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Collection

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LIBRARIES of the

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OUTLINES
OF COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

IN FOUR VOLUMES

VOLUME III

OUTLINES OF COSMIC
PHILOSOPHY

BASED ON THE DOCTRINE OF
EVOLUTION, WITH CRITICISMS
ON THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY

BY

JOHN FISKE

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOSIAH ROYCE

L^univers, pour qui saurait Pembrasser (Tun seul point de vue, ne strait, s'ilest
permis de le dire, qu'unfait unique et une grande vkrite. — D'Alembert

Kai rh '6Kov rovro Sia TOUTa K6(T/xov KaXovffiv, ovk aKoa/jiiav. —
Plato

IN FOUR VOLUMES. —VOLUME IIL

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
1903

OUTLINES OF COSMIC
PHILOSOPHY

BASED ON THE DOCTRINE OF
EVOLUTION, WITH CRITICISMS
ON THE POSITIVE PHILOSOPHY

BY

JOHN FISKE

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JOSIAH ROYCE

L^univers, Pour qui saurait V embrasser cfun seul point de vue, ne seraity s'ilest
pertnis de le dire, qu'unfait unique et une grande vSrite. — D'Alembert

Kai rh '6Kov rovro Siii. Tuvra K6(r fiov KaKovffiv, ovK aKocpiav. —
Plato

IN FOUR VOLUMES. —VOLUME IIL

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

1903

COPYRIGHT 1874 BY JOHN FISKE
COPYRIGHT 1902 BY ABBY M. FISKE, EXECXTFRIX

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED •

CONTENTS

PART II. SYNTHESIS (Continued)

CHAPTER PAGB

X. NATURAL SELECTION .... 3

XI. TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED . . 46

XII. ADJUSTMENT, DIRECT AND INDIRECT . 72

XIII. LIFE AS ADJUSTMENT . . . . 97

XIV. LIFE AND MIND . . . . .106
XV. THE COMPOSITION OF MIND . . 14a

XVI. THE EVOLUTION OF MIND . . .194

XVII. SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL ... 241

XVIII. THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY . . .280

XIX. ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS . , 330

OUTLINES OF COSMIC
PHILOSOPHY

PART II

SYNTHESIS {continued)

** Die Thatigkeit des Organismus ist bestimmt durch seine Receptivitat
und umgekehrt. Weder seine Thatigkeit noch seine Receptivitat ist an
sich etwas reelles, Realitat erlangen beide nur in dieser Wechselbestimmung.
Thatigkeit und Receptivitat entstehen also zugleich in einem und demselben
untheilbaren Moment, und nur dieses Simultaneitat von Thatigkeit und Re-
ceptivitat constituirt das Leben. In den entgegengesetzten Richtungen, die
durch diese Entgegensetzung entstehen, liegt das Princip fiir die Construc-
tion aller Lebenserscheinungen. " — Schelling, Enter Enttuurf. 1799.

CHAPTER X
NATURAL SELECTION *

IN that most delightful of printed books, the
" Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann
and Soretj" there is an amusing anecdote
which shows how distinctly the great master real-
ized the importance of the question of the ori-
gin of species. The news of the French Revo-
lution of July, 1830, had just reached Weimar
and set the whole town in commotion. In the
course of the afternoon, says Soret, " I went
around to Goethe's. * Now,' exclaimed he to
me, as I entered, ' what do you think of this
great event ? The volcano has come to an
eruption ; everything is in flames, and we have
no longer a transaction with closed doors ! '
' Terrible afl^air,' said I, ' but what could be ex-
pected under such outrageous circumstances, and
with such a ministry, otherwise than that the
whole would end with the expulsion of the royal
family ? * ' My good friend,' gravely returned
Goethe, * we seem not to understand each other.

^ [See Introduction, § 18. Compare with this chapter the
essay I. in Darwinism and Other Essays, on *« Darwinism
Verified.'']

3

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

I am not speaking of those creatures there, but
of something quite different. I am speaking
of the contest, so important for science, between
Cuvier and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, which has
just come to an open rupture in the French
Academy ! * " At this unexpected turn of the
subject poor Soret knew not what to say, and
for some minutes, he tells us, his thoughts were
quite at a standstill.

The anecdote well illustrates the immeasurable
superiority of Goethe over Comte in prophetic
insight into the bearings of the chief scientific
question of the immediate future. While Comte
was superciliously setting aside the problem of
man's origin, as a problem not only insoluble
but utterly devoid of philosophic value even if
it could be solved, the great German poet and
philosopher was welcoming the outbreak of this
famous contest on questions of pure morpho-
logy, as conducive to the speedy triumph of the
development theory, for which he himself had
so long been waging battle. But events were
hastening that triumph even more rapidly than
Goethe could have anticipated. In December,
1 83 1, only a few weeks before Goethe was laid
in the grave, Mr. Darwin set out upon that
voyage around the world, in the course of which
he fell in with the facts which suggested his the-
ory of the origin of species. The history of the
investigation is a memorable one, — worth not-

4

NATURAL SELECTION

ing for the illustration it gives of the habits of
a truly scientific mind. On his return to Eng-
land, in 1837, Mr. Darwin began patiently to
collect all kinds of facts which might be of
use in the solution of the problem, — " How is
organic evolution caused ? " It was only after
seven years of unremitting labour that he went
so far as to commit to manuscript a brief sketch
of his general conclusions, of which the main
points were communicated to his friends Sir
Charles Lyell and Dr. Hooker. A less wise and
sober speculator than Mr. Darwin would now
at once have rushed into print. A thinker less
thoroughly imbued with the true scientific spirit
would probably have suffered from not publish-
ing his views, and profiting by the adverse crit-
icisms of contemporary observers. It is a strik-
ing illustration of Mr. Darwin's patience and
self-restraint that he continued fifteen years
longer to work assiduously in testing the weak
and strong points of his theory, before present-
ing it to the public. And it is an equally inter-
esting illustration of his thoroughly scientific
temperament that, after so many years of soli-
tary labour, he should have been so little carried
away by the fascinations of his own hypothesis
as to foresee clearly all the more valid objections
which might be urged against it. After a care-
ful perusal of the recent literature of the sub-
ject, and especially of the skilful work of Mr.

5

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

St. George Mivart, it still seems to me that
the weightiest objections which have yet been
brought to bear on the Darwinian theory are to
be found in chapters vi.-ix. of Mr. Darwin's
own work, where they are elaborately and in
most cases conclusively answered. To such a
marvellous instance of candour, patience, and
sobriety, united with the utmost boldness of
speculation, the history of science can show but
few parallels.

In 1858 a fortunate circumstance caused Mr.
Darwin to break his long silence, and to give to
the public an exposition of the results of his
researches. Mr. Wallace, who had been for sev-
eral years engaged in studying the natural his-
tory of the Malay Archipelago, had arrived at
views concerning the origin of species quite sim-
ilar to Mr. Darwin's, and in 1858 he sent Mr.
Darwin an essay on the subject, which in August
of the same year was published in the Journal
of the Linnaean Society. Sir Charles Lyell and
Dr. Hooker now earnestly advised Mr. Dar-
win to publish his own views ; and in 1859 the
memorable treatise on the " Origin of Species '*
was given to the world.

It would, however, be incorrect to rate Mr.
Wallace's merits, in the discovery of the law
of natural selection, so high as Mr. Darwin's.
They do not stand on precisely the same level,
like Adams and Leverrier with reference to the

6

NATURAL SELECTION

discovery of the planet Neptune. Mr. Wallace,
indeed, thought out independently all the es-
sential points of the theory, and stated it in a
way which showed that he understood its wide-
reaching importance ; but being a much younger
man than Mr. Darwin, and having begun the
investigation at a much later date, he by no
means worked it out so elaborately. Nor is it
likely that, with an equal length of time at his
command, he could have succeeded in produ-
cing a work comparable in scientific calibre to
the " Origin of Species." His lately published
collection of essays, while showing unusual pow-
ers of observation and rare acuteness in the ap-
plication of his theory to certain special classes
of phenomena, nevertheless furnishes convin-
cing proof that in breadth and depth of scientific
attainment, as well as in philosophic capacity,
he is very far inferior to his great coadjutor. In
his preface, indeed, Mr. Wallace hastens to ac-
knowledge, with a modest self-appreciation as
rare as it is admirable, and especially rare in such
cases, that his strength would have been quite
unequal to the task which Mr. Darwin has ac-
complished.

As Professor Haeckel somewhere observes,
it was quite fortunate for the progress of science
that Mr. Darwin received such a stimulus to
the publication of his theory ; since otherwise
he might perhaps have gone on several years

7

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

longer, observing and experimenting in seclu-
sion. The almost immediate acquiescence of the
majority of naturalists in Mr. Darwin's views
shows that in 1859 the scientific world was fully
prepared for them. The flimsiness of the spe-
cial creation hypothesis was more or less clearly
perceived by a large number of biologists, who
were only withheld from committing themselves
to the derivation theory by the circumstance
that no satisfactory explanation of the process of
development had been propounded. No one
had assigned an adequate cause for such a phe-
nomenon as the gradual evolution of a new
species ; and sundry attempts w^hich had been
made in this direction were so obviously futile
as to excite both distrust and ridicule. Lamarck,
for example, placing an exaggerated stress upon
an established law of biology, contended that
" desires, by leading to increased actions of mo-
tor organs, may induce further development of
such organs,'* and that, consequently, animals
may become directly adapted through structural
changes to changes in their environment. We
shall see, as we continue the discussion, that such
directly adaptive changes really take place ; but
Lamarck ill understood their character, and in-
deed could not have been expected to under-
stand it, since in his day dynamical biology was
in its earliest infancy.^ By insisting on volition
^ Lamarck also tried to explain organic development meta-

8

NATURAL SELECTION

as a chief cause of adaptive change, the illustri-
ous naturalist not only left the causes of vege-
table variation unexplained, but even in the
zoological department laid open the way for
malicious misrepresentations which the unin-
structedzeal of theological adversaries has gladly
transferred to the account of Mr. Darwin. Some
time ago a clergyman in New York, lecturing
about Darwinism, sarcastically alluded to " the
bear which took to swimming, and so became a
whale." Had this worthy person condescended
to study the subject about which he thought
himself fit to enlighten the public, he would
soon have discovered that his funny remark is
not even a parody upon any opinion held by
Mr. Darwin. In so far as it is applicable to any
opinion ever held by a scientific writer, it may
perhaps be accepted as a parody, though at best
a very far-fetched and feeble one, of the hypo-
thesis of Lamarck.

It is now time to explain what the Darwinian
theory is. At the outset we may observe that
while it is a common error to speak of Mr.
Darwin as if he were the originator of the de-
rivation theory, the opposite error is not un-
frequently committed of alluding to him as if
he had contributed nothing to the establishment
of that theory save the doctrine of natural se-

physically, as the continuous manifestation of an <* inherent
tendency " toward perfection.

9

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

lection. Mr. Mivart habitually thus alludes to
him. In fact, however, Mr. Darwin^s merits
are twofold. He was the first to marshal the
arguments from classification, embryology, mor-
phology, and distribution, and thus fairly to
establish the fact that there has been a deriva-
tion of higher forms from lower ; and he was
also the first to point out the modus operandi of
the change. The first of these achievements by
itself would have entitled him to associate his
name with the development theory ; though it
was only by the second that the triumph of the
theory was practically assured. Just as, in as-
tronomy, the heliocentric theory was not re-
garded as completely established until the forces
which it postulated were explained as identical
with forces already known, so the development
theory possessed comparatively little value as a
working hypothesis so long as it still remained
doubtful whether there were any known or
knowable causes sufficient to have brought about
the phenomena which that theory assumed to
have taken place. It was by pointing out ade-
quate causes of organic evolution that Mr. Dar-
win established the development theory upon
a thoroughly scientific basis.

As Lyell explained all past geologic phe-
nomena as due to the slow action of the same
forces which are still in action over the earth*s
surface and beneath its crust, so Mr. Darwin,

lO

NATURAL SELECTION

in explaining the evolution of higher from
lower forms of life, appeals only to agencies
which are still visibly in action. Whether spe-
cies, in a state of nature, are changing or not at
the present time, cannot be determined by di-
rect observation, any more than the motion of
the hour-hand of a clock could be detected by
gazing at it for one second.^ The entire period
which has elapsed since men began to observe
nature systematically is but an infinitesimal por-
tion of the period requisite for any fundamen-
tal alteration in the characteristics of a spe-
cies. But there are innumerable cases in which
species are made to change rapidly through the
deliberate intervention of man. In the course
of a few thousand years, a great number of
varieties of plants and animals have been pro-
duced under domestication, many of which
^ ** If we imagine mankind to be contemplated by some
creature as short-lived as an ephemeron, but possessing intelli-
gence like our own — if we imagine such a being studying men
and women, during his few hours of life, and speculating as
to the mode in which they came into existence ; it is manifest
that, reasoning in the usual way, he would suppose each man
and woman to have been separately created. No appreciable
changes of structure occurring during the few hours over which
his observations extended, this being would probably infer that
no changes of structure were taking place, or had taken place ;
and that from the outset, each man and woman had possessed
all the characters then visible — had been originally formed
with them. This would naturally be the first impression,'*
Spencer, Principles of Biology, vol. i. p. 338.
II

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

differ so widely from their parent-forms that,
if found in a state of nature, they would be un-
hesitatingly classified as distinct species, and
sometimes as distinct genera. Modifications in
the specific characters of domesticated organisms
are the only ones which take place so rapidly
that we can actually observe them ; and it there-
fore becomes highly important to inquire what
is the agency which produces these modifica-
tions.

That agency is neither more nor less than
selection^ taking advantage of that slight but uni-
versal variation in organisms implied by the
fact that no two individuals in any species are
exactly alike. If man, for example, wishes to
produce a breed of fleet race-horses, he has
only to take a score of horses and select from
these the fleetest to pair together : from among
the offspring of these fleet pairs he must again
select the fleetest ; and thus, in a few genera-
tions, he will obtain horses whose average speed
far exceeds that of the fleetest of their undo-
mesticated ancestors. It is in this and no other
way that our breeds of race-horses have been
produced. In this way too have been produced
the fine wools of which our clothing is made.
By selecting, generation after generation, the
sheep with the finest and longest wool, a breed
of sheep is ultimately reared with wool almost
generically different from that of the undomes-

12

NATURAL SELECTION

ticated race. In this and no other way have the
different races of dogs — the greyhound, the
mastiff, the terrier, the pointer, and the white-
haired Eskimo — been artificially developed
from two or three closely allied varieties of the
wolf and jackal. The mastiff and bloodhound
are more than ten times as large as the terrier,
and, if found in a state of nature, they would
perhaps be classed in distinct genera, like the
leopard and panther, whose differences are hardly
more striking. Yet the ancestral races from which
these dogs have been reared differed but slightly
from each other. The different breeds of dogs
vary in the number of their toes, teeth, and
vertebrae, in the number and disposition of
their mammae, in the shape of their zygomatic
arches, and in the position of their occiputs ;
although dogs have not been selected with re-
ference to these peculiarities, about which un-
instructed men neither know nor care, but only
with reference to their speed, fleetness, strength,
or sagacity. In the case of domestic pigeons,
where man has been to a great extent actuated
by pure fancy in his selections, the divergences
are still more remarkable. All domestic pigeons
are descended from a single species of wild
pigeon — yet their differences, even in bony
structure, in the, internal organs, and in mental
disposition, are such as characterize distinct
genera, and to describe them cojnpletely would

?3

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

require a large volume. Pigs, . rabbits, cows,
fowl, silk-moths, and hive-bees furnish no less
instructive evidence ; and the development of
the peach and the almond from a common
stock, and of countless varieties of apple from
the sour crab, may be cited, out of a hundred
examples, to show what prodigies artificial se-
lection has accomplished in the modification of
vegetal organisms.

Now Mr. Darwin's great achievement has
been to show that a similar process of selection,
going on throughout the organic world without
the knowledge or intervention of man, tends
not only to maintain but to produce adaptive
alterations in plants and animals. The process
is a simple one, when once we have the clew to
it. All plants and animals tend to increase in
a high geometrical ratio. The old problem of
the nails in the horse's shoe teaches us what an
astounding affair is a geometrical rate of in-
crease ; but when we consider the reproductive
capacity of insects and plants, the nails in the
horse's shoe are left nowhere. When Arctic
travellers tell us that the minute protococcus
multiplies so fast as to colour blood-red many
acres of snow in a single night, such a rate of
increase appears astonishing. But It is a mere
trifle compared to what would happen if repro-
duction were to go on unchecked. Let us take
the ^ase of a plant which yields one hundred

14

NATURAL SELECTION

seeds yearly, and suppose each of these seeds to
reach maturity so as to yield its hundred off-
spring in the following year : in the tenth year
the product would be one hundred quintillions ^
of adult plants ! As this is one of those figures
before which the imagination stands hopelessly
baffled, let us try the effect of an illustration.
Supposing each of these plants to be from three
to five inches in length, so that about twenty
thousand would reach nearly an English mile,
the total length of the number just mentioned
would be equal to five million times the radius
of the earth^s orbit. The ray of light, which
travels from the sun to the earth in eight min-
utes, would be seventy-six years in passing along
this line of little plants ! And in similar wise
it might be shown of many insects, crustaceans,
and fishes, that their unchecked reproduction
could not long go on without requiring the as-
similation of a greater quantity of matter than
is contained in the whole solar system.

We may now begin dimly to realize how
prodigious is the slaughter which unceasingly
goes on throughout the organic world. For
obviously, when a plant like the one just cited
maintains year by year a tolerable uniformity
in its numbers, it does so only because on the
average ninety-nine seeds perish prematurely

^ According to the American system of numeration. One
hundred thousand trillions, according to the EngHsh system.

15

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

for one that survives long enough to produce
other seeds. A single codfish has been known
to lay six million eggs within a year. If these
eggs were all to become adult codfishes, and
the multiplication were to continue at this rate
for three or four years, the ocean would not
afford room for the species. Yet we have no
reason to suppose that the race of codfishes is
actually increasing in numbers to any notable
extent. With the codfish, as with animal spe-
cies in general, the numbers during many suc-
cessive generations oscillate about a point which
is fixed, or moves but slowly forward or back-
ward. Instead of a geometrical increase with a
ratio of six millions, there is practically no
marked increase at all. Now this implies that
out of the six million embryo codfish a suffi-
cient number will survive to replace their two
parents, and to replace a certain small propor-
tion of those contemporary codfishes who leave
no progeny. Perhaps a dozen may suffice for
this, perhaps a hundred. The rest of the six
million must die. We may thus understand
what is meant by the " struggle for existence."
Battles far more deadly than those of Gettys-
burg or Gravelotte have been incessantly waged
on every square mile of the earth's life-bearing
surface, since life first began. It is only thus
that the enormous increase of each species has
been kept within bounds. Of the many oflf-

i6

NATURAL SELECTION

spring produced by each plant and animal, save
in the case of those highest in the scale, but
few attain maturity and leave offspring behind
them. The most perish for want of sustenance,
or are slain to furnish food for other organisms.
There is thus an unceasing struggle for life —
a competition for the means of subsistence —
going on among all plants and animals. In
this struggle by far the greater number suc-
cumb without leaving offspring — but a few
favoured ones in each generation survive and
propagate to their offspring the qualities by
virtue of which they have survived.

Thus we see what is meant by " Natural
Selection." The organisms which survive and
propagate their kind are those which are best
adapted to the conditions in which they live ; so
that we may, by a legitimate use of metaphor,
personify Nature as a mighty breeder, selecting
from each generation those individuals which
are fleetest, strongest, most sagacious : lions with
supplest muscles, moths with longest antennae,
mollusks with hardest shells, wolves with keen-
est scent, bees with surest instinct, flowers with
sweetest nectar ; until, in the course of untold
ages, the numberless varieties of organic life
have been produced by the same process of
which man now takes advantage in order to
produce variations to suit his own caprices.

Between natural selection and selection by

VOL. in 17

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

man there is, however, one important differ-
ence. Selection by man tends to produce vari-
eties adapted to satisfy human necessities or
inclinations, and it has no direct reference to
the maintenance of the species. Such abnor-
mities as the pouter and tumbler pigeons could
not be sustained in a state of nature — and
hence, when domesticated animals are turned
loose, they are apt to revert to something like
their ancestral type,^ else they are exterminated
by races better adapted to wild life. But nat-
ural selection, working with the sternest of
methods, saves from the general slaughter only
those individuals which can best take care of
themselves, and thus maintains each species in
adaptation to its environment. The wonderful
harmonies in the organic world, which a crude
philosophy explained as the achievement of
creative contrivance, are therefore due to the
continued survival of the fittest and the con-
tinued slaughter of the less adapted plants and
animals.

Now if the geography and meteorology of
the earth were ever-constant, if the nature of
the soil, the amount of moisture, the density
of the atmosphere, and the intensity of solar
radiance were everywhere to remain forever un-

1 This fact, which has often been alleged by superficial
critics as an obstacle to the Darwinian theory, is thus in reality
implied by that theory.

i8

NATURAL SELECTION

altered, and if each race of plants and animals
were always to remain confined to one limited
area, the survival of the fittest would simply
maintain unaltered any given aspect of the be-
ings constituting the organic world. All vari-
ations on either side of the well-adjusted mean
would be incessantly cut off by natural selection,
and species would be immutable. It is need-
less to say that no such state of things has ever
existed. Constant change has been the order
of things ever since our planet first became fit
to support organic life. No part of the earth*s
surface is now, or ever has been, at rest. Con-
tinents are rising and sinking, seas are growing
deeper and shallower, soils are constantly alter-
ing in chemical composition, rivers are ever
changing their beds, solar radiance is ever gain-
ing or losing in intensity, according to the
earth's ever-varying position in space, the den-
sity and moisture of the air are continually in-
creasing and diminishing, and every species of
plant and animal is continually pressing upon
the limits of the area within which it is confined.
All these changes are going on to-day, and have
been going on during millions of ages. Though
so slight as to be recognized only by the most
careful observation during the period covered
by human history, these changes have during
longer periods sufficed to submerge every con-
tinent and perhaps to make dry land of every

19

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

sea and ocean on the face of the globe. They
have raised mountains like the Andes and the
Himalayas at the rate of a few inches per cen-
tury ; they have converted extensive tropical
swamps into the desert of Sahara ; they have
repeatedly covered Europe and North America
with glaciers ; and they have hidden beneath
solid rocks vast treasures of carbon stealthily
purloined from the dense atmosphere of an
older age.

Since such changes have ever been going on,
it follows that organisms have been unable to
remain constant and live. A race of animals or
plants in which no individuals ever varied would
sooner or later inevitably be exterminated, leav-
ing no progeny to fill its place. Observation
shows, however, that there is no such race.
The members of each species are ever slightly
varying, but, so long as the environment re-
mains constant, natural selection prevents the
variations from accumulating on either side of
the mean which is most advantageous to the
species. When the environment changes, if
certain variations on one side of the established
mean tend to bring the individuals which man-
ifest them into closer adaptation to the new en-
vironment, these individuals will survive in the
struggle for life, and thus the average character
of the species will be slightly altered. No two
bears have just the same amount of hair, no
20

NATURAL SELECTION

two moths have just the same length of pro-
boscis, no two antelopes are exactly matched in
fleetness. Now if increasing cold renders a
thicker covering useful to the bear, or if the
lengthening of a flower-calyx, due to a slight
change in soil or quantity of sunlight, renders a
longer proboscis useful to the moth, or if the
immigration of a carnivorous animal makes it ne-
cessary for antelopes often to run for their lives,
then in each generation the thickest - coated
bears, the longest-tongued moths, and the fleet-
est antelopes will survive. Every individual
variation in the direction of a heavier coat, a
longer sucker, or a structure better adapted for
fleeing will give its owner the advantage in the
incessant struggle for life, and these peculiari-
ties will be oftenest inherited, while individuals
which do not vary, or which vary in tue wrong
direction, will have to migrate or die.^

The student of natural history, who realizes,
however dimly, the prodigious complexity of
the relations of the various species of animals
and plants to each other, will perceive that the
amount of variation thus preserved and en-
hanced must in the course of long ages become

1 It is thus one of the great merits of the theory of natural
selection, that it accounts for the phenomena o^ extinction of
species, — which formerly could only be accounted for by
the gratuitous and utterly indefensible hypothesis of periodical
catastrophes or cataclysms.

21

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

enormous. If a grain of sand were each year
added to an ant-heap, it would in course of time
become as large as Chimborazo. But these
changes, directly caused by natural selection,
are greatly aided and emphasized by other
changes indirectly produced by correlation of
growth, and also by what is called the law of
use and disuse. By correlation of growth, or
internal equilibration, we mean the effect pro-
duced upon any part of the organism by change
in a related or neighbouring part. Let us sup-
pose that it becomes advantageous to some
feHne animal, like the ancestor of the lion, to
have large and powerful jaws. Since no two
of our leonines would have jaws of exactly the
same size and strength, natural selection would
preserve all the strong-jawed individuals, while
the weak-jawed individuals would succumb in
the struggle for life. In the course of many
generations our race of leonines would possess
on the average much larger and stronger jaws
than at the period at which we began to con-
sider it. But greater weight of jaw entails in-
creased exertion of the muscles which move the
jaw, so that these muscles, receiving more and
more blood, will become permanently increased
in size and power. The portions of the skull
into which the jaw bones fit will likewise receive
an extra strain, and will consequently increase
in rate of nutrition and grow to a larger size, so

22

NATURAL SELECTION

that the shape of the whole head will be altered.
This increased weight of the head, and the in-
creasingly violent activity of the muscles which
move the jaws, entails a greater strain upon the
vertebrae which support the head, and upon
the cervical muscles which move it from side to
side. The heightened nutrition of these bones
and muscles will add to their weight, so that
the shoulders and chest will be affected. There
will be a tightening of the tendons, and proba-
bly a pergsptible alteration in the relative lengths
of the different bones and muscles throughout
the anterior part of the body ; and these changes,
altering the animal's centre of gravity, will in-
evitably cause other compensating changes in
the rest of the body. The legs, shoulders, and
haunches will be modified. Alterations in the
weights bearing upon the chest will affect the
growth of the lungs and the aeration of the
blood. And the stomach, intestines, and va-
rious secreting glands will respond to the re-
quirements of all these nutritive changes. While,
lastly, such deep-seated variations cannot fail to
influence the nervous system of the animal,
and to modify somewhat its temperament and
its modes of life.

To illustrate the effects of use and disuse, let

us reconsider the antelopes, of whom natural

selection has so long preserved the swiftest and

most quickly frightened individuals that they

23

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

now rank among the fleetest and most timid of
mammals. If all the lions and other swift car-
nivora of Africa were to become extinct, so that
antelopes would no longer have to run for their
lives, the slower and less easily alarmed indi-
viduals would begin to be preserved in as great
numbers as the swifter and more timid ones, so
that by and by the average speed and timidity
of the race would be diminished. In all this
we see merely the effects wrought by unaided
natural selection. But it is a fundamental law
of biology that functions are maintained at
their maximum only through constant exercise.
Freed from savage enemies, our antelopes
would less frequently use the muscles con-
cerned in running, and would less often exer-
cise the mental faculties concerned in the rapid
perception of approaching danger. Inevitably,
therefore, they would, after several generations,
diminish in speed, and become less alert and less
timid. Here we see the effects of what is called
the law of use and disuse. But to these we should
also have to add the effects of correlation of
growth. Decrease in speed involving decrease
in muscular tonicity, and rendering possible the
assimilation of less concentrated food, would
seriously modify the nutrition of the entire or-
ganism. The digestive tract would probably
be enlarged, and larger and lazier bodies could
not fail to be produced, both by |the direct in-
24

NATURAL SELECTION

fluence of the nutritive processes, and because
natural selection would no longer necessitate
the slaughter of all clumsy bodied individuals.
Thus in course of time the breed of antelopes
would become so thoroughly altered as to con-
stitute a distinct species from their graceful,
swift, and timid ancestors. It is in just these
ways that New Zealand birds, freed by insular
isolation from the attacks of mammalian ene-
mies, have grown large and clumsy, and have
lost the power of flight which their partly-
aborted wings show that they once possessed.

By the same kind of illustration we may
form a rough notion of the way in which a sin-
gle species bifurcates into two well-defined spe-
cies. Suppose a race of ruminants to have been
living in Africa before the introduction of car-
nivora, and suppose that, for sundry reasons,
the vitality of the race was but little afi^ected by
moderate variations in the sizes of its individ-
uals, so that while some were comparatively
light and nimble, others were comparatively
large and clumsy. Now introducing upon the
scene the common ancestor of the lion and the
leopard — by immigration either from Asia or
from some other adjacent territory now sub-
merged — let us note some probable features
of the complex result. First, as regards the
attacked ruminants, it is likely that in course
of time the lightest and swiftest individuals,
• 25

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

habitually taking refuge in flight, would have
greatly increased both in fleetness and in tim-
idity ; the largest and most clumsy of the
species, unable to save themselves by fleeing,
would often be forced to stand and fight for
their lives, and would thus ultimately have
gained in size, strength, and courage ; while
those who were neither nimble enough to get
out of the way nor strong enough to fight suc-
cessfully would have all been killed off. And
thus, after a while, by perpetual destruction of
the means and preservation of the extremes, we
should get two kinds of ruminant as diflFerent
from one another as the antelope which es-
capes by his fleetness and cautious timidity,
and the bufi^alo which boldly withstands the
lion and not unfrequently conquers or repulses
him. Secondly, let us observe what must have
been going on all the while with the attacking
carnivora. The lighter and less powerful of
these would find manifest advantage in crouch-
ing amid dense foliage and springing down upon
unwary victims passing below. The larger and
more powerful individuals would more fre-
quently roam about the open country, attack-
ing the larger ruminants and giving chase to
the nimbler ones, and would thus increase in
strength and fleetness. And thus there would
be initiated such difl^erences of size and habit as
characterize the leopard and the lion.
26 .

NATURAL SELECTION

It must be borne in mind that this is a purely
hypothetical illustration, which does not pre-
tend to give a complete account of the complex
process. I have no idea that the differentiation
between antelopes and buffaloes, or between
lions and leopards, was accomplished in any such
straightforward way as this. But while unduly
simplifying the case, the illustration is undoubt-
edly sound in principle. No doubt the lion is
so strong and so swift because only the strong-
est and swiftest lions have been able to prey at
once upon buffaloes and upon antelopes. No
doubt the antelope is so swift and so timid
because only the swiftest and most quickly
frightened antelopes have been enabled to
get away from the lion, and to propagate their
kind. And no doubt in the process above de-
scribed, we get a partial glimpse of some of the
essential incidents in the past careers of these
races.

All the foregoing illustrations unite in enfor-
cing the conclusion that the direct and indirect
effects of natural selection are by no means lim-
ited to slight or superficial changes in organ-
isms. The student of physiology well knows
that no change, however seemingly trivial, which
ensures the survival of the organism in its fierce
struggle for existence, can fail in the long run
to entail so many other changes as to modify,
more or less perceptibly, the entire structure.
27

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

Even such a slight change as an increased thick-
ness of the woolly coat of a mammal may, by
altering the excretory power of the skin, affect
the functions of the lungs, liver, and kidneys,
and thus indirectly increase or diminish the size
of the animal, which in turn will modify its
speed, its muscular development, its mental fac-
ulties, and its habits of life.

Having thus briefly indicated the capacity of
the theory of natural selection for explaining the
most general phenomena of organic variation,
let us in conclusion observe how admirably it
explains certain special phenomena, which do
not otherwise admit of scientific explanation.
For evidence of the signal success with which
Mr. Darwin has explained such otherwise un-
accountable facts as the dimorphism of cer-
tain flowers, the existence of neuters or sterile
females among bees and ants, the odoriferous
glands in mammals, the calcareous shells of
mollusks, the heavy carapace of the tortoise, the
humps of the camel, the amazingly complicated
contrivances through which orchidaceous plants
are fertilized by insects, the slave-making in-
stinct of certain ants, the horns of male rumi-
nants, and countless other phenomena, — for
all this, I must refer to Mr. Darwin's various
works. From the mass of phenomena to which
the theory of natural selection has been satisfac-
torily applied, I will only select as an illustra-
28

NATURAL SELECTION

tion the case of colour, in the animal and vege-
tal kingdoms.

Until after the publication of Mr. Darwin's
speculations, the colours of plants and animals
had never been made the subject of careful and
philosophical study. So far as any hypothesis
was held concerning these phenomena, it was the
vaguely conceived hypothesis that they are due
to the direct action of such physical conditions
as climate, soil, or food. But there are fatal
objections to such an explanation. When Dr.
Forbes Winslow, in his work on the " Physio-
logical Influence of Light," tells us that " the
white colour of animals inhabiting the polar re-
gions is attributable to the absence of intense
sunlight," it is an obvious objection that the
polar regions are not preeminent for darkness.
Though within the limits of the arctic circle
the sun is below the horizon for six months
together, it is none the less for the other six
months above the horizon ; and though its
slanting rays do not cause excessive heat in the
summer, the prolonged glare of light, intensified
by reflection from the snow and ice, is described
as peculiarly intolerable. The summer ought to
tan the polar bears as much as the winter can
bleach them. And to this it may be added that
the Eskimos and Greenlanders, living under the
polar circle, are not bleached. Several other
facts, ahke incompatible with the direct action
29

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

of physical agencies, are mentioned by Mr.
Wallace. While wild rabbits, for instance, are
always tinted gray or brown, the same rabbits,
when domesticated, give birth to white and
black varieties, though there has been no change
either in climate or in food. The case is the
same with domestic pigeons. But even suppos-
ing that the most general features of animal col-
ouring could be explained on this hypothesis, —
which they cannot be, — there would still re-
main the more remarkable cases of tree-frogs,
which resemble bark, and of the so-called leaf-
butterflies, which when at rest are indistinguish-
able from leaves ; and the existence of such
cases is a stumbling-block in the way of all the-
ories save the theory of naturd selection.

For according to the theory of natural se-
lection each species of animals will be charac-
terized by that shade of colour which is most
advantageous to the species in the struggle
for existence. Now, as Mr. Wallace observes,
" concealment is useful to many animals, and
absolutely essential to some. Those which have
numerous enemies from which they cannot es-
cape by rapidity of motion, find safety in con-
cealment. Those which prey upon others must
also be so constituted as not to alarm them by
their presence or their approach, or they would
soon die of hunger.*' In striking harmony with
this general principle, we find that the great

30

NATURAL SELECTION

majority of animals are so coloured as best to
escape notice, and that animals which are not
protectively coloured are animals whose habits
of life are such as to enable them to dispense
with secrecy. The polar bear is white, as the
California bear is gray and the Hindustan bear
black, because with a coat thus coloured it can
best escape notice and secure its prey. The
polar hare has a permanent coat of white ; but
the alpine hare, the arctic fox, and the ermine,
which do not live amid perpetual snow, have
coats that are white in the winter only. Arctic
owls, falcons, and buntings are coloured snowy
white ; and the ptarmigan is white in winter,
while " its summer plumage so exactly harmo-
nizes with the lichen - covered stones among
which it delights to sit, that a person may walk
through a flock of them without seeing a single
bird." In the sandy deserts of Northern Af-
rica, all birds, without exception, all snakes and
lizards, and all the smaller mammals, are of a
uniform sandy colour. The camel is tinted like
the desert in which he lives, and the same is
true of the antelope and the Australian kanga-
roo. The tawny lion, says Mr. Wallace, " is a
typical example of this, and must be almost in-
visible when crouched upon the sand or among
desert rocks and stones." His brother, the
tiger, " is a jungle animal, and hides himself
among tufts of grass or of bamboos, and in these
31

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

positions the vertical stripes with which his body
is adorned must so assimilate with the vertical
stems of the bamboo as to assist greatly in con-
cealing him from his approaching prey. How
remarkable it is that besides the lion and tiger,
almost all the other large cats are arboreal in
their habits, and almost all have ocellated or
spotted skins, which must certainly tend to
blend them with the background of foliage —
while the one exception, the puma, has an ashy
brown uniform fur, and has the habit of cling-
ing so closely to a limb of a tree, while waiting
for his prey to pass beneath, as to be hardly dis-
tinguishable from the bark." ^ Such nocturnal
animals as owls, goat-suckers, mice, bats, and
moles are dusky coloured. In tropical forests,
where the trees are laden with green foliage all
the year round, we find brilliant green pigeons
and parrots ; while the northern snipe resem-
bles the marshy vegetation in which it lives, and
the woodcock, with its variegated browns and
yellows, is inconspicuous among the autumn
leaves.^ Arboreal iguanas are tinted leafy green ;
and out of many species of tropical tree-snakes

^ Wallace, Natural Selection^ pp. 49, 53.
^ The general principle is well stated by Emerson, in this
pretty quatrain : —

*' He took the colour of his vest
From rabbit's coat and grouse's breast j
For as the wild kinds lurk and hide,
So walks the huntsman unespied."

32

NATURAL SELECTION

there is but one which is not green, and this
kind conceals itself during the daytime in holes.
Flat fish, like the skate and flounder, are col-
oured like the gravel beneath them. Fishes
which live among gorgeous coral reefs are mag-
nificently tinted. The brilliant red hippocampi
of Australia dwell among seaweed of the same
colour. And numerous other examples from
the vertebrate sub-kingdom are given by Mr.
Wallace, from whose remarkable essay the ex-
amples here given are culled.

Before going farther, let us note how com-
pletely these interesting phenomena are in har-
mony with the theory of natural selection. The
variability of the hues of domestic animals de-
scended from a monotonously coloured wild
species shows that there is no direct physiolo-
gical necessity for the production of animals of
a single given style of colouring. But it is tol-
erably obvious that in the struggle for existence
the most conspicuous among those animals
which serve as food for others will be the soon-
est detected, killed, and eaten ; while in general
the most conspicuous carnivorous animals will
be the most easily avoided, and hence will be
the most likely to perish for lack of sustenance.
And while it is not universally true of the
higher animals, as it is of the lower animals and
plants, that a much greater number perish than
survive, the destruction of life is nevertheless

VOL. in 23

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

so great that the fate of each creature must often
depend upon apparently trivial circumstances.
The explanation would therefore be satisfactory,
even if protective shades of colouring could be
regarded as circumstances of slight importance,
— which they cannot.

Since, therefore, it is natural selection which
keeps up the protective hues of animals, by
kilHng off all save the least conspicuous indi-
viduals, we may understand why it is that ani-
mals which have for several generations been
domesticated no longer retain, without consid-
erable deviation, their protective style of col-
ouring. Freed from the exigencies of wild life,
there is no longer an imperious need for con-
cealment, and hence the unfavourably coloured
individuals survive like the rest, and variety
appears among members of the same species.
In the cat family, which appears to have been
originally arboreal, there is a strong tendency
to the production of stripes and spots. In the
lion, which is not arboreal, and in the puma,
owing to the peculiarity above mentioned, these
variegated markings have been almost wholly
weeded out by natural selection.^ But in the
domestic cat, along with these spots and stripes

* The variegated marking usually appears, however, in lion-
cubs ; thus showing that the variegated colouring of the leopard
and tiger is relatively primary, while the monotonous colour-
ing of the adult lion is relatively secondary.

34

NATURAL SELECTION

which occasionally show its blood-relationship
with the leopard and tiger, we more often meet
with colours not paralleled among the wild
species ; now and then we see cats which are
coal-black or snowy white. Cows, horses, sheep,
dogs, and fowl furnish parallel examples. Thus
too we may understand why the sable and the
Canadian woodchuck retain their brown fur
during the winter ; for the one can subsist on
berries, and is far more agile than any of its
foes, while the other lives in burrows by the
river-side and catches small fish that swim by in
the water. And thus we may understand why
it is that in the case of birds which build open
nests, the female is dull coloured like the nest ;
while on the other hand, the females of birds
which build dorhed nests are often as brightly
coloured as the males.

Turning now to the insect world, we find a
vast abundance of corroborative proof. Among
the tiger-beetles examined by Mr. Wallace in
the Malay islands, those which lived upon wet
mossy stones in mountain brooks were coloured
velvet green ; others, found for the most part on
dead leaves in the forest, were brown ; others
again, " never seen except on the wet mud of
salt marshes, were of a glossy olive so exactly
the colour of the mud as only to be distinguished
when the sun shone,'' by casting a shadow.
"In the tropics there are thousands of species

35

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

of insects which rest during the day clinging to
the bark of dead or fallen trees ; and the greater
portion of these are delicately mottled with gray
and brown tints, which though symmetrically
disposed and infinitely varied, yet blend so com-
pletely with the usual colours of the bark, that
at two or three feet distance they are quite in-
distinguishable." Moths, which when resting
expose the upper surfaces of their wings, have
these dull coloured. Butterflies, on the other
hand, which rest with their wings raised perpen-
dicularly and laid together so as to show only
the under surfaces, have the upper surfaces bril-
liantly coloured, while the exposed under sur-
faces are dusky and inconspicuous — or even
marked in imitation of leaves. Mr. Wallace
describes an East Indian butterfly whose wings
are superbly tinted with blue and orange : this
butterfly is a very swift flyer and is never known
to settle save among the dead leaves in the dry
forests which it frequents. When settled, with
its wings raised, it imitates a shrivelled leaf so
perfectly that even the keen eye of the natural-
ist can hardly detect it. This protective colour-
ing is found throughout the whole immense
order to which belong grasshoppers, crickets,
and locusts ; the most remarkable instance be-
ing furnished by the so-called " walking-leaf,"
to which no description can do justice. On the
other hand, hornets, bees, and wasps, which are

36

NATURAL SELECTION

protected by their stings, are brilliantly but not
in general protectively coloured. Bugs and
ground - beetles emit a disagreeable, pungent
smell, and they are often conspicuously coloured.
But the most wonderful of all are the cases of
protective mimicry. The heliconidae are among
the most beautiful of South American butter-
flies. Being never eaten by birds, on account
of a nauseous liquid which exudes from them
when touched, they are not only very lazy fly-
ers, but have the under sides of their wings
as gorgeously tinted as the upper side, so that
they can be seen from quite a long distance.
From the same cause they are prodigiously
numerous, swarming in all the tropical forests.
Now it is obvious that if another butterfly, not
protected by a disagreeable odour or taste, were
to resemble the heliconia in colouring, it would
be as efliciently protected as by imitating a dead
leaf or dry twig ; provided that there were but
few of these butterflies among a large number
of heliconias. For, as Mr. Wallace says, " if
the birds could not distinguish the two kinds
externally, and there were on the average only
one eatable among fifty uneatable, they would
soon give up seeking for the eatable ones, even
if they knew them to exist.'' Now along with
the heliconidae there does, in fact, live a distinct
family of butterflies, the pieridae, most of which
are white, and which are anatomically as distinct

37

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

from the heliconidae as a lion from a buffalo.
But of these pieridae there is one genus, the
leptalis, which exactly resembles the heliconias
in external appearance. So close is the resem-
blance that such expert naturalists as Mr. Bates
and Mr. Wallace have been repeatedly deceived
by it at the time of capture. Moreover, each
species of this genus leptalis is a copy of the
particular species of heliconia which lives in the
same district. Every band and spot and fleck
of colour in the heliconia is accurately repro-
duced in the leptalis ; and besides this, the lazy
mode of flight is also imitated ; while in point
of numbers, we find about one leptalis to a
thousand heHconias. Nor is this the only in-
stance. So preeminently favoured are these
beautiful insects by their disgusting taste, that
they are exactly imitated by at least three gen-
era of diurnal moths. In other parts of the
world similar phenomena have been noticed.
The relationship of the leptalis to the heliconia
is repeated in India, in the PhiHppine Islands,
in the Malay archipelago, and in various parts
of Africa ; the protected insect being, in all
these cases, very much less numerous than the
insect whose colours it mimics. In similar wise,
bees and wasps are often imitated by beetles,
by flies, and even by moths.

For further details I must refer to Mr. Wal-
lace's essay, which is a singularly beautiful

38

w

NATURAL SELECTION

specimen of inductive reasoning. The facts al-
ready cited are quite enough to sustain the gen-
eral conclusion that the colours of animals are
in the main determined by the exigencies of
the struggle for existence. Where it is for the
advantage of an animal to be concealed, as in
the great majority of cases, its colour, whether
brilliant or sombre, is such as to protect it.
But where the animal is otherwise adequately
protected, — either by its peculiar habits, by a
sting, a disgusting odour or taste, or a hard
carapace, — and where it is not needful for it
to be hidden from the prey upon which it feeds,
then there is usually no reference to protection
in the colour of the animal. In some of these
cases, however, a very conspicuous colouring
becomes protective — as in the case of the jet-
black toad which Mr. Darwin saw in La Plata,
which emitted a poisonous secretion, and which,
when crawling over the sandy plain, could not
fail to be recognized by every passing creature
as an object to be avoided.

In many cases the gorgeous tints of the
otherwise protected male animal are due to
what is called " sexual selection," — to the con-
tinual selection of the more beautiful males by
the females. To this cause is due the magni-
ficent plumage of the male bird of paradise ;
and Mr. Darwin would similarly explain the
brilliant colours of many male butterflies. In
39

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

his work on the " Descent of Man " may be
found an account of the elaborate observations
which have led to these conclusions. Without
feeling it necessary to insist upon the validity
of all the special explanations contained in that
work, we must admit that the general theory is
substantiated by a superabundance of induc-
tive evidence. And when this kind of selection
is taken in connection with the need for pro-
tective concealment, we have the means of ex-
plaining by far the greater part of the colouring
found in the animal kingdom.

