Again, as to the fundamental conception of Mr. Spencer's philosophy. "Further, in assuming universal nebula as the homogeneous of progressive heterogeneity, Mr. Spencer really makes an enormous assumption opposed to facts. What sort of homogeneity is that which would exist among sixty-two chemical elements, probably differing in atomic shape, and certainly differing in chemical affinities and properties?" (p. 243.) It might be thought that, before a reviewer ventured so confidently to expose this "enormous assumption opposed to facts," he would have taken some care to acquaint himself with the current views of chemists on the matter in question. What is his authority for supposing, that the sixtytwo chemical elements are considered as elements, in any other sense than as substances which we are at present unable to decompose? No chemist of any prudence, who bears in mind what Davy did with the alkalies, would commit himself to the assertion, that what we regard for convenience' sake as simple bodies are really simple bodies. On the contrary, chemists in general tacitly assume the great probability that all these bodies, which as yet resist our powers of decomposition, are really compound. The whole chemical notation is based upon an implied supposition of this kind. The endeavor to reduce the various atomic weights to multiples of hydrogen, involves the suspicion that the so-called elements are all built up out of some common unit. And various attempts have been made to represent the modes in which this original unit may be so grouped and re-grouped as to form atoms answering to the atomic weights of the different elements. Even the strictures that are passed, and legitimately passed, upon the belief that the atoms of other elements are multiples of the atoms of hydrogen, — strictures based upon the fact that the atomic weights do not exactly correspond with this assumption, even these strictures are not supposed to tell against the belief that the various kinds of matter are built up of homogeneous units, but only against the idea that the atom of hydrogen is that unit. If hydrogen is compound, which we have now good reason for believing, the anomalies in the chemical scale no longer stand in the

way of the belief in the fundamental homogeneity of matter. But the belief that the so-called elementary bodies are not really elementary is no longer merely suspected: it is proved as clearly as is possible without actual separation of the components. The phenomena of spectrum analysis render the assumption, that the so-called elementary bodies are really elementary, quite inconceivable. Were their atoms simple, each of them could produce only a single line in the spectrum. But each of them produces more than one, and some of them a great number. Even those of small atomic weight, such as nitrogen, have three or more lines; and those of higher atomic weights have some of them very many; as instance iron, which has eighty-three lines. Being produced by the absorption of certain ethereal undulations by atoms oscillating synchronously with them, it is impossible that the atom of a so-called element should produce very many lines, unless it were composed of very many atoms oscillating in different periods.

But, even supposing it were true that there are sixty-two elements, properly so called, and that, instead of beginning with absolute homogeneity, evolution begins with a form of matter that is to this extent heterogeneous, it by no means. follows that the law of Evolution is untrue. Mr. Spencer has nowhere made the "enormous assumption" ascribed to him. He has himself pointed out, that the formula has to be taken with a qualification; that there is no such thing in nature as absolute homogeneity; that, save under unimaginable conditions, absolute homogeneity is impossible. And, to meet the fact rigorously, he describes the process of evolution as a transformation of the relatively homogeneous into the relatively heterogeneous, through a progressive increase of heterogeneity. All that is alleged is, that, with whatever stage of the process we begin, every further stage increases the degree of multiformity. Whether the first stage, as known to us, was or was not absolute uniformity matters not; and, as Mr. Spencer himself asserts that the first stage was not and could not be absolute uniformity, he will probably not feel much discomfited by the reviewer's statement, that

nebulous matter consists of sixty-two elements, even were that statement an ascertained fact, instead of being an improbable hypothesis.

Again, the reviewer observes, "Exactly as much heterogeneity existed in nebulous matter as now exists in the organized Cosmos." This is to assert that there was exactly as much heterogeneity in the solar system when its matter was equally diffused through its space, giving two grains to a cubic mile, as now when condensed and differentiated into inhabited globes; and this is equivalent to saying, that there is exactly as much heterogeneity in the organic germ as in the developed adult. Hence the criticism, if valid at all, is valid against the law of Von Baer, or that radical conception of evolution which has been long since accepted by all scientific men.

