PART II.

THE NATURE OF PERCEPTION.

CHAPTER IX.

HERBERT SPENCER.

The Relation of Perception to Universal Activity—The Definitions of Evolution and of Life-The "Unknowable."

HUMAN knowledge consists of the elaboration of perceptions, the organization of facts. The principle of perception, therefore, underlies and must explain the whole fabric of ontological science. Notwithstanding the vast proportions to which the writings upon this science have grown, there is probably no department of knowledge which, in the future, will require less space to record its truths than the science of Metaphysics.

The imposing number of works upon ontology have not, however, appeared in vain. It was necessary that every possible construction of the questions involved should be made before the mind could choose between them. Hence bodies of co-ordinated beliefs have sprung up in all directions; these have coalesced into orders or schools named after the characteristics of each, such as ideal, spiritual, rational, natural, and positive. These schools have been subdivided into varieties which bear the names of their principal advocates, forming a long list and representing practically every possible shade of opinion. This is not only the history of metaphysical science, but of all sciences; it is, in fact, the only way in which opinion grows into settled belief. The test of truth in the majority of the sciences, although precisely the same

in nature, is much simpler than in philosophy, because the means of verification are so much nearer at hand. There is a horizon, however, to every science which eludes the special methods of each, and requires the combined logic of all to survey it. It is this outlying region of experience which constitutes the field of philosophy. Zeller tells us that “the term Philosophy, as in use among the Greeks, varied greatly in its meaning. Originally it denoted all mental culture, and all effort in the direction of culture. The word oopia from which it is derived was applied to every art and every kind of knowledge. A more restricted significance seems first to have been given to it in the time of the Sophists, when it became usual to seek after a wider knowledge by means of more special and adequate instruction than ordinary education and the unmethodical routine of practical life could of themselves afford." Since the time of Plato this word has assumed a more and more special meaning, until to-day it is widely understood to designate not merely a development of knowledge, but a different kind of knowledge from that to which the particular sciences belong. The term mental science, again, has had, if any thing, a more restricted meaning than the more general term philosophy. The activities. of the mind have been regarded as of another source and kind than other activities. This idea has grown until the different mental faculties, such as memory, will, reason, and perception, have come to be considered as separate principles, the interdependencies of which are inscrutable. The confusion which these superstitions have engendered is only just beginning to give way before the new science of psychology, which studies the mind as an organ and its activity as part of organic life.

Perception has always been conceded to be the chief mental faculty, partaking in its nature of all the others. The theories concerning the nature of this faculty, which we find in the different systems of mental science, form the truest index to their comparative logical merit. A careful analysis, therefore, of the theory of perception which is presented in

any system of philosophy, will serve to bring us by the shortest route to a comprehension of its scope, and the position it holds in the great hierarchy of Knowledge.

The philosophy of Herbert Spencer has made an impression in America: it is a system which has especially commended itself to the inquiring minds of our people. The Americans resemble the Greeks in their intellectual economy; they have not buried themselves in the learning of the past, and are therefore keenly alive to the progress, and proportionately less attentive to the history, of thought. This fact has given Spencer's system, as a whole, an importance which it could not have attained in an older country. In England, and on the continent, Spencer's writings are estimated according to their individual merit, philosophical culture there being too general to admit of the concrete conception which we have formed of them.

In reviewing a great and new system, such as the Synthetic Philosophy of Herbert Spencer, it is a certain disadvantage to have studied it only at first hand. The enormous reach of its investigations, and the vast co-ordinating power which has made this system one of the greatest achievements of modern thought, are such as to place all who study it, deeply in the author's debt. A new system, scarcely completed, has no subsequent expository' to illuminate it, to help us to distinguish between what is really original with the author and what is imbibed from contemporaneous thought. In a mind like Spencer's the rays of contemporaneous thought converge, and it is necessary to view it from a distance in time, in order to separate the reflected from the individual light. Mr. Fiske says: "When Von Baer discovered that the evolution of a living organism from the germ-cell is a progressive change from homogeneity of structure to heterogeneity of structure, he discovered a scientific truth. But when Herbert Spencer applied Von Baer's formula to the evolution of the solar system, of the

'I am not unmindful of the excellent works of John Fiske and Malcolm Guthrie.

earth, of the totality of life upon its surface, of society, of conscious intelligence, and the products of conscious intelligence, then he discovered a truth in philosophy,—a truth applicable not merely to one order of phenomena, but to all orders." If this claim for originality in Mr. Spencer's behalf could be sustained, we should indeed have in him a Columbus of philosophy, for this vast discovery could be compared to a new continent of thought. That this new continent of thought, known as evolution, has been discovered, no one will deny; but we should hesitate to give the credit to any individual, or even to any century. While we plume ourselves upon the discoveries of our century, we are continually forgetting that we are, in the strictest sense, but a consequence of the past; that by reason of this inestimable debt knowledge is, for the most part, but erudition, and philosophy but Eclecticism. In distributing the honors, therefore, to the originators of this great theory of Evolution, which our race is but beginning to appreciate, our encomiums become a hymn of praise to the thinkers of all ages.

Spencer's philosophic system is an application of the principle of evolution to every conceivable aspect of life and of the universe. It begins with a work entitled "First Principles," which is in effect an epitome of the whole. The immediate purpose of this volume is to demonstrate the interdependence of all phenomena, and thereby to define the term evolution.

Little by little as his argument progresses Mr. Spencer adds to the meaning of this word evolution, or rather he removes one restriction after another to its meaning until its generality alarms the metaphysician, and the inquiry arises, Is it not a universal term? The position here taken with regard to the meaning of ultimate terms is already familiar to the reader. There can be but one ultimate fact, give it what name or names we please; for ultimate means final, and a final fact is only distinguished from other facts by its

1

John Fiske: "Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy," vol. I., p. 40.

simplicity. If it were complex, it could be separated into more general facts. If it is simple, resisting all further analysis, if it is a common property of every fact, if it remains after every analysis has been pushed to its farthest limits, and if it is the foundation of every inference or synthesis,— it is unity itself. That Mr. Spencer employs the term evolution as an ultimate fact will be manifest to any one who will patiently examine his treatment of the subject in "First Principles."

1

In closing the second chapter on the Law of Evolution, Spencer says: "As we now understand it, Evolution is definable as a change from an incoherent homogeneity to a coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter." In a chapter entitled "The Interpretation of Evolution," and referring to the above described law of evolution, we find the following: "Is this law ultimate or derivative? Must we rest satisfied with the conclusion that throughout all classes of concrete phenomena such is the course of transformation? Or is it possible for us to ascertain why such is the course of transformation? May we seek for some all-pervading principle that underlies this all-pervading process? ✶✶✶ It may be that this mode of manifestation is reducible to a simpler mode, from which these many complex effects follow. ✶✶✶ Unless we succeed in finding a rationale of this universal metamorphosis, we obviously fall short of that completely unified knowledge constituting Philosophy. As they at present stand, the several conclusions we have lately reached appear to be independent, there is no demonstrated connection between increasing definiteness and increasing heterogeneity, or between both and increasing integration. Still less evidence is there that these laws of the redistribution of matter and motion are necessarily correlated with those laws of the direction of motion and the rhythm of motion previously set forth. But until we see these now separate truths to be implications of one truth, our knowledge remains imperfectly coherent. ***

'Spencer's "First Principles," p. 360. The italics are the author's. The italics are the author's.