The colours of the vegetal kingdom have,
to a considerable extent, been no less satisfac-
torily explained. " Flowers do not often need
protection, but very often require the aid of
insects to fertilize them, and maintain their re-
productive powers in the greatest vigour. Their
gay colours attract insects, as do also their
sweet odours and honeyed secretions ; and that
this is the main function of colour in flowers is
shown by the striking fact that those plants
which can be perfectly fertilized by the wind,
and do not need the aid of insects, rarely or
never have gaily coloured flowers." ^

Returning for one moment to the case of
animals, which are usually benefited by conceal-
ment but sometimes by conspicuousness, let us
note Professor Shaler's ingenious explanation
^ Wallace, Natural Selection y p. 262.
40

NATURAL SELECTION

of the rattlesnake's rattle. The existence of
this appendage has long been a puzzle to phi-
losophical naturalists, and Darwinians have been
repeatedly challenged to account for the forma-
tion or preservation by natural selection of an
organ assumed to be injurious to the species.
The difficulty has lain in the assumption, too
hastily made, that the noise or the rattle must
be prejudicial to the snake by forewarning its
enemies or prey of its presence, and thus giving
the enemies time for sudden attack, and allow-
ing the prey to escape. On the theory of nat-
ural selection, the preservation of the species
must entail the atrophy of such an organ, or,
rather, must prevent its origination, unless the
damage occasioned by it be more than com-
pensated by some utility not hitherto detected.
Professor Shaler's hypothesis, however, sug-
gests the possibility that this whole speculation
is fundamentally erroneous. Far from being
injurious to the snake, by serving to warn its
prey, it would appear that the rattle may be
directly useful by serving as a decoy. Professor
Shaler has observed that the peculiar sound of
the rattle is a very close imitation of the note
emitted by a certain cicada common in Amer-
ican forests frequented by rattlesnakes ; and ac-
cording to his ingenious suggestion, the bird,
hearing the note and thinking to make a meal
of the cicada, advances upon its own destruc-
41

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

tion, becoming the eaten instead of the eater.
If this be true, there may be data here for ex-
plaining some of the alleged phenomena of
fascination, so far as rattlesnakes are concerned ;
and another case will be added to the numer-
ous cases now on record in which certain ani-
mals have acquired, for utility's sake, peculiari-
ties characteristic of totally different species.
I should be more inclined, however, to adopt
quite a different interpretation of the rattle-
snake's rattle. As hinted above, the general
law that animals are benefited by concealment
has some important exceptions. In many
cases, when an animal is especially noxious, it
is for his advantage to be conspicuous, that en-
emies may recognize him at a distance and keep
away from him. Thus, as we have seen, while
grasshoppers, moths, and butterflies (on the ex-
posed under-surfaces of their wings) are usually
so coloured as best to escape notice, on the
other hand, bees and wasps, which are pro-
tected by their stings, and many beetles, which
are protected by a noxious taste or odour, are
apt to be conspicuously coloured. And the
jet-black toad of La Plata is a still better ex-
ample. Now a rattlesnake is unquestionably a
very noxious animal, and so dangerous to its
enemies that they will always do well to keep
out of its way. Moreover the death wound in-
flicted by it, though usually very sure, is some-
42

I

NATURAL SELECTION

what slow in operation ; so that in a fierce
struggle it will often happen that its action is
not prompt enough to preclude a return of
compliments fatal to the snake. When a tiger
tears open the jugular vein of his enemy, the
enemy is placed hors de combat at once ; but
when the rattlesnake has bitten, there is nothing
to prevent the foe from employing his few
remaining moments in tearing the serpent to
pieces. Hence the rattlesnake must be pecu-
liarly benefited by an apparatus which serves
as a signal to warn enemies of his presence, and
to keep them from attacking him. His more
formidable enemies, belonging chiefly to the
mammalian class, are certainly intelligent enough
to profit by such warning and shun the danger ;
and as it is plainly for the snake*s advantage to
avoid even a conflict, it is clear that he is prac-
tically helped even less by his terrible bite than
by his power of threatening a bite.

This explanation seems to me quite sound
in principle. Yet if we adopt it, there is no-
thing to prevent us from giving due weight also
to Professor Shaler*s suggestion. The success
with which the note of the cicada is counter-
feited by the rattle is a point to be more fully
determined by further observation. And if it
turns out that the rattle fulfils the double pur-
pose of alarming sundry animals that are hos-
tile and of enticing sundry others that are good

43

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

for food, it will not be the first case in which it
has happened that a structure useful in one way
has also become useful in another way. The
question is an interesting one, and valuable if
only because it reminds us of the danger of rea-
soning too confidently, from a priori premises,
about matters the due elucidation of which re-
quires careful study of the details of the every-
day life of animals. It is one of the great merits
of the theory of natural selection that it has
directed so many naturalists, with eyes open,
into this fruitful field of inquiry.

It is because it so well illustrates the wealth
of suggestiveness in Mr. Darwin's theory, that
I have ventured upon this digression. To the
general validity of that theory, or even to the
validity of the more special hypothesis concern-
ing the uses of concealment or of conspicuous-
ness, the success of the foregoing explanation
is not essential, — since its possible inadequacy
may very well be due to the incompleteness of
our grasp upon all the details of this particular
case. But, returning from this digression to our
main thesis, and considering the general signi-
ficance of the phenomena of colour, we see that,
in addition to those most general phenomena
of organic life which demand for their explana-
tion the Darwinian theory, there is at least one
special class of phenomena which that theory
is competent to explain even in minute details.

44

NATURAL SELECTION

And there are other special classes of pheno-
mena to which it has been applied with equally
remarkable success. But when a theory, de-
duced from the observed general facts of or-
ganic life, and invoking no agencies but such
as are known to be in operation, is found on
trial to account for such an enormous mass of
special facts, for which no other valid explana-
tion has been propounded, — we may well say
of it, as Laplace said of his own Nebular Hy-
pothesis, that the chances in favour of its being
a true explanation are many thousand million
to one.

45

CHAPTER XI
TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

WHEN an objection to a complex the-
ory in any department of science is
so extremely obvious as to seem at
first sight fatal to the theory, it is unwise to urge
it in argument until we have very thoroughly
considered the matter. Men like Laplace and
Goethe, Spencer and Darwin, in framing their
theories of evolution, are indeed liable to over-
look difficulties which are so unobtrusive as to
be detected only after prolonged observation ;
but they are very unlikely to overlook difficul-
ties which are so conspicuous as to occur at
once to the minds of a hundred general readers.
When, therefore, a reader of average culture,
who has perhaps never seriously bent his mind
to the question of the origin of species, and who
is very likely unacquainted with the sciences
which throw light upon that subject, finds him-
self immediately confronted by difficulties in a
theory which men of the highest learning and
capacity have spent a quarter of a century in
testing, common prudence should lead him to
continue his study until he has made sure that

46

H TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

^Hie difficulty is not due to his own ignorance
^Hather than to the shortcomings of the theory.
^K^his wholesome caution is too seldom mani-
^^ested by literary reviewers, many of whom, in
criticising Mr. Darwin's theory without having
duly read his works, allege certain objections as
being quite obvious to all intelligent people, save
to the one-sided speculator who is supposed
to have ignored them. In Mr. Darwin's case,
this mode of treatment is peculiarly impertinent,
since even the less obvious objections to the
theory of natural selection were for the most part
foreseen and answered in the first edition of the
"Origin of Species," — a book to which, as to
an arsenal of scientific facts, one must still resort
who would deal intelligently with the latest criti-
cisms directed against the theory.

The most obvious objection to the Darwinian
theory is the paucity, or, as it is often incorrectly
alleged, the absence, of transitional forms in the
various sedimentary strata. This is at first sight
a weighty objection against the doctrine of natu-
ral selection, according to which the progress
has been effected by infinitesimal increments ;
although it is of no force against the doctrine of
derivation, as held by Mr. Mivart, who rejects
the maxim N at ur a non facit s ahum ^ ?ind main-
tains that progress has been effected by sudden
jumps, occurring at rhythmical intervals. Mr.
Mivart's suggestion, however, cannot be en-
47

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

tertained as a scientific hypothesis so long as it
alleges no physical agencies competent to effect
the sudden jumps from one specific form to
another ; nor does the comparative paucity of
transitional forms in a fossil state afford any
reason for our adopting it. A brief considera-
tion will show us that the fact is entirely con-
sistent with the theory of progress by minute
variations.

In the first place, let us note that in gen-
eral intermediate transitional forms must be the
soonest killed off in the struggle for existence ;
and that, especially, where two strains or va-
rieties become further differentiated into true
species, it is the extreme forms which multiply
at the expense of those which are intercalated
between them. Here, as on a former occasion,
our comprehension of the argument will be
facilitated by a reference to the analogous set
of phenomena which occur during the process
of linguistic differentiation. It is held by most
philologists that all languages in the tertiary or
amalgamative stage of development must have
previously existed in the secondary or aggluti-
native stage, — and, at a yet earlier period, in
the primary or juxtapositive stage, of which the
Chinese is a still living example. Against this
view M. Renan has urged the absence or pau-
city of transitional forms connecting one class
of languages with another. Now in answering

48

r

TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

M. Kenan's objection, I have begun b^ show-
ing, from a consideration of the Romanic dia-
lects, that the difficulty is only imaginary. " A
language like Latin, spread over a vast space of
country in imperfectly civilized times, inevitably
breaks up into a host of local patois. Each se-
cluded rustic community has its own style of
pronunciation, its own choice of words and syn-
tactical devices, its own method of contracting
or otherwise modifying its expressions. And
although the inhabitants of any given town
can usually communicate with those of the next
town, the slight differences accumulate until
intercourse between distant places is no longer
practicable. In such a state of things we find
plenty of transitional dialects, as the Genoese
and Provencal between Italian and French, and
the Balearic and Catalan between French and
Spanish. The Tuscan can understand the Gen-
oese, the Genoese can understand the dweller
in Piedmont, the Piedmontese can understand
the Vaudois, the Vaudois can understand the
Lyonnais, and so on until we come to Paris ;
but the Tuscan and the Parisian cannot under-
stand each other. Now the progress of civili-
zation in each country tends to kill out the
patois, elevating that variety of the language
which has been made the vehicle of the domi-
nant literature to supremacy over the more
provincial forms. Increased facilities of com-

voL. ni 49

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

munication, and the growth of large centres of
population, and commercial as weH as literary
activity, end by making the inhabitants of all
parts of the country speak and write more and
more Hke those of its intellectual metropolis.
And in this way the intermediate dialects slowly
disappear, leaving two languages with thor-
oughly distinct individualities, like Italian and
French." ^ Now even here, as I go on to show,
the relationships among the dialects have be-
come sufficiently obscured — owing to disap-
pearance of connecting links — to allow M.
Raynouard to maintain the paradox that the
modern Romanic languages are descended, not
directly from the Latin, but from the old Pro-
ven9al. And in such countries as Hindustan,
the processes of divergence, and accompanying
obliteration, have gone on to such an extent that
Bengali has been mistaken for a non- Aryan lan-
guage.

Here in the domain of language we see that
competition is most severe and destructive be-
tween closely allied forms, and that the extremes
will vigorously flourish long after the short-
lived means have been crushed out of existence.
The maxim In medio tutissimus ibis does not
apply to such cases. We have now to observe
that among the phenomena which natural his-

^ ** The Genesis of Language,** North American Review ^
October, 1869, pp. 334* 335-
50

r

TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

tory deals with, a quite similar process goes on.
First we may note, with Mr. Darwin, that " as
the species of the same genus usually have,
though by no means invariably, much similarity
in habits and constitution, and always in struc-
ture, the struggle will generally be more severe
between them, if they come into competition
with each other, than between the species of
distinct genera. We see this in the recent ex-
tension over parts of the United States of one
species of swallow having caused the decrease
of another species. The recent increase of the
missel-thrush in parts of Scotland has caused the
decrease of the song-thrush. How frequently
we hear of one species of rat taking the place
of another species under the most different cli-
mates ! In Russia the small Asiatic cockroach
has everywhere driven before it its great con-
gener. In Australia the imported hive-bee is
rapidly exterminating the small stingless native
bee. One species of charlock has been known
to supplant another species ; and so in other
cases. We can dimly see why the competition
should be most severe between allied forms,
which fill nearly the same place in the economy
of nature ; but probably in no one case could
we precisely say why one species has been vic-
torious over another in the great battle of
life." 1

^ Origin of Species, 6th edition, p. 59.

51

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

For our present purpose, however, it is not
needful that we should be able to accomplish
the latter task, which would require a know-
ledge of the minutiae of the organic world such
as is not likely to be possessed by any one for
a long time to come. It is enough for us to
note that the ordinary process of competition,
among organisms as among dialects, tends to
kill out the means much sooner than the ex-
tremes. Still more clear will this become, if
we recur to one of the hypothetical illustrations
given in the preceding chapter. It was there
shown that, in the case of a group of ruminants
hitherto isolated from carnivorous foes, and in
which different strains or varieties have begun
to establish themselves, a newly arriving inci-
dent force, in the shape of strong and swift
carnivora, will at once tend to exterminate all
the intermediate forms, while the extremes will
not only be indefinitely preserved, but will be-
come yet more widely different from each other.
Now this hypothetical case is probably a fair
sample of a very large proportion — perhaps
the majority — of the cases in which specific
variations have been rapidly accumulated and
persistently fixed. It is by no means Hkely that
variation has gone on throughout the past with
a uniform pace ; but there must rather have
been immensely long periods of comparative
stability, alternating with relatively brief periods,

52

I

TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

during which newly introduced sets of circum-
stances have tended to enhance and accumulate
variations on either side of a hitherto established
mean. Such a conclusion is implied by the
theory of natural selection, according to which
specific variation occurs, not in conformity to
some mysterious law of progress uniformly
operating, but only in conformity to some more
or less conspicuous alteration in the sum total
of the conditions of existence.

It follows, therefore, that in general, when
incipient varieties are differentiated into well-
marked species, the number of intermediate
forms must be immeasurably smaller than the
numbers of forms contained in the resulting
species to which they serve as the transition.
During epochs of rapid divergence, the means
may all be extinguished after a few hundred
generations, while the generations of the ex-
tremes which persist thereafter may be num-
bered by tens of thousands. Suppose, for ex-
ample, two great islands separated by a shallow
sea. During long ages, while the floor of this
intervening sea is constantly rising, the specific
changes occurring on either island may be quite
few and unimportant, and such fossil records
as are left will indicate a general persistence
of type. But when in course of time the pro-
cess of elevation has converted this interven-
ing channel into an isthmus connecting the two

S3

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

islands, there must inevitably ensue a marked
change in the conditions of existence in both
regions. Extinction will go on at a relatively-
rapid pace ; and, as above illustrated, this ex-
tinction must ordinarily result in the disappear-
ance of intermediate forms and the preservation
of extremes. After a while this process must
result in the establishment of an approximate
equilibrium among the forms of life over both
areas, such as formerly obtained over each area
separately. And thus for a long time to come,
the specific changes occurring will again be few
and unimportant.

Thus we see graphically illustrated the truth
that, in comparison with the myriads of individ-
uals comprising the well-defined species which
propagate themselves through long ages with
relative stability of character, the number of
intermediate individuals which ever come into
existence must be relatively small. We have
next to note that, even of this relatively small
number of individuals, a still smaller relative
number are likely to leave after death a per-
manent fossil record of their existence.

In the first place it is only by a rare com-
bination of circumstances that any plant or ani-
mal gets fossilized at all. The chances were
nearly infinite against the preservation of any
of the very earliest organisms, with their soft
and speedily decaying textures. The higher
54

r

TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

land animals, on the other hand, owe their oc-
casional preservation to the accidents of dying
in sheltered caves, or of being covered with
blown sand or peat-moss, or of being frozen in
Arctic ice. Trees with solid trunks, littoral and
marine animals, especially crustaceans and shell-
covered mollusks, are more likely to be pre-
served than other organisms. But in the second
place, the majority of the organisms once fos-
silized are afterwards destroyed along with the
sedimentary strata which contain them. Since
there have been several enormously long alter-
nating periods of elevation and of subsidence,
it follows that all the older sedimentary strata
must have been metamorphosed by volcanic
heat. These oldest rocks have sunk to a depth of
six or eight miles, down below the ocean-floor,
where they have been metamorphosed by the
heat of the molten liquid below, and whence they
have again been slowly shoved up above water-
level, with all traces of their organic contents
obliterated. This process must have occurred
so many times as to have destroyed all but the
later records of life. The title "palaeozoic,'*
formerly applied to the Silurian rocks, is a mis-
nomer. It was formerly supposed that there were
no fossil-bearing rocks below the Silurian. But
within a few years the Cambrian and Lauren-
tian strata have been discovered, carrying us
back into an antiquity nearly twice as great as

55

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

that to which we had reached with the Silurian
rocks ; and it is now generally admitted that
even the Laurentian strata are modern com-
pared with the beginnings of life upon our
globe.

But this is not all. Along with the im-
mensely long geologic rhythms, which have
thus entailed the periodic metamorphosis of
strata, there have been going on minor rhythms,
resulting in the alternate deposit and denuda-
tion of fossil-bearing strata. Each of the sedi-
mentary strata now surviving was deposited
during an epoch of subsidence, and since its
elevation to its present position has been more
or less denuded. Now it is only during epochs
of subsidence that permanent fossil - bearing
strata can be deposited. During epochs of ele-
vation the newly formed sedimentary deposit
is rapidly disintegrated by the action of coast-
waves ; and even those thin deposits which are
made during an epoch of subsidence are in the
next-recurring epoch of elevation soon worn
away. It is thus only the thicker strata de-
posited during an epoch of subsidence which
have preserved for our inspection a few speci-
mens of the organisms living at the time when
they were deposited.

But in close juxtaposition to this comes the
remarkable fact that the most rapid variation
among specific forms must take place during

56

TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED
)Ochs of elevation. For since the only varia-

I

^Kons preserved by natural selection are those
which bring the organism into closer adaptation
to its environment ; and since in most cases
the organic environment of any group of organ-
isms, comprising its enemies, competitors, and
prey, is a much more important factor of change
than its inorganic environment, comprising cli-
mate and soil ; it follows that those periods dur-
ing which groups of organisms, hitherto isolated,
are gradually brought into contact with one an-
other must be the periods most favourable for
specific change. The most rapid variation, at-
tended by the greatest frequency of transitional
forms, will therefore occur during those epochs
of elevation when archipelagoes are being con-
verted into continents, and when shallow parts
of the sea, hitherto divided by deep channels,
are getting practically united together by the
diminishing depth of the channel. During such
periods it is not only the inorganic agencies of
climate and soil which will be altered ; the or-
ganic environment of each group of organisms
will be immensely increased in extent and het-
erogeneity. The struggle for existence will in-
crease in violence, and there will be an increased
amount both of variation and of extinction.

We are thus driven to the remarkable con-
clusion, not only that each system of fossilifer-
ous strata now remaining has been preceded
57

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

and followed by systems destroyed as fast as
they were formed, but also that the systems
thus destroyed coincided with the periods which
must have been richest in transitional forms.

But notwithstanding the extreme imperfec-
tion of the geological record, and notwithstand-
ing these special difficulties in the way of find-
ing transitional forms, such forms are frequently
met with. Indeed it may be asserted, as one of
the most significant truths of palaeontology, that
extinct forms are almost always intercalary be-
tween forms now existing. Not only species,
genera, and families, but even orders of con-
temporary animals, apparently quite distinct,
are now and then fused together by the discov-
ery of extinct intermediate forms. In Cuvier's
time, horse, tapir, pig, and rhinoceros were
ranked as a distinct order from cow, sheep,
deer, buffalo, and camel. But so many transi-
tional forms have been found in tertiary strata
that pachyderms and ruminants are now united
in a single order. By numerous connecting links
the pig is now seen to be closely united with
the camel and the antelope. Similar results re-
lating to the proboscidians, the hyaena family
of carnivora, the apes, the horse, and the rhi-
noceros, have been obtained from the explora-
tion of a single locality near Mount Pentelikos
in Greece. Among more than seventy species
there discovered, the gradational arrangement

58

TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

of forms was so strongly marked, that the great
palaeontologist, M. Gaudry, became a convert
to Mr. Darwin's theory in the course of the
search.^ Referring for many more such exam-
ples to the last edition of Sir Charles Lyell's
" Principles of Geology," let me further observe
that there has as yet been but little search for
fossils save in Europe and North America, and
even these areas have by no means been thor-
oughly explored. Concerning South America
much less is known, and the greater portions
of Asia, Africa, and Australia are just so much
terra incognita to the palaeontologist. As M.
Gaudry observes, a few strokes of the pickaxe
at the foot of Mount Pentelikos have revealed
to us the closest connecting links between forms

^ We may also profitably consider the toxodon, found by
Mr. Darwin in South America, which is ** one of the stran-
gest animals ever discovered. In size it equalled an elephant or
megatherium, but the structure of its teeth, as Mr. Owen
states, proves indisputably that it was intimately related to the
Gnawers, the order which at the present day includes most of
the smallest quadrupeds : in many details it is allied to the
pachydermata : judging from the position of its eyes, ears, and
nostrils, it was probably aquatic, like the dugong and manatee,
to which it is also allied. How wonderfully," says Mr.
Darwin, " are the different orders, at the present time so well
separated, blended together in different points of the structure
of the toxodon ! " Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, p. 82.
Compare the remarks on the quaternary fauna of Western
Europe in Sir John Lubbock's Prehistoric Times , zd edition,
pp. 296-298.

59

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

which seemed before very widely separated : far
closer will such links be drawn when a consid-
erable portion of the earth's surface shall have
been thoroughly investigated.

The argument from " missing links/' there-
fore, in so far as it has any validity at all, is an
argument which rests entirely upon negative
evidence. But negative evidence, as every one
knows, is a very unsafe basis for argument.^ A
single item of positive evidence will always out-
weigh any amount of negative evidence. A
single case in which two or three species of
genera are demonstrably connected with each
other through lineally intermediate forms, is
enough to outweigh the case of a thousand
species or genera in which no such linear con-
nection has yet been demonstrated. Now there
can be no question that Equus^ Hipparion^ and
Anchitherium are quite distinct genera ; and a
comparison of the skeletons of the three leaves
it equally unquestionable that the hipparion is
simply a more ancient horse, and that the anchi-

1 ** For instance, the several species of the chthamalinze (a
sub-family of sessile cirrhipeds) coat the rocks all over the
world in infinite numbers : they are all strictly littoral, wdth
the exception of a single Mediterranean species, which inhab-
its deep water, and this has been found fossil in Sicily, whereas
not one other species has hitherto been found in any tertiary
formation : yet it is known that the genus chthamalus existed
during the Chalk period. ' * Darwin, Origin of Species, 6th edi-
tion, p. 271.

60

I

TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

therium is simply a more ancient hipparion.
As Professor Huxley observes : " The process
by which Anchitherium has been converted into
Equus is one of specialization, or of more and
more complete deviation from what might be
called the average form of an ungulate mam-
mal. In the horses, the reduction of some parts
of the limbs, together with the special modifi-
cation of these which are left, is carried to a
greater extent than in any other hoofed mam-
mals. The reduction is less and the specializa-
tion is less in the hipparion, and still less in the
anchitherium ; but yet, as compared with other
mammals, the reduction and specialization of
parts in the anchitherium remain great." ^ But
as we go back still farther into the Eocene
epoch, we find Plagiolophus, a genus intermedi-
ate between the horse and the agouti, in which
the reduction and specialization of parts is still
less. Here, where the exploration has been
relatively complete, the intermediate forms are
so numerous as to leave no doubt whatever as
to the genetic kinship.^ And similarly of the

^ Critiques and Addresses y Tp. 195.

2 I may add that, in particular, numerous extinct forms
intercalary between man and ape are likely to be discovered
when we search for them in those parts of the earth where they
are Ukely to exist, — namely, in Africa, Madagascar, South-
eastern Asia, and the Malay Archipelago. Such forms are
not Hkely, however, to be directly intermediate between man
and the gorilla or the chimpanzee. For these are probably

61

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

rhinocerotidae and hyaenidae Professor Huxley
says, " it is indeed a conceivable (?) supposition
that every species of rhinoceros and every spe-
cies of hyaena, in the long succession of forms
between the Miocene and the present species,
was separately constructed out of dust, or out
of nothing, by supernatural power ; but until I
receive distinct evidence of the fact, I refuse to
run the risk of insulting any sane man by sup-
posing that he seriously holds such a notion."
It thus appears that the argument from
" missing links," which to the general reader
may appear so obviously fatal to the Darwinian
theory, is to the student of palaeontology by no
means alarming. Our brief survey of the facts
in the case has shown ms firsts that transitional
varieties are always likely to have been less nu-
merous in individuals than the well-defined
species which they serve to connect ; secondly,
that the geologic eras which have left in the
rocks the record of their organic life have been
usually the eras in which variation and extinc-
tion have been least rapid, and in which ac-
cordingly transitional varieties have been least
numerous ; and thirdly^ that in spite of all these

aberrant types, and the connection between man and the
anthropoid apes is to be sought much lower down, — perhaps
near the point of departure of the anthropoid apes from the
lower monkeys and lemurs. See the anatomical evidence very
well presented in Mr. Mivart's recent work on Man and Apes.
62

TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

adverse circumstances, transitional forms have
already been discovered in considerable num-
bers, while it is fair to expect that many more
will be discovered when by and by we have
come to know the earth's surface more inti-
mately.

Of all the objections which have been urged
against the theory of natural selection, this ob-
jection, from the paucity of transitional forms,
is the least weighty, though probably the most
obvious. The second objection which we have
to consider, though less immediately obvious, is
more weighty ; and though there is no reason
for regarding it as insuperable, we must admit
that it has not yet been entirely disposed of.
This objection is implicated with the difference
between the morphological and the physiolo-
gical definitions of species, and is usually known
as the argument from the infertility of hybrids.
As ordinarily stated, indeed, this argument is
merely the expression of a sorry confusion of
ideas. By a curious misunderstanding the in-
fertility of the mule is often urged as a direct
objection to the Darwinian theory. But this is
putting the cart before the horse. It is not the
infertility of the offspring of the horse and the
ass which should be cited as an obstacle to
the theory of natural selection, but it is the fer-
tility of the offspring of the carrier-pigeon and
the pouter, or of the pouter and tumbler. Mor-

63

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

phologically the carrier, the pouter, and the
tumbler may well be regarded as distinct species
artificially developed from a common wild stock ;
but so long as mutual infertility is held to be
the physiological test by which we are to dis-
tinguish between varieties and species, it may
be argued that, in spite of their great morpho-
logical differences, the carrier and the tumbler
are only varieties and not true species. And
going a step farther, it may be argued that until
the theory of natural selection has accounted
for the rise of infertility between races descended
from a common stock, it has not completely
performed the task of reconciling deduction with
observation.

Against the derivation theory in general this
objection has no weight whatever. That races
originally fertile together should, after long
subjection to different sets of circumstances, be-
come infertile with one another, is a priori in
the highest degree probable, when we reflect
upon the extreme sensitiveness of the reproduc-
tive system to changes of habit in the organism
as a whole. When we remember that " the
constitution of many wild animals is so altered
by confinement that they will not breed even
with their own females," we need not be sur-
prised that the leopard and the lion, which dur-
ing many ages have had very different habits
of life, will not breed with each other. Nor

64

I

TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

need we wonder that the horse and the ass, with
less important differences in general habit, have
become partially infertile together, to such an
extent that their offspring are hopelessly barren.
Though the modus operandi of this change is as
yet ill understood, it is nevertheless a change
quite in harmony with what we know concern-
ing the intimate dependence of the reproductive
system upon the rest of the organism. And let
us not fail to note that it is the achievement of
this change in the capacities of the reproduc-
tive system which completes the demarcation
between two bifurcating species, and finally pre-
vents the indefinite multiplication of intermedi-
ate varieties.

But while this objection has no weight as
against the theory of derivation in general, it
may fairly be urged that the failure to explain
the origination of mutual infertility is, for the
present at least, a shortcoming on the part of
the theory of natural selection. After the con-
clusive arguments brought up in our ninth
chapter, the derivation theory will no longer, in
the present work, be regarded as on trial : that
the higher forms of life are derived from lower
forms will be taken as proved. But whether
the theory of natural selection has completely
fulfilled its proposed task of explaining the mode
in which such derivation has been brought
about, is quite another question. And while

VOL. Ill O^

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

admitting the full force of the considerations
alleged by Mr. Darwin, in his admirable chap-
ter on Hybridism, it seems to me that there is
a gap at this point which further research will
be required to fill.^ As Professor Huxley re-
minds us, " it must not be forgotten that the
really important fact, so far as the inquiry into
the origin of species goes, is that there are such
things in nature as groups of animals and of
plants, whose members are incapable of fertile
union with those of other groups ; and that
there are such things as hybrids, which are ab-
solutely sterile when crossed with other hybrids.
For if such phenomena as these were exhib-
ited by only two of those assemblages of living
objects, to which the name of species ... is
given, it would have to be accounted for by any

* I doubt if the hypothesis of natural selection, taken alone,
will afford the solution of this problem. It seems more likely
that such considerations will have to enter as are presented in
Mr. Spencer's Principles of Biology ^ vol. i. pp. 209-291.
Concerning what may be called the ** dynamics of heredity,'*
we know as yet but little ; but as far as speculation has already
gone, Mr. Darwin's theory of pangenesis seems to me decid-
edly inferior to Mr. Spencer's theory of physiological units. I
do not discuss these theories here, because it is not necessary
for the general purposes of this work. It may do no harm,
however, to remind some of my readers that ** pangenesis " is
merely a subsidiary hypothesis, with the possible inadequacy
of which Mr. Darwin's main theory is in no way con-
cerned.

66

I TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED
leory of the origin of species, and every the-
ry which could not account for it would be, so
ir, imperfect." ^

We have now reached a point at which we
may pause for a moment to contemplate the
theory of natural selection in its logical aspect,
and to mark its character as a scientific hypo-
thesis. A moment's inspection will reveal the
absurdity of the thoughtless remark — some-
times heard from theologians and penny-a-liners
— that the Darwinian theory rests upon purely
gratuitous assumptions and can never be sub-
mitted to verification. On the contrary, the
theory of natural selection, when analyzed, will
be found to consist of eleven propositions, of
which nine are demonstrated truths, the tenth
is a corollary from its nine predecessors, and the
eleventh is a perfectly legitimate postulate. Let
us enumerate these propositions : —

1. More organisms perish than survive;

2. No two individuals are exactly alike ;

3. Individual peculiarities are transmissible to
offspring;

4. Individuals whose peculiarities bring them
into closest adaptation with their environment
are those which survive and transmit their pe-
culiar organizations ;

5. The survival of the fittest thus tends to

^ Huxley, Lay Sermons y p. 303.

67

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

maintain an equilibrium between organisms and
their environments ;

6. But the environment of every group of
organisms is steadily, though slowly, changing ;

7. Every group of organisms must accord-
ingly change in average character, under penalty
of extinction ;

8. Changes due to individual variation are
complicated by the law that a change set up in
any one part of a highly complex and coherent
aggregate, like an organism, initiates changes in
other parts ;

9. They are further complicated by the law
that structures are nourished in proportion to
their use ;

10. From the foregoing nine propositions,
each one of which is indisputably true, it is an
inevitable corollary that changes thus set up and
complicated must eventually alter the specific
character of any given group of organisms ;

11. It is postulated that, since the first ap-
pearance of life upon the earth's surface, suffi-
cient time has elapsed to have enabled such
causes as the foregoing to produce all the spe-
cific heterogeneity now witnessed.

It seems to me that this summary fairly re-
presents the logical character of the theory of
natural selection. The theory is so strong that
no scientific writer is disposed to deny that the
process of natural selection has always gone on
68

I

TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

i^and must continue to go on. And the inference
I^Bbannot be avoided that in due course of time the
^R)rocess must work specific variations. The only
^K)urely hypothetical portion of the theory is the
^^wssumption that past geologic time has been long
enough to allow of the total process of evolution
by such infinitesimal increments. But concern-
ing this assumption, it is the clear verdict of
logic, that if the theory is thoroughly substan-
tiated in all its other portions, we have the right
to claim as much time as is needful, provided
we do not run counter to conclusions legitimately
reached by astronomy, geology, or physics. Now
concerning the age of the earth, neither astro-
nomy, nor geology, nor physics has as yet had
anything conclusive to say ; and it must be left
for future inquiries to give us the quantitative
data requisite for settling this point.^ We can-

^ The reader who wishes to see how fallacious all attempts
at reaching the age of the earth from astronomico-physical ar-
guments are likely to prove with our present resources, may
consult Huxley's Lay Sermons y pp. 268—279.

^[See Fiske's further remarks on this subject in the Excur-
sions of an Evolutionist y I. The discussion of the physical and
geological evidences of the age of the earth has become more
prominent in the literature since Fiske wrote the sentences of
the text. Lord Kelvin has recently elaborated his earlier physi-
cal arguments in favour of a decided limitation of the age of the
earth ; and geologists have undertaken new forms of reply.
Yet though the question now has more *' actuality '* than Fiske
assigns to it, it is still far from a solution about which authori-
ties agree.]

69

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

not yet, indeed, estimate the age of the last great
glacial epoch with any approach to accuracy ;
yet the age which we assign to this epoch must
enter as an important factor into our estimates
of the antiquity of preceding epochs. But while
this point remains undetermined, it may be noted
that even the decision which leaves the smallest
time for the operation of unaided natural selec-
tion can weaken the Darwinian theory only on
the assumption that the agency already alleged
by that theory has been the sole factor concerned
in forwarding organic evolution — and this as-
sumption, though it may have been made by
over - confident disciples of Mr. Darwin, has
never been made by Mr. Darwin himself. Mr.
Darwin is too profoundly scientific in spirit to
imagine that, with all his unrivalled patience
and sagacity, he has completely solved one of
the most intricate problems with which the stu-
dent of nature has ever been called upon to deal.
It is more than likely that future research will
disclose other agencies which have cooperated
with natural selection in accelerating the diver-
sification of species. Meanwhile the evidence in
behalf of the first ten propositions involved in
the Darwinian theory is sufficiently strong to
make it apparent that a vast amount of specific
change must have taken place, and also that
natural selection has been a chief factor in pro-
ducing that change. To the arguments which
70

I

TWO OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

in our ninth chapter were seen to overthrow the
dogma of fixity of species may now be added
the argument that at least one group of clearly
defined agencies is at work, with which, in the
long run, the fixity of species must become in-
compatible. The explanation of the details of
specific differentiation may well form the subject
of cautious investigation for many generations of
observers and thinkers. But enough has already
been explained to draw forth the undeniable
Fact of Derivation from the region of mystery
in which it was formerly half hidden, and thus
to place the Theory of Derivation upon a thor-
oughly scientific basis. In expounding the way
in which this has been done, we have obtained
several useful conceptions, which will not fail to
do us good service in future chapters.

71

CHAPTER XII

ADJUSTMENT, DIRECT AND
INDIRECT 1

/^ N objection much less obvious than the
A-\ two considered in the foregoing chapter
•^ -^ is brought up by Mr. Mivart against
the theory of natural selection. In the Cuvier-
ian classification, the marsupials were ranked as
an order of mammalia, side by side with orders
like the carnivora or rodentia. This arrange-
ment is now obsolete. The class of mammals is
no longer directly divided into orders, but is
first separated into three sub-classes, the mono-
delphia, didelphia, and ornithodelphia. The lat-
ter sub-class, forming the link between mam-
mals and sauroids, is now nearly extinct, being
represented only by a single order, containing
two genera, the Australian echidna and duck-
bill. Leaving these aside, all other mammals,
except the marsupials, are comprised within the
sub-class monodelphia. The didelphia or mar-
supials are divided by Professor Haeckel into
eight orders ; and between these orders and sun-
dry orders of the higher monodelphia there is a
^ [See Introduction, § 19.]

72

ADJUSTMENT, DIRECT AND INDIRECT

curious parallelism. For example there is an order
of edentate marsupials, there is a marsupial or-
der of carnivora, and another of insectivora, and
another of rodents, while the kangaroo strongly
resembles the sub-order of ruminants, and the
opossum is clearly related to the lemurs, or low-
est of the primates. It becomes, then, an inter-
esting problem to settle the genetic relationships
between the two sub-classes. Did the order of
apes descend from the ape-like marsupials, the
monodelphian carnivora from the didelphian car-
nivora, the higher rodents from the marsupial
rodents, and so on ? If so, it is difficult to see
how the pouch should have been lost, and the
placenta developed in so many different orders
independently : such a number of exact coin-
cidences seem hardly probable. On the other
hand, did all the monodelphia descend from one
didelphian form ? If so, it is strange that the
differentiation into orders should have gone on
so similarly in the two sub-classes, resulting, for
example, in the production of marsupial mice
which in general appearance are hardly distin-
guishable from placental mice.

Birds and reptiles present an equally puzzling
cross-relation. Upon no theory are these the
direct ancestors of mammals, although the low-
est mammals are both bird-like and reptilian in
appearance. The duck-bill, belonging to the
mammalian sub-class of ornithodelphia, some-
73

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

what resembles a lizard with a bird's beak. Em-
bryology shows that the three classes are diver-
gent offshoots from an amphibious or batra-
choid ancestor ; but the birds and the reptiles
resemble each other much more closely than
either resembles the mammalia, so that Profes-
sor Huxley joins them together in the super-
class or province of sauroids. So far all is plain ;
but when we inquire by what forms the birds
and reptiles are linked most closely together,
we are met by a difficulty. Birds are divided
into two sub-classes : the ostrich, cassowary,
emeu, dinornis, etc., are grouped together as
struthious birds, while all other existing forms
belong to the sub-class of carinate birds. Now
until quite lately it was supposed that all birds
were descended from an extinct reptilian form
like that ancient reptile, the flying pterodactyl.
For the resemblances in structure between the
pterodactyls and the carinate birds are striking
enough to have suggested an immediate com-
munity of origin. Nevertheless, within the past
seven years, a much stronger case has been
made out in favour of the descent of the stru-
thious birds from large reptilian forms akin to
the dinosauria, — of which extinct order the
member most commonly known is the gigantic
iguanodon. Now here, says Mr. Mivart, is a
dilemma just like the one which confronted us
in the case of mammals. If all birds started
74

ADJUSTMENT, DIRECT AND INDIRECT

from the pterodactyl, why do the struthious
birds so strongly resemble a totally different rep-
tile ? If all birds started from a dinosaurus, why
do the carinate 'birds so strongly resemble the
pterodactyl? If we try to split the difference,
and say that the carinate birds started from the
pterodactyl, while the struthious birds started
from the dinosaurus, the difficulty is immensely
increased. For then the question arises, how
could the struthious and the carinate birds, start-
ing from such different points, have come to
resemble each other so strongly ?

Mr. Mivart is careful to state that these zo-
ological cross - relations do not constitute an
obstacle to the theory of evolution. They are
difficulties only on the theory that organic evo-
lution has been solely caused by the natural
selection of fortuitous variations. To make this
more clear, let us provisionally accept one of
each of the pairs of alternatives offered by the
two cases just described. Let us agree, with
Professor Haeckel, that all the monodelphian
mammals have come from one didelphian ; and
let us agree, with Professor Huxley, that the
kinship between birds and reptiles is closest in
the case of the struthious birds and the dinosau-
rians. Now we are obliged to maintain that the
original monodelphian branched off into a dozen
or more forms, of which six or seven happen to
agree remarkably, in general appearance and in

75

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

habits of life, with six or seven of the forms into
which the original didelphian had at an earlier
date branched off. And we are also obliged
to maintain that the remarkable shoulder-struc-
ture of the pterodactyl, in which it agrees so
closely with the carinate birds, was independ-
ently evolved and has a purely physiological sig-
nificance. That is to say, the resemblance of
the pterodactyl to carinate birds is a secondary
adaptive resemblance, like the less marked re-
semblance of bats to birds, or like the resem-
blance of a porpoise to a fish. And this view,
which seems to be Professor Huxley's, is ren-
dered probable by the fact that in wing-structure
the pterodactyl differs from birds in much the
same way that a bat does.

We are now extricated from our imbroglio
with regard to classification, but we are still left
confronted with the difficulty of supposing that
the natural selection of casual variations can so
often have resulted in producing whole orders
of closely resembling animals from distinct an-
cestral orders. Other facts, brought up by Mr.
Mivart, still further increase the apparent diffi-
culty. The most important of all these relate to
the development of the higher organs of sense
in the three sub-kingdoms of annulosa, mol-
lusks, and vertebrates. Coincidences between
the members of any one of these sub-kingdoms
and the members of the others are not to be

76

ADJUSTMENT, DIRECT AND INDIRECT

attributed to community of origin. No natu-
ralist supposes that an annulose animal, or a true
mollusk, has ever been developed into a verte-
brate. And while the mollusks and vertebrates
appear to have diverged from a molluscoid an-
cestor akin to the still-living ascidians, the annu-
lose sub-kingdom has a totally different pedi-
gree. To discover any likeness between the
two great groups, we must follow them back to
those remotest ancestors who possessed hardly
any distinctively animal characteristics. Bearing
all this in mind, it is a striking fact that the eye
of the cuttle-fish, which is the highest of mol-
lusks, appears to be constructed like the eyes
of vertebrates. It apparently contains not only
a similar retina, but also a lens, the choroid and
sclerotic tunics, and the vitreous and aqueous
humours. Now this coincidence cannot be due
to community of inheritance, for the vertebrate
and molluscous sub-kingdoms are linked to-
gether only at their lowest extremities, and
while the lowest vertebrate has an eye far infe-
rior to the one just described, the molluscoid
ascidians have merely rudimentary eye-spots.
The coincident structures have therefore been
independently developed. Again, Mr. Mivart
urges that the agreement cannot be explained
on the assumption " that the conditions requi-
site for effecting vision are so rigid that similar
results in all cases must be independently ar-
77

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

rived at ; " for the eyes of the higher insects,
which are excellent visual organs, differ very
widely in structure from those of the cuttle-fish
and the higher vertebrates. Here, therefore,
is a difficulty ; and it is still further increased
if the alleged fact be true, that there is a simi-
larly close correspondence between the auditory
structures in the vertebrates and in the cuttle-
fish.

In presenting these difficulties I have closely
followed Mr. Mivart, whose scientific argu-
ments are usually stated with a clearness and
precision which one would gladly see paralleled
in the philosophic discussions by which they are
supplemented. I have selected these arguments
because they seem to me to constitute the
strongest portion of the case which Mr. Miv-
art has brought to bear against the theory of
natural selection — and also because by seeing
whither they tend, we shall begin to see how
the theory of natural selection must be sup-
plemented, before it can become a complete
explanation of the phenomena with which it
deals.

Now we must at the outset admit that nat-
ural selection must act upon every individual
variation which is distinctly advantageous or in-
jurious to the species, — always preserving the
former and rejecting the latter. This process
must equally go on, whether the variation is a

7»

I ADJUSTMENT, DIRECT AND INDIRECT
lere idiosyncrasy, such as we call fortuitous, or
Ihether it is one that is manifested simultane-
ously by a large number of individuals, so that
,^^ may be traced to causes acting upon them all
'^Bi common. Now this latter case is the one
^Hhich must here be taken into the account. If
^^ large number of individuals may simultane-
ously vary in a given direction, and if this may
often happen within the limits of single genera-
tions, it is obvious that we have here a factor of
specific change not to be lightly passed over. In
estimating the effects of natural selection upon
a number of variations which are, quite legiti-
mately, taken for granted, we must not forget
to generalize the variations in connection with
some common cause to which they may be
assignable. Now it cannot be denied that in
any single generation of organisms variations
are very likely to occur, throughout nearly the
whole number of individuals, which are due to
the direct adaptation of the species to its envi-
roning circumstances. When exhibited in the
effects wrought upon the human constitution by
exposure to changed physical conditions, such
variations are known as acclimatization. Within
the infinitesimal period of two centuries the
English race in America has come to differ per-
ceptibly, though very slightly, from the Eng-
lish race in Europe ; and this very slight differ-
ence, which cannot be explained by the much
79

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

overrated hypothesis of the infusion of foreign
blood, and which certainly cannot be traced to
natural selection, must be almost wholly due
to direct adaptation to new physical and social
conditions. Of kindred import is the fact that
" twenty-nine kinds of American trees all differ
from their nearest European allies in a similar
manner, having leaves less toothed, buds and
seeds smaller, fewer branchlets, etc." So M.
Costa states " that young shells taken from the
shores of England and placed in the Mediterra-
nean at once altered their manner of growth,
and formed prominent diverging rays like those
on the shells of the proper Mediterranean oys-
ter." We have seen that the direct action of
physical agencies will by no means account for
the chief features of colouring in the organic
world ; yet it appears to be true that members
of the same species of birds are more brightly
coloured when living in a clear dry atmosphere
than when living near the coast. So, too, in the
contour of their wings, the various butterflies
of Celebes all show parallel divergences, inex-
plicable by natural selection alone, from kindred
species in Java and India. And a host of like
facts concerning these insects are cited by Mr.
Mivart from Mr. Wallace's essay on the Ma-
layan Papilionidae. More examples might be
cited if this work were intended to be a scien-
tific treatise on Darwinism ; but for the compre-
8q

ADJUSTMENT, DIRECT AND INDIRECT

tension of the present point, in its philosophic

tarings, these illustrations will suffice.^
Facts of this kind point to the conclusion
fhat an inherent capacity for adaptive changes
possessed by all organisms. And by the

ihrase " inherent capacity " I do not mean to
Insinuate the existence of any occulta vis^ or

letaphysical " innate power," of which no sci-
mtific account is to be given in terms of mat-
ter and motion. An organism is a complex
jystem of forces ; even the simplest living patch
>f protoplasm is a highly complex system, but
in the higher organisms the complication of
Forces is almost infinite, when compared with
>ur limited powders of analysis. Now such a

''Stem of forces must, under penalty of over-
throw, maintain both its internal equilibrium
md its equilibrium with external incident forces.

.nd this double maintenance of equilibrium
lecessitates a rhythmical redistribution of forces
from moment to moment, of which, as was
jhown in the chapter on rhythm, the result

lust be continual change. Now the internal
jquilibration of the forces in the organism with

ich other is generalized in the laws of growth.

^ [Since the appearance of the discussions of Weissman, the
juestions here touched upon by Fiske have assumed wholly
lew forms, and have given rise to an immense literature. For
Jpencer's later expression and defence of his views, see his
?/jtfji/. Library Edition, vol. i. p. 388-478.]

L. Ill o I

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

development, and heredity ; while the external
equilibration of the forces in the organism with
environing forces is generalized in the laws of
variation and adaptation. As the result of the
former process, all organisms tend to assume cer-
tain typical forms, as inevitably as crystals. In
the case of the lowest organisms the forms as-
sumed may be possibly due to the operation of
chemical polarity similar (though much more
involved) to that which gives form to crystals.
In all but the lowest organisms the forms as-
sumed are the expression of tendencies due to
the cooperation of countless ancestral forces, and
such tendencies are now not improperly classified
under the head of " physiological polarity,'* —
provided that nothing more is meant by "po-
larity " than the ability of certain special groups
of forces to work different structural changes in
different directions. So much for the internal
adaptive process. But now, as the result of the
parallel process of external adaptation, it follows *
that the forms due to the internal process can
remain constant only so long as the environ-
ment remains unchanged. If the changes in the
environment are too great or too sudden to be
equilibrated by changes in the distribution of
the system of internal forces, the system is
overthrown, and the organism perishes. But
if the external changes are moderate and grad-
ual, the adjustment of the organism to them by
82

ADJUSTMENT, DIRECT AND INDIRECT

means of internal changes must result in that
kind of organic variation known as direct adap-
tation. We need not be surprised, therefore,
by the parallel variations of whole genera of
American trees or Malayan butterflies — nor
need we ascribe them, with certain recent writers,
to " occult energies " of the metaphysical sort,
or to a kind of pantheistic " intelligence " in-
herent in nature, or to any other agency unre-
cognizable by science ; since the necessity for
such parallel variations, wherever .whole groups
of organisms are exposed to like environing
agencies, is a corollary from the fundamental
principles of vital dynamics.

