Conceiving evolution, however, as the history rather of events than of causes that originate change, we shall find that Spencer's services to human knowledge can hardly be overestimated.
It was a stroke of genius to combine the ideas of the persistence of force, adjustment to en vironment, and natural selection for the purpose of explaining the relations of all phenomena. It offered a mode of unifying the cosmos which showed identities and relations throughout the whole not before observed. The persistence of force guaranteed the fundamental identity of all reality, in spite of the differences of form which it assumed, while the varieties of composition explained the differences. The conception sup plies an initial presumption of the variation of a single species to account for the varieties; this once done, the whole problem of evolution is at least historically conceived as intelligible. In the inorganic world it is merely a question of the collocations of matter. In the organic world it is a question both of collocation and of the adjustment of structure and function. In the ethical world the growth is in the form of the substitution of altruism for egoism or selfish ness. In the political and social worlds the proc ess is but a repetition of that in the others, ex cept that we deal with collective as distinct from organic wholes. One la w prevails throughout the whole process—the redistribution of matter and motion according to the conditions of the persistence of force. Originally Spencer re duced life to a function of matter and motion. But in the last edition of his Biology he admitted that life was an 'unknown force,' a position which involves a complete revolution in his sys tem as recognizing something more in the world as ultimate than matter and motion. The hypoth esis of a universal ether and the modification of older views regarding the nature of electrical and magnetic phenomena, with the discovery of a number of forms of energy not suspected a generation ago. threaten to modify greatly the
bases of Spencer's system. But they do not disturb the general conception which he formed of the process of evolution, since this is independent of the forces involved and is simply a process of composition and decomposition throughout the cosmos and in all specific forms of reality. It is Spencer's manner of tracing the relations and affinities between the various phenomena of ex istence that gives his work its interest and has so generally influenced the intelligent public. He knew little of Greek philosophy and less of the modern Kanto-Degelian movement. The con sequence was that he began his speculations with science, eschewed the transcendentalism of Ger man epistemology, and wrote in terms that every intelligent man can understand. The public has not cared whether his abstract formulas were clear or not, or whether they really expressed an explanation. They were impressed with his power of illustration and reference to facts which they were willing to use as interpreting his for mulas. and as his illustrations and analogies depicted such an interesting unity in the course of nature, they were ready to take him as a prophet of the new gospel and leave subtleties to the transcendentalists. Spencer will not be for gotten for a method that supplies a clear con ception of the unity of all things in terms of facts instead of abstract. conceptions, though he was at times too much of a philosopher to avoid the sins which his scientific temperament sought to correct in others.
Consult: Hudson, Introduction to the Phi losophy of Herbert Spencer (New York, 1894) ; Cother .111 Epitome of the Synthetic Philosophy (ib., 1889) ; Guthrie, On. Spencer's Unification of A noirlrdyt, (London, 1862) ; Painter, Herbert Spencers E rol n I ionsthcorie ( Jena, 1806) ; Gaupp, Herbert spencer (Stuttgart, 1897).