Spencer's Biology “The Principles of Biology. By Herbert Spencer. Vol. I.” New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1866. ²³. [From The Nation 2.55 (8 June 1866): 724-725.] ²⁴

“The aim of this work is to set forth the general truths of biology as illustrative of, and as interpreted by, the laws of evolution; the special truths being introduced only so far as is needful for elucidation of the general truths.” This first volume consists of three parts; the first, called the “Data of Biology,” treats of the elements, the materials, and their properties which enter into the processes of life, and the ideas which determine its definition. The second, called the “Inductions of Biology,” treats of the various fundamental facts and classes of facts observed in organic life in general, including the main principles of biology as an inductive science. The third part, called the “Evolution of Life,” is a discussion of the bearing of the general facts of biology on the question of the origin of species. In his second volume Mr. Spencer will “pass to the more special phenomena of development as displayed in the structures and functions of individual organisms.” Two other works, the “Principles of Psychology” and the “Principles of Sociology,” will complete the labor which Mr. Spencer1 has proposed for himself, namely, the survey of the sciences for the purpose’ of including all human knowledge under the conception's set forth in his “First Principles,” and for establishing a universal science or philosophical

system on the basis of the inductive sciences, interpreted by certain forms or laws of thought which Mr. Spencer assumes to have an à priori validity and a universal application. These forms are given in the mechanical conceptions of matter, motion, and force, and the à priori truths supposed to he implicated in them. Every fact of science is to be represented in such mechanic terms.

As a philosophical theory this system has also, of course, a theological as well as a scientific side. It proposes a cosmological theory of the dependence of the world of phenomena on its unknown cause. The unknowable, hitherto represented as the Creator producing the world from a non-phenomenal existence, or from nothing; or pictured as the Great Artificer building an order out of chaos, is by Mr. Spencer represented as the cause, the unknown cause, of evolution, continuously producing the worlds and all the forms of life. Evolution is regarded as the profoundest conception which the human mind can compass of the divine agency in creation. The first existence, or the chaos whence the world and its order arise; is the homogeneous or undifferentiated matter of the universe, with its primitive forces and their necessary laws. Creation, or the connection between the first cause of things and the last effects of nature, consists of the processes by which the world passes from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous. This is the direction in which creative power is exerted. It is the unfolding of the properties of matter and force. These terms, matter and force, must he understood, however, in a sense broad enough to include all first existences which are cognizable, and to exclude the antithesis between the metaphysical and incomprehensible entities “matter” and “mind.” The phenomena of mind are also to be formulated in terms of matter, motion, and force; but it is matter in a generalized mechanical sense that Mr. Spencer takes as his type of the first cognizable existence.

If we must have a cosmology—if we cannot restrain our speculative faculties to a less ambitious exercise—then that theory of the universe in its totality which agrees best with the facts of science and the ideas with which science has familiarized instructed minds in modern times, is the one most likely to gain credence. But science itself stands in no need of such illumination. The leading idea of Mr. Spencer’s system, the thread on which he displays a mine of scientific lore, with unsurpassed abilities in scientific speculation, is too weak to sustain its load. Not that his facts in any degree militate against his thesis: they only fail to prove what is peculiar to it. They simply “illustrate” what Mr. Spencer means by his law.

Different portions of Mr. Spencer’s writings have very unequal merit. It is his ambition to produce a philosophy; but his strength lies in his clear summary expositions of the widely various departments of scientific facts and generalizations, with which he has most industriously and laboriously made himself acquainted, and in the ingenuity he displays in the very suggestive and instructive generalizations and colligations of the facts which he presents. In such portions of his writings he is clear and strong, though somewhat too easily impressed by a mere analogy, and sometimes mistaking a figure of speech for a matter of fact. But when called upon to rise into the region of pure abstractions in setting forth his system, and dealing with the ideas to the illustration of which he has devoted so much study, his writing becomes vague and weak. He is obviously not so able in the treatment of the higher abstractions as in the proximate generalizations of science. Where the philosopher would appear at his best, Mr. Spencer becomes very tedious. His grasp of the mechanical ideas by which he would interpret the facts of biology is quite unlike what the masters of mechanical philosophy have shown in the mechanical sciences. His application of mechanical ideas to the organic sciences very much resembles the use made of similar ideas in physics before the time of Galileo. His principle of the “Persistence of Force,” which in his book of “First Principles” he supposes to be the same as the mechanical doctrine of the conservation of force— only a better name for it—has none of the technical precision and definiteness which belong to this doctrine; and the important conclusions, which he deduces somewhat summarily from it, really flow, so far as they are facts, from the more general philosophical doctrine, “the Law of Causation.” Mr. Spencer’s “Persistence of Force” is in fact only a mechanical name for this fundamental postulate of science. In the same way, to suit his system, he renames other principles of science. Mr. Darwin’s law of “Natural Selection” he designedly translates “Indirect Equilibration,” while the principle of the improvements of adaptation by use he calls “Direct Equilibration.”