We are now in a position to amend quite
materially the view thus far taken of the causes
of organic evolution. Hitherto we have con-
cerned ourselves too exclusively with the selec-
tion of variations, omitting to inquire into the
character and mode of origin of the variations
selected. But the latter point is no less im-
portant than the former. If variations might
occur equally in all directions from the aver-
age standard, by reason of circumstances so in-
definitely compounded as to make them seem
fortuitous, then the natural selection of such
variations might well be pronounced incapable
— save in very rare instances — of working en-
tirely analogous results in organisms so geneti-
cally distinct as monodelphians and didelphians,

83

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

or as vertebrates and mollusks. In other words
natural selection, acting upon such fortuitous
individual variations, would tend to produce
indefinitely increasing differentiations in many
directions. Such differentiations are to be seen
in the amazingly elaborate contrivances for the
fertilization of orchids, the explanation of which
is one of Mr. Darwin's most brilliant achieve-
ments. But when it is admitted that a great
number of similar adaptive variations must be
simultaneously occurring in the same direction,
then it is obvious that the natural selection of
such variations may often produce analogous
results in different genera and families, or even
in different orders, classes, or sub-kingdoms.
Mr. Mivart alleges the many resemblances be-
tween whales and the ancient ichthyosaurians
as hardly explicable on the theory of the selec-
tion of fortuitous variations. But when we
recollect that the vertebrate structure of mam-
mals is at the outset homologous with that of
reptiles, and that direct adaptation must of it-
self tend to produce similar variations alike in
mammals and in reptiles which pass from a
terrestrial into an aquatic environment, the re-
semblance between a whale and an ichthyosaurus
ceases to be an enigma. The superficial resem-
blance of a whale to a fish is a fact of like na-
ture. And in the case of amphibious carnivora,
like the seal, direct adaptation to a partially

84

ADJUSTMENT, DIRECT AND INDIRECT

marine environment has aided in producing
fish-like limbs, while it has not interfered with
the general likeness of the animal to certain
families of land carnivora. So in the case of
the pterodactyl as compared with carinate birds,
we begin with skeletons constructed on the
same plan, and we may expect to find that di-
rect adaptation to the necessities "of flight will
tend to produce similar modifications of the
shoulder structure. But since, before the ap-
pearance of pterodactyls, the dermal covering
of reptiles was very likely as different from that
of birds as it is now, so that a reptilian wing
could not be formed by a modification of the
dermal covering, we find, naturally enough, the
wing of the pterodactyl formed, like that of
the bat, by a modification of the skeleton. And
this fact seems to justify us in the alternative
which we have accepted, that the likeness of
the pterodactyl to birds is no proof of imme-
diate kinship, but only of secondary adaptive
variation, as in the case of bats. A similar
argument applies to the numerous likenesses
between the higher mammals and the marsu-
pials. At an ancient epoch the marsupials were
a dominant race of animals, extending all over
the world. But since they have been almost
everywhere exterminated by their hardier mo-
nodelphian descendants, there is no difficulty in
the view that direct adaptation to similar differ-

8s

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

ences of environment, when aided by natural
selection, has brought about a differentiation
of the higher mammals analogous to that which
had formerly taken place among the marsupi-
als. That six or seven orders of monodelphi-
ans should vary in the same direction with six
or seven orders of didelphians is no more sur-
prising than that twenty-nine kinds of Amer-
ican trees should all differ in the same direction
from their European congeners. It is certainly
far less surprising than would be the simultane-
ous loss of a pouch and acquirement of a pla-
centa by a host of marsupial genera scattered
all over the earth.

Pursuing the argument a step farther, we may
begin to understand, in a general way, even the
similarity of the eye of a cuttle-fish to the eye
of a vertebrate. Utterly unlike a vertebrate in
general structure, — and so remotely akin that
for all practical purposes of argument the kin-
ship is of no account, — if a cuttle-fish could be
shown to possess numerous points of special re-
semblance to a vertebrate, the fact would be an
obstacle to any theory of the origin of organic
forms. But the only special resemblances which
are found to exist are those between the eyes
and the ears. Now these are organs in which
such variations as occur must be in a preeminent
degree directly adaptive. The eye, for example,
contains an optical apparatus of which the func-
86

ADJUSTMENT, DIRECT AND INDIRECT

tion is the concentration of rays of light into a
focus upon the retina. Such is the function dis-
charged by the lens, and the vitreous and aque-
ous humours. Now, while the compound eyes
of insects show us that this function c^n be dis-
charged in more than one way, a brief consider-
ation of the optical conditions in the case would
show that it can only be accomplished in a few
ways. Not only does the passage of the light
directly tend to set up molecular rearrange-
ments in the refracting matter which lies before
the retina, but out of those rearrangements there
are very few which can assist the focalizing pro-
cess ; so that natural selection, in preserving the
best-refracting eyes, would have but very few
directions in which to act. The anterior mem-
brane might differentiate into a number of con-
verging lenses, as in the higher annulosa, but
if such a differentiation did not occur, it is diffi-
cult to see how the needful refraction could be
secured, save by the differentiation of the succes-
sive strata which we call the aqueous, crystal-
line, and vitreous humours. This may serve to
indicate the course of explanation to be taken.
The physical conditions for securing very effi-
cient vision being thus limited, and direct adap-
tation being such an important factor in the pro-
cess, it does not seem at all strange that two eyes
quite similar in structure should be independ-
ently produced. A precisely similar argument

87

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

will apply to the case of the ear. And the force
of these considerations is still further increased
when we learn from Professor Gegenbaur that
the resemblances between the eyes of vertebrates
and the eyes of cuttle-fishes are only superficial
analogies, and not fundamental homologies, as
Mr. Mivart's very exaggerated statement might
lead one to suppose.

In all these cases, here too briefly summed
up, natural selection must of course be regarded
as steadily cooperating with direct adaptation.
No matter whether individual variations are
directly called forth by environing agencies, or
are due to internal causes, in our ignorance of
which we call them fortuitous, they must equally
be the objects of natural selection wherever they
influence, in the slightest degree, the individ-
ual's chances of survival. Thus the theory of
natural selection is not superseded, but supple-
mented, by the class of considerations here sug-
gested by Mr. Mivart's objections. Ordinarily,
if not always, the two processes must go on in
concert ; and while the frequent occurrence of
directly adaptive changes must greatly accelerate
the operation of natural selection, on the other
hand natural selection, by weeding out all cases
of retrograde variation, must complete the work
of direct adaptation.

There are, however, some conspicuous in-
stances in which natural selection seems to play
88

ADJUSTMENT, DIRECT AND INDIRECT

either a very subordinate part, or none at all.
As we have just been considering eyes and ears,
let us once more return to them, to show how
certain peculiarities in their structure must be
chiefly due to directly adaptive changes. Within
the human ear, firmly fastened in the temporal
bone, is a spirally coiled chamber, known as
the cochlea. Within this chamber there is a very
elastic membrane, and on it lie the so-called
fibres of Corti, which are a series of fibrous fila-
ments placed side by side, with great regularity,
so as to present somewhat the appearance of the
keyboard on a piano. It is now held by phy-
siologists that this row of fibres is really a key-
board, and that each fibre is set in vibration
only by a particular musical note, exactly as
an A-tuning-fork is set vibrating when A is
sounded near it, but not when any other note is
sounded.^ The auditory nerve, in passing into
the cochlea, branches into an immense number
of nerve filaments, each of which communicates
with ofie of the keys of this ear-piano. So that
when A is sounded on a musical instrument, the
A-key within the ear vibrates, and transmits its
vibrations to a special filament of the auditory

^ [The hypothesis here stated has since been altered in cur-
rent literature in the sense of regarding, not the rods of Corti,
but the fibres of the basilar membrane as constituting the
"key-board" in question. Fiske would have modified this
passage accordingly.]

89

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

nerve. If this view be correct, we have here a
truly marvellous instance of differentiation. But
now in what way can this structure have ever
been useful to human beings in the struggle for
life ? Doubtless a considerable power of discrimi-
nating sounds is useful to any animal, but of
what use can it be to distinguish between A and
A-sharp ? We may safely conclude, I think,
that survival of the fittest has played quite a
secondary part in this case. The explanation
must be sought in the direct effects wrought by
auditory vibrations upon the molecular struc-
ture of the cochlear fibres. And it is a system
of effects which has not even yet been wrought
in its present completeness save among highly
civilized people. A savage cannot distinguish
the slight variations in pitch by which our ears
are delighted. And even among ourselves there
are ears which can neither in melody discrimi-
nate between the ascending and the descending
gamut, nor in harmony distinguish between the
mellifluous tonic chord and the harsh inversions
of the minor ninth. The defect may be com-
pared to that of colour blindness, although it
is probably more common because the ear has
been far less thoroughly trained than the eye.
Now when we consider how much can be ef-
fected by individual training in enabling a mod-
erately good ear to discriminate between quarters,
eighths, and smaller fractions of a tone, and bear
90

ADJUSTMENT, DIRECT AND INDIRECT

in mind that this training must consist in the
further differentiation of the sensitive cochlear
fibres, we have a strong argument in favour of
the production of this wonderful structure by
direct adaptation alone.

Concerning the human eye I need only say
that in the retina it presents a structure closely
analogous to the ear-piano just described. The
chief layer of the retina is composed of little
rods of nerve tissue, packed closely together like
organ pipes ; and it is probable that each of these
rods vibrates in unison with a particular ray of
light.' Here is a case of extreme differentiation
just like that witnessed in the ear ; and substan-
tially the same argument will apply to it. The
survival of a primeval savage in the struggle for
life would certainly depend to a considerable ex-
tent on his ability to discriminate certain col-
ours as well as outlines by the eye, as also upon
his ability to recognize the timbre or quality of
certain sounds. But the power of distinguishing
the delicate shades in a painting of Correggio

^ This is the opinion of Helmholtz, the greatest living au-
thority ; and it is strengthened by Dr. Brown-Sequard's dis-
covery of the number of fibres in the spinal cord v^^hich are
specialized for the reception of particular sensations. [The
passage in the text above, and in this note, regarding the func-
tions of the retina, would have been greatly modified had
Fiske rewritten it in the light of recent knowledge. The the-
ory of the colour sensations has been much changed by the
researches since Helmholtz.]

91

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

could be no more useful, from a zoological point
of view, than the power of appreciating the most
subtle harmonic effects in a symphony of Schu-
mann. For this extreme differentiation there
would seem to be no assignable cause save the
direct action of luminous waves upon the won-
derfully sensitive and responsive nerve tissue
of civilized men.

Were it needful for the further illustration of
our position, I might show how Mr. Spencer
has proved that the structure of vertebral col-
umns is also primarily due to directly adap-
tive changes. Many peculiarities in the shapes
of plants and animals are probably thus to be
explained. And in regard to the hues of or-
ganisms— those phenomena which are so beau-
tifully explained by the Darwinian theory —
there are some exceptions to be cited. The
magnificent tints of many corals, of certain cat-
erpillars, and of the shells of sundry mollusks,
must undoubtedly be due to the direct work-
ing of such chemical affinities as produce our
wonderful aniline dyes, or the rich tints of our
American autumn woods.

But passing over all these interesting points,
enough has been said to show that there are
many phenomena of organic evolution which
natural selection, when considered alone, will
not suffice to account for. But with the amend-

92

ADJUSTMENT, DIRECT AND INDIRECT

ments now agreed upon, there may be framed
an outline of a tolerably complete classification
of agencies. Let us reduce to a common form
of expression the agencies contemplated in this
and in the two preceding chapters.

Considered in the widest sense, the processes
which we have seen to cooperate in the evolution
of organisms are all processes of equilibration
or adjustment. From the dynamical point of
view, as has been shown in previous chapters,
an organism is a complex aggregate of matter,
in which permanent structural and functional
differentiations and integrations are rendered
possible by the fact that it continually receives
about as much motion as it expends. Now a
state in which expended motion is continually
supplied from without is called a state o^ de-
pendent moving equilibrium. In other words,
it is a state in which every change in the dis-
tribution of external forces must be met by a
change in the distribution of internal forces, in
order that the equilibrium may be preserved.
This is the case with every organism. Its life
is a perpetual balancing of external forces by
internal forces. And the complete accomplish-
ment of this end requires also that there shall
be a continuous internal equilibration, — a per-
petual balancing of forces operative in the dif-
ferent parts of the organism. Thus the career

93

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

of an organism, or of a group of organisms, con-
sists of two kinds of equilibration, which we
may briefly designate as external and internal
equilibration. And a moment's consideration
will show us that each of these kinds of equili-
bration may be either direct or indirect. The
adjustment of a group of organisms to changing
external circumstances is effected partly by such
direct adaptations as we have above considered,
partly by the destruction of all those members of
the group which do not become directly adapted.
In this latter way equilibrium is maintained in-
directly ; and natural selection, or survival of
the fittest, may be accurately characterized as
" indirect equilibration." Turning now to the
internal processes, we see that direct equilibra-
tion which consists in continually arranging all
the units of the organism in accordance with
their physiological polarities exemplified alike
in heredity and in correlation of growth. On
the other hand, the dwindling and final eva-
nescence of organs which are disused is due to
the fact that the nutritive material is all needed
by the other organs which are in constant use ;
and it may accordingly be regarded as an indi-
rect method of preserving the internal equili-
brium of the organism. The process of organic
evolution may therefore be summarized as fol-
lows : —

94

ADJUSTMENT, DIRECT AND INDIRECT

i Equilibration

p. . r Direct Adaptation.

X erna < indirect Natural Selection,

P , \ I Correlation of Growth.

(^ Indirect Use and Disuse,

Here we have a classification of agencies co-
extensive with our present knowledge of the
subject, and sufficiently comprehensive to in-
clude such factors in the problem as may here-
after be discovered. Under one of these four
subdivisions every special process concerned in
forwarding organic evolution must be included.
For since it is admitted on all sides that specific
change is due to the necessity for maintaining
equilibrium between the organism and the en-
vironment, it follows that every process which
results in the modification of species must be a
process of adjustment or equilibration, either
external or internal, direct or indirect. In the
scientific treatment of the problem, there is
room for much beside natural selection, but
there is no room for occulta vires, or pantheis-
tic intelligences, or for " tendencies," save such
as may be expressed as the unneutralized sur-
plus of forces acting in a particular direction.

But we have now done something more than
merely to classify the causes of organic evolu-
tion. In the act of classifying these, we have
arrived at the law or formula which expresses
the chief characteristic of organic evolution.

95

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

We have reached the all-important truth that
the progress of life on the globe has been the
continuous equilibration of the organism with
its environment. We need now only go a step
farther in order to obtain a formula which will
not only express the distinguishing characteristic
of Life itself, but will also serve as an immedi-
ate basis for our inquiries into the phenomena
of mind and of society.

96

CHAPTER XIII

LIFE AS ADJUSTMENT*

ONE of the cardinal propositions of Mr.
Spencer's system of philosophy is the
definition of Life, first published in
1855, ^^ ^^^ "Principles of Psychology," but
now transferred to the first volume of his
" Principles of Biology." According to Mr.
Spencer, the continuous maintenance of an
equilibrium between the organism and its envi-
ronment is the process in which life essentially
consists. Life — including also intelligence as
the highest known manifestation of life — is
the continuous establishment of relations within
the organism, in correspondence with relations
existing or arising in the environment.^ Out

^ [See Introduction, § 19.]

2 The full definition runs thus : *< Life is the definite com-
bination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and suc-
cessive, in correspondence with external coexistences and
sequences.'* This is incomparably the most profound and
complete definition of Life that has ever been framed ; and the
chapter in which it is set forth and illustrated would alone en-
title Mr. Spencer to a place among the greatest thinkers that
have ever lived. The objection has indeed been raised, in
metaphysical quarters, that this is a definition, not of Life, but

VOL. Ill 97

LIFE AS ADJUSTMENT

of the host of illustrations by which this formula
is justified, it will be sufficient for our present
purpose to select but one or two. " The sting-
ing and contractile powers of a polyp's tentacle
correspond to the sensitiveness and strength of
the creatures serving it for prey. Unless that
external change which brings one of these crea-
tures in contact with the tentacle were quickly
followed by those internal changes which result
in the coiling and drawing up of the tentacle,
the polyp would die of inanition. The funda-
mental processes of integration and disintegra-

of the circumstances or accidents in which Life is manifested.
Concerning this objection, we may content ourselves with the
following remarks by Mr. Lewes. Both Life and Mind,
says Mr. Lewes, are processes. ** Neither is a substance —
neither is a force. To speak of Vitality as a substance would
shock all our ideas ; but many speak of it as a force. They
might with equal propriety hold Mortality to be a force.
What, then, is meant by Vitality, or vital forces ? If the ab-
stracdon be resolved into its concretes, it will be seen that a
certain process, or group of processes, is condensed into a
simple expression, and the final result of this process is trans-
posed from a resultant into an initial condition, the name given
to the whole group of phenomena becomes the personification
of the phenomena, and the product is supposed to have been
the producer. In Heu of regarding vital actions as the dyna-
mical results of their statical conditions, the actions are person-
ified, and the personification comes to be regarded as indicating
something independent of and antecedent to the concrete facts
it expresses." Problems of Life and Mind, vol. i. p. no.

98

LIFE AS ADJUSTMENT

tion within it would get out of correspond-
ence with the agencies and processes without
It ; and the Hfe would cease/' So in higher ani-
lals, " every act of locomotion implies the ex-
fpenditure of certain internal mechanical forces,
[adapted in amounts and directions to balance
or out-balance certain external ones. The re-
cognition of an object is impossible without a
[harmony between the changes constituting per-
ception, and particular properties coexisting in
ithe environment. Escape from enemies sup-
[poses motions within the organism, related in
kind and rapidity to motions without it. De-
Istruction of prey requires a particular combina-
rtion of subjective actions, fitted in degree and
succession to overcome a group of objective
^ones. And so with those countless automatic
processes exemplified in works on animal in-
stinct." ^ And similarly, as will appear still more
:learly when we come to treat especially of the
[evolution of intelligence, " the empirical gen-
jcralization that guides the farmer in his rotation
>f crops, serves to bring his actions into con-
fcord with certain of the actions going on in
►lants and soil ; and the rational deductions of
:he educated navigator who calculates his posi-
tion at sea, constitute a series of mental acts by

1 [Spencer, Principles of Biology, vol. i. Part I. chap-
Jr V. § 28.]

99

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

which his proceedings are conformed to sur-
rounding circumstances." ^

We practically recognize the truth of this
definition of life when we attempt to ascertain
whether an animal is dead or alive by poking
it with a stick. If it responds by motions of its
own, we judge it to be alive ; if it merely moves
as the stick pushes it, we judge it to be dead.
So we decide whether a tree is alive or dead by
observing whether the increased supply of solar
radiance in spring causes those internal motions
which result in the putting forth of leaves. In
these cases we recognize the truth "that the
alteration wrought by some environing agency
on an inanimate object does not tend to in-
duce in it a secondary alteration, that anticipates
some secondary alteration in the environment.
But in every living body there is a tendency
towards secondary alterations of this nature ;
and it is in their production that the' correspond-
ence consists."

This formula for vital phenomena is further
illustrated and justified by the fact that the de-
gree of life is low or high, according as the
correspondence between internal and external
relations is simple or complex, limited or ex-
tensive, partial or complete, imperfect or perfect.
The lowest forms of life respond only to the

^ [Spencer, Principles of Biology, Part I. chapter v.
§28.]

100

LIFE AS ADJUSTMENT

^simpler and more homogeneous changes which
iffect their total environment. The relations
established within a plant answer only to the
>resence or absence of a certain quantity of
light and heat, and to the chemical and hy-
rrometric relations existing in the enveloping
itmosphere and subjacent soil. In a polyp, be-
jides general relations similar to these, certain
iore special relations are established in corre-
spondence with the external existence of me-
:hanical irritants ; as when its tentacles contract
in being touched. The increase of extension
icquired by the correspondences as we ascend
:he animal scale may be seen by contrasting
:he polyp, which can simply distinguish be-
tween soluble and insoluble matters, or between
opacity and translucence, in its environment,
ith the keen-scented bloodhound and the far-
jighted vulture. And the increase of complexity
lay be appreciated by comparing the motions
respectively gone through by the polyp on the
►ne hand, and by the dog and vulture on the
►ther, while securing and disposing of their
>rey. In the next chapter it will be shown that
the advance from lower to higher forms of life
:onsists in the orderly establishment of relations
dthin the organism, answering to external re-
lations of coexistence and sequence, that are
rontinually more special, more remote in space
ind in time, and more heterogeneous ; until at

lOI

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

last we reach civilized man, whose intelligence
responds to every variety of external stimulus,
whose ordinary needs are supplied by imple-
ments of amazing complexity, and whose men-
tal sequences may be determined by circum-
stances as remote as the Milky Way and as
ancient as the birth of the Solar System.

When viewed under this aspect the phe-
nomena of life and of intelHgence are so simi-
lar that it is difficult to keep them separate in
our series of illustrations. As we proceed to
treat of psychology, we shall much better ap-
preciate the importance of the truth which I am
now expounding. Restricting ourselves here,
as far as possible, to physiological illustrations,
let us note that in any organism life continues
just so long as relations in the environment are
balanced by internal relations, and no longer.
The difference in result between a jump from
a horse-car and a jump from an express train
running at full speed depends simply on the
difference in the ability of the contracting mus-
cles to neutralize a small or a large quantity of
arrested momentum. The motor energy with
which the head is carried forward until it strikes
the ground is exactly the surplus of external
force to which the organism has failed to op-
pose an internal force. If the resulting concus-
sion of the brain is not so great as to induce in-
stant death, but only causes inflammation, with
1 02

LIFE AS ADJUSTMENT

temporary loss of consciousness, then the con-
^nuance of life will depend upon the ability of
le molecular forces within the organism to
inng about a redistribution of matter and mo-
ion which shall balance the sudden redistribu-
ion caused by the blow. Dynamical pathology
*gards all diseases as disturbances of the inter-
lal equilibrium of the organism, and recovery
the restoration of the equilibrium. The avoid-
Ince of danger is the coordination of certain
actions in anticipation of more or less complex
relations about to arise without. If disease and
danger be successfully avoided, the death which
ensues in old age is due to the diminished plas-
ticity of the organism which renders it incapable
of responding to external changes. As we saw
when treating of the primary aspects of Evo-
lution and Dissolution, the evolution of the
body, even to the close of life, is character-
ized by the integration of its constituent matter,
shown in the increasing proportion of solids to
fluids, which makes the bones brittle, the mus-
cles stiff, and the nerves sluggish. Death from
old age ensues just when the consequent molec-
ular immobiHty has reached the point at which
incident forces can no longer be balanced by
internal rearrangements.

A paragraph will suffice for the exposition of
this formula of life in connection with the gen-
eral law of evolution. That the evolution of
103

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

life upon the earth, beginning with innumerable
jelly-like patches of protoplasm, like the mo-
nera discovered by Professor Haeckel, and end-
ing with more than two million species of plants
and animals such as naturalists classify, has been
a change from homogeneity to heterogeneity,
will be denied by no one. Nor is it needful to
repeat, save for form's sake, what was sufficiently
illustrated in an earlier chapter, — that the
higher forms are also those in which the various
orders of integration are most completely ex-
emplified. We need only to note that the con-
tinuous adjustment of the organism to its en-
vironment, in which process we have seen that
life consists, must necessitate both the differen-
tiation of the organism and the integration or
definite combination of the changes which con-
stitute its activity. For as the life becomes
higher the environment itself increases in hete-
rogeneity as well as in extent. The environ-
ment of a fresh-water alga is, as Mr. Spencer
remarks, limited to the ditch or pool in which
the alga lives. The acaleph borne along on a
wave of the sea has a much more homogeneous
environment than the caterpillar which crawls
over leaves ; and the actions by which the cat-
erpillar must "meet the varying effects of grav-
itation '' are far more heterogeneous than the
actions of the acaleph. In the case of the higher
animals, not only is their environment extremely
104

LIFE AS ADJUSTMENT

^Hf adjacent organisms which stand to them in
^^he relations of enemies, competitors, or prey ;
but it also presents highly coordinated actions
on the part of these organisms, which must be
met by highly coordinated actions on the part
of the former. Thus with the increase of the
organism in heterogeneity, definiteness, and co-
herence, its environment increases in heteroge-
neity and presents more definite and coherent
relations to which the organism must adjust it-
self. And in this way the heterogeneous, defi-
* nite, and coherent activity of the organism is
again enhanced. The corollary from this group
of truths is one which will nearly concern us
when we come to treat of the Evolution of So-
ciety : it is this — the greater the amount of
progress already made, the more rapidly must
progress go on.

105

CHAPTER XIV
LIFE AND MIND^

BEFORE we proceed to treat of physical
life as the continuous establishment of
subjective relations that are in corre-
spondence with environing objective relations,
we must dispose of certain questions which have
been raised by Comte and his disciples concern-
ing the right of psychology to be regarded as an
independent science. Part of Comte's plan for
the renovation of philosophy was the rescuing
of psychology from the exclusive control of
metaphysicians. The manner in which he pro-
posed to accomplish the rescue is only too
briefly described ; he simply denied in toto the
claims of psychology to be regarded as an in-
dependent science. According to Comte there
can be no science, worthy of the name, founded
upon the observation and comparison of states
of consciousness ; and psychology must there-
fore be studied as a part of biology, by the aid
solely of the methods used in biology. That
is, the study of mind must be reduced to the
study of nervous phenomena simply. It is easy
^ [See Introduction, § 20.]
106

LIFE AND MIND

to say that the inevitable outcome of this is the
unquaHfied assertion of materialism. But as
Comte himself never drew such an inference,
and always protested energetically against ma-
terialism, as based upon illegitimate inferences
from the study of nervous phenomena, it would
not be fair in us to draw the inference for him
and then upbraid him with it. This kind of
misrepresentation is dear to theologians, and we
may contentedly leave them an entire monopoly
of it. But worse remains behind. Having
condemned psychological analysis as useless,
Comte offers us in exchange the ludicrous sub-
stitute — Phrenology !

Of all the scientific blunders which Comte
ever made, this was beyond question the one
which has done most to injure his credit with
competent scientific critics. Yet in fairness we
must remember that Comte^s ignorance of psy-
chology was his weakest point, and that forty
years ago, when the anatomy and physiology
of the nervous system were in their infancy,
the conception of dividing the gray surface of
the cerebrum into thirty or more provinces,
each the seat of a complex group of mental ap-
titudes, did not seem so absurd as it does now.
In those days even Broussais, a first-class phy-
siologist, adopted some of the leading doctrines
of phrenology. Moreover the fundamental
conception of Gall — which included the ana-
107

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

tomlcal comparison of all animal brains, in con-
nection with the study of the mental character-
istics of animals — was a noble conception;
though in working it out he showed himself
lamentably ignorant of the plainest rules of in-
duction. The purposes of our inquiry do not
render it necessary for me to discuss the merits
of a hypothesis which has long since ceased to
be of any interest, save as an episode in the early
history of physiological psychology. Those
who wish to see the question treated critically
may be referred to the works of Miiller, Val-
entin, Wagner, Vulpian, Gratiolet, Longet, and
especially of Lelut ; to the appendix to Hamil-
ton's " Lectures on Metaphysics ; " to the chap-
ter on Gall in Mr. Lewes's " History of Phi-
losophy ; " and to Mr. Bain's treatise on " The
Study of Character."

It is not Comte's acceptance of phrenology,
but his denial of psychology, which here con-
cerns us. The former is merely a personal
question, bearing upon Comte's scientific com-
petence ; the latter is a question of general in-
terest. We may note at the outset that many
contemporary positivists differ from Comte on
this point. It is generally agreed that a science
may be founded, even if it has not already been
founded, upon the observation and comparison
of states of consciousness ; though there is some
disagreement as to the position of that science
io8

LIFE AND MIND

with reference to the other sciences. Mr.
Lewes, for instance, misled by his general ad-
herence to the Comtean classification of the
sciences, regards psychology as a subdivision of
biology, on the ground that the phenomena
of consciousness are merely a special division
of the phenomena of life. This is, in one sense,
true ; so true, indeed, as to be fatal to the con-
clusion which it is meant to support. For it
may be said, with equal truth, that the pheno-
mena of life are but a subdivision of the phe-
nomena presented by the surface of our con-
tracting and cooling planet ; so that it might
equally well be argued that biology is only a
subdivision of geology. And again it may be
said that geologic phenomena are only a sub-
division of the general phenomena presented
by the condensation of a nebula ; so that geo-
logy is only a branch of astronomy. Yet it
could hardly be said that psychology is a mere
branch of astronomy ; so that here we seem to
have reached a reductio ad absurdum.

But by travelling back over the course we shall
get out of the difficulty, and not only see why-
psychology has as good a right as any other
branch of inquiry to be ranked as an independ-
ent science but also see why it must needs be
partly founded upon an observation and com-
parison of states of consciousness. Let us then.

109

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

having reached the primeval nebula, begin our
journey backwards.

Our position is explained by the considera-
tion that all the synthetic concrete sciences are
but adjacent tracts of one general science, —
Cosmology. " Practically, however, they are
distinguishable as successively more specialized
parts of the total science — parts further spe-
cialized by the introduction of additional fac-
tors. The astronomy of the solar system is a
specialized part of that general astronomy which
includes our wKole sidereal system ; and be-
comes specialized by taking into account the
revolutions and rotations of planets and satel-
lites. Geology is a specialized part of this special
astronomy ; and becomes speciahzed by join-
ing, with the effects of the earth's molar motions,
the effects of continuous decrease in its internal
molecular motion, and the effects of the molec-
ular motion radiated from the sun. Biology
is a specialized part of geology, deahng with
peculiar aggregates of peculiar chemical com-
pounds formed of the earth's superficial ele-
ments — aggregates which, while exposed to
these same general forces, molar and molecular,
also exert certain general actions and reactions
on one another. And psychology is a special-
ized part of biology, limited in its application
to a higher division of these peculiar aggregates,
and occupying itself exclusively with those spe-

IIO

LIFE AND MIND

cial actions and reactions which they display,
from instant to instant, in their converse with
the special objects, animate and inanimate, amid
which they move." ^

This last point is one which requires further
illustration. Concisely expressed, it amounts to
this — that psychology is distinguished by deal-
ing in a particular way with the relations be-
tween the organism and its environment. A
few illustrations will render this perfectly in-
telligible — will show us that mere nervous
physiology is not, and never can be, psycho-
logy.

Nervous physiology treats of relations sub-
sisting within the organism. It explains how
waves of molecular motion, set up in a nerve
centre and transmitted along a nerve axis, cause
contraction in the fibres of a muscle, or secre-
tion in a gland, or molecular rearrangement
in the substance of the tissues, or set up a
new molecular undulation in some other nerve
centre. It seeks to formulate the conditions
under which nervous stimulation and nervous
discharge take place. Or it shows how certain
feelings are invariably sequent upon certain re-
arrangements of the molecules composing the
nerve substance. Even if it recognizes, as it
does continually recognize, some force external
to the organism, which causes the molecular re-

^ Spencer, Principles of Psycho logy y vol. i. pp. 137, 138.
Ill

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

arrangement and the resultant feeling, it never-
theless does not concern itself with the relation
between the external cause and the internal
effect, but only with the internal effect.

Now, as Mr. Spencer has forcibly pointed
out, " so long as we state facts of which all the
terms lie within the organism, our facts are
anatomical or physiological, and in no degree
psychological. Even though the relation with
which we are dealing is that between a nervous
change and a feeling, it is still not a psycholo-
gical relation so long as the feeling is regarded
merely as connected with the nervous change,
and not as connected with some existence lying
outside the organism. . . . For that which dis-
tinguishes psychology from the sciences on
which it rests is that each of its propositions
takes account both of the connected internal
phenomena and of the connected external phe-
nomena to which they refer. In a physiologi-
cal proposition an inner relation is the essential
subject of thought ; but in a psychological pro-
position an outer relation is joined with it as
a coessential subject of thought. A relation in
the environment rises into coordinate impor-
tance with a relation in the organism. The
thing 'contemplated is now a totally different
thing. It is not the connection between the
internal phenomena, nor is it the connection

112

I

LIFE AND MIND

between the external phenomena ; but it is
the connection between these two connections, A
psychological proposition is necessarily com-
pounded of two propositions, of which one con-
cerns the subject and the other concerns the
object ; and cannot be expressed without the
four terms which these two propositions imply.
The distinction may be best explained by sym-
bols. Suppose that a and b are two related
manifestations in the environment — say, the
colour and taste of a fruit ; then, so long as
we contemplate their relation by itself, or as
associated with other external phenomena, we
are occupied with a portion of physical science.
Now suppose that x and y are the sensations
produced in the organism by this peculiar light
which the fruit reflects, and by the chemical
action of its juice on the palate ; then, so long
as we study the action of the light on the retina
and optic centres, and consider how the juice
sets up in other centres a nervous change known
as sweetness, we are occupied with facts belong-
ing to the science of physiology. But we pass
into the domain of psychology the moment we
inquire how there comes to exist within the or-
ganism a relation between x and y that in some
way or other corresponds to the relation be-
tween A and B. Psychology is exclusively con-
cerned with this connection between a b and

113

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

X Y : it has to investigate its nature, its origin,
and its meaning." ^

It is true, as the last chapter showed us, that
biology also presupposes a reference to pheno-
mena outside the organism, the very defini-
tion of Life being " the continuous adjustment
of internal relations to external relations ; '* so
that Mind here appears to be but the highest
form of Life. We see here the difficulty of
sharply demarcating adjacent provinces of na-
ture. Nevertheless there is a broad distinction,
though not a sharp one. Exclude from biologi-
cal problems all those adjustments which con-
stitute mental reaction upon the environment,
and the only external factors remaining are
those general conditions of temperature, mois-
ture, food and the like, which are taken for
granted once for all. While in each special
problem of psychology the relation between
internal and external relations is the main sub-
ject of inquiry, on the other hand, in special
problems of biology, the relation between the
internal processes and these general external
factors is not the chief, but a subordinate, sub-
ject of inquiry. Digestion, for instance, implies
food ; and " food implies neighbouring plants
or animals ; but this implication scarcely enters
into our study of digestion, unless we ask the

^ Spencer, Principles of Psycholog^y vol. \. p. 132. [Part
I. chapter vii. § 53.]

114

LIFE AND MIND

quite special question — how the digestive or-
gans become fitted to the materials they have
to act upon." But a moment's introspection
will make it clear to every one " that he can-
not frame any psychological conception without
looking at internal coexistences and sequences
in their adjustments to external coexistences and
sequences. If he studies the simplest act "of
perception, as that of localizing a touch in some
part of his skin, the indispensable terms of his
inquiry are: on the one hand a thing (i) and
a position (2), both of which he regards as ob-
jective ; and on the other hand a sensation (3),
and a state of consciousness constituting his
apprehension of position (4), both of which he
regards as subjective. Or, if he takes for his
problem one of his complex sentiments, as that
of justice, he cannot represent to himself this
sentiment, or give any meaning to its name,
without calling to mind actions and relations
supposed to exist in the environment : neither
this nor any other emotion can be aroused in
consciousness even vaguely, without positing
something beyond consciousness to which it
refers."^

Let us observe, in passing, that these consid-
erations are quite incompatible with Material-
ism. The doctrine of the materialists rests partly
on the assumption that the study of the laws of

^ Spencer, Principles of Psychology, vol. i. p. 133.

"5

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

nervous action can give us a complete account
of mental phenomena. But we have seen that
to understand the simplest act of perception, we
must take into the account not only the sub-
jective and the objective factors, but the relation
between the two. It is this relation which con-
stitutes the perception. But this relation exists
only in consciousness, and we cannot explain
it save by direct observation of consciousness.
Push our researches in biology as far as we
may, the most we can ever ascertain is that cer-
tain nerve changes succeed certain other nerve
changes or certain external stimuli in a certain
definite order. But all this of itself can render
no account of the simplest phenomenon of con-
sciousness. As Mr. Spencer well says, " such
words as ideas, feelings ^ memories y volitions , have
acquired their several meanings through self-
analysis, and the distinctions we make between
sensations and emotions, or between automatic
acts and voluntary acts, can be established only
by comparisons among, and classifications of,
our mental states. The thoughts and feelings
which constitute a consciousness, and are abso-
lutely inaccessible to any but the possessor of
that consciousness, form an existence that has
no place among the existences with which the
rest of the sciences deal. Though accumulated
observations and experiments have led us by a
very indirect series of inferences to the belief
ii6

LIFE AND MIND

that mind and nervous action are the subjective
and objective faces of the same thing, we remain
utterly incapable of seeing, and even of imagin-
ing, how the two are related. Mind still con-
tinues to us a something without any kinship to
other things."

Thus we conclude that psychology — though,
from the objective point of view it may be re-
garded as a branch of biology, in the same ab-
stract sense in which biology may be regarded
as a branch of geology, and geology as a branch
of astronomy — has nevertheless an equal claim
with any of these to be ranked as a distinct sci-
ence. From the subjective point of view it has
a superior claim to any of the others. Since here
the phenomena studied are directly given in the
consciousness of the investigator, there arises
a distinction more fundamental than those by
which the various departments of objective sci-
ence are marked oif from each other. And, in-
deed, without some of the data furnished by
this unique subjective science, it is impossible
to obtain the premises of philosophy ; as will
at once be admitted, on recollecting the topics
which occupied us in the first part of this work.
Psychology is therefore distinct alike from bio-
logy and from other sciences, in its problems
and in its theorems. The problem of biology
is to formulate the laws of nutrition and repro-
duction, muscular contraction and nervous irri-
117

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

tation, heredity and adaptation. The problem
of psychology is to formulate the laws of Asso-
ciation, — the order in which certain relations
among environing phenomena give rise to cer-
tain corresponding relations among our states
of consciousness. And while the theorems of
objective science in general are based upon the
observation of objective phenomena, whether
external or internal to the organism, the theo-
rems of psychology are based not only upon the
observation of objective phenomena, but also
upon the observation of subjective states.

In view of these results, we see how hope-
lessly Comte went astray. Rejecting all intro-
spection as metaphysical and delusive, he would
have had us confine our inquiries to the suc-
cession of those nervous phenomena which are
the invariable concomitants of feelings, ignoring
the fact that without introspective observation
we can never even ascertain that there is any
invariable concomitance between the feelings
and the nervous phenomena. He would have
us solve a problem in which two factors are con-
cerned, by investigating only one factor.

In giving his reasons for thus rejecting all
observation of consciousness, Comte reveals his
inability (upon which I have already frequently
remarked) to distinguish between psychology
and metaphysics. He insists that psycholo-
gic inquiry, as hitherto conducted, has not re-
ii8

LIFE AND MIND

suited in discovery. If this were true, it would
not help his case. Metaphysical psychologists
have failed in discovery, not because they have
directly examined states of consciousness, but
because they have constructed unverifiable hy-
potheses about the nature of Mind in itself.
Where they have abstained from ontological
inquiries, and have contented themselves with
scientific methods, psychologists have made
discoveries. To say nothing of such recent in-
quirers as Bain, Wundt, Fechner, and Taine,
it may be fairly claimed that, among older spec-
ulators, Hobbes, Locke, Leibnitz, Berkeley,
Hume, Kant, and Hartley, have by psycho-
logic analysis made real and permanent contri-
butions to our knowledge of mental operations.
And at the very date when Comte was preparing
his great treatise for publication, there appeared
a remarkable book which, by establishing some
of the fundamental laws of Association, went
far toward placing psychology upon a scientific
basis. It is not to the crude and superficial
Gall, as Comte would have us believe, that we
must give the respect due to the founder of
scientific psychology : that respect is due, in
far greater degree, to James Mill, the illustri-
ous author of the " Analysis of the Human
Mind.**

Nevertheless, while psychology is a science
clearly distinct from biology, dealing with phe-
119

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

nomena which may be classed as super-organic,
and using introspective observation as one of
its main implements of inquiry, it is no more
than any other an absolutely independent sci-
ence. Since the phenomena of Mind are never
manifested to us save in connection with the
phenomena of Life, and since the same general
formula expresses the fundamental character-
istics of the two groups of phenomena, it fol-
lows that no complete science of psychology
can be constituted without the aid of biology.
The conclusions reached by the analysis of sub-
jective states must be shown to be in harmony
with the conclusions reached by the synthesis
of objective phenomena, before the scientific in-
terpretation of Mind can be regarded as entirely
satisfactory. The force of this statement be-
comes at once apparent, when we recollect that
introspective observation can inform us only
concerning the mental processes which go on in
adult civilized men. In order to understand
the genesis of these mental processes, we need
the assistance of objective psychology and of
nervous physiology; we need to compare the
mental processes observed in adult civilized
men, with the mental processes observed or in-
ferred in civilized children, in adult barbarians,
and in the lower animals, down to those hum-
ble organisms in which the phenomena of in-
telligence first become differentiated from the
1 20

LIFE AND MIND

ihenomena of organic life. The immense ad-
''ance which has been made in mental science
[uring the past forty years has been mainly due
to the practical recognition of this fact. Trea-
tises on psychology are no longer solely based
pon an analysis of what happens when " I see
fthe inkstand/' although analyses of this' sort
are still, as is here maintained, indispensable.
The nervous system, in its ascending complica-
tions from the amphioxus to man, is now taken
into the account. The normal variations in
psychical manifestation, in the various human
ices, from childhood to old age, are taken into
'the account. The abnormal variations caused
by stimulants and narcotics, as well as those ex-
libited in epilepsy, insanity, and other forms
!of nervous disease, are taken into the account.
And careful investigations into the ways - in
which different organisms respond to external
rstimuli, show us that the lower forms of psy-
chical activity are no longer neglected. While
[the analysis of complex mental operations has
■been pushed to an extent which until lately
[would have been deemed impracticable, on the
iother hand the sub-science of psychogeny, deal-
ing with the origin of the various manifestations
►f mental activity, has arisen to coordinate im-
portance with subjective psychology. It has
[become generally recognized that — inefface-
able as is the distinction between the pheno-

121

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

mena of consciousness and all other phenomena
— nevertheless the one as well as the other can
be scientifically explained only when present
manifestations are studied in their connection
with past manifestations. In this domain, as in
all others, the Law of Evolution holds sway.

Let us now, in accordance with these gen-
eral considerations, begin by contemplating the
phenomena of Mind as gradually differentiated
from the phenomena of Life ; reserving for an-
other chapter the interpretation of sundry psy-
chological truths in terms of the law of evolu-
tion. And first let us reconsider the definition
of life which was briefly illustrated in the preced-
ing chapter. We saw that life essentially consists
in the continuous adjustment of relations within
the organism to relations in the environment.
And we saw that the degree of life is low or high,
according as the correspondence between in-
ternal and external relations is limited or exten-
sive, partial or complete, simple or complex. We
saw that the lowest forms of life respond to the
changes going on about them only in a sim-
ple, imperfect, and general way. A tree, for in-
stance, meeting by changes within itself none but
physical and chemical changes which occur with
general uniformity in the environment, exhibits
life in a very simple and unobtrusive form. We
habitually regard it as less alive than a polyp,
because the polyp, by displaying nascent sensi-

122

LIFE AND MIND

tiveness and contractility, responds to a greater
variety of more special external stimuli. Yet
the polyp, possessing no specialized organs of
sense, can oppose but one sort of action to
many diverse kinds of impression. Phenomena
so different as those of light and heat, sound
and mechanical impact, can affect it in but one
or two ways, — by causing it to move, or by
slightly altering its chemical condition. The
modes of response to outer relations are few
and homogeneous. Passing abruptly to civi-
lized man, at the other end of the animal scale,
we find a different state of things. To each
kind of external stimulus there are many pos-
sible modes of response. Not only, for exam-
ple, does the human organism sharply distin-
guish between variations which affect the eye
and those which affect the ear ; not, only do eye
and ear, which are themselves organs of amaz-
ing complexity, discern an endless number of
differing tones and hues, as well as a great
variety of intensities and qualities; but each
particular manifestation of sound or of light is
capable of arousing in the organism very differ-
ent psychical combinations, entailing different
muscular actions, according to circumstances.
Tennyson's traveller, who, walking at nightfall
in a strange land, hears the moaning of a dis-
tant sea, —

123

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

•' And knows not if it be thunder, or a sound
Of rocks thrown down, or one deep cry
Of great wild beasts," —

will adopt a course of action more or less in
conformity with environing relations, according
to the degree of his sagacity and the extent of
his experience. Streaks of light and strata of
cloud in the horizon will lead the practised
mariner and the unskilled passenger to dif-
ferent conclusions. A cartoon of Raphael or;
a symphony of Beethoven will excite different
emotions in an artist and in a person of feeble
impressibility. And from the swinging of a
cathedral lamp the young Galileo drew infer-
ences which had escaped the attention or baffled-
the penetration of thousands of less acute be-
holders. Thus, with civilized man, the modes
of response to outer relations are almost infi-^
nitely numerous and heterogeneous.

But now, in this briefly indicated contrast!
between the lowest and highest extremes of life,
regarded as a correspondence between the or-
ganism and the environment, we have passed
abruptly from vital relations which are purelyj
physical to vital relations which are almost
purely psychical. The relations contemplated
have been, in each of the instances, relations
internally set up in adjustment to external rela-
tions. But while the relations set up within the^
tree are simply physico-chemical ; and while thci
124

LIFE AND MIND

relations set up within the polyp, though in-
volving nascent sensitiveness, are nevertheless,
in the absence of specialized nerve matter, un-
attended by consciousness, and therefore cannot
strictly be classed as psychical ; on the other
hand, the relations set up within civilized man
are almost purely psychical, involving only such
physico-chemical elements as are necessitated
by the fact that conscious activity does not go
on unattended by molecular changes in nerve
tissue. It appears, therefore, that while in the
vegetal world, and in the lower regions of the
animal world, the life is purely or almost purely
physico-chemical, it becomes more and more
predominantly psychical as we ascend in the
animal world, until at the summit it is mainly
psychical. The continuous adjustment of inner
to outer relations, which both constitutes life
and maintains it from moment to moment, is a
process which, at first purely physiological, be-
comes ever more distinctly psychological.

