Herbert Spencer

CHAPTER VII

CHARACTERISTICS: EMOTIONAL AND ETHICAL

Emotional—The Genius Loci—Poetry—Science and Poetry—Art—Humour—Callousness—Nature—Human Relations—Fundamental Motives

Emotional.—Spencer found great delight in scenery and sunsets; he enjoyed music within certain limits; he was very fond of children, but he was essentially a man of thought, not of feeling or of action. The scientific mood dominated him, the artistic and practical moods were in abeyance. Although he delighted in imaginative construction, he does not seem to have had much imaginative life. Although he pondered over the great mysteries of the universe, there was no mystical element in his composition. Of course no Englishman wears his heart on his sleeve, but Spencer was more than usually callous, and our sketch would be far from true if it ignored his emotional limitations.

The Genius Loci.—To begin with, let us refer to his indifference to places which are rich in human associations. On his many holidays he visited not a few of these, and yet he seems to have been rarely touched or impressed by their significance. He frankly confessed that he took but little interest in what are called histories, but was interested only in sociology, and therefore his appreciation of the genius loci was always limited. He could not people the palaces, the cathedrals, the castles, the ancient cities that he visited. "When I go to see a ruined abbey or the remains of a castle, I do not care to learn when it was built, who lived or died there, or what catastrophes it witnessed. I never yet went to a battle-field, although often near to one—not having the slightest curiosity to see a place where many men were killed and a victory achieved." He had few historical associations even in Rome, and when at Florence he did not go three miles to Fiesole. The forms and colours of time-worn walls and arches excited pleasant sentiments, he said, but that seems to have been all. It was a sort of conchological interest that he had.

One is unfortunately familiar with the cosmic preoccupation which the dominant scientific mood is apt to engender, as also with historical erudition which loses the wood in the trees or leaves Nature out altogether. These are the defects of our limited mental capacities and our ill-organised education; but that a man of Spencer's powers could be so complacent with his limitations is extraordinary. And that he could write, "It is always the poetry rather than the history of a place that appeals to me," is more extraordinary still; as if the history were not half the poetry.

Poetry.—Spencer's attitude to poetry was characteristic; he took it all too intellectually and was usually bored. He did not find enough thought in it, and it may be doubted if he ever surrendered himself to the artistic mood. At one time he regarded Shelley as "by far the finest poet of his era," and of "Prometheus Unbound" he said, "It is the only poem over which I have ever become enthusiastic." It satisfied one of his organic needs—variety; "I say organic, because I perceive that it runs throughout my constitution, beginning with likings for food." Another requirement of poetry for Spencer was intensity. "The matter embodied is idealised emotion, the vehicle is the idealised language of emotion." For this reason he was in but small measure attracted to Wordsworth. "Admitting, though I do, that throughout his works there are sprinkled many poems of great beauty, my feeling is that most of his writing is not wine but beer" (i. p. 263). Similarly, he found the "Iliad" "tedious" and Dante "too continuously rich"... "a gorgeous dress ill made up."

"About others' requirements I cannot of course speak; but my own requirement is—little poetry and of the best. Even the true poets are far too productive." More will agree with him when he says: "The poetry commonly produced does not bubble up as a spring, but is simply pumped up; and pumped-up poetry is not worth reading. No one should write verse if he can help it. Let him suppress it if possible; but if it bursts forth in spite of him, it may be of value."

In reference to the supposed antagonism between Science and Poetry, Spencer refers to the story that Keats once proposed after dinner, some such sentiment as "Confusion to Newton," for having by his analysis destroyed the wonder of the rainbow. "In so doing," Spencer says, "Keats did but give more than usually definite expression to the current belief that science and poetry are antagonistic. Doubtless it is true that while consciousness is occupied in the scientific interpretation of a thing, which is now and again "a thing of beauty," it is not occupied in the æsthetic appreciation of it. But it is no less true that the same consciousness may at another time be so wholly possessed by the æsthetic appreciation as to exclude all thought of the scientific interpretation. The inability of a man of science to take the poetic view simply shows his mental limitation; as the mental limitation of a poet is shown by his inability to take the scientific view. The broader mind can take both. Those who allege this antagonism forget that Goethe, predominantly a poet, was also a scientific inquirer" (Autobiography, i. p. 419). This is sound sense, and is the excuse for Spencer's own limitations in regard to poetry; he usually found it too difficult to lay aside the intellectual preoccupation that gave part of the point to Huxley's jest in the course of a talk on tragedy: "Oh! you know, Spencer's idea of a tragedy is a deduction killed by a fact."

The same sort of desperately serious intellectual attitude is seen in Spencer's remarks on the Opera. His "intolerance of gross breaches of probability" spoilt his enjoyment of the music. "That serving-men and waiting-maids should be made poetical and prompted to speak in recitative, because their masters and mistresses happened to be in love, was too conspicuous an absurdity; and the consciousness of this absurdity went far towards destroying what pleasure I might otherwise have derived from the work. It is with music as with painting—a great divergence from the naturalness in any part so distracts my attention from the meaning or intention of the whole, as almost to cancel gratification."