If this mechanical terminology really added anything to the resources of science; if Mr. Spencer could deduce anything from his mechanical principles which could confirm any inductive conclusion or direct any inductive enquiry, which are not already confirmed or determined by philosophical principles without a mechanical dress, we should welcome his philosophy most cordially. As it is, this mechanical dress seems to us superfluous.

But to return to Mr. Spencer’s lucid expositions of science. No account of the argument for the transmutation hypothesis has appeared to us abler or clearer than part third of this volume. Not even Mr. Darwin’s remarkable hook presents the evidence so conclusively. But Mr. Spencer appears to value this part of his hook and, indeed, all his disquisitions on the “special truths” of science “only in so far as they “illustrate the general truths” of his philosophy. He evidently prides himself on his weakness, and is quite .unconscious of his real strength. All that his studies prove, or tend to prove, is “that the groups within groups” of related races, “which constitute the animal and vegetal kingdoms, have arisen by direct descent, multiplication, and divergence—that is,” he adds, “by evolution.” But evolution implies more in Mr. Spencer’s philosophy than the transmutation hypothesis postulates. It implies and necessitates progress, a progress which is inherent in the order of things, and is more than the continuity and community of causation which the physical sciences postulate. It borrows an idea from the moral sciences, the idea of an end. Mr. Spencer’s philosophy is not teleological in the narrower sense of the word; that is, it does not postulate specific ends—like the conditions of human happiness—as determining the order in nature; but it is none the less as a cosmological theory—or a theory of the universe in its totality—charged with a mission. It contemplates the universe in its totality as having an intelligible order, a relation of beginning and end—a development. All that the transmutation hypothesis presupposes is continuity and uniformity in the temporal order of nature. Mr. Spencer admits that paleontology, the only inductive science which can testify directly on the subject, is inconclusive. So far as inductive evidence is concerned, it is doubtful whether there has been any progress in the types of organic life. That the present forms of life are derived from comparatively few forms living in the remote past, is probable from the argument from classification; but that these forms were the only types of life then in existence, or that the extinction of species has not kept pace with their multiplication, cannot he concluded from the geological record. Transmutation, then, is as well fitted as any word to express all that the evidence of paleontology, the geographical distribution, or the classification of animals and plants tends to prove. The argument, for progressive development from embryology is merely analogical. To be valid it requires a much closer resemblance in essential points between the terms of comparison, namely, between the individual life with its limits and definite steps of progress, and the indeterminate continuity of life in a race. Evolution expresses more than the evidence warrants, and more than many transmutationists are disposed to admit. “It may be thought paradoxical,” says Lyell, “that writers who are most in favor of transmutation.(Mr. C. Darwin and Dr. J. Hooker, for example) are nevertheless among those who are most cautious, and one would say timid, in their mode of espousing the doctrine of progression; while, on the other hand, the most zealous advocates of progression are oftener than not very vehement opponents of transmutation.” . . “The true explanation of the seeming anomaly is this, that no one can believe in transmutation who is not profoundly convinced that all we know in paleontology is as nothing compared to what we have yet to learn, and they who regard the record as too fragmentary, and our acquaintance with the fragments which are extant as so rudimentary, are apt to be astounded at the confidence placed by the progressionists in data which must be defective in the extreme.”

Mr. Spencer is both a transmutationist and a progressionist, but he is the latter on à priori grounds chiefly. No one has set forth and illustrated the imperfections of the geological record more forcibly; but, instead of following the cautious naturalists, and suspending his judgment in the lack of evidence, he takes advantage, as it were, of this lack to reach his conclusion by the “high priori road.”

A philosophy like Mr. Spencer's is doubtless a great desideratum to many, nay, to most minds, to enable them to receive the facts and hypotheses of modern science hospitably. A philosophy once received is a potent source of credence, and makes it easy to admit asserted facts and to entertain hypotheses. That the general belief in supernatural agencies has proved the miracles, and filled the world with fairies, devils, and witches, cannot be doubted. That a general doctrine which excludes all supernatural agency will enable the inductions and hypotheses of science to take a firmer hold on the faith of mankind, is equally certain; but this is not the method in which the facts and - theories of science have been established. An Intellectual virtue, very rare and difficult to attain, the power to go out from all philosophies and preconceptions into the world of observation and fact—the power to suspend the judgment and to scrutinize facts on their own merits—this is the virtue of the scientific, philosopher, and the potent cause of the great change in the intellectual life of modern times.