From the facts of comparative anatomy we
may elicit a parallel truth. In standard works
on human anatomy it is customary to distin-
guish between the vegetative organs (compris-
ing the nutritive and reproductive systems),
which are developed from the endoderm of the
embryo, and the animal organs (comprising the
nervo-muscular system), which are developed
from the ectoderm. Not unfrequently these are
125

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

otherwise and .more appropriately distinguished
as the nutritive and relational systems — the
special office of the former being the integration
of nutritive material, in behoof either of the or-
ganism or of its derivative offspring, while the
special office of the latter is the maintenance of
relations between the organism and the environ-
ment. The demarcation is thoroughly distinct,
but it is not absolute ; since the relations each
moment set up even in the nutritive system
must correspond with certain general relations
of air, temperature, and assimilable material in
the environment. Now we have to note that
in the vegetal world such general correspond-
ences are all that are established ; there is no
system of organs differentiated for the purpose
of maintaining an equilibrium of relations with
the environment. In such simply organized
animals as the polyp there is no differentiation
of relational tissues or organs ; but the entire
surface of the animal, besides maintaining such
general correspondences as characterize vegetal
life, exhibits in a slight degree the irritability
and contractility which in higher creatures are
specialized in those tissues which form the rela-
tional organs. In the molluscoida, the property
of irritability being localized in a few nerve
threads uniting in ganglionic masses, and the
property of contractilitv being specialized in a
parallel manner, there is rendered possible that
126

LIFE AND MIND

more special mode of response to environing
agencies known as reflex action. In the lower
vertebrata the integration of numerous adjacent
ganglia into a medulla, having connections with
various parts of the organism, renders possible
a much more perfectly coordinated series of re-
sponses to external stimuli. And at the same
time the development of a pair of pedunculated
ganglia from the upper portion of the medulla
is attended by the ability to compound the im-
pressions which the medulla receives ; so that
it becomes possible for the correspondences to
extend in space and time. As we ascend through
the vertebrate sub-kingdom, the growth of these
pedunculated ganglia — the cerebrum and cere-
bellum — becomes more and more the predomi-
nant characteristic of the nervous system ; and
at the same time the power of adjusting inner
relations to remote, special, and complex rela-
tions increases. Finally when we come to man,
in whom the correspondences have reached a
marvellous degree of heterogeneity, extent, and
definiteness, we find not only that the relational
system of organs is the dominant fact in his or-
ganization, but also that the system of pedun-
culated cephalic ganglia is the dominant fact in
the relational system of organs. Not only is
the nutritive life quite subordinated to the spe-
cially relational life, but the lower modes of the
relational life, such as reflex action and instinct,
127

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

are quite subordinated to those higher modes,
such as thought and emotion, which are made
possible by the great extent to which the cer-
ebrum and cerebellum carry the compound-
ing of impressions received in the medulla. In
order to realize with vividness how completely
human life has come to mean the higher psy-
chical life, let us try to imagine what life would
be without the cerebrum and cerebellum. Yet
from the biological point of view these systems
of ganglia, though nearly, are not quite, abso-
lutely essential to human life — since the less
complex acts and impressions are still coordi-
nated after they have been destroyed by disease,
and since infants, born without any brain save
the medulla and basal ganglia, have been known
to live for a short time. Such a deprivation of
the higher relational activities naturally seems
to us almost equivalent to deprivation of life.

We may now more thoroughly appreciate
the force of the distinction between the pro-
vinces of biology and of psychology, which was
stated in the earlier part of this chapter. We
see that while life, physical and psychical, is the
continuous adjustment of inner to outer rela-
tions, nevertheless in the lowest forms of life,
unaccompanied by mind, the outer relations to
which adjustment is made are exceedingly gen-
eral, and the correspondence is simple, direct,
and homogeneous. But as we pass to forms
128

LIFE AND MIND

somewhat higher, we find, along with this sim-
ple correspondence maintained by the whole
organism, a number of more complex, indirect,
and special correspondences, for the establish-
ment and maintenance of which there is differ-
entiated a particular relational structure. As the
correspondence increases in complexity, in in-
directness, and in speciality, the maintenance
of it is confined more and more to this spe-
cialized nervo - muscular structure — and the
enormously heterogeneous series of adjustments
which eventually goes on becomes distinguished
from the relatively homogeneous series of ad-
justments which has all along been going on,
as psychical life in contrast with physical life.
Thus by a regular process of evolution it hap-
pens that, while at the outset the psychical life
is but a slight extension of the correspondence
which constitutes the physical life, at the end
the correspondence which constitutes the psy-
chical life is all in all, and the processes of
physical life come to be regarded as entirely
subordinate to the maintenance of this higher
correspondence.

Let us now briefly trace the various exten-
sions and complications of the correspondence
as it becomes more heterogeneous, definite, and
coherent. Scanty justice can here be done to
the subject, since it is necessary for me to com-
press into half a dozen pages the substance of
VOL. m 129

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

a series of illustrations which in Mr. Spencer's
exceedingly condensed exposition fill a hundred
pages.^ Nevertheless a few striking facts may
be noted down, which will serve to assist in the
comprehension of the process. Let us first note
that in the simplest forms of life the correspond-
ence extends " only to external relations which
have one or both terms in contact with the or-
ganism. The processes going on in the yeast-
plant cease unless its cell-wall is bathed by the
saccharine and other matters on whose affini-
ties they depend. . . . And so too among the
lowest animals, the substances to be assimilated
must come in collision with the organism be-
fore any correspondence between inner and
outer changes is shown." The correspondence
is similarly limited in time. The tree, which
puts forth its leaves from year to year, does
so only in response to luminous and thermal
changes which occur contemporaneously. The
polyp's tentacles contract only in response to
immediately present stimuli. "Alike in all these
forms of life, there is an absence of that cor-
respondence between internal relations and dis-
tant external relations " — in space and time —
which we see exhibited in higher forms.

Now the extension of the correspondence in
space is effected by the gradual differentiation

^ [See Part III. of vol. i. of the Psychology : " General
Synthesis."]

130

LIFE AND MIND

of organs of sense. One of the most notable
achievements of modern biology is the discov-
ery — due among others, to Huschke, Remak,
Milne - Edwards, and Huxley — that all the
sense-organs are but successive modifications of
tactile structures, or rather, of those simple der-
mal structures which in the higher organisms
are specialized as tactile. The most perfect or-
gans of touch are the vibriss^e or whiskers of the
cat, which act as long levers in communicating
impulses to the nerve fibres that terminate in
clusters about the dermal sacs in which they are
inserted. Yet these whiskers are merely spe-
cialized forms of just such hairs as those which
cover the bodies of most mammals, and which
are found evanescent upon the human skin, em-
bedded in minute sacs or reentrant folds. Now
it is a demonstrated fact that the eye and ear
are morphologically identical with vibrissa. The
bulb of the eye and the auditory chamber are
nothing but extremely metamorphosed hair-
sacs, and the same is true of the olfactory cham-
ber. The crystalline lens is a differentiated hair,
the aqueous and vitreous humours are liquefied
dermal tissue, and the otolites of the ear are
" concretions from the contents of an epider-
mic sac." In view of these astounding disclo-
sures of embryology, we may readily assent to
Mr. Spencer's statement that modern science
justifies the guess of Demokritos, " that all the
131

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

senses are modifications of touch/' From a sin-
gle sense, more or less diffused over the surface
of the body, and capable of establishing corre-
spondences only with agencies in direct contact
with the body, there have arisen, by slow differ-
entiations, such localized senses as sight and
hearing, which serve to enlarge the environment
and establish correspondences with agencies
more and more remote. Let us briefly consider
the sense of sight, omitting hearing, as well as
smell and taste, since our space is too limited to
deal with them properly.

In such lowly organized creatures as the hy-
dra the ability to distinguish between light and
darkness, or between sunshine and shadow, is
possessed in a slight degree by the entire sur-
face of the body. But vision can hardly be said
to exist, even in its most rudimentary aspect,
until this sensibility is " concentrated in a par-
ticular spot. The rudimentary eye consisting,
as in a planaria, of some pigment grains, may be
considered as simply a part of the surface more
irritable by light than the rest. Some idea of
the impression it is fitted to receive may be
formed by turning our closed eyes towards the
light, and passing the hand backwards and for-
wards before them." But while this localization
of sensibility enables the creature to adapt it-
self to the movements of neighbouring opaque
bodies, the extension of the correspondence is
132

LIFE AND MIND

nevertheless very slight. To produce notice-
able obscuration the opaque object must ap-
proach very near ; and hence " we may infer
that nascent vision extends to those objects alone
which are just about to touch the organism, . . .
so that it amounts at first to Httle more than
anticipatory touch." ^ As we pass to higher
forms, we find the eye gradually increasing in
translucence, acquiring a convexity of surface,
liquefying internally into refracting humours,
while the nerve vesicles within multiply and
arrange themselves as retinal rods ; the result
being seen in the gradually increasing power
of the organism to adapt its actions to actions
occurring at a distance. The process and the
result of development are essentially the same
in the case of hearing and smell, though there
are great differences in the degrees to which
these senses are developed in the highest ani-
mals.

Further extension of the correspondence is
effected, in the higher vertebrates, by the in-
crease in size and complexity of the cerebrum
and cerebellum. These pedunculated groups
of ganglia, which issue from the medulla, and
whose function it is to compound in higher
and higher aggregates the already compound
impressions received by the medulla, are capa-

^ Spencer, Principles of Psychology y vol. i. pp. 314, 315.
[Part III. chapter iv. § 142.]

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

ble of adjusting inner relations to outer rela-
tions beyond the reach of the organs of sense.
" Chased animals that make their way across
the country to places of refuge out of view are
obviously led by combinations of past and pre-
sent impressions which enable them to tran-
scend the sphere of the senses." And in man,
by the aid of science, the correspondence is ex-
tended not only over the entire surface of the
earth, but through all visible space ; witness the
facts that telegraphic reports enable purchasers
in New York to adapt their actions to prices
in London, and that the inferences of astrono-
mers are modified in accordance with chemical
changes going on in remote nebulae.

Along with the extension of the correspond-
ence in space there goes on an extension in
time, resulting in an enormous increase of the
psychical life. Under their more simple forms
the two kinds of extension go on together. The
rudimentary eye, which enables the organism to
anticipate the contact of an approaching opaque
body, may serve to illustrate the primitive con-
nection between adjustments to external coex-
istences and adjustments to external sequences.
And it is obvious, without concrete illustration,
that in general the more remote are the outer
relations to which inner relations are adjusted,
the longer will be the interval by which the ad-
justment may be made to anticipate the group
134

LIFE AND MIND

of outer relations which it is designed to bal-
ance. But it is only in the higher vertebrates,
whose cephaHc ganglia are sufficiently large and
complex to enable them to form ideal represen-
tations of outer relations not immediately pre-
sent, that there is witnessed a decided extension
of the correspondence in time. Dogs and foxes
exhibit a well-marked anticipation of future
events, in hiding food to be eaten hereafter. But
it is first in the human race that such foresight
becomes highly conspicuous ; and the difference
between civilized and savage men in this respect
is probably even more marked than the differ-
ence between savage men and the higher allied
mammals. There are strong reasons for believ-
ing that the more complex correspondences in
time are chiefly effected by the cerebrum, while
the more complex correspondences in space are
chiefly affected by the cerebellum. And if this
be the case, we may understand why it is that
in the course of human progress the increase of
the cerebrum in size and complexity has been
so much greater than the increase of the cere-
bellum. In no other respect is civilized man
so widely distinguished from the savage, as in
his habitual adjustment of his daily actions to
contingencies likely to arise in a more or less
distant future. But here we touch upon an
important theorem of sociology, which I shall
hereafter consider at greater length.

135

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

Next let us note that the extension of the cor-
respondence in space and in time is accompanied
by a progressive increase in the speciality of the
correspondence. Manifestly the differentiation
of sense-organs which renders possible the ad-
justment of inner relations to distant outer re-
lations, also renders possible the adjustment of
inner relations to outer relations that are more
and more special. Increased width of retina en-
hances the power of estimating the size of neigh-
bouring objects, since the differences in the vis-
ual areas which they occupy will become more
clearly appreciable. The multiplication of retinal
rods enhances the power of estimating shape,
since differently shaped objects affect different
numbers and different combinations of these
rods. Thus while animals with rudimentary
vision, in becoming aware of the presence of
approaching objects, can recognize them only as
objects, on the other hand an animal with de-
veloped vision, in recognizing objects near or
distant, can also distinguish between innumer-
able differences in their sizes and shapes, and
can make a proportionally great number of spe-
cial adaptations in its conduct. It is similar with
the ability to distinguish colours, and to esti-
mate direction by the eye. And from the grow-
ing heterogeneity of the other senses, we might
draw parallel illustrations, were there room for
them. Finally the high development of the
136

LIFE AND MIND

cephalic ganglia, rendering possible the com-
pounding of ideal representations of objects and
relations not present to sense, increases to an
enormous degree the speciality of the adjust-
ments. Such special adjustments are seen in the
cases of " the lion that goes to the river-side at
dusk to lie in wait for creatures coming to drink,
and the house-dog standing outside the door in
expectation that some one will presently open
it." But the increase in speciality of adjustment
is most conspicuously exemplified in the pro-
gress of the human race ; as is seen by contrast-
ing the savage who sharpens his arrows in ex-
pectation of the periodic flight of certain birds,
with the astronomer who at a given day, hour,
and minute adjusts his telescope to watch a
transit of Venus.

In the Ufe of the highest animals, and espe-
cially in the life of the human race, character-
ized as it is by the predominant activity of the
great cephalic ganglia, there is witnessed an in-
crease in the generality of the correspondence,
parallel with the increase in speciality. As this
topic falls almost entirely within the province of
sociology, the illustration of it must be reserved
for a future chapter. Let it here suffice to re-
call the fact, already mentioned (Part I. chapter
viii.), that the progress of human knowledge has
all along been equally characterized by analysis
and by synthesis, — by the differentiation im-
137

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

plied in the recognition of relations that are
more and more special, as well as by the inte-
gration implied in the grouping of relations in
classes that are more and more general.

Along with the increase of the correspondence
in spatial and temporal remoteness, in speciality
and in generaHty, there is a continuous increase
in complexity. Indeed, in the various aspects
of psychical progress already contemplated, this
aspect has been continually illustrated. Obvi-
ously the development of sense-organs, while
widening the environment and increasing the
number of relations to which the organism may
adjust itself, enhances also the complexity of
the adjustments. Contrast the simple move-
ments of the planaria when an opaque object
passes before its rudimentary eye, with the com-
plex movements of a cat when a mouse is heard
scratching in the wainscot, and it becomes evi-
dent that the heterogeneity of the impressions
received by an organism is paralleled by the
heterogeneity of the adjustments by which it
responds to them. The multiplication of the
objects and relations of which any organism can
take cognizance involves of necessity a growing
complexity in the actions by which it adapts it-
self to their presence. In civilized man, whose
immensely developed cephalic ganglia bear wit-
ness to the predominance of psychical over phy-
sical life, this correlated advance in heterogene-

138

LIFE AND MIND

ity of correspondence is exemplified in the in-
terdependent progress of science and art. Here
again we are carried into the domain of socio-
logy, and this thread must be left to be gathered
up with the others when we come to treat of
intellectual progress.

It remains to note that the extension of the
correspondence in space and time, and its in-
crease in definite heterogeneity, both heighten
the degree of life and add to the ability to
maintain life. On the one hand, the more nu-
merous, the more complicated, and the more
clearly defined are the outer relations to which
the organism adapts itself, and the longer the
interval of time by which the adjustments may
be made to forestall external contingencies, the
greater will be the number of heterogeneous
changes in which life consists. And on the other
hand, the greater the number of heterogeneous
changes by which the organism can respond to
outer changes, the more easily and surely will
life be prolonged. Whence, says Mr. Spencer,
"we may clearly see how life and ability to
maintain life are two sides of the same fact —
how life is a combination of processes, the result
of whose workings is their own continuance."
An interesting commentary on this proposition
is furnished by Mr. Lankester's recently pub-
lished essay on " Comparative Longevity," in
which it is shown that high individuation, or the

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

power of responding heterogeneously to exter-
nal changes, is the chief, though not the sole,
factor concerned in producing length of life.
The amount of normal longevity in any spe-
cies depends upon the definite heterogeneity of
the adaptation of its individual members to en-
vironing circumstances, and also upon the ratio
of their nutrition to their expenditure. But the
preponderant importance of the former factor is
seen in the fact that, in spite of their immensely
greater personal expenditure, the higher animals
are, as a rule, very much longer lived than the
lower ones. In the civilized human races also,
as contrasted with the savage races, the life is
not only higher in degree but longer in dura-
tion : the longevity of the lowest savages rarely
exceeds forty-five years.

As we proceed to survey, in a single view, the
various truths here separately elucidated, we find
that the essential distinction, above insisted on,
between the sciences of biology and psychology,
is thoroughly justified by the very facts which
illustrate the close connection between the two.
The foregoing exposition conclusively proves
that in dealing with the adjustments of inner to
outer actions, biology " limits itself to the few
in which the outer actions are those of agents
in actual contact with the organism — food, aer-
ated medium, and things which produce certain
effects by touch (as insects which fertilize flow-
140

LIFE AND MIND

ers) ; thus leaving to psychology all other ad-
justments of inner to outer actions.** " The
moment we rose to a type of creature which
adjusts certain organic relations to relations of
which both terms are not presented to its sur-
face, we passed into adjustments of the psycho-
logical order. As soon as there exists a rudi-
mentary eye capable of receiving an impression
from a moving object about to strike the organ-
ism, and on rendering it possible for the organ-
ism to make some adapted movement, there is
shown the dawn of actions which we distinguish
as intelligent. As soon as the organism, feebly
sensitive to ajar or vibration propagated through
its medium, contracts itself so as to be in less
danger from the adjacent source" of disturbance,
we perceive a nascent form of the life classed as
psychical. That is to say, whenever the corre-
spondence exhibits some extension in space or
in time, some increase of speciality or complex-
ity, we find we have crossed the boundary be-
tween physical life and psychical life." ^

^ Spencer, Principles of Psychology, vol. i. p. 392. [Part
III. chapter xi. § 175.]

141

CHAPTER XV
THE COMPOSITION OF MIND^

IN pursuing the analysis of a complex series
of phenomena, with the object of ascertain-
ing the simple ultimate elements of which
the complex series is made up, we shall some-
times most satisfactorily accomplish our pur-
pose if we begin with the most complicated cases
which the series presents. After explaining these
by resolving them into their less complex com-
ponents, our analysis " must proceed similarly
with these components ; and so, by successive
decompositions, must descend to the simpler
and more general, reaching at last the simplest
and most general." Let us proceed, after this
fashion, to inquire into the Composition of
Mind. Beginning with the most highly in-
volved operations of conscious intelligence, and
neglecting, for the time being, the consideration
of those emotional states by which all operations
of intelligence are to a greater or less degree ac-
companied, let us pursue our analysis until we
have arrived at those ultimate units of feeling
in the manifold compounding of which all con-
^ [See Introduction, § 20.]
142

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

scious operations, whether intellectual or emo-
tional, consist.

Beginning, then, with a somewhat compli-
cated operation of intelligence, let us consider
the process by which an astronomer, knowing
the dimensions of the earth, is enabled to cal-
culate therefrom the distance of the moon. He
must, in the first place, assimilate in thought the
case of the moon to like cases in which the dis-
tances of inaccessible objects upon the earth are
indirectly measured. When a land surveyor
wishes to ascertain the distance of a church
tower situated on the farther side of a river, he
has recourse to an indirect method of measure-
ment. Upon his own side of the river he first
measures the distance between two points suffi-
ciently removed from each other, and this dis-
tance he calls a base line. From each end of
the base line he now takes a sight at the inac-
cessible tower, and, with the proper instruments,
measures the difference between its direction and
the direction of the base line. In this way he
obtains an ideal triangle, of which the tower is
the apex ; and, knowing the length of the base
line, and the value of the two angles at the ends
of the base line, he calculates by trigonometry
the length of the two sides which express the
distance of the tower from the ends of the base
line. Now, the astronomer, imitating this pro-
cess, assumes as a base line the known distance
143

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

between two remote points on the earth's sur-
face, as for example London and Cape Town ;
and then from each of these points he proceeds
to take the bearings of the moon. The process,
indeed, is here compKcated by the fact that, ow-
ing to the long distance, the inequalities of the
earth's surface, and its curvature, the observer
at Cape Town cannot see the position of Lon-
don, and vice versa. It is necessary, therefore,
again to resort to an indirect method, and,
having measured the meridional bearings of the
moon from the north pole at London and from
the south pole at Cape Town, to compare these
bearings with the knowledge that the bearing of
the one pole from the other is i8o degrees or
two right angles. A further correction must be
made for the fact that London and Cape Town
are not on the same meridian. But disregarding
these steps in the process, as unnecessarily com-
plicating our case, we have to note that, when
the astronomer has thus indirectly measured
the angles which ideal lines drawn to the moon
must make at the two ends of his long base
line from London to Cape Town, he is at
once enabled, like the land surveyor, to calcu-
late by trigonometry the lengths of these ideal
lines, and thus to ascertain the moon's distance.
What, now, is the essential characteristic of the
process which the astronomer goes through ? Or,
in other words, what is the fundamental psy-
144

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

chical process by the manifold compounding of
which is built up this highly complex series of
inferences ?

From beginning to end, the fundamental pro-
cess is the cognition of the equality of sundry
relations. The thought which underlies and de-
termines the whole calculation is the cognition
that the relations between the sides and angles
of a great triangle, having for its apex the moon,
and for its base the chord of the arc of the
meridian of London measured to a point in the
southern hemisphere upon the same parallel
with Cape Town, are equal to the relations be-
tween the sides and angles of a similar small tri-
angle, having an inaccessible tower for its apex
and a measured line of five or six rods for its
base ; and that these relations, in turn, are equal
to the relations between the sides and angles of
a still smaller and similar triangle which may
be drawn on a sheet of paper, and of which the
sides and angles may, if necessary, be directly
measured. Now, this cognition implies the pre-
vious establishment, in the calculator's mind, of
sundry cognitions of the equalities and inequal-
ities of certain relations between the sides and
angles of triangles. To show briefly how such
cognitions have been established, let us cite the
simplest case — that in which the two angles at
the base of an isosceles triangle are recognized
as equal to each other. Euclid establishes this

VOL. Ill

145

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

point by supposing two similar and equal isos-
celes triangles, of which the one is turned over
and placed upon the other, so that the apex and
one side of the one will coincide with the apex
and opposite side of the other. Then the other
sides and the bases must respectively coincide,
otherwise the two triangles would not be similar
and equal, and the conditions of the case would
be violated. All the sides being thus equal, each
to each, the two triangles must everywhere co-
incide, and consequently the two basal angles
must be equal, both in the triangle which has
been turned over and in the one which has kept
its original position. Now, each step of this de-
monstration is a cognition of the equality of a
pair of relations of length or of direction ; and
in each case this cognition is established, not
by any anterior demonstration, but by direct in-
spection. Or, in other words, when it is said
that two lines of equal length, starting from the
same point, and running in the same direction,
must coincide at their farther extremities, the
truth of the statement is at once recognized
simply because the states of consciousness which we
call the ideas of the two lines are totally indis-
tinguishable from each other. This immediate
perception of the equality — or, in some cases,
of the inequality — between two or more rela-
tions of position or magnitude is the goal to-
ward which every geometrical demonstration
146

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

tends. And, still more, it is the mental act im-
plied in every step of every such demonstration.
All the devices familiar to the reader of Euclid
— the bisecting of lines and angles, the drawing
of parallels and the circumscribing of circles for
argumentative purposes — are simply devices
for bringing a given pair of space relations di-
rectly into consciousness, so that their equality
or inequality may be recognized by direct in-
spection.

Manifestly the case is the same in that alge-
braic reasoning which our astronomer will often
find it desirable to employ in the course of his
computation of the moon's distance. The axiom
that " relations which are equal to the same
relation are equal to each other " is an axiom
which twice involves the immediate recognition
of the equality of two given relations. And, if
any proof were needed that the whole science
of algebra is based upon this axiom, it may be
found in one of the most common algebraic arti-
fices. " When a simpHfication may be thereby
achieved, it is usual to throw any two forms of
an equation into a proportion — a procedure in
which the equality of the relations is specifically
asserted." To cite Mr. Spencer's simple illus-
tration, — if we take any equation, 2 xy =y,
and, dividing it byjy, obtain a second equation,
2 X =jy, the legitimacy of our proceeding is at once
rendered apparent when the two equations are
147

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

thrown together in a proportion, in which it is
asserted that the ratio of 2 xy to y^ is equal to
the ratio oi ix to jy. Or, if any doubt still
remain as to the correctness of this, we resort
to the familiar device of multiplying extremes
and means, and obtain the identical proposi-
tion ixy'^-ixy'^^ in which the identity of the
two terms is immediately cognized, because the
states of consciousness which they evoke are in-
distinguishable from one another.

Thus the complicated quantitative reasoning
by which an astronomer determines the distance
of a heavenly body consists in the long-contin-
ued compounding of immediate cognitions of
the equality or inequality of two or more given
relations or groups of relations of position and
magnitude.

Before proceeding to unfold all that is im-
plied by this conclusion, let us consider another
concrete example of a somewhat different kind.
When a certain horned animal, of slender fig-
ure, with cloven hoofs, and a hairy integument,
is presented to the inspection of a naturalist,
he at once recognizes it as a giraffe ; and, if
required further to describe it, he observes that,
as having four stomachs and chewing the cud,
it belongs to the sub-order of ruminants ; as
having its toes firmly united in a solid hoof, it
belongs to the order of ungulata; as having
mammary glands and suckling its young, it be-
148

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

longs to the class of mammals ; and, as having
an internal bony skeleton, it belongs to the
sub-kingdom of vertebrates. What, now, is the
mental act which is repeated at each stage of this
description? It is " a cognition of the fact that
the relation between particular attributes in this
animal is like the relation between homologous
attributes in certain other animals." To confine
ourselves to the first clause of the description —
" the attributes implied by the term ruminant
can be known only as previously observed or
described ; and the predication of these, as pos-
sessed by the animal under remark, is the predi-
cation of attributes like certain before -known
attributes. Once more, there is no assignable
reason why, in this particular case, a relation of
coexistence should be thought, between ' such
attributes as the possession of four stomachs and
the possession of horns and cloven hoofs,' un-
less as being like certain relations of coexistence
previously known ; and, whether the think-
ing of this relation can be otherwise accounted
for or not, it is clear that the predication can-
not otherwise have any probability, much less
certainty." ^ The case is the same with the
remaining clauses of the description. In each
instance the mental operation performed by the
naturalist is the recognition of the likeness be-

^ Spencer, Principles of Psychology, vol. ii. p. 69. [Part
VI. chapter vii. § 298.]

149

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

tween certain groups of relations observed in
this giraffe and certain other groups of relations
previously classified as pertaining to ruminants,
ungulata, mammals, and vertebrates. Obviously,
therefore, the reasoning by which the places of
animals in the zoological scale are determined
consists in the compounding of cognitions of
likeness or unHkeness between certain given
groups of relations.

So far, then, the mental operation performed
by the naturalist seems to be not unlike that
performed by the astronomer. And indeed, in
spite of the superficial difference which seems
so widely to separate the classification of ani-
mals from the measurement of celestial spaces,
it will appear, on a moment's reflection, that
the only real difference between the mental pro-
cesses involved in the former case, and those
involved in the latter, is the extent to which
likeness is predicated of the relations concerned.
Deeply considered, the act of the astronomer
is the same as that of the naturalist, — save
that, while the former classifies together sundry
groups of relations as equal to one another, or
indistinguishable from one another, the latter
classifies together sundry groups of relations
as like one another, or but slightly distinguish-
able from one another. Now, in this state-
ment we see that what is meant by equality is
merely exact likeness; but something more is
150

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

needed for the accurate description of the dif-
ference between the two cases. The objects
which the astronomer contemplates are simple
triangles, presenting simple relations of posi-
tion and magnitude ; while the objects contem-
plated by the naturalist are complex organisms,
presenting immensely compounded relations of
structure and function. Now, in speaking of
simple things or simple relations, such as lengths
and breadths, weights, times, and velocities, we
habitually predicate equality or inequality of
them. " Wherever the terms of the compari-
son, being both elementary, have only one as-
pect under which they can be regarded, and can
be specifically posited as either distinguishable
or indistinguishable, we call them either unequal
or equal. But when we pass to complex things,
exhibiting at once the attributes, size, form, col-
our, weight, texture, hardness, -— things which,
if equal in some particulars, are rarely equal in
all, and therefore rarelyindistinguishable, — then
we use the term like to express, partly the ap-
proximate equality of the several attributes sep-
arately considered, and partly the grouping of
them in a parallel manner in time and space.
Similarly with the relations involved in reason-
ing. If simple, they are recognized as equal ox
unequal; if complex, as like or unlike^

The essential difference, then, between the
quantitative reasoning employed in the most

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

advanced sciences, and the qualitative reasoning
employed in those which are less advanced,
may be thus stated : in the first case the rela-
tions contemplated are so simple that they may
be directly juxtaposed in consciousness, and re-
cognized as equal or unequal ; but in the sec-
ond case the relations contemplated consist of
so many simple relations heterogeneously com-
bined, that they can only through a very indi-
rect process be juxtaposed in consciousness,
and hence are only approximately recognized as
like or unlike. That this is the only essential
difference between quantitative reasoning and
qualitive reasoning is shown by the fact that all
qualitative reasoning is vaguely quantitative,
while all quantitative reasoning begins by being
qualitative. For example — to cite Mr. Spen-
cer's admirable illustration — when a brewer de-
scribes a vat of fermenting wort as containing
carbonic acid, he makes a qualitative statement;
yet some rude notion of quantity is involved in
it. " He thinks of the carbonic acid as more,
certainly, than a cubic foot ; less, certainly, than
the total capacity of the vat : the quantity is
thought of as in some ratio to the quantity of
wort." On the other hand, " a man who has
walked a mile in fifteen minutes, and, observ-
ing that he has a quarter of a mile still to go,
infers the time it will take to reach his destina-
tion, does not primarily infer three minutes and
152

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

three quarters ; he primarily infers a short time

— a time indefinitely conceived as certainly less
than ten minutes, and certainly more than one."
Doubtless he may in an instant proceed to cal-
culate the exact length of the time ; yet, as it
will not be denied that even before calculating
he has a vague notion of the interval, it must
be admitted that his inference, though ultimately
quantitative, is, at the outset, only qualitative.
Between the two kinds of reasoning, therefore,
the only difference is the degree of definiteness
to which they are respectively developed.

Bearing in mind these mutually harmonious
conclusions — which alike imply the assertion
that, between the highest and the lowest kinds
of reasoning employed by civilized man, the
difference consists solely in the complexity of
the relations contemplated, and in the greater
or less definiteness with which these relations
are cognized as equal or unequal, like or unlike

— let us now advance a step farther. Already,
in the course of the foregoing analysis, the essen-
tial similarity between reasoning and classifica-
tion has been vividly brought before us. We
have now to scrutinize this similarity somewhat
more closely.

To cite an example with which we are already
familiar : when our astronomer, some thirty
years ago, observed that certain irregularities
in the motions of Uranus still remained un-

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

accounted for, after calculating the combined
effects of all the interior planets in producing
such irregularities, it occurred to him that the
unexplained irregularities could only be due
to the gravitative force of some undiscovered
planet outside of Uranus ; and the discovery of
Neptune was the result of this most brilliant
hypothesis. Now, the mental act involved in
this deduction was essentially a classification of
cases. The case of the unexplained perturba-
tions was mentally ranked along with the sev-
eral cases of explained perturbations presented
by the solar system, as being similarly due to
gravitative force ; and to the number of known
cases in which planets deflect each other from
the regular paths in which they would other-
wise move, a new hypothetical case was added.
Comparing, now, this mental operation with
that of the naturalist who, by virtue of certain
observed likenesses of structure and function,
ranks together lions and elephants and seals
in the class of mammals, we may conclude
roughly that the one process consists in the for-
mation of a group o^ like cases, while the other
consists in the formation of a group of like
things. And since by the expression " like
cases " we mean merely " like sets of relations
among two or moxe given groups of things," it
follows that we may characterize Reasoning as
the classification of relations, while Classification,

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

ordinarily so called, is the classification of things.
When, for example, on perceiving two similar
triangles set side by side, we proceed to make
some inference from the known value of a side
in the one to the desired value of the correspond-
ing side in the other, the act is an act of reason-
ing. But when, on taking up two similar sea-
shells, we recognize them in their totality as
belonging to an oyster or some other familiar
mollusk, the act is an act of classification, com-
monly so called. In other words, if the per-
ception of similarity is followed by the thought
of one or more of the like relations which make
up similarity, we have an act of reasoning ; but
if it is followed by the thought of other objects
presenting like relations of similarity to the one
now perceived, we have an act of classification.
But closely related as these two mental op-
erations are now seen to be, we have not yet
disclosed the full extent to which they are re-
lated. Not only is classification involved in
every act of reasoning or inference, but reason-
ing or inference is involved in every act of
classification. Not only does reasoning consist
in the grouping of relations as like or unlike,
but the classification of things can go on only
through the grouping of relations as like or un-
like. To illustrate this, let us take a further
downward step, and consider a mental operation
apparently much simpler than those hitherto

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

treated. Let us consider what is implied by
the perception of an object.

It is admitted on all sides that the perception
of an object necessarily implies the recognition
of the object as this or that, as like certain ob-
jects, and as unlike certain other objects. Every
act of perception, therefore, involves classifica-
tion. We cannot even name a chair without
implying the existence of a group of objects
which the chair resembles ; and the essential
element in the perception of a chair is not the
reception of a group of visual or tactual im-
pressions, but the interpretation of these im-
pressions as like other antecedent impressions
which, taken together, constitute the conscious-
ness of the presence of a chair. And this is
as much an act of classification as the act by
virtue of which the naturalist would rank a
newly found horned and cloven-hoofed mammal
among the ruminants ; the only difference being
that in ordinary perception the act has been per-
formed so frequently as to have become auto-
matic at an early period of life, while in scienti-
fic classification the act involves more or less
conscious thinking, and comparison of rela-
tions.

Here, in this last clause, there is hinted what
we are seeking for. Not only in scientific clas-
sification, but in ordinary perception also, there
must go on a comparison of relations, and a

156

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

grouping of them as like or unlike. In per-
ceiving an apple, for example, " the bulk is per-
ceived to be like the bulk of apples in general ;
the form like their forms ; the colour like their
colours ; the surface like their surfaces ; and so
on." For if the bulk were like that of a water-
melon, or if the shape were cubical, or if the
colour were inky black, or if the surface were
covered with thorns, the object would not be
perceived to be an apple. The act of percep-
tion, therefore, consists in the recognition of
sundry attributes as like sundry attributes pre-
viously known, and as having relations to one
another like the relations between the before-
known attributes. This will appear still more
clearly when we recollect what takes place in
visual perception. It is well known that the eye,
unassisted by the muscular and tactual senses,
can take no cognizance of distance, shape, or
solidity — the only impressions which the retina
receives are impressions of colour, and indirectly
of superficial extension. It is because of this
that infants reach out for the moon, and that
blind men, on first receiving sight, are unable
to distinguish between a round orange and a
cubical block, without feeling the surfaces of
the two. Only after repeated and careful com-
parison of visual impressions with muscular and
tactual impressions is the patient enabled to
discover, by the eye alone, that all the objects

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

in the room or in the landscape are not in con-
tact with his body ; and it is only after a sim-
ilar elaborate comparison that the young child
achieves the feat of looking at an object in a
given direction, or of recognizing by vision its
father or mother. Accordingly, when looking
about the room, all that you really see is a con-
geries of coloured spots. Your knowledge of
the presence of divers objects — chairs, win-
dows, mirror, mantelpiece — is not given in
the act of vision, but is the result of an exceed-
ingly complex, though apparently instantaneous,
process of reasoning. Your seemingly immedi-
ate knowledge that a certain group of coloured
spots means a chair is due to the fact that from
early infancy this group of coloured spots, or
some other like group, has been associated with
sundry impressions of touch and resistance, and
with sensations yielded by the little muscles
which turn the eye hither and thither. The
frequency with which the association has been
repeated has rendered the process of inference
automatic, just as, to a less-marked extent, the
process of reading, at first accompanied by a
conscious classification of every letter, has be-
come automatic, so that we are not aware of
cognizing the letters at all. Nevertheless, al-
though too rapid to rise into consciousness, the
process is still one of inference, implying, like
any other process of inference, the grouping of

158

,m^^_

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

certain relations as like or unlike certain other
relations. Certain correlated groups of colours
are automatically classified with other correlated
groups of colours previously received upon the
retina, and also with certain correlated groups
of muscular and tactual impressions, previously
received simultaneously with the groups of col-
ours in question. Thus our visual perception
of objects consists of a group of sensations ^///i
a complicated series of inferences which does
not differ fundamentally from a course of scien-
tific demonstration. And the same truth may
be, with equal justice, though less vividly, illus-
trated in the case of any other sense than sight.
A much simpler case than that of visual per-
ception is that of a spoon, containing some un-
known liquid, thrust into the mouth by another
person in the dark. Here the only clew to the
character of the liquid is its taste ; and when,
by its peculiar mild pungency, the Hquid is re-
cognized as bromide of potassium, the psychical
process consists of a gustatory sensation plus an
act of classification by which the sensation is
grouped, with other like sensations previously
received. The example is a good one, as show-
ing us also the obverse case. If bromide of
potassium has not been previously tasted, the
result is simply gustatory sensation unattended
by perception ; or rather, it is gustatory sen-
sation generically classified as mildly pungent,
159

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

but not specifically referred to any known liquid,
and therefore only partially interpreted. There
is perception, but it is incomplete.

It is not pretended that these psychological
truths are established by the crude and frag-
mentary exposition here given. The numerous
observations and experiments upon which they
are based would be very interesting to recount ;
but our space does not admit of detailed proof,
nor is it needed ; since these truths are the
common property of psychologists, and will be
questioned by no competent student of the
phenomena of mind. Referring, for minute and
elaborate proof, to Mr. Spencer's " Principles
of Psychology," let us be content with setting
down the implication which is common to all
these conclusions ; namely, that between the
various psychical processes thus far contem-
plated, which include alike the measurement of
celestial distances by the astronomer, and the
direct perception of objects by the unlearned
child, or indeed by the ape or dog, there is
generic identity. The fundamental characteristic
which is common to them all is the reception
of certain groups of sensations, accompanied by
the classification of these groups of sensations,
and of the relations between them, according to
their various likenesses and unlikenesses. The
difference between the highest and the lowest
of the processes thus brought together con-
i6o

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

sists solely in the heterogeneity and definite-
ness of the groups which are classified, and in
the extent to which the classifications are com-
pounded.

To such a statement, however, there is one
essential qualification to be added. It is not
strictly correct to say that the classification in-
volved alike in the most complex act of reason-
ing and in the simplest act of perception is a
classification of groups of sensations and of the
relations between them. For when an object
is perceived, along with the sensations actually
present, there are remembered or internally
revived sensations which enter into the classi-
fication, and these internally revived sensations
are what we call ideas or images. For example,
" when passing the finger over a rough surface,
the perception contains very much more than
the coordinated sensations immediately experi-
enced. Along with these there go the remem-
bered visual impressions produced by such a
surface, which cannot be kept out of the mind,
and in the suggestion of which the perception
largely consists ; and there are automatic in-
ferences respecting the texture and density of
the substance." So when we see an orange
lying on the table, the only sensation actually
present and entering into the case is the sen-
sation of a patch of reddish-yellow colour sur-
rounded by other unlike patches of colour.

vnr TTi 1 O I

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

The other elements in the classification of which
the perception consists are ideas or internally
revived sensations of position, shape, bulk,
texture, juiciness, and so on. And now we dis-
cover another point of difference in degree be-
tween perception and reasoning. While in per-
ception some of the elements classified must be
sensations actually present, in reasoning all the
elements classified may be ideas or internally
revived sensations. The sides and angles of
the isosceles triangles which the astronomer
compares in estimating the moon's distance are
ideal sides and angles ; and the naturalist, in
writing about the classification of ruminants,
deals solely with internally revived impressions
of horns, hoofs, and multiple stomachs, which
were previously present to sense. Thus the
classification involved in reasoning differs from
that involved in perception, not only in heter-
ogeneity and definiteness, but also in indirect-
ness. Nevertheless the difference is not funda-
mental, but is only a difference in degree ; as
is proved by the fact that alike in reasoning and
in perception there is implied the previous re-
ception of the actually present sensations of
which the ideas or revived sensations are the
copies. Our statement, therefore, will become
strictly correct if we say that the fundamental
characteristic common to the most refined rea-
soning, and the crudest perception, is the pre-
162

m

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

sence of certain states of consciousness^ accom-
panied by the classification of these states and
of the relations between them according to
their various likenesses and unlikenesses ; the
differences between the processes being differ-
ences in heterogeneity, definiteness, indirectness,
and extent of integration or compounding.

Let us next observe that, as between the
highest and lowest kinds of reasoning there is a
great difference in the extent to which the com-
parison of relations is carried, so between the
highest and lowest kinds of perception there is
a similar difference.

There is a striking contrast in degree of di-
rectness " between the perception that some
surface touched by the finger is hard, and the
perception that a building at which we are look-
ing is a cathedral. The one piece of knowledge
is almost immediate. The other is mediate in
a double, a triple, a quadruple, and even in a
still higher degree. It is mediate inasmuch as
the solidity of that which causes the visual im-
pression is inferential ; mediate inasmuch as its
position, its size, its shape, are inferential ; me-
diate inasmuch as its material, its hollowness,
are inferential ; mediate inasmuch as its ecclesi-
astical purpose is an inference from these infer-
ences ; and mediate inasmuch as the identifica-
tion of it as a particular cathedral is a still more
remote inference resulting from the union of

163

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

these inferences with those many others through
which the locaHty is recognized."^ From this
example it appears that while, at the highest
extreme, perception emerges into reasoning, on
the other hand at its lowest extreme, as where
a body is perceived to be rough or hard, it
borders very closely upon simple sensation.
Proceeding then a step farther in our descend-
ing analysis, we have to examine the character
of the difference between perception and sen-
sation.

Sensation, no less than perception, has a
variety of grades. At the one extreme it rises
to a point where it is barely distinguishable
from perception ; at the other extreme it lapses
into an unconscious or sub-conscious psychical
state. While writing these lines the sum total
of my consciousness may contain elements con-
tributed by dull sounds of persons walking
overhead, by the rumbling of wagons in the
street, by faint odours wafted from the kitchen,
by soothing pulses of sensation from the pipe
held in my mouth, and by the occasional strik-
ing of the cuckoo-clock, as well as by the pres-
sure exerted by the chair in which I am sitting,
and the table upon which my arm is resting,
and the pen which is grasped in my fingers. But
while I am absorbed in thought, none of these

^ Spencer, Principles of Psychology, vol. ii. p. 245. [Part
yi. chapter xviii. § 352.]

164

I

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

elements rise into the foreground of conscious-
ness, — though they are present as psychical
states, as is shown by the fact that the going out
of the pipe or the failure of the clock to strike
is noticed; yet I hQCome conscious of them, in the
ordinary sense of the word, " only when they
pass a certain degree of intensity," as when a
child overhead falls on the floor, or when the
shriek and rumble of a passing railway train are
added to the confused mass of outdoor noises ;
"and only then can I be said to experience"
these feelings " as sensations." But when a
psychical state rises into the foreground of con-
sciousness and becomes known as a sensation,
as when my finger happens to touch the heated
pipe -bowl, then "I not only contemplate the
afl^ection as an afi^ection of myself — as a state
through which my consciousness is passing or
has passed — but I also contemplate it as ex-
isting in a certain part of my body — as stand-
ing in certain relations of position. I perceive
where it is." The close relationship between
sensation and perception is illustrated by this
example : nevertheless psychology here distin-
guishes between two portions of the mental act.
Though in the practical experience there is no
separation between the two, yet analysis enables
us to distinguish between the consciousness
of the painful feeling and the consciousness of
the presence of the heated object which causes

165

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

the feeling ; and the former of these we call
sensation, while the latter we call perception.

We shall now be greatly assisted by observ-
ing a psychological fact of which Sir William
Hamilton caught a glimpse, though, as usual,
his analysis was not sufficiently thorough, and
his statement of the case was inaccurate. We
need not pause to criticise the theorem that
while " perception proper and sensation proper
exist only as they coexist, in the degree or in-
tensity of their existence they are always found
in an inverse ratio to each other;" for its in-
accuracy has been fully demonstrated by Mr.
Mill and also by Mr. Spencer, who shows the
true statement to be, "not that sensation and
perception vary inversely, but that they exclude
each other with degrees of stringency which
vary inversely." To illustrate this, we will sup-
pose that you are getting water from a hot-
water faucet, and that, as the water begins by
running cold, you clasp your hand about the
faucet so as to turn it off when the water has
become sufficiently warm. While the water is
cool or tepid, sensation is at the minimum, and
not only is there no exclusion of perception,
but consciousness is occupied with the outer
phenomena, the faucet and the running water,
more than with the inner phenomenon, the
feeling of temperature. The pointed end of the
upright part of the faucet, and the protuberance
i66

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

where the horizontal piece is fitted upon it,
awaken tactual sensations which coexist with
the sensation of temperature, and the automatic
comparison of these sensations which consti-
tutes the perception of the faucet goes on un-
hindered. To concentrate consciousness upon
the feeling of temperature requires a voluntary-
act of attention, induced by the desire to know
how wirm the water is getting. As the water
becomes very much warmer, so as to be slightly
uncomfortable, the perception of the faucet does
not become gradually less vivid, but it tends
to disappear entirely, and consciousness tends
to occupy itself exclusively with the feeling of
temperature. Only through a distinct volun-
tary effort can the perception be made to come
into the foreground of consciousness. If now
there comes a sudden spurt of very hot water,
the tactual perception of the faucet is for the
moment entirely excluded, and the perceptive
act implied in the estimation of the degree of
temperature is also expelled from consciousness,
which is occupied entirely with the sensation of
pain, inducing a violent withdrawal of the hand.
Here sensation, reaching a maximum, has quite
driven out the group of tactual perceptions,
and even visual perceptions are to that extent
held in abeyance, that for the moment they
cease to occupy the attention. If now a piece
of soap is taken from its dish, the newly aroused
167

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

group of sensations, of weight, hardness, smooth-
ness, and the rest, exist in minimum intensity ;
and consciousness is occupied, not with them,
but with the presence of the piece of soap : per-
ception tends to exclude sensation.

" What, now," inquires Mr. Spencer, " is
the real nature of this mutual exclusion? Is it
not an instance of the general fact that con-
sciousness cannot be in two equally distinct
states at the same time ; and that in proportion
as the predominance of one state becomes more
marked, the suppression of other states becomes
more decided? I cannot know that I have a
sensation without, for the moment, having my
attention specially occupied with that sensation.
I cannot know the external thing causing it,
without, for the moment, having my attention
specially occupied with that external thing. As
either cognition rises, the other ceases." By
the " external thing," Mr. Spencer does not
here mean the Ding an sichy but the group of
phenomena which are referred to an existence
outside of the organism. But we have already
seen that, when consciousness is so occupied
with such a group of phenomena that the result
is the perception of an object, the psychical act
involved is an automatic classification of sun-
dry states of consciousness and of the relations
between them, according to their various Kke-
nesses and unlikenesses. Thus we arrive at the
i68

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

distinction between sensation and perception.
Impossible as it is to disentangle the two in
practical experience, analysis yet distinguishes
the former as an apparently elementary state
of consciousness, while the latter is " a discern-
ing of the relations between states of conscious-
ness." According, therefore, as attention is
directed chiefly to a conscious feeling or to the
relations between a number of feelings, is now
sensation and then perception predominant.