In connection with Spencer's relative lack of interest in poetry and the drama, or in the works of men like Carlyle and Ruskin, we have simply to deplore the fact and remember that his mind was preoccupied with big problems and was dominated by the scientific mood. From his boyhood he was "thinking about only one thing at a time," and he had to husband his energies. This is well illustrated by his note on Carlyle's Cromwell: "If, after a thorough examination of the subject, Carlyle tells us that Cromwell was a sincere man, I reply that I am heartily glad to hear it, and that I am content to take his word for it; not thinking it worth while to investigate all the evidence which has led him to that conclusion." This might seem to betray a somewhat Philistinish contempt for historical study and complacence therewith, but the real state of the case is revealed in the sentence that follows the above: "I find so many things to think about in this world of ours, that I cannot afford to spend a week in estimating the character of a man who lived two centuries ago." What he somewhat strangely calls "interests of an entirely unlike kind" were at that time strongly attracting him to Humboldt's Kosmos. His outlook was characteristically cosmic, not human.

Art.—One of Spencer's heresies concerned the old masters of painting, whose works he regarded as highly over-rated. On the one hand, he detected insincerity in the conventional veneration in which the works of Raphael and Michael Angelo, to name no smaller names, are held. Subject is not dissociated from execution, and "the judicial faculty has been mesmerised by the confused halo of piety which surrounds them." There is an æsthetic orthodoxy from which few are bold enough to dissent. On the other hand, Spencer detected in the works themselves "fundamental vices," "the grossest absurdities," "gratuitous contradictions of Nature," impossible light and shade, and no end of technical defects in what he was pleased to call "physioscopy."

Art-criticism is probably now more emancipated from authority than it was when Spencer promulgated his heresies and Ruskin wrote his Modern Painters, and doubtless many experts will admit that some of the philosopher's strictures are justified. More will probably maintain that in his intellectual criticism Spencer was blind to artistic genius. In his criticism, for instance, of Guido's "Phœbus and Aurora," to which he allowed beauty in composition and grace in drawing, he applied commonplace physical criteria to show that "absurdity was piled upon absurdity." "The entire group—the chariot and horses, the hours and their draperies, and even Phœbus himself—are represented as illuminated from without: are made visible by some unknown source of light—some other sun! Stranger still is the next thing to be noted. The only source of light indicated in the composition—the torch carried by the flying boy—radiates no light whatever. Not even the face of its bearer immediately behind it is illumined by it! Nay, this is not all. The crowning absurdity is that the non-luminous flames of this torch are themselves illuminated from elsewhere!" And so on.

All this is dismally intellectual, and reminds us of the medical man's discovery that Botticelli's "Venus," in the Uffizi at Florence, is suffering from consumption, and should not be riding across the sea in an open shell, clad so scantily.

Humour.—Prof. Hudson speaks of Spencer's capital sense of humour, but it is difficult for a reader of the Autobiography to believe this. The ponderous way in which he analyses his own little jokes, for instance, is too quaint to be consistent with much sense of humour. Thus he tells us that it was only the sudden access of moderately good health that enabled him to remark to G. H. Lewes, on a little tour they had, that the Isle of Wight produced very large chops for so small an island. The fact is that he always took himself and other people very seriously in little things as well as great. With what physiological seriousness does he discuss the experience he had coming down Ben Nevis after some wine on the top of whisky: "I found myself possessed of a quite unusual amount of agility; being able to leap from rock to rock with rapidity, ease, and safety; so that I quite astonished myself. There was evidently an exaltation of the perceptive and motor powers."... "Long-continued exertion having caused unusually great action of the lungs, the exaltation produced by stimulation of the brain was not cancelled by the diminished oxygenation of the blood. The oxygenation had been so much in excess, that deduction from it did not appreciably diminish the vital activities."

Callousness.—In his extreme sang-froid, Spencer sometimes did violence to the unity of the human spirit. We venture to give one example. In referring to a ramble in France (Autobiography, ii. p. 236), he wrote as follows: "We passed a wayside shrine, at the foot of which were numerous offerings, each formed of two bits of lath nailed one across the other. The sight suggested to me the behaviour of an intelligent and amiable retriever, a great pet at Ardtornish. On coming up to salute one after a few hours' or a day's absence, wagging her tail and drawing back her lips so as to simulate a grinning smile, she would seek around to find a stick, or a bit of paper, or a dead leaf, and bring it in her mouth; so expressing her desire to propitiate. The dead leaf or bit of paper was symbolic, in much the same way as was the valueless cross. Probably, in respect of sincerity of feeling, the advantage was on the side of the retriever." The animal psychology here expressed seems pretty bad, and the human psychology much worse.

Turning, however, to pleasanter subjects and correcting any unduly harsh judgment, we would remind the reader that Spencer was genuinely fond of music and of scenery, two loves which cover a multitude of sins.

"The often-quoted remark of Kant that two things excited his awe—the starry heavens and the conscience of man—is not one which I should make of myself. In me the sentiment has been more especially produced by three things—the sea, a great mountain, and fine music in a cathedral. Of these the first has, from familiarity I suppose, lost much of the effect it originally had, but not the others."

