104 HERBERT SPENCER

parallel transformation.] " It has to be shown that
the redistribution of matter and motion must every-
where 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 re-
current 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 incompre-
hensible 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 de-
stroyed to sense by combination, are not destroyed irt
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*'*rence, we think the facts are