It remains to be observed that sensations,
or — as we may otherwise call them — feelings,
are either peripherally or centrally initiated. In
other words, a feeling may either originate at
the surface of the organism — as Is the case
with sensations of sight, hearing, smell, taste,
and touch, and In the main with muscular and
thermal sensations ; or it may originate In the
interior of the organism — as is the case with
the sensations of hunger and repletion, and with
certain muscular sensations, such as cramp ; or,
again, it may start from some group of nerve
centres, as is the case with those vague feelings
which accompany more or less complex acts
of perception and reasoning, and which, when
they acquire a certain degree of prominence, we
call emotions. By the inclusion of these states
of consciousness, the term " feeling " covers
a somewhat wider range of meaning than the
term " sensation." Nevertheless the current use
169

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

of the word " feeling " to designate indiffer-
ently a sensation or an emotion bears uncon-
scious witness to the fact that the two kinds
of psychical state differ only in their modes of
genesis and of composition. The contrast be-
tween a peripheral sensation, as of colour or
touch, and an emotion, is chiefly a contrast in
degree of definiteness and of localization. But
this contrast holds also between peripheral sen-
sations and such vague internal sensations as
hunger, which, being known as cravings, are
assimilated to the lowest orders of emotion.
From this difference in definiteness arises the
fact that the peripheral sensations admit of
being definitely grouped according to their re-
lations of likeness and unlikeness, and thus
afford the material for perception and reasoning,
while emotional states admit no such definite
grouping, but arrange themselves variously in
clusters, the particular character of the cluster
being determined by certain contemporaneous
perceptions or ideal reproductions of past per-
ceptions. For these reasons the ultimate psy-
chological nature of emotion can be reached
only through a synthetical interpretation which
starts by recognizing the fadt that, along with
that classifying of conscious states which occurs
in perception and reasoning, there goes on a
recognition of certain states as pleasurable or
desirable to retain in consciousness, and a re-
170

i

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

cognition of certain other states as painful or
desirable to expel from consciousness. Thus in
practical experience emotions are, in however
slight a degree, inseparably associated with per-
ceptions and inferences, as the vague, internally
initiated feelings accompanying the definite pe-
ripheral feelings in the classifying of which the
perceptions and inferences consist.

Looking back now over the region already
traversed, we find that we have passed in review
a large number of mental operations which dif-
fer immensely in complexity, some of them be-
ing performed only by the most highly educated
adult civilized men, while others are performed
habitually by children, barbarians, and numer-
ous animals inferior to man. Yet, amid all this
diversity, our analysis has detected a fundamen-
tal unity. In spite of their vast differences in
complexity, we have seen that all these mental
operations are ultimately made up of the same
psychical process. The grouping of the rela-
tions among feelings is the elementary act which
is repeated alike in each simple and direct act
of perception, and in each complicated and in-
direct act of ratiocination. At the present stage
of our analysis, therefore, the ultimate elements
of mind would seem to h^ feelings and the rela-
tions between feelings. It remains to add that
relations themselves must be secondary feelings
due to the bringingtogether of primary feelings.
171

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

We can know a relation only as some modifica-
tion of consciousness resulting from some com-
bination of the feelings directly aroused in us by
inner or outer agencies ; and such modification
of consciousness must be itself a kind of feeling.
For further illustration let us briefly mention
the different relations in the order of their de-
creasing complexity, that we may note the fun-
damental relation involved in them all. The
most complex relations are those of similarity
and dissimilarity, as exemplified when we recog-
nize the kinship between a thoroughbred race-
horse and a Shetland pony, or the complicated
divergences between a city and a village. Sim-
pler relations are those of cointension and non-
cointension, as when we perceive that two sounds
are equal in degree of loudness, or that in grasp-
ing wood and in grasping marble the feelings
of temperature are different in degree ; of coex-
tension and non - coextension, as when two lines
or two areas are seen to be equal or unequal ;
of coexistence and non-coexistence, as when the
yellow - reddish light reflected by an orange
is regarded as accompanied by sweetness and
juiciness, but not by viscidity; o{ connature and
non-connature, as when greater warmth is men-
tally assimilated to less warmth, but distin-
guished from blueness or roughness. Now,
underlying all these relations, and all mental
processes whatever, is the relation of likeness
172

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

and unlikeness between primary states of con-
sciousness. Given the power of recognizing two
feelings or conscious states as like each other,
and two other feelings or conscious states as
unlike each other, and we have the primordial
process in the manifold compounding of which
all operations of intelligence consist. Let us now
take into the account the universally admitted
fact that consciousness is rendered possible only
by ceaseless change of state — that a uniform
state of consciousness is in no respect different
from complete unconsciousness. If our minds
were to become spellbound, like the palace of
the Sleeping Beauty, all our thoughts and feel-
ings remaining fixed in statu quo, our conscious
existence would be practically at an end. For
consciousness to exist at all, it is necessary that
a given state should be followed by a different
state. But this is not all that is required. A
succession of feelings, of which no two were
alike, would not give rise to consciousness, since
the recognition of any feeling implies its classi-
fication with some antecedent like feeling. Con-
sciousness, therefore, " is not simply a succession
of changes, but an orderly succession of changes
— a succession of changes combined and arranged
in special ways." Thus we reach the law of the
Composition of Mind. Since intelligence can-
not arise or continue unless consciousness is
continually passing from one state into a differ-

173

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

ent state, it follows that there must be a contin-
uous differentiation of states ; and again, since
intelligence cannot arise or continue unless par-
ticular states of consciousness are continually-
known as like certain previous states, it follows
that there must be a continuous integration of
states. Alike in the most rudimentary percep-
tion and in the most developed reasoning, the
essential process is the separation of the unlike
and the bringing together of the like. So that,
" under its most general aspect, all mental action
whatever is definable as the continuous differentia-
tion and integration of states of consciousness^' and
the kind of mental action is regarded as high
or low, according to the greater or less extent
to which the differentiation and integration are
carried. The phenomena of conscious intelli-
gence are thus seen to conform to the universal
law of evolution ; and we may further note that
this conclusion is entirely in harmony with the
definition of psychical life as the continuous ad-
justment of inner to outer relations. For clearly,
when an intelligence is developing in the midst
of a complex environment, the greater the num-
ber of subjective relations which are adjusted to
objective relations, the greater will be the extent
to which the differentiation and integration of
conscious states will be carried.

Here we may seem to have arrived at a sat-
isfactory conclusion of our analysis. But the
174

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

lowest depths of the problem yet remain to
be sounded, as will be seen when we consider
a superficial objection not unfrequently urged
against the foregoing views. Alike in all the
mental operations which have formed the sub-
ject matter of our analysis, we have seen that
the relations of likeness and unlikeness entering
into the case are classified with certain other
relations of likeness and unlikeness previously
cognized. The thought which determines the
astronomer in calculating the moon's distance
implies previous experience of triangles and of
numerical relations. In the classification of a
giraffe there is implied previous acquaintance
with the complex relations of structure and
function connoted by the terms ruminant^ ungu-
late^ monodelphian, mammal, vertebrate, and ani-
mal. The perception of an apple implies nu-
merous antecedent experiences of colour, size,
configuration, smoothness, odour, and taste.
And in like manner, though we have provision-
ally defined a sensation as an " elementary state
of consciousness," yet we have also seen that,
in order to become truly conscious of a sensa-
tion, we must know it, or, in other words, must
classify it with some like sensation previously
felt. In short, we have seen that there can be
no cognition, of whatever order, which is not a
recognition, necessarily implying some previous
combination of psychical states. How then, it

175

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

is asked, can there be any first cognition ? How
can intelligence ever begin at all, if the first and
simplest intelligent act implies a reference to
experiences which, in accordance with the theory,
must have preceded any intelligent act ?

Formidable as this objection may seem, and
unanswerable as it would have been if urged
half a century ago, it has to-day no force what-
ever ; and those who now deliberately urge it
succeed only in betraying their entire lack of
acquaintance with the progress which psycho-
logy has made since the times of Reid and Stew-
art. As long as psychological questions were
settled simply by introspection — by observing
what goes on in the consciousness of adult civil-
ized man — the objection here cited must have
seemed conclusive. But familiarity with the con-
ception of evolution has now led us to regard
things in general, not as coming at once into
fulness of being, but as gradually beginning to
be; and in the case of the phenomena of intel-
ligence, this view of the question is amply jus-
tified by experiments in objective psychology
presently to be mentioned. The conception
of an absolutely first cognition, not determined
by previous psychical states, rests upon a fallacy
similar to that upon which rested the preforma-
tion theory in biology. Just as it was formerly
held that the embryo started as a fully devel-
oped organism, differing from an adult organ-

176

I

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

ism only in size, so the objection which we are
now considering involves the hypothesis that the
earliest cognitions of an infant are like those of
an adult in point of definiteness, the only differ-
ence being in the quantity of them. The latter
hypothesis is as contrary as the former to the
Doctrine of Evolution, and it is quite as de-
cidedly negatived by the observation of facts.
For let us observe what is implied by the ac-
quiring of a definite cognition by an infant. If
the foregoing analysis be taken as correct, it is
obvious that when any object, as an orange, is
first presented to the mind of an infant, it can-
not be perceived or identified as an orange. Be-
fore this intellectual feat can be achieved, there
must go on for some time that complicated
grouping of visual, tactual, and gustatory sen-
sations above described. In accordance with the
established theory of vision, we must admit
that, when the orange is held before the child's
eye, the only sensation aroused is that of a red-
dish-yellow colour, which cannot even be per-
ceived to be round until after it has been asso-
ciated with sundry tactual sensations. But this
is not all. Not even the sensation of a reddish-
yellow colour can acquire definite shape in con-
sciousness, until sensations of blue, or red, or
green, or white colour have been aroused, with
which it can be contrasted, and until a subse-
quent like sensation of reddish-yellow colour

VOL. Ill 177

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

has been aroused to which it can be assimilated.
Observe now the position into which we are
brought. We are obHged to hold that the first
sensation of orange colour cannot, strictly speak-
ing, exist as a sensation at all ; while, neverthe-
less, a subsequent sensation of orange colour
(not, in any actual case, the second, but the
twentieth or hundredth) occurring after inter-
vening sensations of blue or green, can acquire
definite shape as a sensation by being compared
with this first sensation which is not strictly
a sensation. Obviously then, though the first
presentation of orange colour cannot awaken a
visual sensation which can be known as such, it
must produce some psychical state which is real,
though not known. For if no psychical state
were produced by the first presentation, then
the second, or twentieth, or hundredth presen-
tation could no more awaken a definite state of
consciousness than the first. We are thus led to
the assertion that states of consciousness may be
produced by the differential grouping or com-
pounding of psychical states which are beneath
consciousness.

Now this conclusion, which, admirably ex-
plains the beginnings of conscious intelligence
in the young child, is completely confirmed by
experiments lately made with reference to the
continuous genesis of sensations in the adult.
Not only does the infant frame its earliest con-

178

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

scious sensations by the compounding of un-
conscious or sub-conscious psychical changes, but
in every sensation of sound, colour, odour, taste
or touch which the adult receives, there is a
precisely similar formation of a conscious state
by the compounding of unconscious or sub-con-
scious psychical states. In the case of sound,
the evidence for this statement amounts to com-
plete demonstration ; the evidence is hardly less
strong in the case of sight ; and in the case of
the other senses, all the evidence thus far ob-
tained points toward the same conclusion. Let
us first examine the composition of a sensation
of sound, as admirably elucidated by M.Taine
in his recent treatise on "Intelligence."

In musical sounds three characteristics are to
be distinguished — loudness, pitch, and quality
or timbre. The first of these, the loudness, de-
pends upon the amplitude of the atmospheric
waves by which the sensation of sound is caused.
A series of sound-producing waves, like any
other series of waves, has its elevations and de-
pressions, and the height of the elevation above
the depression is called the amplitude of the
wave. The loudness of the sound varies as the
square of the wavers amplitude. From this it
follows that every elementary sound has a period
of minimum intensity, answering to the wave's
minimum amplitude when it is just beginning
to rise ; secondly, a period of maximum inten-
179

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

sity answering to the wave's maximum ampli-
tude when it has risen to its greatest height ; and,
thirdly, a period of minimum intensity, answer-
ing to the wave's minimum amplitude when it
has sunk nearly to the level again ; while be-
tween these minima and the maximum there
are many varying degrees of loudness. In other
words, every elementary sound is at first faint,
then gradually becomes loud, then grows fainter,
till it disappears. Now note what happens when
elementary sounds are made to succeed each
other. If the succession be irregular, there is
a mere chaos of noises — a case with which we
need not here deal. But if the succession be
regular, and steadily increase in rapidity, there
follows a remarkable series of results. As long
as the waves or pulses answering to the elemen-
tary sounds succeed each other slowly, the sounds
are distinguishable from each other as raps or
puffs, according to the instrument employed,
and each has its maximum and its two minima
of intensity. But when the waves begin to strike
the ear at the rate of about sixteen in a sec-
ond, the consciousness of separate raps or puffs
becomes evanescent, and there arises the con-
sciousness of a continuous tone of very low
pitch. That the consciousness of the separate
sounds has not quite ceased, and that the con-
tinuousness of the tone which they compose
is not complete, are shown by the fact that the
1 80

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

maxima and minima are still perceived. In the
deepest bass notes of an organ, for example,
the pulsations are clearly distinguishable — a
fact which proves that we are conscious of the
effects answering respectively to the protuber-
ances and to the hollows of the waves. Now,
the pitch of a tone depends upon the rapidity
with which the waves succeed each other, and,
therefore) upon their length, or the distance
between two successive hollows, because as the
waves come faster they grow shorter. The
shorter the waves, the higher the pitch. Hence,
as the pitch rises, the protuberance of any
wave approaches nearer and nearer to the pro-
tuberances of the waves immediately behind it
and in front of it, and the maximum intensities
of sound which answer to the protuberances be-
come crowded together in consciousness. The
result is that, after a while, the maxima and
minima are no longer distinguishable by the
ear, so that by no effort of attention can we dis-
cern the elementary pulses of which the tone is
composed. The tone asserts itself to be com-
pletely homogeneous. All that mere introspec-
tion could discover in consciousness would be
an apparently simple sensation of musical tone.
Yet into the composition of this sensation there
enter a thousand or several thousand psychical
states, answering to the presence of as many ele-
mentary sounds with their maxima and minima
i8i

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

of intensity. And if any one of these elemen-
tary sub-conscious psychical states were absent,
the character of the conscious sensation would
be different from what it is.

But this is not all. Every musical tone has a
timbre or quality of its own, according as it pro-
ceeds from a piano, a violin, a flute, or any
other instrument. Now, Helmholtz has proved
that the quality of any tone is due solely to the
number and combinations of certain higher and
fainter tones which accompany it. Along with
the fundamental note there are heard sundry
harmonic notes, due to vibrations from two to
ten times more rapid than those which consti-
tute the fundamental note. When any note is
sounded on the piano, the first six harmonics
are sounded with it ; when the same note is
sounded on the violin, by means of the bow,
the first six harmonics are sounded so feebly
as to be overpowered by the seventh, eighth,
ninth, and tenth ; and this is the only cause of
the diflPerence in quality of tone between the
piano and the violin. Now, by an effort of
attention these harmonic over- tones may be
recognized as distinct sensations when two or
three notes are slowly struck. But in ordina-
rily rapid playing they are not distinctly recog-
nized. Their only effect is to impart to the
tones that peculiar quality which enables the ear
to recognize the instrument from which they
182

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

emanate. Thus our apparently simple sensa-
tions of musical sound are enormously complex.
When ¥-in-alt is sounded on the violin, there
are produced, in the course of a single second,
several thousand psychical states which together
make up the sensation of pitch, fifty-five times
as many psychical states which together make
up the sensation of quality, and an immense
number of other psychical states which together
make up the sensation of intensity. These psy-
chical states are not, in any strict sense of the
term, states of consciousness ; for if they were
to rise individually into consciousness, the re-
sult would be an immense multitude of sensa-
tions, and not a single homogeneous sensation.
There is no alternative, therefore, but to con-
clude that in this case a seemingly simple state
of consciousness is in reality compounded of an
immense multitude of sub-conscious psychical
changes.

Returning now to what we have called the
elementary sound, by the manifold compound-
ing of which all cognizable tones, qualities, and
intensities are built up, we shall the more read-
ily yield to the evidence which shows that even
this primitive unit of sound is not elementary.
For as M. Taine observes, each so-called ele-
mentary sound, in passing from its minimum to
its maximum, passes through an infinite series
of degrees of intensity, and, unless there were

183

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

some psychical modification corresponding to
each increment of intensity, there would be no
state of consciousness answering to the total rise
from the minimum to the maximum. Again,
while, for simplicity's sake, we have assumed
that each of the raps or puffs which occur too
slowly to be heard as a single tone of lowest
pitch is heard by itself as an elementary sensa-
tion, this is not strictly true. For the so-called
simple sensation must be either a sensation of
musical tone or a sensation of noise. In the
former case its composite character has been
already shown. In the latter case, in the sensa-
tion of noise, rap, or puff, the truly primitive
elements are sub-conscious psychical states an-
swering to successive waves of unequal lengths.
Any one of these waves by itself will not pro-
duce a genuine state of consciousness ; it is only
by compounding the sub-conscious psychical
affections which they severally produce, that we
obtain the so - called elementary sensation of
noise or rap.

In every way, therefore, the conclusion is
forced upon us that every one of our apparently
simple auditory sensations is made up of a vast
multitude of psychical affections, of which the
really simple ones would never rise into con-
sciousness save by being joined with others.
Our simplest cognizable sensation of sound is

184

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

in reality a compound of the fourth or fifth, or
even of some higher, order.

In the case of visual sensations, the same con-
clusion is reached by a precisely similar argu-
ment, sensations of colour differing from those
of sound only as answering to wave lengths
immeasurably shorter and more rapid in suc-
cession. It is unnecessary to insist upon the
manifold analogies between sound and light,
which are each day brought more vividly before
the attention of the physical inquirer, as, for ex-
ample, in the wonderful but plausible hypothe-
sis lately propounded, that all the lines in the
spectrum are simply the harmonic over-tones of
a fundamental colour, which, being a couple of
octaves below red, is itself invisible. Restrict-
ing our statement to ascertained points of re-
semblance, it may be said that the argument
from the phenomena of musical pitch applies
step by step to the phenomena of colour as we
rise in the scale from red to violet ; the only
difference being that, as the slowest vibrations
which the eye receives occur at the rate of about
458,000,000,000,000 in a second, we cannot
experimentally distinguish, as in the case of the
lowest sounds, the seemingly elementary sensa-
tion which answers to each couple of vibrations.
Nevertheless, from experiments with the elec-
tric spark it has been shown that a sensation of

185

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

light which endures for one second is composed
of at least a million successive sensations, each
one of which, if separately excited, would rise
into consciousness and be recognized as a flash
of light. Now, as this flash of electric light
is cognized as white, it follows that the cog-
nizable sensation which lasts for one millionth
of a second is really made up of at least three
sub-conscious psychical states, which, if they
were severally to rise into consciousness, would
be severally cognized as red, green, and violet
flashes, — these being the primitive elements of
which the consciousness of white light is com-
posed.^ This fact alone shows that the method
by which a sensation is formed out of sub-con-
scious psychical changes is essentially the same
in the eye and in the ear.

No such elaborate investigations have been
made with reference to the other peripheral sen-
sations. Yet in the cases of smell and taste,
the argument is not essentially different from
what it is in the cases of hearing and vision.
The physical antecedent, either of smell or taste,
is a chemical reaction between particles of the
odorous or sapid substance, and the ends of
the olfactory or gustatory nerve fibrils. Now, a
chemical reaction implies an enormous number

1 [This assertion is based upon hypotheses as to the nature
of colour vision which are no longer generally held by recent
experimental psychologists.]

i86

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

of undulatory movements by which myriads of
molecules are seeking to reach a position of
equilibrium. Accordingly, the end of the nerve
fibrils in the olfactory chamber or in the tongue
must be rapidly smitten by little molecular
waves, just as the auditory filaments are smitten
by atmospheric waves ; and thus there is indi-
cated a course of argument similar to that em-
ployed in the case of sound. It may be fairly
argued that if each wave does not produce some
sub-conscious psychical effect, the sum of the
waves will not produce a state of consciousness
known as smell or taste ; so that here too the
seemingly primitive sensation is really deriva-
tive and compound.

M. Taine*s argument with reference to the
tactile sensations is singularly beautiful, but no
room is left for more than the briefest allusion
to a few of its salient points. All tactile sensa-
tions are either dermal or muscular ; that is, they
are due either to disturbances of nerve fibrils
embedded in the skin, or to disturbances of
nerve fibrils embedded in the extremities of the
muscles lying under the skin. In the first case,
the sensation is either of contact or of tempera-
ture ; in the second case, there is a sensation of
resistance or pressure ; and in both cases, when
the sensation proper to the nerve is prolonged
or intensified beyond a certain degree, it is at
first accompanied and finally supplanted by a

187

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

sensation of pain. Now, Weber's experiments
have shown that these differences in sensation
are not due to the excitation of distinct nerves,
but to the differently combined excitation of
the filaments of the same nerves. The differ-
ence between the sensation of contact and the
sensation of temperature depends upon the order
in which the filaments of a particular nerve are
set in vibration. And thus, as Fick observes,
we may understand why it is difficult to distin-
guish between a prick from a needle and a mi-
nute burn from a spark of fire ; for the nearer
we approach to a truly elementary sensation, the
more evanescent becomes the distinction be-
tween the compound sensation of temperature
and that of mechanical contact. On the con-
trary, when a larger area of skin is suddenly
rubbed or burned, so that enough nerves are
brought into play to compound the elements of
the sensations, then there is no difficulty in dis-
tinguishing the feeling of temperature from that
of mechanical contact. From these and many
other kindred facts, to which scanty justice is
done by this cursory allusion, M. Taine very
plausibly concludes that our ordinary tactile sen-
sations are made up of little component psychi-
cal affections differing only in number, order,
and duration ; while, according as these elemen-
tary psychical states are differently compounded,
they form conscious sensations which, as pre-
i88

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

sented to consciousness, seem to be severally
simple and distinct in kind.^

Throughout this remarkable analysis ques-
tions are suggested which can be completely
answered only when physics and chemistry, as
well as physiology and psychology, are much
more advanced than at present. Yet there are
three important principles which we may regard
as established in the case of sound, and as clearly
indicated in the case of the other sensations. The
first is, that sensations which are apparently
simple and elementary, and which cannot be
analyzed by mere observation of consciousness,
are nevertheless compounded of many succes-
sive and simultaneous sensations, which are
themselves compounded of still lower psychical
affections. The second is, that two sensations,
which differ only in th-e mode in which their
elements are compounded, may appear in con-
sciousness as generically different and irreducible
to each other. The third is, that two or more
psychical affections which, taken separately, are
as non-existent to consciousness, may, neverthe-
less, when taken together, coalesce into a sen-

^ [The progress of Experimental Psychology has now ren-
dered this paragraph antiquated. Both the empirical details
regarding the skin sensations and the theory of their relations
to the organs of sensation have entered upon a new stage since
the discovery of the ** temperature points " in 1884 (by Blix,
Goldscheider, and Donaldson).]
189

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

satlon which is present to consciousness. And
when these three conclusions are presented in a
single statement, they become equivalent to the
conclusion above obtained from examining the
beginnings of conscious intelligence in an infant ;
namely, that states of consciousness may be pro-
duced by the differential grouping or compound-
ing of psychical states which are beneath con-
sciousness.

This result is in entire harmony with what
might be inferred a priori from the known char-
acteristics of nerve action. Whether in the gray
substance of ganglia, or in the white substance
of nerve fibres, the physical action which ac-
companies psychical changes is an undulatory
displacement of molecules resulting in myriads
of little waves or pulses of movement. From
this fact we might have suspected that, as a cog-
nizable state of consciousness is attended by the
transmission of a number of little waves from
one nerve cell to another, so the ultimate psy-
chical elements of each conscious state must
correspond to the passage of these little waves
taken one by one. And this inference, which
by itself would be only a plausible guess, is
raised to the rank of a scientific hypothesis by
its harmony with the results of the analysis above
sketched.

Thus we are led to infer, as the ultimate unit
of which Mind is composed, a simple psychical
190

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

shocks answering to that sim^\t physical pulsation
which is the ultimate unit of nervous action. By
the manifold and diverse compounding of myr-
iads of such primitive psychical shocks, accord-
ing to the slight structural differences of differ-
ent nerves, are formed innumerable elementary
sensations, which appear to be generically differ-
ent ; just as aquafortis and laughing-gas, which
seem generically different, yet differ really only
in the proportions of nitrogen and oxygen which
compose them. By a similar differential com-
pounding of these elementary sensations, we
get complex sensations of blueness and redness,
warmth, pressure, sweetness, roughness, and of
various kinds of timbre and degrees of pitch.
Carrying still farther the same process of differ-
entiation and integration, we rise step by step to
perceptions of greater and greater complexity, to
conscious classifications, and to reasoning in its
various forms, from the crude inferences of the
child, barbarian, or boor, to the subtle and indi-
rect combinations of the artist and the scientific
discoverer. Thus amid all their endless diver-
sities we discern, though dimly, a fundamental
unity of composition throughout all orders of psy-
chical activity, from the highest to the lowest.^

^ [For a later criticism of this Taine-Spencer theory of the
composition of mind, which might well have modified Fiske's
acceptance of the theory had he rewritten this chapter, see
James, Principles of Psychology y vol. i. pp. 1 5 1 sqq. ]

191

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

Near the close of his first edition of the " Ori-
gin of Species," Mr. Darwin predicted that the
establishment of his theory would eventually
place the science of psychology upon a new
basis — that of the acquirement of each mental
faculty by slow gradations.^ We seem now to
have fairly started upon the path which leads
to this desired goal. For while, among the
mental operations above analyzed, some are pe-
culiar to the highest human intelligence, there
are others which are shared by the highest and
the lowest human intelligence. Others — as the
simplest inferences, several complex perceptions,
and all the most simple ones — are shared by
all human intelligence with the intelligence of
apes, dogs, horses, and indeed of the majority
of mammals, many birds, and possibly some
lower animals. Others, again — as the simplest
perceptive acts implied in recognizing a sensa-
tion— must be shared with all those animals
whose nervous system is sufficiently complex to
allow of their having any consciousness what-
ever. While others, finally — as the simplest
sub-conscious groupings of primitive psychical
shocks — must be shared by humanity with all

1 Mr. Darwin has since recognized that this new basis is
already well laid by Mr. Spencer. See Origin of Species, 6th
edition, p. 428. Indeed the Principles of Psychology, upon
which the present chapter is almost entirely founded, was first
published in 1855, four years before the Origin of Species.
192

THE COMPOSITION OF MIND

those forms of animal existence which possess
any nervous structure whatever. For instance,
that reflex action which occurs when the foot of
a sleeping person, casually moved into a cold
part of the bed, is quickly withdrawn without
arousing any state of consciousness, involves the
activity of a fragment of the human nervous
system which corresponds in general structure
to the entire nervous system of a medusa or
jelly-fish. In such lowly creatures, then, we
must suppose that the psychical actions which
go on are similar to our own sub-conscious psy-
chical actions. And, clearly, if we could trace
the slow increments by which the nervous sys-
tem has grown in heterogeneity, definiteness,
and coherence, during the countless ages which
have witnessed the progress from the primeval
marine vertebrate to the civilized modern man,
we should also be able to trace the myriad stages
of the composition of mind, from the reflex
contractions of a rudimentary fin, up to the
generalizations of an Aristotle or a Newton.

193

CHAPTER XVI
THE EVOLUTION OF MIND^

THAT the amount of intelligence mani-
fested by any vertebrate animal depends
to a certain extent upon the amount of
nerve tissue integrated in its cephalic ganglia,
and especially in the cerebrum, is a truth famil-
iar to every one, though often crudely stated
and incorrectly interpreted. In the lowest ver-
tebrate, the amphioxus, there is no brain at all.
In fishes, the cerebrum and cerebellum are much
smaller than the optic lobes ; the cerebrum
being in many large fishes about the size of a
pea, though in the shark it reaches the size of
a plum. Continuing to grow by the addition
of concentric layers at the surface, the cerebrum
becomes somewhat larger in birds and in the
lower mammals. It gradually covers up the
optic lobes, and extends backwards as we pass
to higher mammalian forms, until in the an-
thropoid apes and in man it covers the whole
upper surface of the cerebellum. In these high-
est animals it begins also to extend forwards. In
the chimpanzee and gorilla the anterior portion
1 [See Introduction, § 21.]
194

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

of the cerebrum is larger than in inferior mam-
mals ; but in these animals, as in the lowest
races of men, the frontal extension is but slight,
and the forehead is both low and narrow. In
civilised man, the anterior portion of the cere-
brum is greatly extended both vertically and
laterally. As already observed, the most pro-
minent physiological feature of human progress
has been the growth of the cerebrum. The
cranial capacity of an average European exceeds
that of the Australians and Bushmen by nearly
forty cubic inches ; and the expansion is chiefly
in the upper and anterior portions.

But this parallelism between increased in-
telligence and increased size of the cerebrum
is complicated by a further parallelism between
the amount of intelligence and the irregular
creasing and furrowing of the cerebral surface.
In the higher mammals both the cerebrum and
the cerebellum are convoluted. But the con-
volutions do not correspond with any " bumps,"
real or imaginary, on the external surface of the
skull ; they are not symmetrical on opposite
sides, like the fancied " organs " of the phreno-
logists ; nor indeed, so far as the general brain
surface is concerned, do they constitute eleva-
tions and depressions at all. The surface of the
brain does not resemble a group of hills and
valleys, but rather a perfectly smooth table-land
cut here and there by very steep and narrow
195

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

chasms. A perfectly smooth lump of butter,
irregularly furrowed by a sharp knife held per-
pendicularly, would present a surface like that
of the human brain. Now the amount of intel-
ligence depends in some way on the number
and irregularity of these furrows. In the low-
est monodelphian mammals, as the rodents and
the lowest monkeys, there are no furrows, or
only a few very shallow ones. In the carnivora
and ungulata there are numerous furrows, some
of them tolerably deep, but all of them sym-
metrically arranged. As we proceed to the
higher apes, we find the furrows increasing in
number and depth, though not yet losing their
symmetry of arrangement. Idiots, young chil-
dren, and adult savages have these creases few
and regular ; and in the lower races their ar-
rangement is similar in different individuals.
But in civilized man the creases are very nu-
merous, deep and irregular ; and they are not
alike in any two individuals.^

^ Phrenologists have done good service by familiarizing the
unlearned public with the fact that the quantity of mental
capacity is related to the quantity of brain. But the character
of this relationship is seriously misinterpreted both by phreno-
logists and by the rest of the unlearned public. It is impossible
to say that a man with an unusually large head must be a man of
unusual mental capacity, because the quantity of mental capacity
depends on many other factors besides quantity of brain. It not
onlv depends upon the sinuous creasing of the brain-surface here
described, which can in no wise be detected by an examination
196

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

'The convolutions into which the human
brain is divided by these furrows consist for
the most part of " eight distinct and concentric
layers, formed chiefly of closely packed fibres,
and of crowds of cells of very different shapes,
the layers differing in the relative proportion
of cells and fibres, and in the manner of their
arrangement." ^ Each cell sends forth processes
with which the tissue of certain fibres becomes
continuous. The office of the fibres is to es-

of the outside of the head, but it also depends largely, as Mr.
Lewes well reminds us, upon the very important element of
vascular irrigation. ** Many individual variations in mental
character depend on the variations in the calibre of the cere-
bral and carotid trunks — and many variations in the intellec-
tual, emotive, and active tendencies depend on the relative
importance of the cerebral and carotid trunks. The energy
of the brain depends mainly on the calibre of its arteries ; the
special directions of that energy depend on the territorial dis-
tribution,'*^ Problems of Life and Mind, vol. i. p. 151.
Again, the quantity of available mental energy which can be
evolved in a given period of time depends, to a very great
extent, upon the efficiency with which the blood is supplied
with oxygen and freed from carbonic acid ; so that mental
capacity not only depends upon capacity of brain, but also
upon capacity of lungs and Hver. In short, a thorough exam-
ination shows that while Mind is most directly correlated with
Brain, it is indirectly but closely correlated with the entire
organism. So that the attempt to estimate individual differ-
ences in mental capacity by referring to brain-size alone is an
utter absurdity.

^ Maudsley, Physiology and Pathology of Mind, p. 55.

197

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

tablish communication between the cells.^ Be-
tween millions of these cells there run millions
of fibres, establishing communications in all
directions. And the elaborate researches of
Schroeder van der Kolk have gone far to prove
that the shapes of the cells and the intricacy of
their communications vary with the amount
of intelligence. In various forms of mental dis-
ease, both cells and fibres undergo pathological
changes, such as atrophy, hardening, softening,
or some other form of degeneration. That is
to say, not only are the activities of the cells
impeded, but the channels of communication
are variously obliterated or blocked up.

Between these fibres and cells there are dif-
ferences of molecular structure implying differ-
ences in molecular activity. While the matter
composing a cell is built up in enormously com-
plex aggregates of molecules, wholly unshielded
from external disturbance, the nerve matter of
a fibre is protected throughout its entire length
by a membranous sheath. And while it is
probable that the action going on in a cell con-
sists in the continual fall of unstably arranged
molecules into a state of more stable equili-
brium, from which a fresh rush of blood is con-
tinually raising them to their former unstable
state ; it is probable that the action going on

^ [The form of statement here would be somewhat modi-
fied in the light of the modern ** neuron theory."]

198

I^^n a

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

I

a fibre consists in the successive isomeric
transformations and retransformations of the
systems of molecules which make up the fibre.
These conclusions are quite probable, though
not proven. But it is entirely proved that a
cell is a place where nervous energy is liberated,
while a fibre is a path along which nervous
energy is transmitted.

Bearing all this in mind, it appears that the
cerebrum and cerebellum are places where count-
less centres are constantly liberating nervous
energy, and where this liberated energy is con-
tinually flowing along definite channels and
from one centre to another. But to make the
statement complete, we should add that much
of the liberated energy is drafted off along cen-
trifugal fibres into the corpora striata, whence
it flows into the medulla and spinal centres, and
is thus diflTused over the body. Omitting the
further consideration of these circumstances, let
us inquire into the meaning of this unceasing
interchange of molecular motion between the
innumerable cells crowded together in the cere-
brum and cerebellum. In other words, what
are the functions of these supreme ganglia ?

That their functions are not in any degree
the direct coordination of sensations and move-
ments would appear from the fact that these
direct coordinations are already made in the
spinal cord and in the medulla. All the mus-
199

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

cular adjustments made in the trunk and limbs
are effected either directly by the spinal centres,
or indirectly by the sympathetic ganglia in co-
operation with the spinal centres. The medulla
coordinates all these muscular adjustments with
the muscular adjustments of the face, and with
the impressions received from the specialized
organs of sense. It' is therefore highly improb-
able that the supreme ganglia can be in any way
directly concerned with these coordinations.
And the improbability is increased by the fact
that the cerebrum and cerebellum are as desti-
tute of sensation as the free ends of the finger-
nails. Scratch one of the spinal centres, and
the result is tetanus. Scratch the medulla, and
the whole body is thrown into terrible convul-
sions. But the cerebrum and cerebellum may
be scratched and sliced without pain or convul-
sion. They take heed only of those impressions
which are communicated to them indirectly.
Countless multitudes of nerve fibres coming up
from the medulla are gathered together in the
corpora striata ; whence other fibres, continuing
from them, radiate to the innumerable cells of
which the supreme ganglia are composed.

We must conclude, therefore, that the func-
tions of the cerebrum and cerebellum are com-
prised in the further compounding of the sen-
sory impressions already compounded in the
medulla. And as such compounding involves
200

I

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

the reproduction of impressions received in
lower centres, and also involves the coordina-
tion of past with present impressions, we may-
say that the supreme ganglia are the seats of
the higher psychical life, — of memory, reason,
emotion, and volition. Dr. Maudsley has thus
appropriately termed them the ideational cen-
tres. But between the functions of the two,
thus closely related, there is nevertheless a dif-
ference. Although the precise determination of
the way in which ideational functions are shared
between the two centres has long remained a
puzzling problem, there is good reason for be-
lieving that Mr. Spencer has solved the diffi-
culty by assigning to the cerebellum the office
of doubly compound coordination in space, and
to the cerebrum the office of doubly compound
coordination in time. The facts of comparative
anatomy, and of comparative psychology, so far
as known, are in harmony with this opinion.
We saw in the chapter on Life and Mind that
the extension of the correspondence in time at
first goes on parallel with the extension of the
correspondence in space — the increased area
over which the organism can act being the mea-
sure of its increased capacity for adapting its
actions to longer and longer sequences in the
environment. But we saw also that in the hu-
man race the extension of the correspondence
in time has gone on far more rapidly than the

20I

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

extension in space — the most striking charac-
teristic of intellectual progress being the ability
of civilized man to adapt his inferences and ac-
tions to remote contingencies. Side by side with
these facts, comparative anatomy shows us that
the cerebrum and cerebellum at first keep pace
with each other in growth ; but as we reach
those higher mammals which exhibit some de-
gree of foresight, we find the cerebrum out-
growing the cerebellum and overlapping it, —
while in man the growth of the cerebrum has
been so great as to render comparatively insig-
nificant all other changes in the nervous system.
With the enormous cerebrum of civilized man
we may further contrast the preponderant cere-
bellum in those carnivorous birds whose psy-
chical life consists chiefly in the coordination
of those extremely complex and remote space
relations involved in the swooping upon prey
from great distances. The human cerebellum is
absolutely larger than that of such birds ; but
its smallness relatively to the cerebrum is a fact
parallel with the simplicity of the space relations
which man coordinates, as compared with the
time relations. Among the latter are comprised
all our ideas of cause, motion, progress, — in a
word, all manifestations of force which involve
the relation of sequence. But these ideas make
up by far the largest and most heterogeneous
portion of our psychical life.
202

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

I am inclined to regard these considerations
[as very powerful ones, — and there are several
others which lead to the same conclusion. To
present the case properly would require a whole
chapter ; but it is not essential for our present
purpose that the question should be decided.
Whether Mr. Spencer's view of the respective
functions of the cerebrum and cerebellum be
[correct or not, it equally remains true that the
class of functions shared by the two are idea-
tional functions. They compound in double,
triple, quadruple, or in far higher multiples, the
sensory elements already simply compounded
by the medulla. And it is in this compound
grouping of impressions, past and present, ac-
cording to their various degrees of likeness and
unlikeness, that thought and emotion, the high-
est phases of psychical life, consist.^

A moment ago we asked, what is the mean-
ing of the ceaseless interchange of molecular
motion which goes on among the innumerable
cells of the brain ? We now see what is the
meaning of it, for there can be but one mean-
ing. The continual redistribution of nervous
energy among the cells is the objective side of
the process of which the subjective side is the

^ [The Spencerian theory, especially as to the functions of
the cerebellum, would hardly have been defended by Fiske
had he rewritten this chapter in the light of later research. A
new era has since dawned in the physiology of the brain.]
203

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

recompounding of impressions. If we may for
a moment unduly simplify the matter, it may
be said that for every renewed grouping of im-
pressions, for every revived association of ideas,
there is a nervous discharge between two or
more cells, along formerly used sets of transit
fibres ; and for every fresh grouping of impres-
sions, for every new connection of ideas, there
is a discharge along new transit lines. In reality
the matter cannot be so simple as this, since,
as we shall presently see, the maintenance of
consciousness implies a state of tension between
many simultaneous discharges. But however
great the complexity, the principle remains the
same.

If it be objected to this view that it obliges
us to assume a vast amount of differentiation
and integration in the brain, during the lifetime
of single individuals, it may be replied that the
assumption is fully sustained, both by sound
deduction and observation. Not only does the
brain increase in size and heterogeneity during
the first twenty-five years of life, but ordinarily
it increases in heterogeneity, and often in size,
for many years later ; and in some cases it in-
creases in heterogeneity until the end of life.
The brain of a young child is in homogeneity
like the brain of an ape ; the furrows are shal-
low, symmetrical, and few in number. With
advancing years they increase in number, depth,
204

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

and irregularity; and the increase is most marked
in those persons who do the most brain work.
In the brains of five very eminent men exam-
ined by Wagner, the heterogeneity of surface is
described as quite astonishing. Such facts prove
that the operations of thought work strongly
marked structural changes in individual brains,
in the course of a few years. And as these
strongly marked changes are but the summing
up of countless little changes in the arrange-
ments of cells and fibres, the inference is inevi-
table that such little changes must be going on
all the time. This is the testimony of observa-
tion, and deduction might have taught us to
expect as much ; since the molecules of nerve
tissue are chemically by far the most unstable
molecules known to science, ever ready to un-
dergo metamorphosis and arrange themselves
in new groups. Waste and repair go on more
rapidly in the brain than in any other part of the
body ; the cerebrum, weighing between three
and four pounds, receives at each pulsation
one fifth of all the blood sent from the heart,
and if the supply is stopped for an instant, con-
sciousness ceases. Where nutritive change is
so excessively rapid, such structural changes as
are involved in the continual setting-up of new
transit lines must be readily effected. And
quite in harmony with this course of inference
is the fact that when cerebral nutrition is nota-
205

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

bly retarded, as by the anaemia and feeble cir-
culation of disease or old age, new associations
of ideas become difficult or even impossible.

To sum up this whole preliminary argu-
ment: the cerebrum and cerebellum are organs
whose function is ideation or the generation of
ideal feelings and thoughts. They are organs
made up of a tissue in which chemical changes
occur with unparalleled rapidity. We cannot
see these changes go on, but we can equally
well infer their general character when we have
examined the chemical properties and molecu-
lar structure of the tissue in which they occur.
Microscopic and chemical examination of this
tissue shows that these chemical changes must
consist in a perpetual transfer of energy from
one cell to another along transit lines composed
of nerve threads. Bear in mind that the cell
does not average more than one ten-thousandth
of an inch in diameter, and that the quantity
of matter contained in a transit line is almost
infinitely small. Now since the cerebrum and
cerebellum are, subjectively speaking, places
where ideation is continually going on ; and since
they are, objectively speaking, places where
nerve cells are continually sending undulations
back and forth along transit lines ; the inference
seems forced upon us, that the transfer of an
undulation from one cell to another is the ob-
jective accompaniment of each subjective unit
206

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

of feeling of which thoughts and emotions are
made up. And if this be so, it becomes a mere
truism to say that the formation of a new asso-
ciation involves the establishment of a new
transit line, or set of transit lines, while the re-
vival of an old association involves merely the
recurrence of motion along old transit lines.
That this is merely a hypothesis, I readily
grant. Nevertheless it is a verifiable hypothesis ;
it is in harmony with all that we know of nerve
action ; and it may be held provisionally until
some better one is propounded. When we pro-
ceed to see how many phenomena it explains,
we shall be, I think, quite ready to admit that,
if it does not contain the whole truth, it must
at least contain a foreshadowing of the truth.

For we have now to note that, by a deduc-
tion from an established law of molecular mo-
tion, this hypothetical law of nervous action can
be shown to explain that law of association
which subjective analysis proclaims as the fun-
damental law of intelligence. In the chapter
on Life and Mind, we saw that the chief busi-
ness of psychology is to answer the question
how there comes to be established in the mind
a relation between two subjective states x and y,
answering to a relation between two phenomena
A and B in the environment. How is it that
there is a subjective relation between the idea of
sweetness and the group of ideas comprised in
207

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

the visual perception of a peach, answering in
some way to the objective relation between the
coexistent properties of the peach, so that the
presentation of the one to the cephalic ganglia
is inevitably accompanied by the representation
of the other ? This question lies at the bottom
of psychology, and we have now to see how it
is to be answered. The answer will lead us
through a portion of the domain of molecular
physics, and will incidentally give us a hint con-
cerning the genesis of nervous systems.

In the chapter on Matter, Motion, and Force,
it was shown that all motion takes place along
the line of least resistance, whether the motion
be the movement of a mass of matter through
a resisting medium, or the passage of a series
of undulations through the molecules of an ag-
gregate. Let us reconsider this truth in one of
its concrete applications.

When a wave of molecular motion traverses a
mass of matter for the first time, the line of least
resistance will of course be determined by the
intimate structure of the mass. But now mark
what happens. Immediately after the passage
of the wave, the intimate structure of the mass,
in the vicinity of the line along which the wave
has travelled, is different from what it was a
moment ago. The passage of the wave has
pushed a linear series of molecules out of posi-
tion, and a short time must elapse before these
208

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

molecules can return to their positions. There-
fore if the first wave is instantly followed by a
second, starting from the same point, the line
already traversed will be the line of least resist-
ance, even more decidedly than before. The
second wave will encounter less resistance than
the first wave, because it will find its work of
altering the positions of the molecules already
partly done for it. Thus, according to the mo-
lecular mobility of the matter in question, the
transit of succeeding waves, along the line once
established, will rapidly become less and less
hindered. And the process must go on either
until the inertia of the molecules along the
transit line opposes a minimum of resistance to
the passage of the wave, or even until the en-
ergy given out by the molecules in changing
position adds to the momentum of the wave.
In either case there is established a permanent
line of least resistance, along which all subse-
quent waves that start from the same point
must travel. The most familiar illustration of
this process is afforded by the facts of magneti-
zation, which show " that the establishment of
undulations along certain lines determines their
continuance along those lines." ^ The case of

^ An illustration of this principle is perhaps to be found in
the mellowing of old violins. According to Professor Tyndall,
* * the very act of playing has a beneficial influence ; appar-
ently constraining the molecules of the w^ood, w^hich in the

VOL. HI 209

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

liquid matter flowing through solid matter — as
when currents of rain water, percolating through
loose soil, gradually break away obstructing par-
ticles and excavate small channels which ulti-
mately widen and deepen into river-beds — is
a case in which similar dynamic principles are
involved. In all these cases, " if we confine our
attention to that part of the motion which es-
caping transformation continues its course, then
it is a corollary from the persistence of force
that as much of this remaining motion as is
taken up in changing the positions of the units
must leave these by so much less able to ob-
struct subsequent motion in the same direc-
tion." ^

Now in the case of organic bodies, the enor-
mously complex molecular changes involved in

first instance were refi'actory, to conform at last to the require-
ments of the vibrating strings." On Sound, p. 90. As Dr.
Maudsley would say, ** musical residua " remain in the molec-
ular structure of the wood.