Nature.—One of the lasting pleasures of Spencer's life was a simple delight in the beauty of Nature, especially in varied scenery. Thus he writes (in 1844) to his friend Lott, regarding a journey into South Wales: "I wish you had been with me. Your poetical feelings would have had great gratification. A day's journey through a constantly changing scene of cloud-capped hills with here and there a sparkling and romantic river winding perhaps round the base of some ruined castle is a treat not often equalled. I enjoyed it much. When I reached the seaside, however, and found myself once again within sound of the breakers, I almost danced with pleasure. To me there is no place so delightful as the beach. It is the place where, more than anywhere else, philosophy and poetry meet—where in fact you are presented by Nature with a never-ending feast of knowledge and beauty. There is no place where I can so palpably realise Emerson's remark that 'Nature is the circumstance which dwarfs every other circumstance.'"

One evening in August 1861 Spencer stood looking over the Sound of Mull from Ardtornish house. "The gorgeous colours of clouds and sky, splendid enough even by themselves to be long remembered, were reflected from the surface of the sound, at the same time that both of its sides, along with the mountains of Mull, were lighted up by the setting sun; and, while I was leaning out of the window gazing at this scene, music from the piano behind me served as a commentary. The exaltation of feeling produced was unparalleled in my experience; and never since has pleasurable emotion risen in me to the same intensity" (Autobiography, ii. p. 69).

Spencer's feeling for Nature was for the most part limited to scenic effects. Occasionally, when he was at leisure, he felt some "admiration of the beauties and graces" of flowers, but this was so unusual that it surprised him, "for, certainly," he says, "intellectual analysis is at variance with æsthetic appreciation." This does not of course mean that there is any opposition between scientific interpretation and artistic enjoyment; it simply means that the scientific mood is quite different from the artistic mood, and that for most people only one can be dominant at a time. There are many naturalists of undoubted analytic skill who have a "love exceeding a simple love of the things that glide in grasses and rubble of woody wreck"; the modern botanist may still see the Dryad in the tree; and if the scientific mood is not allowed by over-specialisation to over-ride all others, increase in knowledge may mean not increase of sorrow, but a deepening of the joy of life.

Human Relations.—That Spencer lacked emotional warmth and expansiveness not only in regard to nature and art, literature and history, but in his human relations, will be admitted by all, but when a great man has an obvious limitation there is often a tendency to make too much of it. We think that Mr Gribble has done this in his interesting comparison of Spencer and Carlyle,[2] whom he contrasts as philosopher and sage. We condense his comparison. Both were big men, both were egotists, both were dyspeptics. Neither suffered fools gladly, and each tended to be an outspoken judge of all the earth. But while Carlyle loved and hated intensely, Spencer judged callously. Carlyle was more like a human being, Spencer "made his heart wait on his judgment—indefinitely." "What is almost uncanny about Herbert Spencer is his triumphant superiority to natural instincts." "It is difficult for the average man to believe that Spencer was a human being of like passions with himself." In reference to love he said, "Physical beauty is a sine qua non with me"; "in every walk of life," Mr Gribble says, "it seems, some sine qua non stood like an angel with a flaming sword between Herbert Spencer and his emotions." "In the main, he suggests abstract intellect performing in a morality play, exhibiting no emotion but intellectual pride." But this tends to suggest that Spencer was a sort of synthetic ogre, which he certainly was not.

Emotion is distinctively impulsive, and it was Spencer's nature and deliberate purpose not to yield to the strain of impulse. Yet we must not misunderstand his reserve and restraint for cold-bloodedness. Some have referred to the cold impersonal way in which he refers to his father in the Autobiography, but when we consider facts not words we find that the relations of sympathy, companionship, and mutual understanding between father and son were very perfect. The human male is slow to learn that it is not only necessary to love, but to say that one loves.

In his human relations, Spencer was loyal, if somewhat too candid, as a friend; he was by no means non-social, but enjoyed conversation with those who interested him, and was himself a good talker and raconteur; he was fond of, and was a favourite with children, which is saying a great deal. One of his friends has called him a thoroughly "clubbable" man, which is probably going too far, but it was only in later years that he became an almost monastic recluse and used ear-stoppers. Many who met him for a short time thought him cold and difficult of access, with reserved chilly talk "like a book," rather restrained, scrupulous and severe; but those who knew him well speak of his large, simple, and eminently sympathetic nature. George Eliot said, "He is a good, delightful creature, and I always feel better for being with him." Prof. Hudson writes: "The better one knew him the more one grew to understand and admire his quiet strength, steadiness of ethical purpose, and unflinching courage, the purity of his motives, his rigid adherence to righteousness and truth, and his exquisite sense of justice in all things." He was often terribly provoked by unjust criticisms and stupid or wilful misunderstandings of his positions, but "in controversy he was scrupulously fair, aiming at truth, and not at the barren victories of dialectics."[3]

Besides his love of truth and justice, besides his courage and self-sacrificing altruism, Spencer reveals a strength of purpose which has rarely been surpassed. In fact it is difficult to over-estimate the resolution with which he effected his life-work. Apart from the inherent difficulty of his task, apart from the long delay of public appreciation, and apart from ill-health, the pecuniary obstacles were very serious. Had it not been for the £80 which came to him in 1850 under the Railway Winding-up Act, he would have been unable to publish Social Statics; a bequest from his uncle Thomas made the publication of the Principles of Psychology possible; he would have been forced to desist before the completion of First Principles had it not been for a bequest from his uncle William; at a later stage an American testimonial and his father's death just saved the situation. Well might he say:—

"It was almost a miracle that I did not sink before success was reached." When we read the detailed story of his preparation, his endeavour, his struggle, his achievement, we cannot but feel that his resolute strenuousness was not far from heroism.

