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he really claims to have shown the Evolution of Mind, that he 
can do so only by committing logical felony on a scale, with 
an audacity and in a fashion so dexterous, that he must stand 
out as one of the most distinguished of all the sophists who 
have bewildered mankind. 
The extent of his embezzlement may be inferred from one 
simple statement. It stretches over the whole realm of ani- 
mated nature, from the most rudimentary organism up to and 
including the powers of Newton, Shakspeare, Michael Angelo, 
Handel, and even Moses, St. Paul, St. John. 
He claims to have proved that all the great men in our world 
might have been developed by solar rays. We have shown 
that solar rays can never give him Mind : hence, as he claims 
to have proved the evolution and growth of all that Mind, we 
can only charge him with an intellectual fraud, having these 
gigantic proportions. Aiming to be the Colossus of philosophy, 
and to unify all human knowledge, this towering ambition 
necessarily made possible a sin of corresponding greatness. 
Some of the consequences of this sin we stated at the beginning 
in the shape of hundreds and thousands of lives bereft of all 
faith in God and the unseen, through this far - extending 
falsehood ! 
It seems to me, then, that our second point is now conclu- 
sively proved. We require Mr. Spencer to hand back all that 
Mind to which he has no manner of right, and to leave his 
philosophy entirely bereft thereof. He now has the Matter of 
which nervous fibre is made, but he has not the Miucl which 
dwells in that fibre. Hence it is true that there are vast tracts 
in his system, — to wit, the whole nervous organisation of all 
animated nature, — where Mind, when he has restored what he 
has stolen, is altogether ignored. But Mind is, he has himself 
assured us, one of the existences, for whose reality we have 
most absolute proof. Here, then, is a complete and glaring 
contradiction between two parts of what he claims to be a 
logical whole. It seems to me his system is destroyed; a 
vast chasm is made in it, which I do not think even he can 
ever repair. 
We may, however, allow that if only he will keep within his 
proper limits, very much of what he has written will stand in 
lines of unfading truth and beauty, and he will have the honour 
of lifting the human intellect to a higher plane of thought and 
life. He is so great and many-sided, and he has contributed 
such a vast amount of intellectual force, that no one who 
reverences the mind of man as one of the greatest handiworks 
of God can honestly refuse him homage. He stands before us 
vast in proportion, of the build of the giants, perhaps of the 