1 Spencer, First Principles, y>' 248. [Part II. chapter ix.
§81, near the close of the section.] Thus, though Mr. Mill
is justified in saying (^Inaugural Discourse, p. 62) that " phy-
siology is the first science in which we [distinctly] recognize
the influence of habit — the tendency of something to happen
again merely because it has happened before," — yet, as we
here see, the phenomena of habit are foreshadowed in the in-
organic world. An admirable instance of that continuity among
phenomena which is everywhere impHed by the theory of
evolution.

210

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

nutrition are such as to aid in the setting-up of
the most perfect transit lines. In an inorganic
mass the molecules have comparatively little
mobility, and they do not leave their connec-
tions from moment to moment, to be instantly
replaced by new molecules. But the complex
clusters of molecules which make up living tis-
sue possess immense mobility, and they are con-
tinually falling to pieces and getting built up
again. Consequently the repeated passage of
waves either of fluid matter or of molecular
motion along a definite line of least resistance,
not only changes the positions of the molecular
clusters, but also modifies the nutritive changes
by which the temporary equilibrium of the
clusters is restored. Instead of a set of rela-
tively homogeneous molecules, which are simply
pushed aside and then tend to oscillate back
again, the advancing wave encounters a heter-
ogeneous edifice of molecules, which tumbles
to pieces and is instantly rebuilt. But in the
rebuilding the force exerted by the advancing
wave has to be expended ; and the result is that
in the rebuilt cluster there is a surplus tension
exerted in the very direction in which the waves
are travelling. The transit lines thus become
far more permeable than any which can be es-
tablished in inorganic bodies. The energy given
out by the decomposing cluster of molecules
adds to the momentum of the wave ; so that

211

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

the line of least resistance becomes to a certain
extent a line of traction. A good illustration is
afforded by the gradual evolution of the circu-
latory system as we ascend in the animal scale.
In the lowest animals which possess any nutri-
tive fluid perceptibly distinct from the proto-
plasmic jelly of which their bodies are com-
posed, this fluid percolates here and there at
seeming random, its course being determined
by local pressures, just as in the case of rain
water trickling through the ground. Now as
we ascend to higher animals, we find that the
nutritive fluid has wrought for itself certain
channels, to which it confines itself, and which
gradually become more and more definite in
direction, and more and more clearly demar-
cated from the adjacent portions of tissue. Un-
til, when we reach animals of a high type of
structure, we find the blood coursing through
permanent channels, the walls of which contract
and expand in such a way as to assist the blood
in its progress. A similar explanation is to be
given of the genesis of the contractile fibres of
muscle, as due to the continuance of molecular
undulations along certain lines.

When we come to the nervous system, we
find most completely realized all the conditions
requisite for the rapid establishment of perma-
nent transit lines. The clusters of molecules of
which nerve tissue is composed are more heter-

212

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

ogeneously compounded than any other known
systems of molecules ; and the alternate pulling
to pieces and putting together of these clusters,
which we call nutrition, goes on here with un-
paralleled rapidity. Of all known substances,
nerve is the most changeable, the most impres-
sible, the most readily adaptable to changing
combinations of incident forces : in short, the
most easily diiferentiable and integrable. Hence
we find that those long transit lines, known as
afferent and efferent nerves, are not only so
constituted that a wave of disturbance set up at
one end is immensely increased before it reaches
the other end, but are also protected by envel-
oping clusters of molecules in such a way that
none of the transmitted motion is allowed to es-
cape laterally. Ease of transit is here witnessed
at its maximum.

Making use of these theorems of transcen-
dental physics, and applying to the problem his
vast and accurate knowledge of biological de-
tails, Mr. Spencer has propounded a theory of
the genesis of nervous systems of all orders of
complexity, which, whether entirely or only par-
tially true, must be regarded as one of his most
brilliant achievements. In the lately published
" Physical Synthesis," which concludes the first
volume of his " Principles of Psychology," Mr.
Spencer shows that the irritability which char-
acterizes the entire surface of the lowest ani-
213

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

mals, and which probably consists in the iso-
meric transformation of colloidal clusters of
molecules distributed over the surface, must
gradually become concentrated in certain defi-
nite transit lines, just as the circulation of a nu-
tritive fluid becomes confined to certain chan-
nels : while the collision of waves which takes
place wherever two or more of these transit
fibres inosculate must result in such chemical
changes, and in the gradual formation of such
a structure, as characterize nerve centres. But
the exposition, when carried into details, is alto-
gether too abstruse to be profitably presented
here, nor is it necessary for our present purpose.
The explanation of the laws of association only
requires that, starting with some kind of ner-
vous system as already established, we should
examine the character of the nutritive changes
set up within it by environing agencies.

The foregoing argument shows us that the
most prominent characteristic of such changes
is the formation of transit lines between neigh-
bouring cells ; and we have seen that the more
frequently a wave of molecular disturbance
passes along any such transit line, the more
easily will it pass, and the more difficult will
it be to divert it into any other transit line.
Hence in any complex aggregate of cells and
fibres, like the human brain, we may expect to
find a countless number of transit lines, of all
214

1

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

degrees of permeability. Those which have
been oftenest traversed will be the most perme-
able, and those which are traversed only at rare
intervals will be but slightly permeable ; while
the passage of a nervous discharge in a new di-
rection will involve the differentiation of a new
line of transit.

Now subjective psychology furnishes us with
an exact parallel to this state of things. The
profound analysis of conscious changes carried
on by the English school of psychology since
the time of Hobbes, and accepted by the Kan-
tian school in all save a few very important
instances — which we shall presently see to be
similarly explicable — has ended in the conclu-
sion that states of consciousness cohere with a
strength dependent upon the frequency with
which they have been repeated in experience.
In other words, "the persistence of the connec-
tion between states of consciousness is propor-
tionate to the persistence of the connection be-
tween the agencies to which they answer." This
fundamental law of association is illustrated by
such familiar truths as the following : " that
phenomena wholly unrelated in our experience,
we have no tendency to think of together ; that
where a certain phenomenon has occurred in
many relations, we usually imagine it as recur-
ring in the relation in which it has most fre-
quently occurred ; that when we have witnessed

21S

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

many recurrences of a certain relation we come
to have a strong belief in that relation ; that if
a relation has been daily experienced through-
out life with scarcely an exception, it becomes
difficult for us to conceive it as otherwise — to
break the connection between the states of con-
sciousness representing it ; and that where a
relation has been perpetually repeated in our
experience with absolute uniformity, we are en-
tirely disabled from conceiving the negation of

The correspondence between the subjective
and the objective sides of the phenomena is
thus complete, and the increasing complication
of cell and fibre in the brain, from infancy to
old age, is seen to have a psychological mean-
ing. If the acquisition of a new idea is attended
by the passage of a wave of molecular motion
along a new path, and if recollection is a state
of consciousness attending the transmission of
a later wave along the same path, we have an
adequate physical interpretation of the fact that
the repetition of an idea is favourable to the re-
collection of it. And we have also the physical
interpretation of habit and prejudice. Molecu-
lar motions that have been repeatedly trans-
mitted between particular groups of nerve cells
end by establishing more or less intricate webs

1 Spencer, Principles of Psychology , vol. i. p. 421. [Part
II. chapter iii. § 189.]

216

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

of transit lines which cannot be obliterated. No
effort can prevent their occasional recurrence
along these lines, or establish a new plexus of
transit lines, involving the derangement of the
old ones. Late in life, when the ratio of repair
to waste is greatly diminished, when the nutri-
tion of the cerebral tissue is impaired, when the
pulling to pieces and putting together of molec-
ular clusters in which nutrition consists goes on
slowly, then the formation of new sets of tran-
sit lines becomes especially difficult ; and hence,
as we say, the shaking off of old habits and
prejudices, and the acquiring of new and strange
ideas, is next to impossible. It is proverbially
hard to teach an old*dog new tricks. We may
here also see why it is impossible to learn or
to carry on complicated thinking when in a state
of anaemia : the nutritive changes go on too
slowly. Changes in memory further illustrate
the theory. In youth, when the excess of repair
over waste is at the maximum, but few discharges
through any transit fibre are needful in order
to work a permanent nutritive change, setting
up a line of communication which shall last
through life : hence learning is easy and rapid,
and memory is powerful. In old age, when
waste is slightly in excess of repair, and both
are at the mimimum, a great many discharges
are necessary for the achievement of any per-
manent nutritive change, — hence learning is
217

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

slow and difficult, and memory is feeble. And
hence — what is most significant of all — the
old man does not remember recent events,
while he remembers very well what happened
in his youth, when his rate of nutrition was
rapid. These and countless similar facts show
us that a state of consciousness and a nutritive
change in the cephalic ganglia are correlated like
the subjective and objective faces of the same
thing. And thus are explained the many facts
which in the seventh chapter were brought for-
ward in illustration of the transformations of
vital energy, — such as the facts that conscious-
ness ceases the instant the carbonic acid in the
blood has attained a certain ratio to the oxy-
gen ; that much thinking entails a great excre-
tion of alkaline phosphates ; and that prolonged
mental exertion is followed by a bodily fatigue
and a keen appetite not essentially different
from the fatigue and hunger which follow mus-
cular exercise.

Regarding it now as provisionally established
that an association of ideas is dependent upon
the formation of a transit line between two nerve
cells, and that the more often the fibrous path
is traversed the more indissoluble will be the
association, let us proceed briefly to apply this
doctrine to the explanation of sundry psychical
phenomena. Now as we begin to examine the
simplest psychical phenomena — those of reflex
218

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

action and instinct — we are met by the seeming
difficulty that indissolubly connected psychical
states occur where the corresponding objective
relation has never been repeated within the ex-
perience of the individual. Instinctive adjust-
ments of inner to outer relations are apparently
made without any help from experience. Moths
and butterflies take to wing immediately on
emerging from the envelope of the chrysalis ;
" a fly-catcher, immediately after its exit from
the t^'g^ has been known to peck at and capture
an insect ; " and " a young pointer will point at
a covey the first time he is taken afield." But
in such cases as these, where the cohesion of
psychical states has not been determined by the
experience of the individual, it has nevertheless
been determined by the experience of the race.
That the repetition of ancestral experiences must
end in the automatic cohesion of psychical states
is both demonstrable a priori and illustrated by
many facts. Birds living in islands uninhabited
by men will not fly away when approached by
travellers, having none of that instinctive fear
which " continued experience of human enmity
has wrought ** in other birds. Yet in a few gen-
erations these birds will acquire the same in-
stinctive fear. In many cases the offspring of a
dog that has been taught to beg will beg instinct-
ively ; and various peculiarities of demeanour,
carefully impressed by education upon sporting
219

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

dogs, are manifested without education by their
descendants. Indeed it is familiar to breeders
that the dispositions and instincts of domestic
animals can be to a certain extent modified by
training and selection, no less than their physical
constitutions.^

The physical explanation of the automatic co-
hesion of psychical states implied in hereditary
instinct is not difficult at this stage of our in-
quiry. When the experience of many past gen-
erations has uniformly contributed to establish a
certain arrangement of transit lines in the chief
ganglia of the animal, there must be a hereditary
tendency for such transit lines to develop by the
mere process of nutrition. And where the psy-
chical life is very simple, and but little varied
from generation to generation, a nervous system

^ ** How strongly these domestic instincts, habits, and dis-
positions are inherited, and how curiously they become min-
gled, is well shown when different breeds of dogs are crossed.
Thus it is known that a cross with a bulldog has affected for
many generations the courage and obstinacy of greyhounds ;
and a cross with a greyhound has given to a whole family of
shepherd dogs a tendency to hunt hares. These domestic in-
stincts, when thus tested by crossing, resemble natural instincts,
which in a like manner become curiously blended together,
and for a long period exhibit traces of the instincts of either
parent : for example, Le Roy describes a dog whose great-
grandfather was a wolf, and this dog showed a trace of its wild
parentage only in one way, by not coming in a straight Hne
to his master, when called. ' * Darwin, Origin of Species y 6th
edition, p. 210.

220

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

embodying certain organized aptitudes will be
transmitted as surely as the muscular or vascu-
lar system is transmitted. Nervous discharges
will run along preestablished transit lines as
inevitably as in human beings the nervous dis-
charges which regulate the respiratory and ali-
mentary movements run in permanent channels.
The character of the process is best exemplified
in reflex action^ the simplest form of psychical
life. In reflex action, which is unaccompanied
by consciousness, a single inner relation is ad-
justed to a single outer relation. For the sim-
pler kinds of reflex action nothing is needed but
what is called a nervous arc ; that is, an afferent
nerve, a ganglion, and an eflferent nerve. , When
a person sound asleep draws away a limb that is
touched, the impression is simply carried along
an afferent nerve" to one of the spinal ganglia,
and thence reflected along an efferent nerve to
the muscle which moves the limb. The assist-
ance of the brain is not needed. In many ani-
mals the limbs thus respond to stimuli after the
head has been cut off or the brain sliced away.
This kind of psychical life, which is but one de-
gree removed from purely physical life, is all
that is manifested by those lowly organized ani-
mals whose nervous systems consist of simple
arcs. So thoroughly physical is this group of
phenomena that it may seem almost inappro-
priate to call it psychical : nevertheless it forms

221

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

the transition from the one kind of life to the
other. It is the lowly beginning from which
higher forms of psychical activity arise/

Now in reflex action, as it is exemplified alike
in the rhythmical movements ofour heart, lungs,
stomach, and other viscera, and in the con-
traction of a polyp's tentacle when food comes
against it, we see a series of nervous discharges
which are automatically directed along certain
definite transit lines. The lines of least resistance
have become permanently organized in the ani-
mal structure, and they are transmitted, with the
accompanying capacities of action, from genera-
tion to generation. Here we see " indissolubly
connected psychical states existing where there
are perpetually repeated experiences of the ex-
ternal relations to which they answer."

The phenomena o^ instinct are more distinctly
psychical than those of reflex action. " While
simple reflex action is common to the internal
visceral processes and to the processes of ex-
ternal adjustment, instinct is not. There are no
instincts displayed by the kidneys, the lungs, the
liver : they occur only among the actions of that

^ [While Fiske would probably still maintain his thesis at
this point, the modern controversy as to the heredity of
acquired characters has rendered these reasonings as to the
origin of instinct more doubtful than they were to the evolu-
tionists of Fiske' s day. See James, Principles of Psychology,
vol. ii. chapter xxviii.]

222

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

nervo-muscular apparatus which is the agent of
psychical Hfe." Instinct, moreover, implies the
coordination of a large number of stimuli with
the answering movements, and herein is its chief
difference from reflex action, — a difference in
degree only. The newly hatched fly-catcher, in
seizing a fly, shows " an exact appreciation of
distance, as well as a power of precisely regu-
lating the muscular movements in accordance
with it." The number of impressions and move-
ments here coordinated is so considerable that it
would take several pages to describe them thor-
oughly. Here certain systems of transit lines,
involved in the establishment of a correspond-
ence in space, are wrought by nutrition in the
animal's nervous system so completely that
when the outer relation occurs the discharge
instantly takes place along the preestablished
channels, and the adjustment is made. There
is an intricate compounding of reflex actions,
involving the assistance of the brain ; for if
the cerebellum be sliced, the fly-catching can no
longer be performed. Intricate, however, as the
combination is, it is a special and unvarying one
which has been continually repeated during the
whole lifetime of countless ancestral fly-catchers,
so that there is nothing strange in the fact that
it is completely organized at birth. The prin-
ciple is the same as in the simpler phenomena
of reflex action. Here, as before, extending the
223

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

experience theory to the entire race, we see " in-
dissolubly connected psychical states existing
where there are perpetually repeated experiences
of the external relations to which they answer."
Though the higher kinds of instinct, in which
the supreme ganglia cooperate, are probably ac-
companied by a vague consciousness, yet in the
main the processes which we have just described
must be regarded as automatic. Let us now
notice what must occur when the correspondence
between inner and outer relations has become
quite complex and special. As Mr. Spencer has
pointed out, " phenomena become less frequent
in proportion as they become more complex ;
and hence the experiences of them can never be
so numerous as are the experiences of" simple
phenomena. The relation between a passing
obscuration and a living body recurs oftener
than the relation between a certain degree of
obscuration and danger, or than the relation be-
tween a certain other degree of obscuration and
food. Again, each of these relations is more
general than the relation between a particular
size and form of visual impression and an ob-
ject of a particular class. And again, this rela-
tion is more general than that between a particu-
lar size, form, and colour of visual impression,
and a certain species of that class." ^ From this

1 Spencer, Principles of Psychology y vol. i. p. 441. [Part
IV. chapter v. § 197.]

224

I

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

it follows that a lowly organized animal, in which
there is established a correspondence only with
the most general environing relations, and which
therefore has experience only of such most gen-
eral relations, has at the same time a uniform
experience which maintains a complete cohesion
among its simple psychical states. On the other
hand, a highly organized animal, in which there
are established correspondences with many com-
plex and special relations, will have a varied ex-
perience, and at the same time a varying cohe-
sion among its complex psychical states. While
the most general relations which it experiences
will also be the most frequent, and while sun-
dry special relations (as in the seizing of its prey
by the fly-catcher) will be extremely frequent,
there are many other special relations of which
the experience will be much less frequent. And
accordingly, along with the perfectly coherent
psychical states generated by the former, there
will be a congeries of less coherent psychical
states generated by the latter. Or, to restate the
case in physiological language : While in the
lower organism there will be a number of tran-
sit lines permanently established, and scarcely
any tendency toward the formation of new ones ;
on the other hand, in the higher organism, there
will be a number of permanent transit lines and
a number of such lines in process of formation,
along with a continual tendency toward the es-

VOL. Ill 12^

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

tablishment of new ones. The consequences of
this are obvious. In becoming more and more
complex, the correspondences become less and
less instantaneous and decided. " They gradu-
ally lose their distinctly automatic character, and
that which we call Instinct merges into some-
thing higher."

For as long as the psychical life consists solely
in the passage of nervous undulations along
permanent preestablished channels, there is no
consciousness. Consciousness, as already shown,
implies continual discrimination, or the contin-
ual recognition of likeness and differences —
and this process implies a rapid succession of
changes in the supreme ganglia. Now this rapid
succession of changes occurs when a vast num-
ber of relations are brought together in a single
ganglion, or group of ganglia, as in the cere-
brum, in order to be compared with each other.
Besides this, consciousness implies a certain
lapse of time during which impressions persist ;
and there is no such persistence in reflex action,
or in the lower forms of instinct, where the
molecular disturbance constituting a nervous
impression is instantly drafted off along the
preestablished channels. Such persistence oc-
curs only when a number of impressions are
brought together in a single ganglion, where an
appreciable time must elapse before they are
carried oflF each along its own set of transit lines.
226

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

For example, when you tickle or pinch the arm
of a person asleep, the arm is at first withdrawn
by simple reflex action : the ordinary channel,
through the afferent nerve to the spinal centre
and back again through the efferent nerve to the
limb, suffices to carry off all the molecular dis-
turbance, — and there is no consciousness of
the irritation or of the resulting contraction.
But if the pinching be frequently repeated, so
that the disturbance is generated faster than it
can be thus drafted off, the surplus is sent up
through a centripetal fibre from the spinal gan-
glion to the brain ; and some dreaming ensues,
or perhaps a fretful sound is emitted. If the
impression be kept up long enough, there is full
consciousness of it, and the person awakes. Now
the rise of consciousness impUed in the dream-
ing and waking is due to the persistence in the
cerebrum of a molecular disturbance which is
not at once drafted off through the proper cen-
trifugal fibres.

Obviously, therefore, when the number of
impressions sent in to the brain from moment
to moment exceeds the number of thoroughly
permeable channels which have been formed
there, so that there is a brief period of tension
during which occur the nutritive changes implied
in the transmission of the disturbance through
the appropriate channels, then there arise the
phenomena of conscious intelligence. For mark
227

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

what must happen. In thefrst place, the per-
sistence of the impressions enables them to be
consciously felt, either pleasurably or painfully ;
so that there is the germ of Emotion. Secondly,
the disturbance tends to propagate itself along
various permeable transit lines, so that there is
a revived association of ideas, or what we call
Memory. Thirdly, there is an integration of the
present impressions with such past ones as they
resemble, and a differentiation of them from
such past ones as they do not resemble ; and
this comparison of present with past impres-
sions, dependent on memory, implies classifica-
tion, and is the germ of what we call Perception
and Reasoning. Fourthly, there is, in the case
of many kinds of impressions, a period of ten-
sion during which it becomes determined along
what set of centrifugal fibres the surplus dis-
turbance shall be drafted off, and here we have
the primitive form of Volition. Thus the vari-
ous phases of conscious psychical life — which
we call emotion, memory, reason, and volition
— arise as soon as there begins to elapse an
appreciable time between the accumulation of
molecular disturbance in a group of cephalic
nerve cells, and its discharge along the proper
transit fibres. And this state of things, which
is not possible in simple nervous systems which
only respond instinctively or by reflex action
to a few general relations in the environment,
228

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

becomes possible in those compound nervous
systems which respond to a great number of in-
frequent and special relations. For the estab-
lishment of inner relations, answering to these
infrequent and special outer relations, involves
a lapse of time during which numerous diverse
impressions are getting distributed through va-
rious transit lines hitherto little used. When,
as in the fully developed human cerebrum, a
vast number of infrequent and special relations
are continually set up, there is a maximum of
nutritive change, there is a maximum of time
during which impressions simultaneously com-
ing in may be compared and classified, and there
is a maximum of consciousness.

This explanation of the way in which the va-
rious phases of conscious psychical life arise is
fully confirmed by the way in which they dis-
appear when actions at first consciously per-
formed become instinctive. The confirmation
is so complete as to afford a very strong proof
of the truth of the hypothesis. Many of the
actions performed by civilized man are desig-
nated by psychologists as " secondarily auto-
matic." That is, they are at first performed with
the assistance of reason, volition, and conscious
memory, and they are attended by feelings of
pleasure or pain. But after a while they are per-
formed without the aid of reason, volition, or
conscious memory, and they are not attended
229

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

by pleasurable or painful feelings. In becom-
ing instinctive, they lapse partially or entirely
from consciousness. The child in learning to
walk and talk must will each movement and
rationally coordinate it with other movements
in order to attain the desired end. But the man,
in walking and talking, is unconscious of the
separate movements and volition serves only to
set them going. In learning to read, the child
must consciously remember each letter, com-
bine it with others into a word, and associate
the word with the thing signified ; and this last
process is repeated in later years when we learn
foreign languages. But in reading our own lan-
guage, or a foreign one which has been thor-
oughly learned, the association of words and
things is automatic. In reading an English book,
in which French quotations are inserted, one fre-
quently passes from one language to the other
and back again without noticing the change,
if the attention be concentrated on the subject
matter. In learning to play the piano, there is
at first a vast amount of conscious association
between the written notes, the keyboard, and
the muscular adjustments of the fingers, wrists,
and arms ; but an accomplished pianist will play
a familiar piece while his attention is directed to
other matters. The case is similar with writing,
and indeed with all habitual actions which re-
quire nervo-muscular coordination. In many
230

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

cases, moreover, the intervention of conscious
attention only impairs the accuracy of adjust-
ment. In billiard playing and rifle shooting, the
aim is usually impaired if we stop to think about
it; and on the piano it is almost impossible to
play triple notes with one hand and double notes
with the other if we attempt to measure out the
time.

Purely intellectual acts also become to a cer-
tain extent automatic with practice, as was in-
deed implied in some of the foregoing illustra-
tions. Not only the combination of words into
a sentence, but the combination of sentences
into a proposition, and the combination of pro-
positions into a theory, is effected more and
more rapidly, until the process hardly attracts
the attention. In a complicated exposition like
the present, numerous scientific theorems, at
first laboriously comprehended one by one, are
wrapped up together and thrown into some
subordinate clause of a sentence, the total be-
ing so obvious as not to withdraw the attention
from the main current of thought while writing.
In such facts we have a partial explanation of
many of the phenomena of what is called un-
conscious or " sub-conscious " thinking. And
thus, too, are to be explained those sudden
flashes of insight, scientific or poetical, which in
early times were attributed to inspiration or dic-
tation from without. Obviously without a good
231

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

deal of such automatic acting and thinking, we
could achieve but little in art or science. We
should never become good pianists if we had
to keep paying attention to all the requisite
muscular adjustments ; and science would ad-
vance but slowly if at each step of an intricate
inquiry in dynamics it were necessary to stop
and reflect upon the elementary laws of matter
and motion.

The physical interpretation of these second-
ary automatic processes is not diflicult, according
to the hypothesis here expounded. During the
process of learning, there is an extensive for-
mation of new transit lines, and consequently an
appreciable interval between the accumulation
of molecular disturbance in the cerebral cells
and its discharge. Impressions persist long
enough to be compared together, and accord-
ingly there is reason and there is volition.
There is a maximum of consciousness, because
there is a maximum duration of the nutritive
changes, and hence weariness soon follows —
cerebral nutrition entailing greater waste than
occurs in any other part of the system. But
with constant repetition the resistance to the
passage of undulations along the new transit
lines disappears entirely. Nutrition has so
modified them that, as above explained, they
become lines of traction instead of lines of re-
sistance. As we say, nothing can prevent the
232

I

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

one group of ideas or movements from follow-
ing the other. The discharges are made in-
stantly, and along with a minimum duration of
nutritive change there is a minimum of con-
sciousness. The combinations become perma-
nently organized in the brain structure, and in
becoming permanently organized they become
instinctive or automatic.

We may now also begin to understand why
it is that in man the organization of instincts,
primary and secondary, is continued through the
early years of life, while in the other animals
the majority of the instincts are already organ-
ized at birth. The distinction is not an abso-
lute one, as many of the higher vertebrates,
both birds and mammals, and in a marked de-
gree the anthropoid apes, cannot take care of
themselves immediately after birth, though they
soon become able to do so. The lower we de-
scend the animal scale, the more completely
organized is the psychical life of the newly born
organism. The reason is obviously to be found
in the greater speciality and complexity, and
the consequent relative infrequency, of the co-
ordinations made by the highest animals, and
especially by man. When, for example, we put
forth the hand to grasp an object, the muscular
adjustments are as instinctive as those of the
fly-catcher pouncing on an insect ; " volition
being concerned merely in setting the process
^3

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

going." But with us, the impressions which we
receive and the motions which we make are
endlessly varied, and the complex combinations
of them occur severally with less frequency
than is the case with the simpler combinations
formed by lower animals. They are accordingly
not coordinated before birth, though they are
easily coordinated during childhood.^

A great number of psychical phenomena are
thus satisfactorily explained by the hypothesis.
But one further service, and a most signal one,
is rendered by it ; and this we must briefly in-
dicate, in accordance with previous promises,
before leaving the subject. The view of cere-
bral action here adopted settles the long-vexed
question between the Lockian and Kantian
schools as to the sources of knowledge ; and
the verdict, while partly favourable to each of
these schools, is not wholly favourable to either.
Let us reconsider the portion of our hypothesis
which bears upon this question.

It follows from the general principles in-
volved in the foregoing exposition, that the
peculiar intellectual activity of any parent, by

1 In the concluding chapter of this Part, I shall endeavour
to show that this origination and prolongation of the period of
infancy, which is the effect of increasing intelligence, is in turn
the proximate cause of the genesis of social relations and of
ethical feelings, and thus, indirectly, of the entire intellectual
and moral supremacy of man.

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

modifying the nutrition of his cerebral tissue,
must impress itself upon the unstimulated and
half- developed brain of his infant offspring.
Eliminating the effects wrought in it by count-
less environing circumstances, we may say that
the infant brain just as surely tends to develop
transit lines similar to those in the parental
brain as the infant face tends to develop mus-
cular peculiarities of expression like those char-
acteristic of the parental face. And while the
tendency is so slight as to count for little or
nothing in the case of the more complex and
infrequent associations of ideas, it must be a
resistless tendency in the case of those nerve
connections which answer to associations in-
volved in every act of experience, — as, for ex-
ample, those concerned in building up our con-
ceptions of space, time, force, and causation.
A concise restatement of the case will now lead
us at once to our conclusion. While ancestral
experience impresses upon the brain a nutri-
tive tendency toward the formation of certain
special nerve connections, individual experience
tends now to assist and now to check the in-
herited tendency. And so the number and
direction of transit lines in any brain is due to
the cooperation of innumerable ancestral and
individual experiences. Locke was therefore
wrong in calling the infant's mind a blank sheet
upon which experience is to write knowledge.

235

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

The mind of the infant cannot be compared to a
blank sheet, but rather to a sheet already writ-
ten over here and there with invisible ink, which
tends to show itself as the chemistry of experi-
ence supplies the requisite conditions. Or, drop-
ping metaphor, the infant's mind is correlated
with the functions of a complex mass of nerve
tissue which already has certain definite nutri-
tive tendencies. On the other hand, the school
of Leibnitz and Kant was wrong in assuming
a kind of intuitional knowledge not ultimately
due to experience. For the ideas formerly called
innate or intuitional are the results of nutritive
tendencies in the cerebral tissue, which have
been strengthened by the uniform experience
of countless generations, until they have become
as resistless as the tendency of the dorsal line
of the embryo to develop into a vertebral col-
umn. The strength of Locke's position lay in
the assertion that all knowledge is ultimately
derived from experience, — that is, from the
intercourse between the organism and the en-
vironment. The strength of Kant's position
lay in the recognition of the fact that the brain
has definite tendencies, even at birth. The
Doctrine of Evolution harmonizes these two
seemingly opposite views, by showing us that
in learning we are merely acquiring latent ca-
pacities of reproducing ideas ; and that beneath
these capacities lie more or less powerful nu-
236

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

tritive tendencies, which are transmissible from
parent to child.

I believe that the last difficulties which may
have hovered about the doctrine of the Test of
Truth, expounded in the third chapter of our
Prolegomena, are now swept away. It must be
by this time quite clear that the inconceivability
test and the experience test are merely the ob-
verse faces of the same thing. An association
of subject and predicate, which answers to an
objective relation of which the experience has
been absolutely uniform, must be absolutely
indissoluble ; and vice versa. The ultimate
question at issue between Mr. Mill and Mr.
Spencer thus becomes reduced to a question of
terminology, save in one important particular,
in which I have already shown that Mr. Mill
is not only demonstrably wrong, but also in-
consistent with himself. The foregoing exposi-
tion adds new weight to the argument by which
it was formerly (Part I., chapter iii.) proved that
when Mr. Mill asserts that the negation of such
an axiom as the indestructibility of matter, which
is now inconceivable, was in past times conceiv-
able, he virtually asserts that there was a time
when men could frame inner relations of which
the corresponding outer relations had never
been presented in experience. And thus he not
only runs counter to the general theory of Life
as Adjustment which is here adopted, but he
237

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

contravenes his own favourite doctrine of the
experiential origin of all knowledge, which is
in reality part and parcel of that general theory
of life.

With these corollaries I must conclude this
too brief account of the process of psychical
evolution. In the present chapter and its two
predecessors, while steadily refraining from the
chimerical attempt to identify Mind with some
form of Matter or Motion, it has nevertheless
been shown that, owing to the mysterious but
unquestionable correlation which exists between
the phenomena of Mind and the phenomena
of Matter and Motion, it is possible to describe
the evolution of the former by the same formula
which describes the evolution of the latter. By
a continuous differential compounding of im-
pressions, we pass, through infinitesimal stages,
from the relatively homogeneous and simple
set of correspondences known as reflex action,
manifested alike by the highest and the lowest
animals, to those exceedingly complex and het-
erogeneous sets of correspondences known as
reason and volition, which are manifested only
by the highest animals, and in their greatest
complexity by man alone. Throughout this
wonderful process we have seen how closely the
evolution of psychical function is correlated with
the evolution of nerve structure. But great as
has been our gain during the foregoing exposi-
238

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND

tion, our theory of psychical evolution is as yet
by no means complete. Concerning the relations
of Mind to Life, and concerning the Composi-
tion and Evolution of Mind in general, we have
obtained many valuable results. But nothing
has as yet been said concerning the especial
mode of genesis of those highest manifestations
of thought and feeling which distinguish civil-
ized man. This problem must be duly treated
before our account of psychical evolution can
be regarded as complete even in outline. Upon
questions of this sort, however, we are not yet
prepared to enter. Those highest manifestations
of thought and feeling which distinguish civi-
lized man from inferior mammals, and in a less-
marked degree from uncivilized man, are the
products of countless ages of social evolution ;
and before we can hope to understand their
mode of genesis, we must see what are the
teachings of history and psychology concerning
the character of social evolution in general.

Having shown how, starting from a relatively
low degree of sociality, a relatively high degree
is attained in conformity to the general theory
of Life as Adjustment, we shall be better enabled
to comprehend the genesis of that lowest degree
of sociality, the attainment of which was the
decisive step which first raised Man above the
level of the Brutes. The four following chap-
ters will therefore be concerned with Sociology ;

239

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

and the first will be devoted to clearing away
a complicated misunderstanding, by the help
of which metaphysicians have long sought, and
still seek, to deter us from applying scientific
methods of interpretation to the phenomena of
human history.

240

CHAPTER XVII
SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL*

THAT the phenomena manifested by
human beings, as grouped in societies,
conform to fixed and ascertainable laws
is a proposition which has thus far been taken
for granted, inasmuch as it is logically insepa-
rable from the other sets of propositions which
go to make up our Cosmic Philosophy. Not
only, moreover, have we thus tacitly assumed
that social phenomena conform to law and may
be made the subject of science, but in the fourth
chapter of this Synthesis it was expressly stated
that the fundamental law to which they con-
form is the Law of Evolution, which has now
been proved to hold sway among inorganic and
organic phenomena, as well as among those
superorganic phenomena which we distinguish
as psychical. Under ordinary circumstances we
might fairly go on and justify our tacit assump-
tion and our explicit assertion by showing, both
deductively and inductively, that the evolution
of society follows in general the same method
as the evolution of organic life. In the follow-
^ [See Introduction, § 22.]

VOL. Ill 241

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

ing chapter I shall proceed to do this. I shall
show, first, that social evolution consists in the
integration of human families or tribal commu-
nities into larger and larger groups, which be-
come ever more heterogeneous and more inter-
dependent ; and secondly, that what we call
civilization consists in the ever increasing de-
finiteness and complexity of the correspondence
between the community and the environment.
Thirdly, I shall carry on the inquiry to a point
somew^hat in advance of Mr. Spencer's expo-
sition as it now stands, and show how these
truths must be supplemented in order to give
us a law of social evolution which shall cover
social phenomena simply, excluding the more
general phenomena of organic life.

But while under ordinary circumstances it
might be well enough to proceed directly to
such an investigation, since there is no better
way of proving that certain groups of pheno-
mena conform to law than by pointing out the
law to which they conform, nevertheless in the
present case I think it desirable to preface the
inquiry with a brief discussion of one or two
logical and psychological truths — truths of
method and of doctrine — which lie at the basis
of sociology. In our survey of the simpler sci-
ences, no such preface was called for. In be-
ginning to treat of biological truths, we did not
deem it necessary to prove that waste and re-
242

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

pair proceed according to immutable laws, or to
forestall possible cavils by declaring that, al-
though we cannot predict our states of health
from week to week, nevertheless organic pheno-
mena are not the sport of chance. It is other-
wise in sociology, which is a new science, en-
cumbered with many popular misconceptions,
and regarded with an evil eye by theologians, —
persons who profess great devotion to the in-
terests of advancing knowledge in general, while
the particular advance in knowledge at any time
going on somehow never happens to be the one
which they think fit to regard with favour. Of
each new trophy which Science has from time to
time laboriously won, these opponents have
hastened to declare, " Behold, it is the last ! '*
Though the phenomena presented by the hea-
venly bodies, by the surface of the earth, and by
the life which covers the earth, have one after an-
other, in spite of vehement theological protest,
been made the subjects of science,^ it is still
stoutly maintained that the results of human
volitions can never become amenable to scienti-
fic treatment. Here, it is cried, on the thresh-
old of sociology we must take our final stand,

^ *' Als Pythagoras seinen beriihmten Lehrsatz entdeckte,
opferte er den Gottern eine Hekatombe, d. h. ein Opfer von
hundert Stieren. Seitdem briillen alle Ochsen, so oft eine neue
Wahrheit entdeckt wird." Buchner, Die Darwin* sche The-
oricy p. 288.

243

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

and insist, in the interests of religion and moral-
ity, that although all other events may occur in
regular sequence, nevertheless in human affairs
there is no such sequence. The arguments
by which it is sought to establish this desper-
ate proposition are based partly on those facts
which are assumed to prove the freedom of the
will, partly on the endless diversity and com-
plexity of human affairs. Concerning this latter
class of considerations, I may say here that they
are at once irrelevant and inconclusive. Irrel-
evant, since even if it were to be granted —
which it is not — that the extreme intricacy. of
social phenomena may prevent our discerning
the order of their sequence, this would prove,
not that there is no sequence, but that our vi-
sion is limited. Inconclusive, because from the
nature of the case, other things being equal,
complex phenomena cannot be generalized until
the simpler phenomena which they involve
have been mentally reduced to orderly succes-
sion. As we shall again have occasion to notice,
the laws of social life could not be discovered
until the sciences of biology and psychology
had gone far toward formulating the laws of
physical and psychical life in general. But the
misconceptions which cluster about this sub-
ject are so numerous that they may best be
eliminated by a somewhat detailed controversy.
Let us examine the argument from complexity,
244

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

as presented by Mr. Froude ; and afterwards
the argument from the assumed lawlessness of
volition, as presented by Mr. Goldwin Smith.

Mr. Froude begins ^ by dogmatically denying
that there is or can be such a thing as a science
of history. There is something incongruous,
he says, in the very connection of the two
words. "It is as if we were to talk of the colour
of sound, or the longitude of the rule-of-three."
But he carries on the thought in a way that
shows plainly his reluctance to grapple fairly
with the problem. In his next sentence he
says, " where it is so difficult to make out the
truth on the commonest disputed facts in mat-
ters passing under our very eyes, how can we
talk of a science in things long past, which
come to us only through books ? " Now to rea-
son like this is merely to shrink from the en-
counter. For the question is, not whether the
science is difficult, but whether it is possible.
Mr. Froude sets out to show that there can be
no such science, and his first bit of proof is that,
if there is such a science, it must be far more
difficult than any other ; a position which we
may contentedly grant. Let us follow him a
step farther. "It often seems to me as if his-
tory were like a child's box of letters, with which
we can spell any word we please. We have
only to pick out such letters as we want, arrange
1 Short Studies on Great Subjects, vol. i.
245

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

them as we like, and say nothing about those
which do not suit our purpose." And what
does all this amount to ? Is this Mr. Froude's
idea of historical investigation ? Why, the same
thing may be done in any science. We have
only to pick out all the facts on one side, and
blink all the facts on the other side, to prove
the veracity of every oracle, soothsayer, and
clairvoyant that ever existed, the validity of
every paltry omen, the credibility of every crazy
notion of alchemy or judicial astrology. In this
way we may prove that the homoeopathist always
saves his patient, while the allopathist always
kills him ; or vice versa. And it was in this
way that the phrenologists erected their pseudo-
science. By following this method, also, it be-
comes easy to prove that Henry VIII. was an
exemplary husband. It is in this way that
every incorrect or inadequate hypothesis in
physical science or in history has arisen, and
gained temporary recognition. Supposing Ty-
cho Brahe had said to his Copernican antago-
nists, " Astronomy is like a child's box of let-
ters ; if we take out what we want and let the
rest go, we can spell whatever we please ; I spell
out the Ptolemaic hypothesis, and will there-
fore abide by it ; " he would have been talking
much after the manner of Mr. Froude. It is
true, as Mr. Froude further says, that one phi-
losopher believes in progress, a second in retro-
246

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

gresslon, and a third, like Vico, in ever-recur-
ring cycles. But is this because the facts are
undecipherable, or because the investigation is
one-sided ? Because Agassiz still believes or-
ganic species to be fixed, while almost all other
naturalists believe them to be variable in char-
acter, are we to infer that there is no science of
biology ? In such unworthy plight does Mr.
Froude retreat before the problem he has en-
countered. He starts to show us that a science
of history is as ridiculous an impossibility as a
scarlet B-flat or a westerly proportion ; and he
ends by mildly observing that history is a diffi-
cult subject, in which a series of partial exam-
inations may bring forth contradictory conclu-
sions !

The next bit of inference concerns us more
intimately. " Will a time ever be when the lost
secret of the foundation of Rome can be recov-
ered by historic laws ? If not, where is our sci-
ence ? " Just where it was before. The science
of history has nothing to do with dates, except
to take them, so far as they can be determined,
from the hands of historical criticism. They
are its data, not its conclusions. As Mr. Mor-
ley reminds us, we do not dispute the possibil-
ity of a science of meteorology because such
a science cannot tell us whether it was a dry or
a wet day at Jericho two thousand years ago.
Facts like these show us that sciences dealing
247

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

with phenomena which are the products of many
and complex factors cannot hope to attain that
minute precision which is attained by sciences
deahngwith phenomena which are the products
of few and simple factors. They show that so-
ciology cannot, like astronomy, be brought un-
der the control of mathematical deduction. But
it was not necessary for Mr. Froude to write an
essay to prove this.

But, continues Mr. Froude, " can you ima-
gine a science which would have foretold such
movements as '* Mohammedanism, or Chris-
tianity, or Buddhism ? To the question as thus
presented, we must answer, certainly not. Nei-
ther can any man foretell any such movement
as the typhoid fever which six months hence is
to strike him down. If the latter case does not
prove that there are no physiologic laws, neither
does the former prove that there are no laws of
history. In both instances, the antecedents of
the phenomenon are irresistibly working out
their results ; though in both cases they are so
complicated that no human skill can accurately
anticipate their course. But to a different pre-
sentment of Mr. Froude's question, we might
return a different answer. There is a sense in
which movements like Mohammedanism, or
Buddhism, or Christianity, could not have been
predicted, and there is a sense in w^hich they
could have been. What could not have been
248

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

predicted was the peculiar character impressed
upon these movements by the gigantic person-
alities of such men as Mohammed and Omar,
Sakyamuni, Jesus, and Paul. What could have
been predicted was the general character and
direction of the movements. For example, as I
shall show in the following chapter, Christianity
as a universal religion was not possible until
Rome had united in a single commonwealth the
progressive nations of the world. And when
Rome had accomplished this task, it might well
have been predicted that before long a religion
would arise which should substitute monothe-
ism for polytheism, proclaiming the universal
fatherhood of God, and the universal brother-
hood of men. I admit that such a prediction
could have been made only by a person familiar
with scientific modes of thought not then in
existence ; but could such a person have been
present to contemplate the phenomena, he might
have foreseen such a revolution in its main fea-
tures, as being an inevitable result of the inter-
action of Jewish, Hellenic, and Roman ideas.
I am inclined to think he might have foreseen
that it would arise in Palestine, that its spread
would be confined to the area covered by Ro-
man civilization, and that its work would for a
long time be most thorough in the most thor-
oughly Romanized regions.

We do not need, however, to insist upon this
249

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

point. For in none of the concrete sciences is
there anything like thorough and systematic
prevision, save in astronomy ; and even in as-
tronomy our foresight becomes precarious as
soon as we pass beyond the solar system, and
begin to inquire into the results of the mutual
gravitation of the innumerable stellar bodies.
We know that our sun is rushing, with immense
velocity, toward the constellation Hercules ; but
we cannot yet trace his orbit, as Kepler traced
the orbit of Mars. When we come to biology
and psychology, the power of accurate prevision
is very small ; yet no one denies that the phe-
nomena of life and intelligence conform to fixed
and ascertainable laws. In sociology we must
expect still less ability to predict. The truth is,
as Comte acutely pointed out, that while in the
simpler sciences our object is gained if we can
foretell the course of phenomena so as to be
able to regulate our actions by it, in the more
complex sciences our object is gained when we
have generalized the conditions under which
phenomena occur so as to be able to make our
volitions count for something in modifying
them. We cannot modify astronomic pheno-
mena, but we can predict them. We cannot pre-
dict, save to a limited extent, biologic pheno-
mena ; but knowing more and more thoroughly
the conditions under which they occur, we can
more and more skilfully modify them so as to
250

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

ensure health or overcome disease. And obvi-
ously even this limited ability to modify the
phenomena implies a certain amount of previ-
sion, quite enough to justify us in asserting that
the phenomena conform to law. The case is
similar in sociology. Though we may not be
able definitely to predict a given political revo-
lution, we may nevertheless understand the gen-
eral movement of affairs and the effects which
certain kinds of legislation are likely to produce,
so as to hasten a desired result or avert social
mischief. Upon this possibility are based all
our methods of government and of education.
And, as in biology, this ability to modify the
phenomena proves that the phenomena occur
in some fixed order of sequence. For if there
were phenomena without any definite order of
sequence, we could neither predict nor modify
them ; and where there is a definite order of
sequence, there is, or may be, a science.

Now in denying that there is or can be a
science of history, Mr. Froude, if he means any-
thing, means that social affairs have no fixed
order of sequence, but are the sport of chance.
Either Law or Chance — these are the only al-
ternatives, unless we were to have recourse, like
the Mussulman, to Destiny, an illegitimate third
idea, made up of the other two misconceived
and mutilated in order to fit together. But for
the modern thinker there is no middle course.
251

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

It is either symmetry or confusion, law or chance,
and between the two antagonist conceptions
there can be no compromise. If the law of cau-
sation is universal, we must accept the theory
of law. If it has ever, in any one instance, been
violated, we may be excused for taking up with
the theory of chance. Now we know that all
the vast bodies in this sidereal universe move
on for untold ages in their orbits, in strict con-
formity to law. In conformity to law, the solar
system in all its complexity has grown out of
a homogeneous nebula ; and the crust of the
cooling earth has condensed into a rigid surface
fit for the maintenance of organic life. Out of
plastic materials furnished by this surface and
the air and moisture by which it is enveloped,
organic life has arisen and been multiplied in
countless differing forms, all in accordance with
law. Of this aggregate of organic existence,
man, the most complex and perfect type, lives
and moves and has his being in strict conformity
to law. His periods of activity and repose are
limited by planetary rotations. His achieve-
ments, physical and mental, are determined by
the rate of his nutrition, and by the molecular
structure and relative weight of the nervous
matter contained in him. His very thoughts
must chase each other along definite paths and
contiguous channels marked out by the laws
of association. Throughout these various phe-
252

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

nomena, already generalized for us by astrono-
mers, geologists, biologists and psychologists, we
know that neither at any time nor in any place
is law interfered with, — that yesterday, to-day
and forever, the effect follows the cause with
inevitable and inexorable certainty. And yet
we are asked to believe that in one particular
corner of the universe, upon the surface of one
little planet, in a portion of the organism of one
particular creature, there is one special pheno-
menon called voHtion, in which the law of cau-
sation ceases to operate, and everything goes
helter-skelter !