As a nervous subject, Spencer was naturally at times irritable, as others can be without his excuse, and even petulant, severe in his utterances, and a little intolerant. But normally he was habitually just and tried to understand people, if not as persons, at least as phenomena. What he said of Carlyle was much more just than what Carlyle said of him, though it may have been what we call less "human." In his own way Spencer felt that "tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner," but it has been truly said that "the natural man would rather be passionately denounced than treated as a phenomenon to be co-ordinated."[4] But this was just Spencer's way, and he applied it equally to himself.

In speaking of his seven years' experience as a committee-man in connection with the Athenæum, he notes certain traits of nature which were manifest to himself at least. "The most conspicuous is want of tact. This is an inherited deficiency. The Spencers of the preceding generation were all characterised by lack of reticence.... I tended habitually to undisguised utterance of ideas and feelings; the result being that while I often excited opposition from not remembering what others were likely to feel, I, at the same time, disclosed my own intentions in cases where concealment of them was needful as a means to success" (Autobiography, ii. p. 280).

It must be admitted that there was little out of the common in Herbert Spencer's daily walk and conversation; in fact, there was a fair share of common-placeness. Spencer himself was rather amused at those who came expecting extraordinary intellectual manifestations or traits of character greatly transcending ordinary ones. There was the pretty poetess and heiress, whom two of his friends (Chapman and Miss Evans) selected as a suitable wife for the philosopher, and who seems to have been as little favourably impressed with him as he was with her. "Probably she came with high anticipations and was disappointed." There was the Frenchman who found Spencer playing billiards at the Athenæum Club, and "lifted up his hands with an exclamation to the effect that had he not seen it he could not have believed it." And there was the American millionaire, Mr Andrew Carnegie, who was so greatly astonished to hear Spencer say at the dinner-table on the Servia, "Waiter, I did not ask for Cheshire; I asked for Cheddar." To think that a philosopher should be so fastidious about his cheese!

Spencer seems never to have fallen in love, and his early utterances on marriage savour somewhat of the non-mammalian type of bachelor. "If as somebody said (Socrates, was it not?)—marrying is a thing which whether you do it or do it not you will repent, it is pretty clear that you may as well decide by a toss up. It's a choice of evils, and the two sides are pretty nearly balanced." He was too wise to marry out of a sense of duty, and too preoccupied to marry by inclination. "As for marrying under existing circumstances, that is out of the question; and as for twisting circumstances into better shape, I think it is too much trouble."... "On the whole I am quite decided not to be a drudge; and as I see no probability of being able to marry without being a drudge, why, I have pretty well given up the idea." As a matter of fact, however, he was not altogether so callous as his words suggest. Indeed when balancing the alternatives of emigrating to New Zealand or staying in England, he gave 110 marks to the latter and 301 to the former, allowing no less than 100 for the marriage which emigration would render feasible!

In short Spencer could not marry when he would, and would not when he could. He had a great admiration for women, especially beautiful women; he had a natural fondness for children and got on well with them; but in his struggling years he could not have supported a wife and family, and besides he was very hard to please. On the one hand there was the economic difficulty, for he felt assured that his friend was right in saying "Had you married there would have been no system of philosophy." It does not seem to have occurred to him that there might have been a better one! On the other hand, there was his eternally critical attitude. "Physical beauty is a sine quâ non with me; as was once unhappily proved where the intellectual traits and the emotional traits were of the highest." From the point of view of the race it seems a pity that his sine quâ non was so stringent; an emotional graft on the Spencerian stock might have given us for instance a new religious genius. But Spencer's own conclusion was:—

"I am not by nature adapted to a relation in which perpetual compromise and great forbearance are needful. That extreme critical tendency which I have above described, joined with a lack of reticence no less pronounced, would, I fear, have caused perpetual domestic differences. After all my celibate life has probably been the best for me, as well as the best for some unknown other."

A critical yet appreciative estimate of Spencer has been given by Prof. A. S. Pringle-Pattison, which we venture to quote to correct our own partiality.

