65 
manifest. The process has been one of continuous development, set up by 
the addition of Von Baer’s law to a number of ideas that were in harmony 
with it.”* 
This distinct avowal would decide the question, if any ques- 
tion were possible, that the relations which are characteristic 
of Spencer’s system are prevailingly physiological. 
Whether Spencer^s view of what life is, and of its genesis 
and conditions, may not be seriously defective, we shall not at 
present inquire; whether he may not have formed an inexact 
and superficial view of development itself, as held by Goethe 
and Yon Baer, or made an illegitimate and unauthorized 
application of the term as understood by them, we need not 
ask, — it is enough for us to know that the conception as at 
present employed was derived from the processes of life, and 
was originally limited to the sphere of organic existence. 
While we take Spencer as the representative of the extremest 
views, we know that multitudes agree with him in holding the 
physiological metaphysics who would shrink from making so 
bold an application of the principles which tfiey involve. But 
we think it not unjust to subject to the same test the principles 
which they all hold in common. 
This system claims to be the apotheosis of science and of 
philosophy, in that it has brought it to its final culmination 
and its ultimate possible perfection. As such it asserts that it 
has invested the universe with the radiance of a single inter- 
preting formula, and has penetrated its darkest abysses with 
scientific light. It resolves all the phases of its past, tracing 
them in order from the beginning when star- dust was found to 
be moving out of chaos from a rarer to a denser medium, on 
to the end when all the possible cycles of development having 
been completed, and every stadium of progressive integration 
and differentiation having been accomplished, the ultimate 
particles shall be released from these bonds, when the scene is 
to shift, and star-dust somehow shall reappear on the arena 
passing from a rarer to a denser medium, and the cycle of 
development shall again be renewed. 
We do not propose to enter into an extended discussion of 
this system. We are well aware that the public, for several 
reasons, are weary of these minute and extended criticisms. 
Prominent among them is this: that few persons are so familiar 
with each of the several lines of argument in which lies its 
strength if it be true, and its weakness if it be false, as to be 
* Essay on Reasons for Dissenting from the Philosophy of Comte, 
appended to an Essay on the Classification of the Sciences. Pp. 46, 47. 