Such is the demand which Mr. Froude makes
upon our powers of acquiescence, and such is
the theory which Mr. Goldwin Smith, in the
interests of theology, pronounces it unphiloso-
phical, if not impious, for us to reject. Of the
Science of History, Mm Smith asserts that " it
extinguishes all sympathy ; " it " must put an
end to self-exertion ; " it " would dissolve the
human family ; " it makes man the most help-
less of animals, no better in fact than " a beast
or a blade of grass ; " it degrades humanity to
mere clay ; it establishes " a strange contradic-
tion between our outward observation and our
inward consciousness ; " it makes us " render up
our personality," and become "a mere link in
a chain of causation, a mere grain in a mass of
being ; " it builds up, " with much exultation,"
253

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

an "adamantine barrier of law " — whatever
that may be — between man and the source of
all goodness ; and, to crown all it tells us that
"conscience is an illusion," and prevents our
having any " rule of right action." ^

Hard words are as powerless to overthrow as
to establish a philosophical theory. In scientific
inquiry the ability to weigh evidence goes for
much, but facility in declamation goes for little.
And to any one who has been brought up amid
scientific pursuits, there is but little that is in-
structive or edifying in the fervid rhetoric of a
writer who, in attacking a disagreeable doctrine,
prefers to stigmatize it as disagreeable, rather

^ Lectures on the Study of History^ pp. 63, 67, 48, 82,
85* 87* 59' P^^ abler men than Mr. Smith or Mr. Froude
have in like manner allowed their feelings to run away with
them w^hen treating of this question. ** Not the picture of a
man ; but the representation of an automaton that is what it
cannot help being ; a phantom dreaming what it cannot but
dream ; an engine performing what it must perform ; an incar-
nate reverie ; a weathercock shifting helplessly in the winds
of sensibility ; a wretched association-machine, through which
ideas pass linked together by laws over which the machine has
no control ; anything, in short, except that free and self-sus-
tained centre of un derived, and therefore responsible activ-
ity, which we call Man ; " — such, says Professor Ferrier, is
** the false representation of man which philosophy invariably
and inevitably pictures forth whenever she makes common
cause with the natural sciences." Lectures and Philosophical
Remains y vol. ii. p. 195. Verily the free-will questicn is a
great opener of the flood-gates of rhetoric!
254

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

than to show that the evidence is against it.
Nevertheless beneath the emotional assertions
just quoted there lies a complicated theoretical
misconception, the character of which it is worth
our while to examine. The well-worn argument
is that unless the human will were " free," there
could be no responsibility, and therefore no mo-
rality ; that if volitions are caused, even though
it be by our own desires, we are all in a condi-
tion similar to that of the man who has made a
promise under duress, to whom neither praise
nor blame can justly be attached for the manner
in which his promise is kept.

It is popularly supposed that there is some-
thing very forcible in this argument ; and that,
when coupled with the opposing arguments
drawn from such sequences as are easily trace-
able among human affairs, the result is a puz-
zle which must forever remain insoluble. The
problem of free-will has been described by poets,
and is customarily regarded, as the most difficult
problem which can occupy human attention ;
and we frequently hear it said that it can never
be completely solved. But in reality all this per-
plexity is the result of the desperate muddle
into which metaphysics has brought the subject.
Strip the question of the peculiar metaphysical
jargon in which it is usually propounded, restate
it in precise scientific language, and it becomes
a very easy question to answer. Would that

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

science presented none more difficult ! Con-
fused and inaccurate verbiage is responsible
for the chronic disputation upon this subject.
Nowhere else is Berkeley's complaint so thor-
oughly applicable, that in deahng with meta-
physics men first kick up a dust and then wonder
why they cannot see through it. Those who
have come to regard the question from a purely
scientific point of view also regard it as thor-
oughly settled; and the need for refuting such
arguments as the one above cited, they class
among the needs, too often thrust upon us,
of refuting fallacies already thrice exploded. In
illustration of this, let us notice the theory which
the free-will argument implies concerning the
nature of volition.

The theory implies that over and above par-
ticular acts of volition, there is a certain entity
called " The Will," which is itself a sort of per-
sonage within the human personality. This en-
tity, called " The Will," is supposed to have
desires and intentions of its own, which the
causationists are supposed to declare constantly
liable to be frustrated by external agencies. In
opposition to this imaginary heresy, it is as-
serted that this autocratic Will is " free," and,
sitting in judgment over " motives," may set
aside the stronger in favour of a weaker, or may
issue a decree in defiance of all motives alike.
Some such crude conception as this is implicitly
256

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

conveyed by every statement which, alluding to
the Will as an entity, ascribes " freedom " to
it. Only by means of such a conception can the
phrase " freedom of the Will " be shielded from
the imputation of nonsense. Only thus can the
argument above cited be regarded as relevant to
the subject in dispute. For if Will be not con-
ceived as an entity acting under conditions, then
no comparison can be made between caused vo-
lition and constrained behaviour. If instead of
"The Will" we look at the act of willing, —
which is not an entity, but a dynamic process,
— then it becomes absurd to talk of this act as
being either free or not free, and we must seek
for some other word than " freedom " by which
to designate its alleged want of causal connection
with preceding psychical states.

Now the tendency to erect relations and pro-
cesses into entities is a tendency which modern
metaphysics has inherited from a mischievous
mode of thought current in ancient times and
rather loosely known as " Realism." Among
metaphysicians, unused to the habits of thought
which science nurtures, the tendency is an almost
irresistible one. Civilization, for example, is ob-
viously a process^ but Dr. Whately continually
speaks of it as if it were a thing which could
be handed about from one nation to another,
or hidden away for a time in some dark corner.
And upon this amusing misconception he builds a

VOL. Ill ^57

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

wonderful theory, which, however, it is not worth
while for any busy man to stop and refute. It
is in a similar way, and owing to the same re-
alistic tendency, that there has arisen the con-
ception of such an entity as "The Will," the
existence of which modern psychology does
not recognize any more than it recognizes the
lapidity of stones or the ubication of points in
space. Modern psychology is concerned only
with the process of will, or volition. As Dr.
Maudsley observes, " it is not man's function
in life to think and feel only : his inner life he
must express or utter in action of some kind —
in word or deed. Receiving impressions from
nature, of which he is a part, he reacts upon
nature intelligently, modifying it in a variety
of ways. ... As the spinal cord reacts to its
impressions in excito-motor action, and as the
sensory centres react to their impressions in
sensori-motor action, so, after the complex in-
terworking and combination of ideas in the
hemispherical ganglia, there is in like manner a
reaction or desire of determination of energy
outwards, in accordance with the fundamental
property of organic structure to seek what is
beneficial and to shun what is hurtful to it. It
is this property of tissue that gives the impulse
which, when guided by intelligence, we call vo-
lition ; and it is the abstraction from the parti-
cular volitions which metaphysician? personify as
258

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

the Will. . . . Physiologically we cannot choose
but reject the Will : volition we know, and will
we know, but the Will, apart from particular
acts of volition or will, we cannot know. To
interpose such a metaphysical entity between
reflection and action thereupon would bring us
logically to the necessity of interposing a similar
entity between the stimulus to the spinal cord
and its reaction. Thus instead of unravelling the
complex by help of the more simple, we should
obscure the simple by speculations concerning
the complex." ^ As scientific inquirers, " we have
to deal with volition as a function of the supreme
centres, following reflection, varying in quan-
tity and quality as its cause varies, strengthened
by education and exercise, enfeebled by disease,
decaying with decay of structure, and always
needing for its outward expression the educated
agency of the subordinate motor centres. We
have to deal with will, not as a single undecom-
posable faculty unaffected by bodily conditions,
but as a result of organic changes in the supreme
centres, afi^ected as certainly and seriously by-
disorder of them as our motor faculties are by
disorder of their centres. Loss of power of will
is one of the earliest and most characteristic
symptoms of mental derangement ; and what-
ever may have been thought in times past, we
know well now that the loss is not the work of
^ Body and Mind, pp. 22, 23.

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

some unclean spirit that has laid its hands upon
the Will, but the direct effect of physical dis-
ease.

Volition is, accordingly, that transformation
of feeling into action which is attended by a
conscious comparison of impressions, and which
involves nutritive changes in the cerebrum or
cerebellum, or in both. As we saw in the pre-
ceding chapter, the sequence of actions upon
impressions is either reflex or instinctive, and
in either case automatic, so long as the nervous
energy liberated by the impression is instantly
discharged through a completely permeable
channel or set of channels. But in those higher
organisms in which an immensely varied ex-
perience has established innumerable complex
systems of less permeable channels, there inter-
venes between the liberation of energy in the
brain and its discharge upon the motor centres
a period during which there is a tension between
various nerve currents, each seeking to discharge
itself along the most permeable lines of transit.
We saw also that this period of tension is a
period of conscious deliberation, involving con-
scious reflection, and feelings of desire or aver-
sion. And these views turned out to be justified
by the fact that as soon as the frequent repeti-
tion of any given set of experiences has rendered
all the transit lines involved in the case com-
pletely permeable, so that there is no longer any
260

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

appreciable period of tension, then the acts once
conscious and voluntary become involuntary and
automatic.

Now the state of consciousness called Desire
is accompanied by a nascent excitement of the
nerve fibres distributed upon the muscular ap-
paratus whose activity is requisite for the attain-
ment of the desired object. There is a tendency
to go through with the movements needful for
realizing the desire ; and this tendency, unless
neutralized by an antagonist tendency, must
end in action. In the language of dynamics,
tension, when not counteracted by opposing
tension, must pass into vis viva. This passage
of nervous tension into nervous vis viva con-
stitutes volition, which may for practical pur-
poses be regarded indifferently as the final stage
of emotion or as the initial stage of action.

Passing from the case in which a single de-
sire is operative, let us briefly consider the spe-
cial case of two conflicting desires, where the
gratification of the one is incompatible with that
of the other. In this case, two groups of motor
nerves are nascently excited. Here there are
two opposite tensions, and the resulting action
will depend on their comparative strength. l{
they exactly neutralize each other, as in the hy-
pothetical case of the ass between the two bun-
dles of hay, no volition will ensue. But in a
complex aggregate, like the human or animal
261

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

organism, such a state of equilibrium cannot be
of long continuance. Sooner or later — either
from the greater vividness with which one of
the desired objects is mentally realized, or from
any one of a thousand other disturbing circum-
stances down to those of a purely physical na-
ture, — one desire will become stronger than the
other. And instantly thereupon, the surplus
nervous tension remaining after the weaker de-
sire is neutralized wall pass into nervous vis viva;
or, in other words, volition will take place.

The opposing tension need not, however,
have desire for its concomitant. It may be fur-
nished by the mere inertia of the nervo-mus-
cular system ; as when a man, wishing to do
something which requires exertion, is too weary
to do it. Weariness implies a diminution in the
total amount of contractile force — a state in
which a tension greater than ordinary is obvi-
ously required for the initiation of muscular
motion. Conversely, the originating tension
need not always be supplied by desire, but may
be consequent upon vivacity, which is the pre-
sence of a superfluous amount of vital energy;
as exemplified alike in the morning frolics of an
infant, in the singing of birds, and in the gam-
bols of a dog when released from his kennel.

Cases as simple as those here treated occur
no doubt with comparative infrequency. Usu-
ally a great number of motives, indefinitely
262

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

complex and variable in their mutual combina-
tions and oppositions, are simultaneously oper-
ative. But however numerous or complicated
the forces at work, from whatever source the
motives to action or inaction arise, whatever be
the nature of the incentives to one kind of con-
duct or to some other kind, it is equally true
that the result depends upon their comparative
strength. Indeed since forces can be measured
only by their effects, to say that of two conflict-
ing motives one is followed by volition, is to
call that motive the stronger one. " Our only
evidence of excess of force is the movement
it produces ; " and when the ancient engineer
wished to ascertain the comparative power of a
couple of catapults, he had no alternative but
to see which would hurl its stone to the greater
distance. To say explicitly that volition does
not follow the strongest motive, is to say im-
plicitly that motion does not always follow the
line of least resistance ; which is to deny the
persistence of force.

Volition being accordingly regarded as the
process whereby feeling initiates action, it be-
comes evident that the term " free " is no more
applicable to it than the term " copper col-
oured." As Mr. Bain observes, " The designa-
tion ' liberty of choice ' has no real meaning,
except as denying extraneous interference. If I
am interfered with by another person compel-
263

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

ling me to act in one way, then it may be said,
intelligibly enough, that I have not liberty of
choice. But as between the different motives
of my own mind, there is no meaning in the use
of the word ' liberty.' Various motives — pre-
sent or prospective pleasures and pains — con-
cur in urging me to act. The result of the con-
flict shows that lone group is stronger than
another, and that is the whole case." ^ Or, as
M. Littre has still more forcibly reminded us,
the term " liberty," as applied to voYitioUy means
the power of obeying the strongest motive.
When that power is interfered with, by paraly-
sis or insanity, or the constraint exercised by
other persons, then we may truly say that we
are deprived of free-will and of responsibility.
But so long* as circumstances allow volition to
follow the strongest motive, then we truly say
that we are free and responsible for our actions.
Thus the tables are completely turned, and
much of the current disputation on this subject
is reduced at once to unmeaning verbiage. The
popular arguments in favour of " freedom " are
seen to be as palpable cases of ignoratio elenchi
as are those daily urged against the develop-
ment hypothesis. By a scientific definition of
Will, the assertion of freedom is set aside as
irrelevant, leaving behind the assertion of non-
causation. That this too is virtually disposed
^ Bain, The Emotions and the Will, ist edition, p. 550.
264

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

of by the same definition scarcely needs point-
ing out. Yet for the sake of still greater clear-
ness, our present results may fitly be supple-
mented by a new class of considerations.

That volitions differ from all other pheno-
mena by their capability of occurring without
any cause is the opinion of the free-will phi-
losophers; and Mr. Smith, in criticising the con-
trary opinion, remarks that "if comets formed
their own future" (/'. e. were endowed with
volition), " they would be rather embarrassing
subjects of science." Without attempting to
decipher the vagaries in which these cosmical
bodies might in such case take it upon them-
selves to indulge,^ it will be enough for my
present purpose to point out some of the shoals
on which the free-will doctrine must land its de-
fenders. If volitions arise without cause, it ne-
cessarily follows that we cannot infer from them
the character of the antecedent states of feeling.
If, therefore, a murder has been committed, we
have a priori no better reason for suspecting
the worst enemy than the best friend of the

1 In point of fact a comet does '* form its own future ** in
the same way that a man does. The state of a heavenly body
at any given moment is a product, partly of the forces, molar
and molecular, with which it was endowed at the preceding
moment, and partly of the forces simultaneously exerted upon
it by environing heavenly bodies. The case of human volition
differs from this in nothing save the number and complexity,
and consequent relative incalculableness, of the forces at work.
0.6^

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

murdered man. If we see a man jump from a
fourth-story window, we must beware of too
hastily inferring his insanity, since he may be
merely exercising his free-will ; the intense love
of life implanted in the human breast being, as
it seems, unconnected with attempts at suicide
or at self-preservation. We can thus frame no
theory of human actions whatever. The count-
less empirical maxims of every-day life, the em-
bodiment as they are of the inherited and or-
ganized sagacity of many generations, become
wholly incompetent to guide us ; and nothing
which any one may do ought ever to occasion
surprise. The mother may strangle her first-
born child, the miser may cast his long trea-
sured gold into the sea, the sculptor may break
in pieces his lately finished statue, in the pre-
sence of no other feelings than those which be-
fore led them to cherish, to hoard, and to create.
To state these conclusions is to refute their
premise. Probably no defender of the doctrine
of free-will could be induced to accept them,
even to save the theorem with which they are
inseparably wrapped up. Yet the dilemma can-
not be avoided. Volitions are either caused, or
they are not. If they are not caused, an inex-
orable logic brings us to the absurdities just
mentioned. If they are caused, the free-will
doctrine is annihilated. No help is afforded by
the gratuitous hypothesis that there is a connec-
0.66

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

tlon between the act and the motive, which yet
is not a causal connection. Such connection, if
it exist, must be a case either of conditional in-
variable sequence, or of unconditional invaria-
ble sequence. On the first supposition, we have
a case like the succession of day and night, in
which both terms of the sequence are condi-
tioned upon a third fact ; so that here we do
not escape causation. The second supposition
is but an assertion of causation in other words.
While to take refuge in the postulate that this
assumed connection is a case of variable se-
quence is to affirm and deny connection in the
same breath.

But it is said that consciousness declares the
Will to be free ; and therefore that any attempt
to disprove its freedom by reasoning is suicidal,
since all such reasoning must end by impugn-
ing the veracity of that consciousness on which
its own data are ultimately based. An ingenious
argument truly, the conclusion whereof would
be more readily admitted if its premise were
true. Consciousness, which is so confidently
appealed to as establishing by its infallible ver-
dict the doctrine of free-will, in fact says no-
thing about the matter. That volitions are un-
caused is a proposition altogether too indirect
for consciousness to sit in judgment upon, and
it can neither be proved nor disproved by sim-
ple introspection. It would have been equally
267

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

appropriate for the mediaeval astronomer to ap-
peal to consciousness as testifying to the revo-
lution of the sun about the earth. As Mr. Bain
observes, " it is a great stretch of asseveration
to call the construction of an enormous theory
an act of consciousness so simple that we cannot
make a slip in performing it." ^ Consciousness
tells us only that we will. By observation and
experience — not by the simple and direct in-
terrogation of consciousness — we know that,
circumstances permitting, our volitions may be
accomplished. With the exception, therefore,
of those theological fatalists who assert that hu-
man actions are determined by an external con-
straining power, it is the universal opinion that
men can voluntarily determine their own actions;
and this is just what the much-abused testimony
of consciousness amounts to. This is all that it
means to any one not mystified by metaphysics ;
the non-causation of volitions being a theorem
so far from obvious to a great many men, that
it requires considerable explanation to make
them understand it. By the testimony of con-
sciousness, as thus interpreted, the assertors of
the lawlessness of volition are not helped in the
least. The question at issue between them and
their opponents is, not whether the actions of
men are normally free, but whether their free-
dom is consistent with their being caused. The
1 The Emotions and the Wil/y ist edition, p. 563.
268

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

assertors of " Free-Will " maintain that causa-
tion is inconsistent with liberty." ^ The so-
called necessarians assert that liberty and causa-
tion are quite consistent with each other. To
which we must now add, that it is not causation,
but the absence thereof, which is as incompati-
ble with liberty as it is with law.

For the causationist, believing that volition
invariably follows the stronger motive, endeav-
ours to increase the relative strength of all those
emotions whose outcome is virtuous and up-
right conduct, while he strives to weaken those
feelings whose tendency is toward base and ig-
noble conduct. Knowing that by continual in-
dulgence desire is reinforced, while by constant

1 ** The law of bondage throughout the universe is the law
of cause and effect. In the violation, then, of this law, true
freedom must consist." Ferrier, Lectures and Philosophical
Remains f vol. ii. p. 255. One might expect such a remark
as this from Mr. Goldwin Smith, who speaks of being ** bound
by the chain of certain causation ; ' ' but from so acute a
thinker as Professor Ferrier, it is surprising. To adopt, in a
somewhat altered sense, Kant's happy illustration, — the spec-
tacle of a bird denouncing as an encumbrance the air by which
alone it is enabled to fly would be a fitting parallel to the
spectacle of those philosophers who decry that regularity of
sequence through which alone has ** freedom " any meaning.
As Lessing long ago said, with well-bestowed contempt, ** Le
beau privilege d'etre soumis a une puissance aveugle qui ne
suit aucune regie ! En serait-je moins le jouet du hasard parce
que ce hasard residerait en mot ? ' '

269

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

repression it is enfeebled, he applies this know-
ledge to the control of his will and the discipline
of his character. But on the theory that voli-
tions are causeless, all methods of self-discipline
become of no avail. If they are powerless to
influence action, it is of small practical impor-
tance whether noble and sympathetic or base
and selfish motives are prevalent ; and the moral
distinction between them loses most of its signi-
ficance. Why, asks Mr. Smith, " is a Philip II.
more the subject of moral disapprobation than
the plague? '* Why, indeed, unless his atrocious
crimes are to be interpreted as the necessary
outgrowth of a character wherein good motives
were impotent and bad motives all-powerful.
Were volition self-determining, then similar acts
might have been committed by a Washington
or a Borromeo. Obviously there would be little
use in laboriously schooling our desires to virtue,
if at any moment in spite thereof some uncaused
volition might bring forth from us a detestable
deed. It is therefore not the doctrine of causa-
tion, but the so-called free-will doctrine, that,
if true, would " put an end to self-exertion,"
and deprive us of every " rule of right action."
Since self-control, and therefore liberty, Is im-
possible unless volition is determined by desire,
it is the latter doctrine — not the former —
which is really inconsistent with the assertion
of human freedom, which takes from us the
270

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

dignity of responsibility, and makes man the
sport of a grotesque and purposeless chance.

In truth, the immediate corollaries of the
free-will doctrine are so shocking, not only to
philosophy but to common-sense, that were not
accurate thinking a somewhat rare phenomenon
it would be inexplicable how any credit should
ever have been given to such a dogma. This
is but one of the many instances in which, by
the force of words alone, men have been held
subject to chronic delusion. The libertarian
doctrine has obtained currency because it has
talked loudly of human freedom, with which,
nevertheless, a brief analysis proves it to be
incompatible. Substitute for the unmeaning
phrase " freedom of the Will " the accurate
phrase " lawlessness of volition," and the theory
already looks less plausible. In place of the
vague and ambiguous word " necessity," write
the clear and definitely connotative word "causa-
tion," and the scientific theory at once loses its
imaginary terrors. The titles with which the
free-will doctrine decorates itself, and those with
which it brands its opponent, are alike " ques-
tion-begging epithets." They serve to prejudge
the point at issue.

Not content with the overwhelming prestige
which its name thus gives it, the free-will doc-
trine seeks to follow up its advantage by iden-
tifying its antagonist with Asiatic fatalism ; a
271

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

confusion of ideas like that under which Mr.
Bounderby laboured, when unable to see the
difference between giving workmen their just
dues, and feeding them with turtle-soup out of
a gold-lined spoon. To say that actions depend-
ent on volition will take place whenever the
essential conditions are present, and to say that
they will take place even if the conditions are
absent, are by free-will theorists held to be one
and the same assertion ! ^ Fatalism is, however,
much more closely akin to their own doctrine.
Each ignores causation ; each is incompatible
with personal freedom ; the only difference be-
tween them being that the one sets up Chance,
while the other sets up Destiny, as the arbi-
ter of human affairs. And while each doctrine
is theoretically held by large bodies of men,
each in practice is habitually contradicted by its
upholders. The defenders of free-will, who in
practice are obliged to admit a certain con-
nection between acts and motives, and the

^ *' It is owing to the very general misconception of the
nature of Law that there arises the misconception of Necessity;
the fact that events arrive irresistibly whenever their condi-
tions are present is confounded with the conception that the
events must arrive whether the conditions be present or not,
being fatally predetermined. Necessity simply says that what-
ever is is, and will vary with varying conditions. Fatalism
says that something must be ; and this something cannot be
modified by any modification of the conditions." Lewes,
Problems of Life and Mi?id, vol. i. p. 309.
272

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

Arab fatalists, among whom the saying is current
that " when Allah wills an event, he prepares
the causes beforehand," alike exemplify this.
Though both agree in repudiating causation,
both equally in their every-day maxims give
evidence of an unconscious belief in its exist-
ence.

Having identified the causation theory with
fatalism, it becomes all the easier for its oppo-
nents to accuse it of denying moral responsibil-
ity. Accordingly, when Mr. Buckle, following
in the footsteps of Laplace, inferred from the
regularity of the statistics of crime and suicide,
marriages and dead-letters, that voluntary ac-
tions conform to law ; ^ it was proposed by one
of his reviewers that state governments should
at once suspend judicial operations, and having
ascertained from statistics the yearly number of
murders, should forthwith hang a correspond-
ing number of individuals, selected by lot from
the community. To which suggestion the nat-
ural reply would have been, that if govern-
ments ever do adopt this singular course of ad-
ministering justice, they will then be consistently
acting on the belief that motives do not stand
in a causal relation to volitions. If the volition
can follow the weaker motive, the feelings which
ordinarily deter from the commission of crime

^ Buckle, Civilization in England, vol. i. pp. 20—30 ;
Laplace, Essai sur les ProbabiliteSy p. 76.

VOL. Ill -^73

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

need not be strengthened by the fear of pun-
ishment.^

Thus do all the favourite arguments in be-
half of the free-will hypothesis recoil upon its
defenders. To adopt from barbarian warfare
an ungraceful but expressive simile, they are like
awkwardly thrown boomerangs which wound
the thrower. Attempting, as the free-will philo-
sophers do, to destroy the science of history,
they are compelled by an inexorable logic to
pull down with it the cardinal principles of
ethics, politics, and jurisprudence. Political
economy, if rigidly dealt with on their theory,
would fare little better ; and psychology would
become chaotic jargon. That psychical actions,

^ '* The very reason for giving notice that we intend to pun-
ish certain acts; and for inflicting punishment if the acts be
committed, is that we trust in the efficacy of the threat and
the punishment as deterring motives. If the volition of agents
be not influenced by motives, the whole machinery of law be-
comes unavailing, and punishment a purposeless infliction of
pain. In fact it is on that very ground that the madman is
exempted from punishment ; his volition being presumed to be
not capable of being acted upon by the deterring motive of
legal sanction. TYv^free agent, thus understood, is one who
can neither feel himself accountable, nor be rendered account-
able to or by others. It is only the necessary agent (the per-
son whose volitions are determined by motives, and, in case
of conflict, by the strongest desire or the strongest apprehen-
sion) that can be held really accountable, or can feel himself
to be so." Grote, Review of Mill' s Examination of Hamil-
ton's Philosophy, p. 97.

274

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

and volitions among them, conform to law is
the indispensable axiom of every science or
philosophy which treats of the mind and its
products, whether individually or socially em-
bodied. He who asserts the contrary maintains
" a form of the Manichaean doctrine of two
principles ... in which one principle, that of
order, presides over the physical phenomena
of the universe, and the other, that of disorder,
over its moral phenomena." ^ As I have already
said, no middle ground can be talcen. The
denial of causation is the affirmation of chance,
and "between the theory of Chance and the
theory of Law, there can be no compromise,
no reciprocity, no borrowing and lending." To
write history on any method furnished by the
free-will doctrine would be utterly impossible.
Mr. Smith tells us that " finding at Rome a
law to encourage tyrannicide, we are certain
that there had been tyrants at Rome, though
there is nothing approaching to historical evi-
dence of the tyranny of Tarquin." By drawing
this inference he abandons his own principles,
according to which the law in question might
have originated without any cause except the
self-determining will of some Roman legislator.
And he is equally inconsistent in saying that
" a nation may have to go through one stage
of knowledge or civilization before it can reach
1 W. Adam, Theories of History , p. 65.
275

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

another, but its going through either is still
free'' If by this it is meant that a nation's pro-
gress need not be due to constraint exercised over
it by other nations, the statement is true, but it
is one which no one has thought of disputing.
But if it is meant that the latter of two succes-
sive stages of civilization is not caused by the
former, the statement destroys itself. By ad-
mitting that " a nation may have to go through
one stage of civilization before it can reach an-
other," Mr. Smith gives up his case and con-
cedes all which has ever been claimed by those
who would construct a science of history. If
there is a definite order of sequence among the
stages of civilization, that order may sooner or
later be formulated, and to formulate that order
is to found sociology as a science. But if causa-
tion in history is denied, if each epoch is not
determined by the preceding epoch, then the
inference is inevitable that the French Revolu-
tion might have happened in the reign of Louis
XL, or that the progress of Christianity might
have been eastward instead of westward. Thus
all conception of progress, as well as all con-
ception of order, is at an end. Thus the vast
domain of History, numbering among its com-
ponent divisions the phenomena of Language,
Art, Religion, and Government, the products
of social activity as well as the phases of social
progress, becomes an unruly chaos, a Tohu-va-
276

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

Bohu, where event stumbles after event, and
change jostles change, without sequence and
without law.

I think, therefore, we are quite justified in
saying that, when stripped of the metaphysical
jargon in which it is usually propounded, the
question of free-will becomes an easy one to
answer. Having laid the dust which meta-
physicians have kicked up, we find our vision
no longer obscured. From whatever scientific
standpoint we contemplate the doctrine of the
lawlessness of volition, we find that its plausi-
bleness depends solely on tricks of language.
The first trick is the personification of Will as
an entity distinct from all acts of volition ; the
second trick is the ascription to this entity of
" freedom," a word which is meaningless as ap-
plied to the process whereby feeling initiates
action ; and the third trick is the assumption
that desires or motives are entities outside of a
person, so that if his acts of volition were in-
fluenced by them he would be robbed of his
freedom. Any one, however, who is not misled
by these verbal quibbles, and who bears in mind
that a person, psychologically considered, is
nothing more than the sum of his conscious
states, will perceive at once that when the de-
sires or aversions determine the volitional acts,
it is the person himself who determines them.
We have accordingly seen that, since liberty of
277

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

choice means nothing if it does not mean the
power to exert volition in the direction indicated
by the strongest group of motives ; and since
all control over character is impossible unless
desires and volitions occur in a determinate
order of sequence ; it is the doctrine of lawless-
ness and not the causationist doctrine which is
incompatible with liberty and destructive of
responsibility. The rhetoric which Mr. Gold-
win Smith lavishes, on the strength of a set of
misapplied phrases, might therefore be justly
retorted upon him, on the strength of a psy-
chologic analysis. And this, which is the con-
clusion of science, we have seen to be also the
conclusion of common sense. Whatever may
be our official theories, we all practically ignore
and discredit the doctrine that volition is law-
less. Whatever voice of tradition we may be in
the habit of echoing, we do equally, from the
earliest to the latest day of our self-conscious
existence, act and calculate upon the suppo-
sition that voHtion, alike in ourselves and in
others, follows invariably the strongest motive.
And upon this ineradicable belief are based
all our methods of government, of education,
and of self-discipline. Finally, in turning our
attention to history, we have found that the
aggregate of thoughts, desires, and volitions in
any epoch is so manifestly dependent upon the
aggregate of thoughts, desires, and volitions in
278

SOCIOLOGY AND FREE-WILL

the preceding epoch, that even the assertors of
the lawlessness of volition are forced to com-
mit logical suicide by recognizing the sequence.
Thus, whether we contemplate volitions them-
selves, or compare their effects, whether we re-
sort to the testimony of psychology or to the
testimony of history, we are equally compelled
to admit that Law is coextensive with all orders
of phenomena and with every species of change.
It is hardly creditable to the character of the
present age for scientific enlightenment that such
a statement should need to be made, or that
thirty-nine pages of critical argument should be
required to illustrate it. To many this chapter will
no doubt seem much like an elaborate attempt
to prove the truth of the multiplication table.
Nevertheless where such a blinding metaphysi-
cal dust has been raised, a few drops of the cold
water of common sense may be not only harm-
less but useful. Having thus done somewhat
to clear the air, we may next proceed to point
out the way in which social changes conform to
the Law of Evolution.

279

CHAPTER XVIII

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY*

A NY attempt to discover the laws to which
/-\ social changes conform must run great
-^ -^ risk of being frustrated by the mere
immensity of the mass of details which the in-
vestigator strives to arrange in orderly sequence.
Seemingly numberless as are the phenomena
dealt with by the physical sciences, they bear no
proportion, either in multitude or in variety, to
the facts upon which the student of sociology
must build his scientific theorems. Facts con-
cerning man in his physical relations to soil,
climate, food, and the configuration of the earth
blend with facts concerning the intellectual and
moral relations of men to each other and to the
aspects of nature by which they are surrounded,
making up a problem of such manifold com-
plexity that it may well have long been deemed
incapable of satisfactory solution. The fit ground
for wonder is, indeed, not that we are as yet un-
able to arrive at accurate prevision amid such a
diversified throng of phenomena, but that, con-
sidering the meagreness of our knowledge in
^ [See Introduction, §§ 22, 23.]
280

1

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

many other departments, we should have been
able to detect any uniformity whatever in human
affairs, and having detected it, to explain it upon
trustworthy scientific principles.

There is but one way to conduct such an in-
tricate investigation securely to its final issue ;
and that is, to make extensive use of elimina-
tion as it is employed in the simpler sciences.
" If without any previous investigation of the
properties of terrestrial matter, Newton had pro-
ceeded at once to study the dynamics of the uni-
verse, and after years spent with the telescope
in ascertaining the distances, sizes, times of re-
volution, inclinations of axes, forms of orbits,
perturbations, etc., of the celestial bodies, had
set himself to tabulate this accumulated mass of
observations, and to educe from them the fun-
damental laws of planetary and stellar equili-
brium, he might have cogitated to all eternity
without arriving at a result." This lucid illus-
tration, which I have cited from the introduc-
tion to Mr. Spencer's " Social Statics," suggests
the proper method of approaching the inves-
tigation of complex phenomena. Minor per-
turbing elements must for a time be left out of
consideration, just as the inequalities of motion
resulting from the mutual attractions of the
planets were at first passed over in the search
for the general formula of gravitation. The dis-
cussion of endless minute historical details must
281

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

be reserved until the law of social changes has
been deduced from the more constant pheno-
mena, and is ready for inductive verification. A
law wide enough to form a basis for sociology
must needs be eminently abstract, and can be
found only by contemplating the most general
and prominent characteristics of social changes.
The prime requisite of the formula of which we
are in quest is that it should accurately desig-
nate such changes under their leading aspect.

Now by far the most obvious and constant
characteristic common to a vast number of social
changes is that they are changes from a worse
to a better state of things, — that they consti-
tute phases of Progress. It is not asserted that
human history has in all times and places been
the history of progress ; it is not denied that at
various times and in many places it has been the
history of retrogression ; but attention is called
to the fact — made trite by long familiarity, yet
none the less habitually misconceived — that
progress has been on the whole the most con-
stant and prominent feature of the history of a
considerable and important portion of mankind.

Around this cardinal fact have clustered, as I
just hinted, many serious misconceptions. The
illustrious thinkers of the last century, who
endeavoured to study human history from a
scientific point of view, were unconsciously led
into an error from which contemporary writers
282

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

have not as yet entirely freed themselves. The
followers of Turgot and Condorcet were prone
to regard progress as something necessary and
universal. They attempted to account for it,
much as Lamarck tried to explain organic de-
velopment, as the continuous and ubiquitous
manifestation of an occult, inherent tendency to-
wards perfection. Subsequent literature exhib-
its many traces of this metaphysical conception.
Thus Dr. Whately, in his edition of Archbishop
King's discourses, asserts that " civilization is
the natural state of man, since he has evidently
a natural tendency towards it." Upon which
it has been aptly remarked that, " by a parity
of reasoning, old age is the natural state of
man since he has evidently a natural tendency
towards it." Indeed, as this comparison is
intended to show, it is difficult to use such ex-
pressions as " natural state " and " natural ten-
dency" without becoming involved in a con-
fusion of ideas. And to ascribe progress to an
inherent tendency, without taking into account
the complex set of conditions amid which alone
that tendency can be realized, is to give us an
empty formula instead of a scientific explana-
tion. Whether the individual will die young or
reach old age, and whether the community will
remain barbarous or become civilized, depends,
to a great extent, upon environing circum-
stances ; and no theory of progress can have

283

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

any value which omits the consideration of this
fact. Mr. William Adam labours under the
confusion of ideas here signahzed, when he finds
fault with Sir G. C. Lewis for upholding the
doctrine of progress while admitting that certain
races have never advanced in civilization. For
this, Mr. Adam accuses him of virtually divid-
ing mankind into two differently constituted
races, of which the one possesses, while the
other lacks, the inherent tendency toward perfec-
tion ! ^ He might as well maintain that because
we admit that certain men are stunted, while
others grow tall, we divide mankind into two
differently constituted races, of which the one
possesses, while the other lacks, the inherent
tendency toward increase in size. Closely allied
to this fallacy is that which associates lateness in
time with completeness in development, and
requires us to assume that nowhere at any time
has there been a temporary retrogression. Thus
Mr. Goldwin Smith appears to be confused by
the impression that the temporary decline in the
moral tone of English society after the Resto-
ration of Charles II., is a fact inconsistent with
the doctrine of a general progress. And Mr.
Mansel still more preposterously declares that
on the theory of progression we ought to regard
the polytheism of imperial Rome as a higher
form of religion than the earlier Hebrew wor-
^ W. Adam, Theories of History , p. 87.
284

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

ship of Jehovah. While another form of the
same confusion is to be seen in the attempts
which writers imbued with the conception of
progress often make, to coax the annals of the
past into affirming the uninterrupted advance
of civilization.

These examples show how vaguely the doc-
trine of progress has hitherto been apprehended.
The fallacy of supposing civilization to have
proceeded serially, or uniformly, or in conse-
quence of any universal tendency, is nearly akin
to the fallacy of classifying the animal kingdom
in a series of ascending groups, — a fruitful
source of delusion, which it was Cuvier's great
merit to have steadily avoided. The theologi-
cal habit of viewing progressiveness as a divine
gift to man,^ and the metaphysical habit of re-
garding it as a necessary attribute of humanity,
are equally unsound and equally fraught with
error. Until more accurate conceptions are ac-
quired, no secure advance can be made toward
discerning the true order of social changes. Far
from being necessary and universal, progress has
been in an eminent degree contingent and par-

^ " It is impossible for mere savages to civilize themselves.
. . . Consequently men must at some period have received
the rudiments of civilization from a superhuman instructor. '* ( !)
Whately's Rhetoric^ p. 94. A statement not altogether com-
patible with the one just quoted from the same author in the
text.

285

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

tial. Its career has been frequently interrupted
by periods of stagnation or declension, and
wherever it has gone on, it has been forwarded,
not by an inexplicable tendency or nisus, but by
a concurrence of favourable conditions, external
and internal. We must remember, moreover,
as Sir Henry Maine reminds us,^ that the com-
munities which have attained to a conspicuous
degree of civilization constitute a numerical mi-
nority of mankind. Contemporaneous with the
rapidly advancing nations of Europe exist the
sluggish nations of Asia, and the almost station-
ary tribes of Africa and Polynesia.

** Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.'*

So irregular, indeed, has been the march of
civilization, that most stages of progress may be
made the subject of ocular investigation at the
present day.

In the science of history, therefore, old
"means not old in chronology, but in struc-
ture : that is most archaic which lies nearest to
the beginning of human progress considered as
a development, and that is most modern which
is farthest removed from that beginning.*'^

Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that the
career of progress has been neither universal

1 Ancient Law, p. 24 ; cf. Lewis, Methods of Observa-
tion in Politics, vol. i. p. 302.

^ M'Lennan, Primitive Marriage, p. 9.
286

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

nor unbroken, it remains entirely true that the
law of progress, when discovered, will be found
to be the law of history. The great fact to be
explained is either the presence or the absence
of progress. And when we have formulated the
character of progress, and the conditions essen-
tial to it, we have the key to the history of the
stationary as well as of the progressive nations.
When we are able to show why the latter have
advanced, the same general principle will enable
us to show why the former have not advanced.
Though in biogeny we habitually view the pro-
cess of natural selection as the process whereby
higher organisms are slowly originated, the prin-
ciple loses none of its importance because sun-
dry species from time to time suffer deteriora-
tion, or remain stationary, or become extinct.
When we know how it is that some species ad-
vance, we know how it is that other species do
not advance. So, in the science of language,
which is equally with sociogeny a. science of de-
velopment, — being, indeed, neither more nor
less than a quite special province of sociogeny,
— we rightly consider the main problem solved
when we have explained the process of phonetic
integration, by which languages ascend from the
primary, through the secondary, to the tertiary
stage of structure. It matters not that Chinese
remains to this day a primary language, and that
the numerical majority of languages have not
287

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

yet become tertiary by completely fusing to-
gether the component roots of their words. The
process by which languages pass from a lower
stage to a higher remains none the less the fun-
damental phenomenon to be investigated, and
when we have generalized the conditions under
which this process takes place, we can explain
its absence as well as its presence. Now the
case is the same with progress in society that it
is with progress in language or in organic life.
Whether manifested or not manifested in any
particular community, progress is still the all-
important phenomenon to be investigated. It
is the one grand phenomenon, to explain the
presence and the absence of which is to explain
the phenomena of history. Just as the study
of the languages which have advanced furnishes
us the key for understanding those which have
not advanced, so the study of the progressive
communities furnishes us, as we shall see, the
law of history ; a law which, in its most gen-
eral expression, covers the phenomena presented
by the non-progressive communities likewise.
Comte was therefore right in restricting the
main current of his inquiry to the course of that
civilization which began on the eastern shores
of the Mediterranean, and has extended over
Europe and a portion of America. The same
plan will be pursued in the present chapter. Al-
though incidental confirmation will be sought
288

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

in the history of the stationary communities, our
main problem will be to formulate the law of
progress from a comparison of the phenomena
presented by the progressive communities.

But before we can fairly enter upon our task,
it will be desirable for us to note the Factors
of Progress with which we shall chiefly have to
deal.

The prime factors in social progress are the
Community and its Environment. The envi-
ronment of a community comprises all the cir-
cumstances, adjacent or remote, to which the
community may be in any way obliged to con-
form its actions. It comprises not only the
climate of the country, its soil, its flora and
fauna, its perpendicular elevation, its relation to
mountain chains, the length of its coast line,
the character of its scenery, and its geographi-
cal position with reference to other countries ;
but it includes also the ideas, feelings, customs,
and observances of past times, so far as they
are preserved by literature, traditions, or monu-
ments ; as well as foreign contemporary man-
ners and opinions, so far as they are known and
regarded by the community in question. Thus
defined, the environment may be very limited
or very extensive. The environment of an Es-
kimo tribe consists of the physical circumstances
of Labrador, of adjoining tribes, of a few trad-
ers or travellers, and of the sum total of the

VOL. Ill 2o9

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

traditions received from ancestral Eskimos.
These make up the sum of the conditions
affecting the social existence of the Eskimos.
The environment of the United States, on the
other hand, while it comprises the physical con-
ditions of the North American continent, com-
prises also all contemporary nations with whom
we have intercourse, and all the organized tra-
dition — political and ethical, scientific and re-
ligious— which we possess in common with all
the other communities whose civilization ori-
ginated in the Roman Empire. The significance
of this increase of size and diversity in the en-
vironment will be explained presently.

Bearing in mind this definition of a social
environment, — which I believe carries with it
its own justification, — let us briefly notice the
error committed by those writers who would
fain interpret all the most important social phe-
nomena as due, solely or chiefly, to physical
causes. This is an error frequently committed
by physiologists who try their hand at the inves-
tigation of social affairs, and who attempt to
treat sociology as if it were a mere branch of
biology. But this is not the case. As we have
seen psychology to be an offshoot from biology,
specialized by the introduction of inquiries con-
cerning the relations of the percipient mind to
its environment ; we must similarly regard so-
ciology as an offshoot from psychology, special-
290

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

ized by the introduction of inquiries concerning
the relations of many percipient and emotion-
ally incited minds to each other and to their
common environment. As in biogeny all at-
tempts to discover the law of organic develop-
ment failed utterly so long as the relations of
the organism to physical environing agencies
were alone studied, and succeeded only when
Mr. Darwin took into account the relations of
organisms to each other; so still more inevita-
bly in sociogeny must all our efforts fail so
long as we consider merely the physiologic re-
lations of a community to the country in which
it dwells, and refuse to recognize the extent
to which communities influence each other by
means that are purely intellectual or moral.
Doubtless the character of the physical environ-
ment is of importance, more especially, perhaps,
in the earlier stages of civilization. No doubt
civilization will first arise, other things equal,
in a locality where food and shelter can be
obtained with a medium amount of exertion ;
where nature is neither too niggard nor too lav-
ish in the bestowal of her favours. No doubt
there is a physical significance in the fact that
civilization began, not in barren Siberia, or in
luxuriant Brazil, but in countries like Egypt
and Mesopotamia, which were neither so barren
as to starve, nor so luxuriant as to spoil, the
labourer. No doubt the Greeks owed much to
291

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

the extent of their coast line. No doubt —
above all — the Mediterranean is justly sacred
to the student of history as partly the civilizer
of the peoples who upon its waves first courted
adventure, and conducted commerce, and im-
parted to each other cosmopolitan sympathies
which could never have been evoked but for
some such intercourse. All this may be granted.
But as civilization advances, the organized ex-
perience of past generations becomes to a greater
and greater extent the all-important factor of
progress. As Comte expresses it, in one of his
profoundest aphorisms, the empire of the dead
over the living increases from age to age. if
we contemplate, from a lofty historical point
of view, the relative importance of the factors
in the environment of our United States, I be-
lieve we shall be forced to conclude that the
victory of the Greeks at Marathon, the con-
quest of Gaul by Caesar, the founding of Chris-
tianity, the defeat of Attila at Chalons and of
the Arabs at Tours, the advent of the Normans
in England, the ecclesiastic reforms of Hilde-
brand, the Crusades, the revolt of Luther, the
overthrow of the Spanish Armada, and the
achievements of scientific inquirers from Archi-
medes to Faraday, have influenced and are in-
fluencing our social condition to a far greater
extent than the direction of the Rocky Moun-
tains, or the position of the Great Lakes, or the
292

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

course of the Gulf Stream. Or if we inquire
why the Spaniards are still so superstitious and
bigoted, I believe we shall find little enlighten-
ment in the fact that Spain is peculiarly sub-
ject to earthquakes, but much enlightenment
in the fact that for eight centuries Spain was
the arena of a life and death struggle between
orthodox Christians and Moorish unbelievers.
The mention of Spain and earthquakes brings
me to Mr. Buckle, a writer of marked ability,
who, though he did not explicitly countenance
the error I am here criticising, was nevertheless
sometimes betrayed into committing it, as may
be seen from the following passage : " The
Arabs in their own country have, owing to the
extreme aridity of their soil, always been a rude
and uncultivated people, — for in their case,
as in all others, great ignorance is the fruit
of great poverty. But in the seventh century
they conquered Persia ; in the eighth century
they conquered the best part of Spain ; in the
ninth century they conquered the Punjab, and
eventually nearly the whole of India. Scarcely
were they established in their fresh settlements,
when their character seemed to undergo a great
change. They who in their original land were
little else than roving savages were now for the
first time able to accumulate wealth, and there-
fore for the first time did they make some pro-
gress in the arts of civilization. In Arabia they

'^93

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

had been a mere race of wandering shepherds ;
in their new abodes they became the founders
of mighty empires, — they built cities, endowed
schools, collected libraries ; and the traces of
their power are still to be seen at Cordova, at
Bagdad, and at Delhi." ^ To exhibit the utter
superficiality of this explanation, we have only
to ask two questions. First, if the Arabs became
civilized only because they exchanged their na-
tive deserts for Spain, Persia, and India, why
did not the same hold true of the Turks, when
they exchanged their barren steppes for the
rich empire of Constantinople ? Though they
have held for four centuries what is perhaps
the finest geographical p6sition on the earth's
surface, the Turks have never directly aided
the progress of civilization. Secondly, how was
it that the Arabs ever came to leave their native
deserts and to conquer the region between the
Pyrenees and the Ganges ? Was it because
of a geologic convulsion ? Was it because the
soil, the cHmate, the food, or the general aspect
of nature had undergone any sudden change ?
One need not be a profound student of his-
tory to see the absurdity of such a suggestion.
It was because their minds had been greatly
wrought upon by new ideas — because their
conceptions of life, its duties, its aims, its pos-
sibilities, had been revolutionized by the genius
^ History of Civilization , vol. i. p. 42.
294

r

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

of Mohammed. The whole phenomenon re-
quires a psychological, not a physical explana-
tion.