"Paradoxical as the statement may seem in view of Spencer's achievement, the mind here pourtrayed, save for the command of scientific facts and the wonderful faculty of generalisation, is commonplace in the range of its ideas; neither intellectually nor morally is the nature sensitive to the finest issues. Almost uneducated except for a fair acquaintance with mathematics and the scientific knowledge which his own tastes led him to acquire, with the prejudices and limitations of middle-class English Nonconformity, but untouched by its religion, Spencer appears in the early part of his life as a somewhat ordinary young man. His ideals and habits did not differ perceptibly from those of hundreds of intelligent and straight-living Englishmen of his class. And to the end, in spite of his cosmic outlook, there remains this strong admixture of the British Philistine, giving a touch almost of banality to some of his sayings and doings. But, just because the picture is so faithfully drawn, giving us the man in his habit as he lived, with all his limitations and prejudices (and his own consciousness of these limitations, expressed sometimes with a passing regret, but oftener with a childish pride), with all his irritating pedantries and the shallowness of his emotional nature, we can balance against these defects his high integrity and unflinching moral courage, his boundless faith in knowledge and his power of conceiving a great ideal and carrying it through countless difficulties to ultimate realisation, and a certain boyish simplicity of character as well as other gentler human traits, such as his fondness for children, his dependence upon the society of his kind, and his capacity to form and maintain some life-long friendships. A kindly feeling for the narrator grows as we proceed; and most unprejudiced readers will close the book with a genuine respect and esteem for the philosopher in his human aspect."

Fundamental Motives.—There seems something approaching self-vivisection in Spencer's analysis of the motives prompting his career, and the reader who is not moved by it must be callous indeed. We shall not do more than refer to the general results arrived at.

"So deep down is the gratification which results from the consciousness of efficiency, and the further consciousness of the applause which recognised efficiency brings, that it is impossible for any one to exclude it. Certainly, in my own case, the desire for such recognition has not been absent. Yet, so far as I can remember, ambition was not the primary motive of my first efforts, nor has it been the primary motive of my larger and later efforts."... "Still, as I have said, the desire for achievement and the honour which achievement brings, have doubtless been large factors."... "Though from the outset I have had in view the effects to be wrought on men's beliefs and courses of action—especially in respect of social affairs and governmental functions; yet the sentiment of ambition has all along been operative."

The other prompters were the pleasure of intellectual hunting and "the architectonic instinct." On the one hand, "It has been with me a source of continual pleasure, distinct from other pleasures, to evolve new thoughts, and to be in some sort a spectator of the way in which, under persistent contemplation, they gradually unfolded into completeness." On the other hand, "during thirty years it has been a source of frequent elation to see each division, and each part of a division, working out into congruity with the rest—to see each component fitting into its place, and helping to make a harmonious whole." "Once having become possessed by the conception of Evolution in its comprehensive form, the desire to elaborate and set it forth was so strong that to have passed life in doing something else would, I think, have been almost intolerable." Like an architect he was restless till his edifice was completed, and on working towards this there was æsthetic as well as intellectual gratification. "There appears to be in me a dash of the artist, which has all along made the achievement of beauty a stimulus; not, of course, beauty as commonly conceived, but such beauty as may exist in a philosophical structure."

Spencer had a high sense of his responsibility to deliver the truth that was in him, and he had a strong faith in human progress. It is in the light of these two sentiments, perhaps, that we best understand the heroism of his strenuous life. "Not only is it rational to infer that changes like those which have been going on during civilisation will continue to go on, but it is irrational to do otherwise. Not he who believes that adaptation will increase is absurd, but he who doubts that it will increase is absurd. Lack of faith in such further evolution of humanity as shall harmonise with its conditions adds but another to the countless illustrations of inadequate consciousness of causation. One who, leaving behind both primitive dogmas and primitive ways of looking at them, has, while accepting scientific conclusions, acquired those habits of thought which science generates, will regard the conclusion above drawn as inevitable" (Data of Ethics, chap. x.).

"Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest it should be too much in advance of the time, may reassure himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view. Let him duly realise the fact that opinion is the agency through which character adapts external arrangements to itself—that his opinion rightly forms part of this agency—is a unit of forces, constituting, with other such units, the general power which works out social changes; and he will perceive that he may properly give full utterance to his innermost conviction, leaving it to produce what effect it may. It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He with all his capacities, and aspirations, and beliefs, is not an accident, but a product of his time. He must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future; and that his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not carelessly let die. He, like every other man, may properly consider himself as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the Unknown Cause; and when the Unknown produces in him a certain belief, he is thereby authorised to profess and act out that belief" (First Principles, p. 123).

CHAPTER VIII

SPENCER AS BIOLOGIST—THE DATA OF BIOLOGY

The Principles of Biology—Organic Matter—Metabolism—Definition of Life—The Dynamic Element in Life—Life and Mechanism

The Principles of Biology.—If there is any book that will save a naturalist from being easy-going it is Spencer's Principles of Biology. It is a biological classic, which, in its range and intensity, finds no parallel except in Haeckel's greatest and least known work, the Generelle Morphologie, which was published in 1866 about the same time as the Principles. As one of our foremost biologists, Prof. Lloyd Morgan has said[5]: "What strikes one most forcibly is the extraordinary range and grasp of its author, the piercing keenness of his eye for essentials, his fertility in invention, and the bold sweep of his logical method. In these days of increasingly straitened specialism, it is well that we should feel the influence of a thinker whose powers of generalisation have seldom been equalled and perhaps never surpassed."

