287 
all the laws of nature are necessary, self-existent forces, or all 
came because they could not help it from one force in no 
particular direction, whose only function is “ persistence.” 
In fact, that is expressly the Spencerian theory of evolu- 
tion, which claims to include the Darwinian, not to contradict 
it. Darwin founded all his conclusions (whether they are all 
right or not) on the largest induction from facts that he 
could make ; and perhaps no philosopher ever took more 
pains to investigate them in so many directions throughout 
nature. The other kind of evolutionary philosophy is entirely 
different in its mode of proceeding; and all its conclusions 
simply come to this : that the law of nature which its dis- 
coverers from a vast number of experiments call the Conserva- 
tion or Correlation of forces, or the constancy of the sum of 
all the forces in the universe, is re-named by Mr. Spencer 
“The Persistence of force” (which omits Transformation or 
Correlation), and then pronounced to be the sole fundamental, 
self-existent, necessary thing or truth; except that he is obliged 
also to assume some unknown kind of homogeneous universal 
matter with no properties besides : and these two between 
them have made all things by the processes which he desig- 
nates as we shall see. We are allowed, and indeed invited, 
to put behind Persistent Force something else, which is called 
the Absolute, Unconditioned, Unknowable, and Unknowing, 
“ universal Immanence,” which never did, or does, anything 
but maintain or start indestructible force. Consequently, for 
all practical purposes, “the Unknown Reality which works 
in us,” of which matter and motion and force are “the 
symbols,” simply is indestructible force : a set of remarkable 
discoveries indeed — that force is a symbol of force, and that 
motion is caused by force, and that matter is only cognisable 
by its properties or forces. And yet his primeval matter was 
homogeneous, and therefore had to acquire, and therefore did 
acquire, all its heterogeneous properties somehow from the 
action of some one force upon it. 
Moreover, the only true Religion consists in acknowledging — 
first, this new kind of Unknowable ; and secondly, the impos- 
sibility of knowing any more about it. Every religion that pro- 
fesses to know anything more is, ipso facto, “irreligious and ab- 
surd” (p. 100). Yet that is just what is professed by every re- 
ligion that is or ever has been, however else they differ. Nay, 
Mr. Spencer himself, is as irreligious and absurd in that respect 
as the believers in Jupiter or Mormon or Mumbo Jumbo ; for 
he professes to know all the functions of his Supreme Reality 
anc( Power — viz., th^t it “ works in us 4 ” and made and 
x 2 
Spencerian 
Evolution, 
