which really has exercised a profound 
influence over my course of thought. The truth which Harvey’s embryo- 
logical inquiries first dimly indicated, which was more clearly perceived by 
Wolff and Goethe, and which was put into a definite shape by Von Baer — 
the truth that all organic development is a change from a state of homo- 
geneity to a state of heterogeneity— this it is from which very many conclu- 
sions which I now hold have indirectly resulted. In Social Statics there is 
everywhere manifested a dominant belief in the evolution of man and of 
society. There is also manifested the belief that this evolution is in both 
cases determined by the incidence of conditions — the actions of circum- 
stances. And there is further, in the sections above referred to, a recogni- 
tion of the fact that organic and social evolutions conform to the same law. 
. . . . The extension of it to other kinds of phenomena than those of 
individual and social organization is traceable through successive stages. 
. . . . Afterwards there came the recognition of the need for further limita- 
tion of this formula ; next the inquiry into those general laws of force 
from which this universal transformation necessarily results ; next the 
deduction of these from the ultimate law of the persistence of force ; next 
the perception that there is everywhere a process of Dissolution comple- 
mentary to that of Evolution ; and, finally, the determinations of the condi- 
tions (specified in the foregoing essay) under which Evolution and Dissolution 
respectively ocour. The filiation of these results is, I think, tolerably 