Much that is in The Principles of Biology has now become common biological property; much has been absorbed or independently reached by others; consciously or unconsciously we are now, as it were, standing on Spencer's shoulders, but this should not blind us to the magnitude of Spencer's achievement. The book was more than a careful balance-sheet of the facts of life at a time when that was much needed; it meant orientation and systematisation; it was the introduction of order, clearness, and breadth of view. It gave biology a fresh start by displaying the facts of life and the inductions from these for the first time clearly in the light of evolution. For if the evolution idea is an adequate modal formula of the great process of Becoming, then we need to think of growth, development, differentiation, integration, reproduction, heredity, death—all the big facts—in the light of this. And this is what the Principles of Biology helps us to do. It is of course saturated with the theory of the transmissibility of acquired characters—an idea integral to much of Spencer's thinking—which had hardly begun to be questioned when the work was published, which is now, however, a very moot point indeed. For this and other reasons, we doubt whether Spencer was wise in making a re-edition of what might well have remained as a historical document, especially as the re-edition is not so satisfactory for 1898 as the original was for 1864.

The chief purpose of The Principles of Biology was to interpret the general facts of organic life as results of evolution. Manifestly, as a preliminary step, "it was needful to specify and illustrate these general facts; and needful also to set forth those physical and chemical properties of organic matter which are implied in the interpretation." "What are the antecedent truths taken for granted in Biology, and what are the biological truths, which, apart from theory, may be regarded as established by observation?" Thus Part I. deals with organic matter and its activity or metabolism, the action and reaction between organisms and their environment, the correspondence between organisms and their circumstances, and similar general data. Part II. states the big inductions regarding growth, development, adaptation, heredity, variation, and so on. Part III. deals with the arguments suggestive of organic evolution and with the factors in the process. Part IV. is a detailed interpretation of the evolution of organic structure, and Part V. an analogous interpretation of the evolution of functions. Part VI. deals with the laws of multiplication.

Before illustrating Spencer's workmanship in dealing with these great themes, we cannot but ask what preparation he had for a task so ambitious. He had an inborn interest in Natural History; he had dabbled in Entomology and done a little microscopic work; he had attended lectures by Owen and had enjoyed many a talk with Huxley; he had been influenced by Lamarck, Milne-Edwards, and von Baer; he had read hither and thither in medical and biological literature; but it is manifest that his own admission was true that he was "inadequately equipped for the task." That he succeeded in producing a biological classic is a signal proof of his intellectual strength. He was kept right by his power of laying hold of cardinal facts and by his grip of the Evolution-clue. Not to be forgotten, moreover, was the generous help rendered by Professor Huxley and Sir Joseph Hooker, who checked his proofs. Spencer made but one biological investigation (1865-6), and that of little moment—on the circulation in plants—but his contact with the facts of organic life was by no means superficial. His intelligence was such that he got further into them than most concrete workers have ever done. And in some measure it was an advantage to him in his task that he was no specialist, that he did not know too much. It enabled him to approach the facts with a fresh mind, and to see more clearly the general facts of Biology which lie behind the details of Botany and Natural History. He was in no danger of not seeing the wood for the trees.

Organic Matter.—"In the substances of which organisms are composed, the conditions necessary to that redistribution of Matter and Motion which constitutes Evolution, are fulfilled in a far higher degree than at first appears." Thus the most complex compounds into which Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen enter, together with small proportions of two other elements (Sulphur and Phosphorus) which very readily oxidise, "have an instability so great that decomposition ensues under ordinary atmospheric conditions"; the component elements have an unusual tendency to unite in different modes of aggregation though in the same proportions, thus forming analogous substances with different properties; the colloid character of the most complex compounds that are instrumental to vital actions gives them great molecular mobility—a plastic quality fitting them for organisation; "while the relatively great inertia of the large and complex organic molecules renders them comparatively incapable of being set in motion by the ethereal undulations, and so reduced to less coherent forms of aggregation, this same inertia facilitates changes of arrangement among their constituent molecules or atoms, since, in proportion as an incident force impresses but little motion on a mass, it is the better able to impress motion on the parts of the mass in relation to one another"; "lastly, the great difference in diffusibility between colloids and crystalloids makes possible in the tissues of organisms a specially rapid redistribution of matter and motion; both because colloids, being easily permeable by crystalloids, can be chemically acted on throughout their whole masses, instead of only on their surfaces; and because the products of decomposition, being also crystalloids, can escape as fast as they are produced, leaving room for further transformations." In short, organic matter is chemically and physically well-suited to be the physical basis of life.

The colloid character of organic matter facilitates modification by arrested momentum or by continuous strain. There is often strong capillary affinity and rapid osmosis. Heat is an important agent of redistribution in the animal organism, and light is an all-important agent of molecular changes in organic substances. But the extreme modifiability of organic matter by chemical agencies is the chief cause of that active molecular rearrangement which organisms, and especially animal organisms, display. In short, the substances of which organisms are built up are specially sensitive to the varied environing influences; "in consequence of its extreme instability organic matter undergoes extensive molecular rearrangements on very slight changes of conditions."

