71 
sation and thouglit/^ To this language there can be no 
objection. A nervous system already implies Mind ; nervous 
matter is a composition of two factors, objective and sub- 
jective : objective it is Matter, subjective it is Mind. Of 
course, therefore, sensation and thought may be correlated 
with it. But Mr. Spencer speaks of correlating physical 
energies,^^ — the rays of the sun, — ‘^with mental energies,^^ 
the operations of the mind ! 
It can hardly be necessary to pursue the argument further. 
Mr. Spencer^s reasoning hopelessly breaks down. Having 
an impossible task to accomplish, he fails to accomplish it. 
Probably it will be well to show from other passages that 
Mr. Spencer really attempts to pass without a logical break 
from the inorganic to the organic. On this point the fol- 
lowing quotation seems to me conclusive: — ^‘^The separation 
between Biology and Geology once seemed impassable; and 
to many seems so now. But every day brings new reasons 
for believing that the one group of phenomena has grown out 
of the othei’. Organisms are highly differentiated portions of 
the Matter forming the Earth^s crust and its gaseous envelope; 
and their differentiation from the rest has arisen, like other 
differentiations, by degrees. The chasm between the inor- 
ganic and the organic is being filled up. On the one hand, 
some four or five thousand compounds once regarded as 
exclusively organic have now been produced artificially from 
inorganic Matter; and chemists do not doubt their ability so 
to produce the highest forms of organic Matter. On the 
other hand, the microscope has traced down organisms to 
simpler and simpler forms, until, in the Protogenes of Professor 
Haeckel, there has been reached a type distinguishable from 
a fragment of albumen only by its finely-granular character.^'’* 
The above statement is important, not only as showing 
clearly Mr. Spencer\s opinion, but also as affording a good 
instance of the extreme looseness of statement, so alien from 
the true scientific spirit, which sometimes mars his pages. 
Once more he says, ^^That Life consists in the maintenance 
of inner actions corresponding with outer actions, was con- 
firmed on further observing how the degree of Life varies as 
the degree of correspondence. It was pointed out that, 
beginning with the low life of plants and of rudimentary 
animals, the progress to life of higher and higher kinds essen- 
tially consists in a continual improvement of the adaptation 
between organic processes and processes which environ the 
* Principles of Psychology, yo\. i. p. 137. 