But it is with the theological and metaphysical doctrines enunciated in Part I. of Mr. Spencer's work that the reviewer is chiefly concerned. The drift of his argument is to fasten upon their author the imputation of Materialism and (by implication) of Atheism. The reviewer repeatedly disclaims the design of exciting an odium theologicum. But what is the odium theologicum, if not an appeal to theological prejudice by branding certain doctrines with terms of reproach, in order to make them obnoxious? He well knows that the terms he applies to Mr. Spencer's philosophy are those of odium; and he recognizes this when he says, that, by certain parties, the imputation of holding such doctrines would be "shaken off with indignation and horror." He recognizes it again when he tells the religious sects, that, if these doctrines prevail, they are all but so many "cattle fattening for the shambles." Before passing to the examination of his position, we ask attention to the following extract from a leading English Orthodox review, which gives an excellent statement of the ground assumed by Mr. Spencer:

"Why cannot some of our teachers learn, that, just so far as science is emancipated from scholasticism, it has to do with phenomena alone? The actuality underlying the phenomena is beyond all reach of human intellect; and no truly scientific man has even the shadow of a dream

of finding it out. Ever near us, ever in us, the one Divine and omnipresent mystery of the world, it remains unchanged and insoluble for all the petty strivings of our reason to formulate in words the phases it presents, and transcends immeasurably the most transcendental analysis that man has been able to invent. Yet, when Descartes thought to find the seat of the soul in the pineal gland, many persons were honestly alarmed, and cried Materialism!' Atheism!' and so forth. And when Mr. Buckle transcribed, almost bodily, some pages from Comte, setting forth the somewhat overrated researches of Bichat into the theory of life, there was again heard the familiar cry. And now, when Mr. Spencer says that the deepest truths we can reach are simply statements of the widest uniformities in our experience of the relations of Matter, Motion, and Force; and Matter, Motion, and Force are but symbols of the unknown reality,' we are like, it seems, to hear again renewed the insensate anathema. A friend and brother reviewer writes to us, with all earnestness and some eloquence, to affirm as follows: :

"The discourse of Mr. Spencer on the law of Evolution contains some admirable things; but the residuum of the whole is simply irreligious nonsense,—that, and no other. True, he tells us that his theory is "no more materialistic than it is spiritualistic, and no more spiritualistic than it is materialistic;" but what avails such a “bead-roll of unbaptized jargon," if he insists on formulating every thing in terms of Matter, Motion, and Force? It really is insufferable, puts one out of all patience. Why, if we may thus formulate a flower, we may thus formulate a Shakespeare. The one is no more and no less a phenomenon than the other. And if we may thus formulate a Shakespeare and a Socrates, Plato and the late United States, a railway engine and the mind which fashioned it, what remains - I almost shudder to ask it — what remains that we should not thus formulate our Lord himself? Nay, what is there to forbid the supposition, that the higher mode of being we attribute to what we call God may be but a different conditioning from any of those we have observed of Matter, Motion, and Force?'

"All of which, we feel assured, is thoroughly sincere, but is as completely mistaken as it is possible it should be. For what is proposed is not the possibility of formulating either flowers or steamengines, Platos or Stephensons, ultimately and actually, but of formulating only and exclusively the uniformities of the phenomena they present. Themselves we are ignorant of; and, so far as science is concerned, always shall be. We can no more formulate their true

Being than we can create such true Being. We can take cognizance of the Matter, Motion, and Force by which they speak to us, only as these are in relation with other manifestations of Matter, Motion, and Force; but it makes all the difference in the world to observe, that these terms are but the convenient and serviceable expressions of our ignorance, and are-in Mr. Spencer's own words, not sufficiently observed by our indignant friend-but symbols of the unknown reality."

The writer in the "Examiner" takes a different view. He says:

"This doctrine is also implied in Mr. Spencer's attempt to formulate all phenomena in terms of Space, Time, Matter, Motion, and Force;' for, Space and Time being made the conditions of all phenomena, and Force their universal cause, phenomena without exception must be simply motions of matter; that is, changes of position among material wholes and parts, atoms and masses" (p. 241).

Where does he find it asserted by Mr. Spencer, that there can be no other manifestation of force to the human consciousness than under the form of motions of matter? Mr. Spencer recognizes as known to us in space and time the three forms of being, - Matter, Motion, and Force; and regards the first two as modes of the last. But does he therefore say that the last has no other modes? It is true that Mr. Spencer holds all evolution to be change of arrangement in these two modes of Force which we know as Matter and Motion. But what are the entire phenomena of evolution. thus generalized? They are the phenomena of the objective universe as presented to the subjective consciousness, and as continually modifying the substance of consciousness by their presentation to it. Does this view imply that Mr. Spencer regards this substance of consciousness as either Matter or Motion? Has he not distinctly alleged, that the substance of consciousness is another mode of manifestation of Force, or of the unknowable source of things? What, then, becomes of the allegation that Mr. Spencer is bound to

* British Quarterly Review, January, 1863.