The correlative general fact is that during these extensive molecular rearrangements, there are evolved large amounts of energy, in the form of motion, heat, and even light and electricity. On the one hand the components of organic matter are regarded as falling from positions of unstable equilibrium to positions of stable equilibrium; on the other hand, "they give out in their falls certain momenta—momenta that may be manifested as heat, light, electricity, nerve-force, or mechanical motion, according as the conditions determine." It follows from the law of the Conservation of Energy that "whatever amount of power an organism expends in any shape, is the correlate and equivalent of a power which was taken into it from without."

Metabolism.—"The materials forming the tissues of plants as well as the materials contained in them, are progressively elaborated from the inorganic substances; and the resulting compounds, eaten, and some of them assimilated by animals, pass through successive changes which are, on the average, of an opposite character: the two sets being constructive and destructive. To express changes of both these natures the term 'metabolism' is used; and such of the metabolic changes as result in building up from simple to compound are distinguished as 'anabolic,' while those which result in the falling down from compound to simple are distinguished as 'katabolic.'"

"Regarded as a whole, metabolism includes, in the first place, those anabolic or building-up processes specially characterising plants, during which the impacts of ethereal undulations are stored up in compound molecules of unstable kinds; and it includes, in the second place, those katabolic or tumbling-down changes specially characterising animals, during which this accumulated molecular motion (contained in the food directly or indirectly supplied by plants) is in large measure changed into those molar motions constituting animal activities. There are multitudinous metabolic changes of minor kinds which are ancillary to these—many katabolic changes in plants and many anabolic changes in animals—but these are the essential ones."

Definition of Life.—Spencer's first definition of life (Theory of Population, 1852) was simply "the co-ordination of actions." But he soon saw that this was too wide. "It may be said of the Solar System, with its regularly-recurring movements and its self-balancing perturbations, that it, also, exhibits co-ordination of actions." "A true idea of Life must be an idea of some kind of change or changes." Therefore he carefully considered assimilation on the one hand, as an example of bodily life, and reasoning on the other hand, as an example of that life known as intelligence, and inquired into the common features of these two processes of change. Thus there emerged the formula that life is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive. But this formula also fails, as he said, by omitting the most distinctive peculiarity. It is universally recognised that living creatures continually exhibit effective response to external stimuli. To be able to do this is the very essence of life, distinguishing its responses from non-vital responses. Thus a clause must be added to the proximate conception, and the formula reads: "Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and sequences." There are internal relations, namely, "definite combinations of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive," and there are external relations, "external co-existences and sequences," and life is the connexion of correspondence between them. Thus under its most abstract form, Spencer's conception of Life is:—"The continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations."

In an appendix to the revised edition of the Principles of Biology, Spencer admits that he had not sufficiently emphasised the fact of co-ordination. "The idea of co-ordination is so cardinal a one that it should be expressed not by implication but overtly." The formula defining the phenomenon of life thus reads: "The definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, co-ordinated into correspondence with external co-existences and sequences." It may be needful to remark that this was not intended to define Life in its essence, but Life as manifested to us. "The ultimate mystery is as great as ever: seeing that there remains unsolved the question: What determines the co-ordination of actions?"

If life be correspondence between internal and external relations, then "allowing a margin for perturbations, the life will continue only while the correspondence continues; the completeness of the life will be proportionate to the completeness of the correspondence; and the life will be perfect only when the correspondence is perfect." As organisms become more differentiated they enter into more complex relations with their environment, and as the environment becomes more complex organisms become more differentiated. The internal and external relations increase in number and intricacy pari passu, and the correspondences between them become more complex, numerous, and persistent. "The highest life is that which, like our own, shows great complexity in the correspondences, great rapidity in the succession of them, and great length in the series of them." "The highest Life is reached when there is some inner relation of actions fitted to meet every outer relation of actions by which the organism can be affected." "This continuous correspondence between inner and outer relations which constitutes Life, and the perfection of which is the perfection of Life, answers completely to that state of organic moving equilibrium which arises in the course of Evolution and tends ever to become more complete."

The Dynamic Element in Life.—But Spencer was not satisfied with his formula of Life. He recognised that there were vital phenomena which were not covered by it. The growth of a gall on a plant, due to irritant substances produced by an insect, shows no internal relations adjusted to external relations; the heart of a frog will live and beat for a long time after excision; the segmentation of an egg shows no correspondence with co-existences and sequences in its environment; when rudimentary organs are partly formed and then absorbed, no adjustment can be alleged between the inner relations which these present and any outer relations: the outer relations they refer to ceased millions of years ago; no correspondence, or part of a correspondence, by which inner actions are made to balance outer actions, can be seen in the dairymaid's laugh or the workman's whistle; the struggles of a boy in an epileptic fit show no correspondence with the co-existences and sequences around him, but they betray vitality as much as do the changing movements of a hawk pursuing a pigeon; "both exhibit that principle of activity which constitutes the essential element in our conception of life."

"When it is said that Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external co-existences and sequences, there arises the question—Changes of what?... Still more clearly do we see this insufficiency when we take the more abstract definition—"the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." Relations between what things? is the question to be asked. A relation of which the terms are unspecified does not connote a thought but merely the blank form of a thought. Its value is comparable to that of a cheque on which no amount is written."

