alone in such a case. It is a problem of two bodies, not of a single uniform force. Then he assumes the constitution of the atmosphere; other assumptions follow, with their results. The changes he describes are not and cannot be truly described as the result of one force. They are the resultant of many forces, and the action of each of them has to be taken into account in order to explain the resultant. He first makes an artificial abstraction of the force expended in the collision, and then tries to trace out its effects. The fact is, that each effect described is simply the combination of the one uniform force assumed, and the other forces he has left out of sight.

"Universally, then, the effect is more complex than the cause." Thus he states his conclusion-a very useful conclusion for his purpose, but one which does not seem to have a logical justification. It does not seem to consist with the law of causation. An adequate cause is one which can completely account for the effect. One of the gravest charges which Mr. Spencer brings against certain thinkers is that they have not a due regard to causation. But what of himself? If the effect is more complex than the cause, whence has the complexity come? Can we account for it? Certainly the illustrations drawn from a collision and from a lighted candle do not

justify his universal law. The complexity is only apparent. For in order to produce the complexity he is compelled to set forth the collision as taking place in a complex of relations, and it is through these relations alone that the complexity is made possible. With regard to the lighted candle, he is

compelled to place it in the midst of various surroundings, and the process of burning is in relation with each of these. Take away the surroundings, and the changes cannot take place. But surely, in any possible view of a cause, we must take into account all the conditions necessary for the production of the effect. If we take these into account, we shall be constrained to say the cause is as complex as the effect. It is not logical first to place the cause in isolated abstraction, and to set the effect in concrete relations, and on the basis of this illogical procedure gravely to set forth a universal law to the effect that universally the effect is more complex than the cause.

It is well to call attention to this so-called law, for it meets us everywhere in the course of the argument for evolution. It lies at the basis of Mr. Spencer's view of the persistence of force. It gives strength, the only strength it has, to the curious statements about the primitive nebulosity so widely current nowadays. It meets us in chemistry; it is present in biology; it is current in the application of evolution to psychology, ethics, and religion. It is well to face it frankly, and to estimate its value. For it seems to

me to be an attempt to get something out of nothing, and in essence to be equivalent to the crudest notion of creation ever present in the minds of men. The cause of evolution must be at least as complex as the result which has emerged. The principles of cosmical multiplicity must lie in the power from which all things have proceeded.

CHAPTER III

NATURE AND INTELLIGIBILITY

Additional factors-Transition from physics to chemistry— Chemical elements-Their character, relations, adaptations, periodicity-Rational character of these relationsNature is intelligible, and therefore related to intelligence -Attempts at explanation-The chemical elements exist in the unity of one system.

THE

HE maxim that the effect is more complex than the cause may be briefly described as the method of Mr. Spencer. At all the transition stages of his great system it has impelled him to search for a new starting period of sufficient simplicity out of which he can evolve a complex effect. When he begins to deal with biology, it leads him to accept the structureless homogeneous cell as the beginning of organic life, and out of it he obtains all the complexities of animated being. The unit of consciousness consists or begins with a sudden nerve shock. "Mind is certainly in some cases, and probably in all, resolvable into nervous shocks" (Psychology, i., sect. 62); and out of a simple nerve shock he tries to build up mind. The primal simplicity of the phenomena of religion he finds in ancestor worship. He has a way, too, of manufacturing intuitions as he needs them. We come to expect, as we turn from one of his treatises

to another, that at the opening of each we shall find a simple cause and a number of complex effects. We anticipate what is coming. The only surprise that awaits us is the precise kind of simplicity which Mr. Spencer will postulate. Some kind he is sure to have, but whether it is an available kind is another question.

We may have to look at some of those simplicities of his further on. Meanwhile let us try his method at an early stage. How does his homogeneous stand related to the chemical elements? We learn from Clerk Maxwell that these chemical elements are indestructible, and cannot be made to decay. They are as they were. We can call them all by the name of matter, because they have properties in common; but each one of them has its own peculiarities, and also its peculiar relation to all the others. Dealing with the classification of the sciences, Mr. Spencer speaks thus: "Theoretically all the concrete sciences are adjoining tracts of one science, which has for its subject-matter the continuous transformation which the universe undergoes. Practically, however, they are distinguishable as successively more specialised parts of the total science-parts further specialised by the introduction of additional factors" (Psychology, vol. i., p. 137). "The new factor which differentiates chemistry from molecular physics is the heterogeneity of the molecules with whose redistributions it deals " (p. 140). The description may be accepted as so far true as regards the distinctions between these two sciences. But does Mr. Spencer also make a distinction in nature corresponding to the distinction between physics and chemistry? "Physics," he tells

us truly, "deals with changes in the distribution of matter and motion considered apart from unlikeness of quality in the matter." But this may be interpreted in two ways. It may mean that we neglect or do not take into account any unlikeness of quality in the matter, while all the time we know that the unlikeness is there. It may also mean that we deny any unlikeness of quality, and proceed as if it were altogether uniform. We have not been able to gather from Mr. Spencer's writings which of these is meant by him. Sometimes he seems to mean the one, sometimes the other. From his doctrine of homogeneity he seems to postulate a matter without any unlikeness of quality, in which unlikeness would by-and-by appear. That is, however, an assumption which has not yet been proved, which chemists say has been disproved. "We might perhaps be inclined to conceive a chemical process in the following manner: substances consist of indifferent matter, which during any chemical process simply becomes invested with different properties from those which it originally possessed, without, however, itself undergoing any real alteration. This conception was, as a matter of fact, for a long time prevalent; but the following laws empirically discovered are in discordance with it: if one substance is transformed into another, then the masses of these two substances always bear a fixed ratio to each other; such a transformation of one substance into another of different mass can only take place according to the first law when a second substance participates in the reaction. The following law, therefore, is in intimate connection with that