This self-criticism led Spencer to the conclusion that "that which gives substance to our idea of Life is a certain unspecified principle of activity. The dynamic element in life is its essential element."

But how are we to conceive of this dynamic element? "Is this principle of activity inherent in organic matter, or is it something superadded?" Spencer at once rejected the second alternative, because the hypothesis of an independent vital principle has a bad pedigree, carrying us back to the ghost-theory of the savage, and because it is an unrepresentable 'pseud-idea,' which cannot even be imagined.

But the alternative of regarding Life as inherent in the substances of the organisms displaying it is also full of difficulties. "The processes which go on in living things are incomprehensible as results of any physical actions known to us." "We are obliged to confess that Life in its essence cannot be conceived in physico-chemical terms. The required principle of activity, which we found cannot be represented as an independent vital principle, we now find cannot be represented as a principle inherent in living matter. If, by assuming its inherence, we think the facts are accounted for, we do but cheat ourselves with pseud-ideas."

"What then are we to say—what are we to think? Simply that in this direction, as in all other directions, our explanations finally bring us face to face with the inexplicable. The Ultimate Reality behind this manifestation, as behind all other manifestations, transcends conception."

"Life as a principle of activity is unknown and unknowable—while its phenomena are accessible in thought the implied noumenon is inaccessible—only the manifestations come within the range of our intelligence, while that which is manifested lies beyond it."

But "our surface knowledge continues to be a knowledge valid of its kind, after recognising the truth that it is only surface knowledge."

The chapter on "The Dynamic Element in Life," which concludes the section of the book called The Data of Biology, was interpolated in the revised edition (1898). It indicates, as it seems to us, that Spencer's point of view had changed considerably since he stereotyped his First Principles. We must pause to consider what this change was.

In his First Principles Spencer wrote: "The task before us is that of exhibiting the phenomena of Evolution in synthetic order. Setting out from an established ultimate principle [the Persistence of Force] it has to be shown that the course of transformation among all kinds of existences cannot but be that which we have seen it to be." [This refers to the formula: Evolution is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion during which the matter passes from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity; and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation.] "It has to be shown that the redistribution of matter and motion must everywhere take place in those ways and produce those traits, which celestial bodies, organisms, societies alike display. And it has to be shown that this universality of process results from the same necessity which determines each simplest movement around us, down to the accelerated fall of a stone or the recurrent beat of a harp string. In other words, the phenomena of Evolution have to be deduced from the Persistence of Force. As before said, 'to this an ultimate analysis brings us down; and on this a rational synthesis must build up.'" And again he wrote: "The interpretation of all phenomena in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force, is nothing more than the reduction of our complex symbols of thought to the simplest symbols."

These were brave words, and if we understand them aright it is, to say the least, surprising to be told when we come to the life of organisms that "the processes which go on in living things are incomprehensible as results of any physical actions known to us."

On the first page of the Principles of Biology we read: "The properties of substances, though destroyed to sense by combination, are not destroyed in reality. It follows from the persistence of force, that the properties of a compound are resultants of the properties of its components—resultants in which the properties of the components are severally in full action, though mutually obscured." But on p. 122 it is written: "We find it impossible to conceive Life as emerging from the co-operation of the components."

In the frankest possible way Spencer admitted that his definition of Life did not cover the facts, that it did not recognise the essential or dynamic element, that "Life in its essence cannot be conceived in physico-chemical terms." But if so, it can only be by great faith or great credulity that we can believe that an Evolution-formula in terms of "Matter, Motion, and Force" is adequate to describe its genesis.

At an earlier part of the Data of Biology Spencer assumed the origin of active protoplasm from a combination of inert proteids during the time of the earth's slow cooling, and did not suggest that there was any particular difficulty in the assumption; yet in the end we are told that it is "impossible even to imagine those processes going on in organic matter out of which emerges the dynamic element in Life."

"One can picture," Prof. C. Lloyd Morgan writes,[6] "how certain folk will gloat and 'chortle in their joy' over this confession, for such it will almost inevitably be regarded. But it is not likely that Mr Spencer is here, in so vital a matter, false to the evolution he has done so much to elucidate. The two seemingly contradictory statements are not really contradictory; they are made in different connections; the one in reference to phenomenal causation, the other to noumenal causation—to an underlying 'principle of activity.' The simple statement of fact is that the phenomena of life are data sui generis, and must as such be accepted by science. Just as when oxygen and hydrogen combine to form water, new data for science emerge; so, when protoplasm was evolved, new data emerged which it is the business of science to study. In both cases we believe that the results are due to the operation of natural laws, that is to say, can, with adequate knowledge, be described in terms of antecedence and sequence. But in both cases the results, which we endeavour thus to formulate, are the outcome of principles of activity, the mode of operation of which is inexplicable. We formulate the laws of evolution in terms of antecedence and sequence; we also refer these laws to an underlying cause, the noumenal mode of action of which is inexplicable. This, if I interpret him rightly, is Mr Spencer's meaning."