The environment in our problem must, there-
fore, not only include psychical as well as phy-
sical factors, but the former are immeasurably
the more important factors, and as civilization
advances their relative importance steadily in-
creases. Bearing in mind these preliminary ex-
planations, let us now address ourselves to the
problem of social evolution, applying to the
solution of it sundry biological principles estab-
lished in previous chapters. We have first to
observe that it is a corollary from* the law of
use and disuse, and the kindred biologic laws
which sum up the processes of direct and indi-
rect equilibration, that the fundamental charac-
teristic of social progress is the continuous weak-
ening of selfishness and the continuous strengthen-
ing of sympathy. Or — to use a more conve-
nient and somewhat more accurate expression
suggested by Comte — it is a gradual supplant-
ing of egoism by altruism.

In the course of our inquiry into the causes
of organic evolution, it was shown that all the
processes cooperating in the development of
higher from lower forms of Hfe are in the wid-
est and deepest sense processes of equilibration.
The all-important truth was there demonstrated,
that the progress of life on the earth has been
295

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

the continuous equilibration of the organism
with its environment. In the maintenance of
such an equilibrium life has been shown to con-
sist. Accordingly, as we have seen, if the en-
vironment is suddenly and violently altered, the
organism perishes ; but when it is altered slowly,
the organism slowly adapts itself to it. If the
adaptation is not completed within a single gen-
eration, nevertheless a sufficient number of gen-
erations will complete it, just as the children
and grandchildren of an emigrant become more
and more thoroughly acclimated to their new
home.

It is now to be shown that civilization is a
slow process of breeding, of adaptation, of ac-
climatization — mental and moral, as well as
physical, — of equilibration between the Com-
munity and the Environment. From age to
age the environment is slowly but incessantly
changing, and to its gradual changes the human
race, embodied in communities, is continually
adapting itself. As just observed, I am not re-
ferring to the physical environment alone ; for
in dealing with society we have to take into the
account those psychological factors which have
been shown to be by far the most considerable
of all. Leaving out of the account all minor
considerations of climate, food, or other physi-
cal circumstances, and looking at the psycholo-
gical factors alone, we must admit that the en-
296

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

vironment is slowly but constantly changing.
Every city that is built, every generalization
that is reached, every invention that is made,
every new principle of action that is suggested,
alters in some degree the social environment, —
alters the sum total of external relations to which
the community must adjust Itself by Instituting
new internal relations. The entire organized
experience of each generation, so far as it is per-
petuated by literature or oral tradition, adds an
item to the environment of the next succeeding
generation ; so that the sum total of the cir-
cumstances to which each generation is required
to conform itself is somewhat different from
the sum total of circumstances to which the im-
mediately preceding generation was required to
conform itself Thus the community, by the
inevitable results of Its own psychical activity,
is continually modifying the environment; and
to the environment, as thus continually modi-
fied, the community must reciprocally conform
itself.

Now in the primitive, isolated, savage con-
dition of mankind, what was the environment
of each family or petty tribe, and what kind
of emotional activity was it fitted to awaken ?
The unanimous testimony of scientific explor-
ers, and others who have carefully studied the
primitive phases of society, leaves us In little
doubt as to this question. As Mr. M'Lennan
297

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

concisely expresses it, " The state of hostility is
the normal state of the race in early times/' ^
The environment of each little tribe is a con-
geries of neighbouring hostile tribes ; and the
necessity of escaping captivity or death involves
continual readiness for warfare, and the contin-
ual manifestation of the entire class of warlike
unsocial passions. While, on the other hand,
the tribe is so small and homogeneous, that the
opportunity for the exercise of sympathetic and
social feelings is confined chiefly to the conjugal
and parental relations. Nevertheless in the ex-
ercise of these feelings in these relations are con-
tained the germs of all subsequent social progress.
While without the limited sphere of the tribe
all is hatred, revenge, and desire to domineer,
within the limits of the tribe there is room for
the rudimentary display of such feelings as loy-
alty, gratitude, equity, family affection, personal
friendship, and regard for the claims of others.
Since these feelings can be exercised only within
family or tribal limits, it follows that the sphere
for their exercise is relatively small ; while as
the hostile or egoistic feelings are conformed to
the whole environment outside of the tribe, it
follows that the sphere for their exercise is large.
Hence, in this primitive state of society, the
egoistic feelings, being oftenest called into play
in the habitual occupations of life, will be most
1 Primitive Marriage^ p. 134.
298

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

active and will overbalance the altruistic feelings.
While, on the other hand, as the kindlier sym-
pathies are but nascent, even the altruistic feel-
ings, such as they are, will be strongly tinged
with egoism. The highest emotion attainable
will be clannishness, and the highest rule of
duty will be that which enjoins loyalty to the
tribal patriarch. This is actually found to be
the emotional and ethical condition of primi-
tively organized communities, wherever they
have been attentively studied by competent ob-
servers. Such, for example, has been the state
of things existing from time immemorial among
the American Indians, among the Polynesians,
and among the Arabs of the desert ; and these
aspects of clan society, in a somewhat later stage,
among the Scottish Highlanders, are well por-
trayed in several of the Waverley Novels.

Now what is it that chiefly determines the
slow development of the altruistic feelings and
the gradual atrophy of the egoistic feelings ?
Obviously it is the growth of the community in
size and complexity, — the gradual enlargement
of the area over which the altruistic feelings ex-
tend, and the gradual increase in the number
of social situations which demand the exercise
of those feelings. These conditions are partly
fulfilled when the tribal community grows to a
vast size, remaining structurally a tribe with a
patriarchal head, — as was the case in ancient
299

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and India, and as is still
the case in China. But they are still better ful-
filled when the community increases in the com-
plexity of its internal relations, and, instead of
remaining a tribe, becomes a federation of civic
bodies, as in ancient Greece, or a single great
civic body, uniting various tribal elements, as
in ancient Rome. In each of these cases, the
increased power of self-protection renders war-
fare less necessary and frequent, and the partial
supplanting of the primitive predatory life by
the occupations of agriculture and trade begins
to make men more and more dependent on one
another over a wider and wider area, and to
create a whole class of interests to which warfare
and destructiveness are more and more inimical.
And in the latter case, where the community
assumes a civic character, the rise of a genuine
political life begins to make men operate on
each other by indirect compulsion, or by persua-
sion, rather than by direct and brutal compul-
sion ; and the highest attainable ethical feeling
is no longer clannishness, but patriotism, in the
exalted sense in which that word was understood
by the Greeks and Romans. Note also that
under the influence of this high ethical feeling,
even military life loses its primitive purely ego-
istic character, and becomes a school of self-dis-
cipline and self-sacrifice, nourishing in no slight
degree the altruistic feelings. If we compare
300

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

the campaigns of Marathon and Thermopylai
with the expedition of a band of Highlanders
in execution of a blood-feud, or with the excur-
sion of a party of Red Indians on the warpath,
we shall find no difficulty in realizing the force
of these considerations.

But, like other phenomena in nature, our
ethical feelings are not sharply marked off from
each other. There is a selfish as well as a sym-
pathetic side to patriotism (understanding the
word always as the Greeks and Romans under-
stood it.) At the one extreme, patriotism is
akin to clannishness ; at the other extreme, it be-
comes so wide as to resemble cosmopoHtanism.
As long as the purely civic structure of society
lasted, the clannish element was distinctly pre-
sent in patriotism. Greek history, after the ex-
pulsion of the Persians, is the history of the
struggle between the higher and the lower pa-
triotism, — between the two feelings known
to the Greeks as Pan-Hellenism and Autono-
mism, represented respectively by Athens and by
the Doric communities. The mournful history
of Thukydides tells us how autonomism won
the day, entailing the moral and political failure
of Greek civilization.

But when Rome had extended her beneficent
sway over all the precincts of the Mediterra-
nean, uniting communities hitherto autonomous
and hostile by common interests of culture and
301

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

of commerce, and bringing aggressive warfare
to an end in the Pax Romana^ then there be-
came possible a cosmopolitan spirit, a Christian
feeling, which regarded all men as legally and
ethically equal, — equal before the Emperor,
and equal before God. To trace the slow growth
of this feeling in the annals of Roman law and
of Stoic philosophy, and to observe its culmi-
nation in the genesis of Christianity,^ is to ob-
tain the key to Roman history.

But great political changes were necessary
before Rome could carry to the end its great
work, — partly because it had increased in size
so much faster than it increased in structure. It
crushed autonomism too rapidly. It developed
imperialism at the expense of nationality. And
hence the time at last arrived when the mutual
cohesion of its provinces became too slight to
withstand those barbaric assaults from without,
which — as we should be careful to remember
— had all along been intermittently attempted
from the days of Brennus to those of Alaric.
For a time, European society seemed likely to

1 Of course it is not meant to imply that other elements
were not at work in the genesis of Christianity. The growth
of what Matthew Arnold calls the ** spirit of Hebraism," not
in Judaea merely, but throughout the Grasco-Roman world, is
an interesting phenomenon in this connection, but the treat-
ment of it does not fall within the scope of the present
exposition.

302

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

disintegrate into a set of tribal communities.
But the old Empire had done its work too thor-
oughly for that. Roman principles, embodied in
the Catholic Church, and in the renovated Em-
pire of Charles the Great, exerted an organiz-
ing power which prevailed over the spirit of
clannish isolation, and by effecting the grand
series of compromises which we vaguely desig-
nate as the feudal system, laid the basis of mod-
ern society.

If now we examine the ethical circumstances
of that vast modern fabric which has been reared
upon material supplied in the older days of
Rome — and which owes so much of its per-
manent character to the labours of the great
Catholic and Imperial statesmen of the Middle
Ages — we shall find that the process here de-
scribed has been continually going on. For the
primitive normal state of warfare there has been
gradually substituted a normal state of peace.
While in primitive times the interests of men
were supposed to coincide only throughout the
limited area of a petty clan, they are now seen
to coincide throughout vast areas, and the rail-
way, the steamship, and the telegraph are daily
bringing communities into closer union, and, as
George Eliot well expresses it, " making self-
interest a duct for sympathy." The spirit of
Christianity, first rendered possible by Roman
cosmopolitanism, has made, and is ever making,
303

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

wider and deeper conquests as civilization ad-
vances. By the primitive savage moral duties
were imperfectly recognized, but only within the
limits of the clan. By the Greek the ethical code
was enlarged, but it was a code not apphcable
to barbarians. The mediaeval Christian had a
still longer list of duties owed by him to all
mankind, his brethren in the sight of God ; and
to the ancient conception of justice thus mate-
rially widened, he added, in elementary shape,
the conception of benevolence or the " enthusi-
asm of humanity ; " but the familiar maxim that
" no faith need be kept with heretics " shows
that even to his conception of duty there were
practical limits narrower than would now be ad-
mitted. The modern, on the other hand, recog-
nizes that he owes certain duties to all men with
whom he may be brought into contact, not be-
cause they are his kindred, or his neighbours,
or his countrymen, or his fellow Christians, but
because they are his fellow men. Such is our
ethical standard, however imperfectly conformed
to ; and neither ancient nor mediaeval had such
an ethical standard. Compare also the ideal
types of perfect manhood at the two extremes
of civilization within our ken. The primitive
type is the man of intense personality, with an
enormous sense of his own importance, easily
roused to paroxysms of anger, brooking no con-
tradiction, disregardful of the feelings of others,
304

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

domineering over all within his reach. The
modern type is the man of mild personality,
shunning the appearance of self-assertion, slow
to anger, patient of contradiction, mindful of the
feelings of those about him, unwilling to " make
trouble." Such is the contrast between the typi-
cal ancient and the typical modern ; and it im-
plies a prodigious alteration in the dominant
ethical feelings of the progressive portion of
our race.

This change, as we now see, has been wrought
by the slow but incessant modification of the
social environment to which each generation of
men has had to conform its actions. The altru-
istic feelings, finding at each successive epoch a
wider scope for action, have become gradually
strengthened by use ; while the egoistic feelings,
being less and less imperatively called into play,
have become gradually weakened by disuse.
And this change in the environment we per-
ceive to have been wrought by the continuous
growth of the community in size and complex-
ity. Where, as among stationary tribes of sav-
ages, there has been no such growth, there the
moral type of the primeval man is still to be
found ; and where, as among the stationary com-
munities of Asia, there has been growth in size
without corresponding growth in complexity,
there the moral type is intermediate between
that of the barbarian and that of the inheritor

VOL. Ill 3^5

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

of Roman civilization. Thus the progress of
society is a mighty process of equilibration or
adjustment, in the course of which men's rules
of action and emotional incentives to action be-
come ever more and more perfectly fitted to the
requirements arising from the circumstance of
their aggregation into communities.

Here we have arrived at a rudimentary concep-
tion of the law of social progress, so far as it can
be obtained from a comprehensive historical in-
duction, aided and verified by deduction from
a few fundamental truths of biology. The fore-
going discussion has brought out one point of
fundamental importance, in which the develop-
ment of social life agrees with the development
of organic life : both are continuous processes
of adjustment or equilibration. But in all this
there is nothing more than might have been an-
ticipated. Since the phenomena of society are
really but the phenomena of life, specialized by
the addition of new groups of circumstances,
we must expect to find that the law of social
evolution will be identical with the law of or-
ganic evolution, save only that it will require
an all-important additional clause to express the
results of the action of the superadded circum-
stances. Let us then seek to ascertain definitely,
— first, in what respects the two kinds of evo-
lution agree, and secondly , in what respects they
differ.

306

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

In the first place the evolution of society,
no less than the evolution of life, conforms to
that universal law of evolution discovered by
Mr. Spencer, and Illustrated at length In earlier
chapters. The brief survey just taken shows us
that social progress consists primarily In the in-
tegration of small and simple communities Into
larger communities that are of higher and higher
orders of composition ; and in the more and
more complete subordination of the psychical
forces which tend to maintain isolation to the
psychical forces which tend to maintain aggrega-
tion. In these respects the prime features of
social progress are the prime features of evolu-
tion in general.

In the second place, the progress of society
exhibits those secondary features of differentia-
tion and integration which evolution universally
exhibits. The advance from indefinite homo-
geneity to definite heterogeneity in structure
and function Is a leading characteristic of social
progress. On considering primitive societies,
we find them affected by no causes of hetero-
geneity except those resulting from the estab-
lishment of the various family relationships.
As Sir Henry Maine has shown, in early times
the family and not the individual was the social
unit. In the absence of anything like national
or even civic organization, each family chief was
a monarch in miniature, uniting in his own

307

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

person th^functions of king, priest, judge, and
parliament ; yet he was scarcely less a digger
and hewer than his subject children, wives, and
brethren. Commercially, it is needless to say,
all primitive communities are homogenous. In
any barbarous tribe the number of different em-
ployments is very limited, and such as there
are may be undertaken indiscriminately by
every one. Every man is his own butcher and
baker, his own tailor and carpenter, his own
smith, and his own weapon maker. Now the
progress of such a society toward a civilized
condition begins with the differentiation and in-
tegration of productive occupations. That each
specialization of labour entails increased effi-
ciency of production, which reacting brings out
still greater specialization, is known to every
tyro in political economy. Nor is it less obvious
that, with the advance of civilization, labour
has been steadily increasing in coherent hetero-
geneity, not only with regard to its division
among different sets of mutually dependent
labourers, but also with regard to its processes,
and even its instruments. The distinguishing
characteristic of modern machinery, as compared
with the rude tools of the Middle Ages or the
clumsy apparatus of the ancients, is its definite
heterogeneity. The contrast between the steam-
engine of to-day and the pulleys, screws, and
levers of a thousand years ago assures us that the

308

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

growing complexity of the objects which labour
aims at is paralleled by the growing complex-
ity of the modes of attaining them. Turning
to government, we see that by differentiation in
the primeval community some families acquired
supreme power, while others sank, though in
different degrees, to the rank of subjects. The
integration of allied families into tribes, and of
adjacent tribes into nations, as well as that kind
of integration exhibited at a later date in the
closely knit diplomatic interrelations of differ-
ent countries, are marked steps in social pro-
gress. Next may be mentioned the differentia-
tion of the governing power into the civil and
the ecclesiastical ; while by the side of these cere-
monial government grows up insensibly as a
third power, regulating the minor details of so-
cial intercourse none the less potently because
not embodied in statutes and edicts. Compar-
ing the priests and augurs of antiquity with the
dignitaries of the mediaeval church, the much
greater heterogeneity of the latter system be-
comes manifest. Civil government likewise has
become differentiated into executive, legislative,
and judicial. Executive government has been
divided into many branches, and diversely in
different nations. A comparison of the Athe-
nian popular government with the representa-
tive systems of the present day shows that the
legislative function has no more than any of
309

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

the others preserved its original homogeneity ;
while the contrast between the Aula Regis of
the Norman kings and the courts of common
law, equity, and admiralty, — county courts,
queen*s courts, state courts, and federal courts,
— which are hneally descended from it, tells us
the same story concerning the judicial power.
Nor should it be forgotten that the steady ex-
pansion of legal systems, to meet the exigencies
which civilization renders daily more complex,
is an advance from relatively indefinite homo-
geneity to relatively definite heterogeneity.

Obviously, however, our task is not com-
pleted when we have pointed out this general
coincidence between the development of soci-
ety and the development of life. Nor can the
universal law here illustrated be the special law
of social progress for which we are seeking. By
reason of its very comprehensiveness, the law of
universal evolution cannot be regarded as sup-
plying the precise kind of information we desire
concerning the relations of social to organic phe-
nomena. By its aid we have found it possible to
interpret not only the development of life, intel-
ligence, and society, but also the genesis of plan-
etary systems and the evolution of the earth. It
is therefore the law not only of social, psychical,
and vital changes, but also of inorganic changes.
Underlying all the sciences of genesis, and fusing
them into one grand science of cosmogony, it
310

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

utters no truth concerning organic or social de-
velopment which is not equally true of all devel-
opment. Thus while it is indeed, in the deep-
est sense, the ultimate law to which organic and
superorganic changes conform, it is silent re-
specting the differential characteristics by which
these changes are distinguished from inorganic
changes. Already in treating of the evolution
of life we saw that the ultimate and general
formula needed to be supplemented by a de-
rivative and special formula, which should de-
scribe organic development in terms inapplicable
to inorganic phenomena. And this formula we
found in the definition of life as the continuous
adjustment of inner to outer relations, upon
which also was afterwards based our entire the-
ory of the evolution of intelligence.

Now the historic survey into which we were
led a moment ago, while inquiring into the
progress of moral feelings, showed us that, in
this respect also, the evolution of society agrees
with the evolution of life in general. The pro-
gress of a community, as of an organism, is a
process of adaptation^ — a continuous establish-
ment of inner relations in conformity to outer
relations. If we contemplate material civiliza-
tion under its widest aspect, we discover its
legitimate aim to be the attainment and main-
tenance of an equilibrium between the wants
of men and the outward means of satisfying
3"

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

them. And while approaching this goal, society-
is ever acquiring in its economic structure both
greater heterogeneity and greater specialization.
It is not only that agriculture, manufactures,
commerce, legislation, the acts of the ruler, the
judge, and the physician, have since ancient
times grown immeasurably multiform, both in
their processes and in their appliances ; but it
is also that this specialization has resulted in
the greatly increased ability of society to adapt
itself to the emergencies by which it is ever
beset. The history of scientific progress is in
like manner the history of an advance from a
less complete toward a more complete corre-
spondence between the order of our conceptions
and the order of phenomena. Truth — the end
of all honest and successful research — is at-
tained when subjective relations are adjusted to
objective relations. And what is the consum-
mation of moral progress but the thorough adap-
tation of the desires of each individual to the
requirements arising from the coexistent desires
of all neighbouring individuals ? Thus the phe-
nomena of social and of organic progress are
seen to correspond to a degree not contem-
plated by those thinkers who, from Plato to
Hobbes, have instituted a comparison between
them. The dominant characteristics of all life
are those in which social and individual life
agree.

312

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

Let us now examine more closely the relations
between the Community and the Environment.
From the twofold circumstance that life is high
according as the organism is heterogeneous, and
also according as it is adjusted to surrounding
conditions, may be derived the corollary that the
heterogeneity of the environment is the chief proxi-
mate determining cause of social progress. Thus we
may understand why civilization advances so
much more rapidly in modern than it did in an-
cient times.^ As Sir Charles Lyell observes : " We
see in our own times that the rate of progress
in the arts and sciences proceeds in a geometri-
cal ratio as knowledge increases, and so, when
we carry back our retrospect into the past, we
must be prepared to find the signs of retarda-
tion augmenting in a like geometrical ratio ; so
that the progress of a thousand years at a re-
mote period may correspond to that of a cen-
tury in modern times, and in ages still more
remote Man would more and more resemble the
brutes in that attribute which causes one gener-
ation exactly to imitate in all its ways the gen-
eration which preceded it/* ^ That the process is
here the same in social and in organic life. Sir
Charles Lyell already suspects ; for he elsewhere
observes that the lower the place of organic
beings " in a graduated scale, or the simpler
their structure, the more persistent are they in

* See above, p. 72. 2 Antiquity of Man, p. 377.

2^3

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

form and organization. In whatever manner the
changes have been brought about, the rate of
change is greater where the grade of organization
is higher." And this fact results from the more
complex relations of the higher beings to their
environment. Applying these considerations to
history, it will be seen that, owing to the politi-
cal isolation of ancient communities, the hetero-
geneity of their environments must have been
inconsiderable. Holding little intercourse with
each other, and accommodating their deeds and
opinions mostly to the conditions existing at
home, their progress was usually feeble and halt-
ing. Owing to the enormous heterogeneity of
the environment to which modern communities
are forced to adjust themselves, progress in later
ages has been far more rapid and far more stable
than of old. The physical well-being of an an-
cient Greek was not enhanced by an invention
made in China, nor could his philosophy derive
useful hints from theories propounded in India.
But in these days scarcely anything can happen
in one part of our planet which does not speed-
ily affect every other part. The physical en-
vironment of a modern European extends over
a great part of the earth's surface, and his psy-
chical environment is scarcely limited in time or
space. His welfare is not unfrequently aifected
by accidents occurring at the antipodes, while
his plans for the coming year are often shaped
3H

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

with conscious or unconscious reference to
events which happened centuries ago. That the
rapid and permanent character of modern pro-
gress is in great measure due to this circum-
stance will be denied by no one. And thus
is explained the wonderful civilizing effect of
various events which have from time to time
brought together distant sections of mankind ;
among which it will be sufficient merely to name
the campaigns of Alexander, the spread of
Roman dominion, the Arabian conquests, the
Crusades, and the voyages of Columbus, Ma-
gellan, and De Gama. The invention of print-
ing, increasing the rapidity and the frequency
with which the thoughts of various minds are
brought into contact, offers another illustration ;
and in a similar way is to be explained the civi-
lizing agency of railroads and telegraphs.

Comparing these deductions with the histori-
cal survey of ethical development above taken,
we arrive at a set of mutually harmonious con-
clusions. We see that the process of intellectual
and moral adaptation which constitutes social
progress is determined by the steadily increasing
heterogeneity of the social environment. And
we see that this increased heterogeneity of the
environment is caused by the integration or
growing interdependence of communities that
were originally isolated. We have now to ex-
amine this process of integration somewhat

3^5

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

more in detail. By instituting a novel compari-
son between the processes of organic and of
social life, we shall be led directly to the special
law of progress for which we are seeking.

Observe first that the living beings which are
lowest, or next to the lowest, in the scale of
organization — as, for example, the protococcus
and the amoeba — are nothing but simple cells.
It has been shown, by Mr. Spencer, that pro-
gress in morphological composition, both in the
animal and in the vegetable kingdoms, consists
primarily in the union of these simple cells into
aggregates of higher and higher orders of com-
plexity. Now in the study of social evolution
we are met by precisely similar phenomena. Let
us consider what is implied by the conclusions
at which Sir Henry Maine has arrived, in his
profound treatise on " Ancient Law," by an
elaborate inquiry into early ideas of property,
contract, and testamentary succession, and into
primitive criminal legislation. " Society in an-
cient times," says Sir Henry Maine, "was not
what it is assumed to be at present, a collection
of individuals} In fact, and in the view of the
men who composed it, it was an aggregation of

^ [In chapter ix. of Part III. of his Principles of Sociology y
Spencer criticises the theory of Maine at length, and under-
takes to show its limitations. Fiske would probably have been
led to modifications of his views had this chapter been before
him.]

316

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

families. The contrast may be most forcibly
expressed by saying that the unit of an ancient
society was th^ family, of a modern society the
individuals^ But originally the family govern-
ment excluded not only individual independ-
ence, but also state supremacy. The sole gov-
ernment actual or possible was that exercised by
the male head of a family group. By slow stages
various family groups closely akin in blood ap-
pear to have become integrated into tribes or
clans, community of descent being still the only
conceivable bond which could hold together a
number of individuals in the same political ag-
gregate. At a later stage the limits of the tribe
were further enlarged by the important legal
fiction of" adoption," or the pretence that newly
added members were descended from some con-
spicuous common ancestor of the tribe. Vestiges
of a time when there were no aggregations of
men more extensive than the tribal community
thus constituted, and when there was no sover-
eign authority save that exercised by the head
of the tribe, may be found in every part of the
world,^ and among totally savage races this state

^ Ancient LaWy p. 126.

2 ** The yei/o? of Athens, the gens of Rome, the mark or
gemeinde of the Teutonic nations, the village community of
the East ... the Irish clan, are all essentially the same
thing.'* Freeman, Comparative Politics y p. 102.

See, among other authorities, Volney's View of the United

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

of things still continues. Now we shall find
something more than an instructive analogy in
the comparison of the primitive family group to
a unicellular organism, for such a comparison
will enable us to realize that in social and in
organic evolution the process of integration
has been substantially the same. The first well-
marked stage in coalescence is the formation
of the tribe or clan, which may be compared to
those lowly organisms made up by the union of
amoeba-like units with but little specialization
of structure or function. At this stage social
organization is but one step removed from that
absolute and ferocious anarchy which charac-
terizes the non-social life of brutes. " Mis-
trust, jealousy, secret ambushes, and implacable
vengeances" characterize the mutual relations
of these social " aggregates of the first order."
Hostility is the rule, and peace the exception.
The repulsive forces are stronger and the cohe-
sive forces weaker than at any subsequent period.
As we have seen above, the selfish impulses
which tend to maintain savage isolation are as

States y p. 397 ; Phillipp on Jurisprudence , p. 207 ; Charles
Comte, Traite de Legislation, liv. iii. chap. 28 ; Grote, His-
tory of Greece, vol. iii. pp. 49-69 ; Gibbon (Paris edition),
vol. iii. p. 243 ; Vico, Scienxa Nuova, Opere, torn. iv. pp.
^3> 35> 40; Aristotle, Eth. Nikom. viii. 14; Tacitus,
Ger mania, vii.; Csesar, Bell. Gall. vi. 22, 23.

318

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

yet unchecked save by instinctive loyalty within
the tribal limits.

The coalescence of such tribes into civic com-
munities is the formation of social " aggregates
of the second order." For a long time these
higher aggregates retain conspicuous traces of
their mode of composition, as in Greece and
Rome,^ until increasing social heterogeneity ob-
literates the original lines of demarcation ; while
new divisions spring up, resulting from the in-
tegration of like parts, as is seen in the guilds
of mediaeval Europe, and still better in the lo-
calization of industries which marks the present
time.

The coalescence of civic and tribal commu-
nities into the nation — an " aggregate of the
third order " — is well exemplified in the his-
tory of France, which, from a disorderly col-
lection of independent baronies, has passed by
well-defined transitions into a perfectly integral
nation. The attainment of this stage is indis-
pensable to a career of permanent progress. As
hinted above, the premature overthrow of the

1 The structure of the Amphiktyonic union shows *« that
the system of cities with which we are so familiar in Grecian
history grew out of an earlier system of tribes." Freeman,
Comparative Politics y p. 88. Further evidence, in abundance,
may be found in the succeeding pages of that excellent book,
which reads, from beginning to end, almost hke a commen-
tary upon this chapter.

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

Hellenic political system is to be attributed to
its very incomplete integration. An aggregate
of the national type was in process of forma-
tion by the extensive coalescence of maritime
cities under the leadership of Athens, when the
Peloponnesian war intervened, vindicating the
superiority of selfish autonomy, and showing by
its result that the civilizing spirit of nationality
was as yet too feeble to prevail.

It was first under Roman dominion that
national aggregation and the feeling of national
solidarity began to be brought to something
like completeness. By absorbing nearly all the
petty communities then existing within the lim-
its of the Mediterranean world, and by gradually
extending to their members the privileges of
citizenship, Rome succeeded in dealing to the
passion for autonomy a blow from which it has
never recovered ; while the enormous extent of
the Empire, and its ethnic heterogeneity, im-
parted to the national spirit thus evoked a cos-
mopolitan character destined to be of prodigious
service^ to civilization. The influence of these
circumstances upon the attitude of Christianity
I have already alluded to, and it cannot be too
strongly insisted upon. No human mind could
have even conceived, much less have carried
into execution, the idea of a universal religion,
if the antique state of social isolation had not
previously been brought to a close in universal
320

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

empire. If Christianity had appeared four cen-
turies earlier than it did, it would, like Bud-
dhism, have assumed the garb of a local religious
reformation. Or if it could have aimed at any-
thing higher and more comprehensive than this,
its preaching would have fallen upon ears not
ready to receive it. All the Oriental enthusi-
asm, all the Hellenic subtlety of Paul could
have effected nothing, had he visited Athens in
the days of Plato and Diogenes. But the cos-
mopolitan element in Roman civilization was
just that which Christianity most readily assimi-
lated, and which it intensified by setting up a
new principle of common action in place of the
primeval principle of community of race. From
this happy concurrence of circumstances there
was formed, upon the ruins of Paganism, that re-
ligious organization which alone, of all churches
that have existed, has earned the glorious name
of Catholic. Disgusted at some of her high-
handed proceedings in later times, Protestant
historians have too generally forgotten that the
Roman Church, by coordinating the most vig-
orous and progressive elements of ancient life,
prepared the way both for the ubiquity and for
the permanence of modern civilization. Had
the ecclesiastical system of the Empire perished,
along with the breaking up of its political sys-
tem ; had there been really that wreck of an-
cient institutions in the fifth century which was
VOL. Ill 321

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

formerly supposed to have occurred, until Mr.
Bryce and Mr. Freeman' dispelled the gross
error ; it is difficult to see how mediaeval Euro-
pean history could have been politically any-
thing more than a repetition of Grecian history,
save only in the extent of its geographical range.
Whoever is disposed to doubt so emphatic an
assertion will do well duly to ponder the fact
that the newly arriving Teutonic subjects of the
Empire (who would, in such case, have come
as foreign conquerors) had not advanced be-
yond the stage of tribal organization. On their
further aggregation into rural and civic bodies,
the autonomous spirit would have acquired an
ascendency which it might well have taken an-
other more fortunate Athenian federation, or
another all-absorbing Roman domination, thor-
oughly to destroy. Even as it was, it required
all the immense power of the Church, unflinch-
ingly exercised through many generations, to
prevent European society from disintegrating
into a mere collection of mutually repelling
tribal communities. But the Church not only
preserved the best social results of Roman do-
minion, by hastening the consolidation of each
embryonic nationality ; it also, by its peculiar
position as common arbiter between the difl^er-
ent states thus arising, assisted in the formation
of a new social aggregate of a yet higher order.
The modern system of independent nationali-
322

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

ties held in virtual federation — not by interna-
tional codes, but by the possession of guiding
principles of conduct more or less heartily rever-
enced by all — is chiefly the work of the Roman
Church. Here, finally, we have reached a sys-
tem whose structure bears in the highest degree
the marks of permanence. It is sustained by
the ever-deepening sentiments of cosmopolitan
philanthropy and universal justice, — the most
cohesive of social forces, as the spirit of local
selfishness was the most disruptive.

Here it might seem that we have obtained
all the data requisite for enunciating our law of
social progress. But something is still wanting.
Our law of progress, if now enunciated, would
be too general. It would cover alike the phe-
nomena of social and of organic life. In both
there is an advance from indeterminate uni-
formity to determinate multiformity ; in both
there is a continuous adaptation of the organism
or the community to its environment ; and in
both there is a continuous integration, entail-
ing an advance from incoherence to coherence
of structure. We must now start in search of
that all-important clause which shall express the
essential difi^erence between organic and social
progress.

In the ancient family community, as deline-
ated by Sir Henry Maine, the separate exist-
ence of the individuals was almost submerged
3^3

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

and lost in the corporate existence of the aggre-
gate. Personal freedom was entirely unrecog-
nized. To family duties all individual rights
were subjected. By a tie, religious no less than
political, the members of the family were all
held in allegiance to its oldest male representa-
tive. The father might abandon his son in in-
fancy, and when grown up might sell him as a
slave, or put him to death for disobedience.
And the wife was to an equal extent in the
power of her husband, to whom she legally
stood in the relation of a daughter, so that mar-
riage was but the exchange of one form of ser-
vitude for another. N o transfer of property was
valid, unless the persons conducting it swore in
the name of some ancestor, — dead ages ago,
it might be ; for so absolute was the author-
ity of the paterfamilias that it could not be
conceived as departing from him at death, but
must be exercised by him, through the medium
of prescriptive ceremonial, over whole gener-
ations to come. Nothing, in short, was regu-
lated by contract, but everything was determined
by status} And this is the fact which irretriev-
ably demolishes Rousseau's theory that social
aggregation is due to a primitive compact. That

1 This term is well defined by Heineccius : ** Status est
qualitas cujus ratione homines diverse jure utuntur. . . . Alio
jure utitur liber homo ; alio servus ; alio civis ; alio pere-
grinus.'* Re cita Hones, lib. i. tit. 3.

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

theory is merely an illegitimate attempt to ex-
plain an ancient phenomenon by causes which
have had only a modern existence.^ The mem-
ber of a primitive tribal community had no con-
ception of contract ; what he was born to do
belonged to his status ; and that he must do.
The prevalence of this state of things in the
empires of the East is chief among many con-
verging proofs that those nations are nothing
but immense tribes, or aggregates of the first
order.

With the rise of higher aggregates, such as
states, civic or imperial, this sinking of the
individual in the corporate existence still for
some time continued. The rights and duties
of the individual were still unrecognized, save
in so far as they followed from the status in
which he happened to be placed. In republican
Rome, and in the Hellenic communities, the
welfare of the citizen was universally postponed
to the welfare of the state. But circumstances
too complicated to be here detailed, of which
the chief symptom was the increasing importance
assigned by Roman jurisprudence to contracts,
resulted, at an advanced period of the empire,
in the more or less complete recognition of in-

1 See the discussion of the doctrine in Austin, Province of
Jurisprudence y pp. 331—371 ; Kant, Rechtslehref Th. ii.
Abschn. i. ; Stahl, Philosophie des RechtSy ii. 142 ; Maine,
Ancient Law, chap, ivo

325

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

dividual rights and obligations. On the rise of
the feudal system, the relations of vassal to
suzerain were, through the influence of Roman
conceptions, extensively regulated by contract ;
and it is in this respect that the feudal institu-
tions are most widely distinguished " from the
unadulterated usages of primitive races.'* ^ It
was, I believe, mainly owing to this that the
integration of feudal lordships into nations was
accompanied by the enlargement of individual
liberty to a much greater extent than the inte-
gration of ancient clans, gentes, and phratries
into civic communities. The Roman Church
also aided in promoting the freedom of individ-
uals, as well as in facilitating the consoHdation
of states. By the more or less strict enforce-
ment of clerical celibacy, it maintained in the
midst of hereditary aristocracy a comparatively
democratic organization, where advancement
largely depended upon moral excellence or in-
tellectual ability. And preserving, by the same
admirable institution, its independence of feudal
patronage, it was often enabled successfully to
interpose between the tyranny of kings and the
helplessness of subjects. To ecclesiastical celi-
bacy, more than to almost any other assignable
institution, we owe our emancipation from an-
cient patriarchal conceptions of social duty. The
development of industry, crossing in various
1 Maine, op. cit. p. 365.
326

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

ways the antique divisions of society, has con-
tributed to the same result ; until, in modern
times, the primitive mode of organization is
almost entirely effaced, leaving but few barely
traceable vestiges. Individual rights and obli-
gations, from being nothing, have come to be
all in all. While originally the individual was
thought to exist only for the sake of the state,
the state is now regarded as existing only for
the sake of the individual.

It will thus be seen that the very same pro-
cess, which has resulted in the formation of
social aggregates of a higher and higher order,
has also resulted in the more and more com-
plete subordination of the requirements of the
aggregate to the requirements of the individual.
And be it further noticed, that the relative
strength of the altruistic feelings, which main-
tain the stability of the highest social aggrega-
tion, maintains also to the fullest extent the in-
dependence of its individual members ; while
the relative strength of the egoistic feelings,
which in early times prevented the existence of
any higher organization than the family or tribe,
was also incompatible with individual freedom
of action. Now this is precisely the reverse of
the state of things which we find in organic
evolution. In organic development, the indi-
vidual life of the parts is more and more sub-
merged in the corporate life of the whole. In

327

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

social development, corporate life is more and
more subordinated to individual life. The high-
est organic life is that in which the units have
the least possible freedom. The highest social
life is that in which the units have the greatest
possible freedom. This feature of social evolu-
tion is most conveniently described by Schel-
ling's term individuation^ which is employed in
a kindred sense both in Mr. Spencer's and in
other modern works on biology.

Thus we have at last reached the conclusion
in quest of which we set out. Supplementing
our previous results, according to which organic
and social evolution were seen to agree, by our
present result, according to which they are seen
to differ, we obtain a formula for social evolu-
tion which may be regarded a^ fundamentally
accurate. We obtain the Law of Progress, which
may be provisionally stated as follows : —

" The Evolution of Society is a continuous est ah-
lishment of psychical relations within the Commu-
nity, in conformity to physical and psychical rela-
tions arising in the Environment ; during which,
both the Community and the Environment pass
from a state of relatively indefinite, incoherent
homogeneity to a state of relatively definite, coherent
heterogeneity ; and during which, th^ constituent
Units of the Community become ever more distinctly
individuated r

In the next chapter I shall proceed to show
328

THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

how this exceedingly general and technical for-
mula includes and justifies whatever is defensi-
ble in sundry less abstract generalizations, ex-
pressed in more popular language, by Comte
and Buckle. We shall be called upon to pass
in review certain phases of social evolution, and
to criticise, with the aid of the theorems now at
our disposal, the claims of Comte to be regarded
as the founder of sociology.

3^9

CHAPTER XIX
ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS ^

THE discussion contained in the fore-
going chapter has shown to what a
notable extent the phenomena of social
evolution may be expressed, with the strictest
accuracy, by formulas originally invented to de-
scribe the evolution of life in general. Let us
briefly review the results which we have already
obtained.

First, we saw that social as well as organic
evolution consists in the continuous adaptation
of the community, or organism, to the environ-
ment. Or, expressing the same thing in other
words, social progress is a continuous establish-
ment of inner relations in conformity to outer
relations.

Secondly, we saw that in the course of this
adaptation the community, like the organism,
continually increases in definite heterogeneity,
through successive differentiations and integra-
tions.

Thirdly, we saw that in the community, as in
the organism, the increase in internal heteroge-
1 [See Introduction, § 24.]

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

neity is determined by the continuous increase
of heterogeneity in the environment.

Fourthly^ we saw that the increase of hetero-
geneity in the environment is determined by the
successive integratipn of communities into more
and more complex and coherent aggregates.
And this law alsoHolds of organic progress.

These four generalizations, expressing the
points in which social and organic development
coincide, were summed up in the first two
clauses of our law of progress. They are imme-
diate corollaries of the law of universal evolution
and of the definition of life as adjustment. They
are not to be understood as mere expressions of
striking analogies. They are to be understood
as implying that the evolution of life and the
evolution of society are, to a certain extent and
in the most abstract sense, identical processes.
Such a conclusion, indeed, became inevitable the
moment we were brought to admit that the phe-
nomena of society constitute but a specialized
division of the phenomena of psychical life.

Nevertheless it would be a grave error to in-
fer, from this necessary coincidence in develop-
ment, that a community is nothing more than
a kind of organism, as Plato imagined in his
" Republic," and Hobbes in his " Leviathan."
When we go so far as to compare the metrop-
olis of a community to the heart of an organ-
ism, its roads to blood vessels, its circulating

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

commodities to circulating nutritive materials,
its money to blood corpuscles, its channels for
transmitting intelligence to nerve axes, and the
individuals of which it is composed to physio-
logic units ; we are instituting a series of analo-
gies, which are no doubt of considerable value
in the study both of history and of political
economy. In his essay on the "Social Organ-
ism," Mr. Spencer has traced a great number
of such analogies, which are no less instructive
than curious, but they are after all analogies and
not homologies. So when M. Littre points out
that the study of political economy stands in the
same relation to the science of sociology as the
study of the nutritive functions to the science
of biology, he reveals an analogy of great philo-
sophical value. But we nevertheless feel that
there is a wide distinction between an organism
and a community, which it would be absurd to
ignore; and Hobbes's conception of society as a
vast Leviathan strikes us as grotesque.

This insuperable distinction is the fact that
in a community the psychical life is all in the
parts, while in an organism the psychical life is
all in the whole. The living units of society
" do not and cannot lose individual conscious-
ness,'* while " the community as a whole has
no corporate consciousness." " The corporate
life must here be subservient to the lives of the
parts, instead of the lives of the parts being
33^

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

subservient to the corporate life." ^ The his-
torical induction at the close of the preceding
chapter showed us that such has been the case.
While during the advance toward greater het-
erogeneity and coherence, the original lines of
demarcation between communities have been
ever becoming effaced as the communities have
become integrated into higher and higher aggre-
gates, we saw that as a part of the very same
process the individualities of the members of
society have been ever increasing in definiteness
and ever acquiring a wider scope for activity.
And we saw that this process not only has ever
gone on, but must continue to go on ; since, by the
law of use and disuse, the sympathetic or social
feelings must continue to grow at the expense
of the selfish or anti-social feelings ; and since
this slow emotional modification, which makes
possible the higher integration of society, en-
sures also the higher individuation of its mem-
bers. " Progress, therefore, is not an accident,
but a necessity. Instead of civilization being
artificial, it is a part of nature ; all of a piece
with the development of the embryo or the un-
folding of a flower. The modifications man-
kind have undergone, and are still undergoing,
result from a law underlying the whole organic
creation ; and provided the human race con-

1 Spencer's Essays, zd series, p. 154. [Library Edition,
vol. i. pp. 176, 177.]

333

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

tinues, and the constitution of things remains
the same, those modifications must end in com-
pleteness/*^ As surely as the astronomer can
predict the future state of the heavens, the so-
ciologist can foresee that the process of adap-
tation must go on until in a remote future it
comes to an end in proximate equilibrium. The
increasing interdependence of human interests
must eventually go far to realize the dream of
the philosophic poet — of a Parliament of Man .
a Federation of the World,

'* When the kindly earth shall slumber, lapt in universal law/*

and when the desires of each individual shall be
in proximate equilibrium with the means of sat-
isfying them and with the simultaneous desires
of all surrounding individuals. Such a state im-
plies at once the highest possible individuation
and the highest possible integration among the
units of the community ; and it is the ideal goal
of intellectual and moral progress.

Thus the fundamental law of progress, as for-
mulated at the close of the last chapter, contains
all the provisions requisite in such a formula.
It describes, in a single grand generalization, all
the phenomena of social evolution, both in so
far as they result from the general laws of life,
and in so far as they result from the operation
of circumstances peculiar to the aggregation of
^ Spencer, Social Statics^ p. 65.

334

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

intelligent organisms in a community. And it
includes and justifies all the minor generaliza-
tions which may be reached by a direct induc-
tion from historical phenomena solely.

This law of progress we find to be exceed-
ingly abstract — it expresses a general truth
quite completely disengaged from the incidents
of particular cases. Such, as we were led to an-
ticipate, must be the character of a law which
generalizes a vast number of complex pheno-
mena. A formula which is to include in one
expression phenomena so different as the rise
of Christianity and the invention of the steam-
engine must needs be eminently abstract. To
attempt to make it concrete, so as to appeal
directly to the historical imagination, would be
to deprive it of its universality, to increase its
power of expressing some one set of phenomena
by rendering it powerless to express some other
equally important set. This consideration ex-
plains the manifest failure of all the attempts
which have been made to determine the general
law of progress by a simple historical induction.
Take, for example, the two crude generaliza-
tions which pretty nearly sum up the philoso-
phy of history as it is contained in the work of
Mr. Buckle, — that "scepticism " is uniformly
favourable to progress, while the " protective
spirit " (or, the spirit of over-legislation) is uni-
formly detrimental to it. These, in the first

335

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

place, are generalizations drawn from a peculiar
and temporary phase of society and illegitimately
extended to all phases of society ; and, in the
second place, even so far as they go, they have
but a limited applicability — expressing at best
certain aspects of intellectual and industrial pro-
gress, but leaving quite out of sight that slow
moral evolution which underlies the whole.
Whatever of truth is contained in these state-
ments is also contained in the formula which I
am here expounding, and is much more accu-
rately expressed in the terms of that formula.
Scepticism, for instance, in the best sense of the
word, is the attitude of mind which is caused by
the perception that certain inner psychical rela-
tions — say, a given set of beliefs or institutions
— have ceased to be adapted to outer relations.
The mediaeval conception of the world, as pre-
sented in Dante's treatise on " The Monarchy,"
was very closely adapted both to the knowledge
and to the social needs of the time. The concep-
tion of man as the centre of a universe made
solely for his use and behoof, with a sun to give
him light by day and a moon and stars to give
him. light by night, with an Emperor and a Pope
divinely appointed to rule him in this life, and
an Autocrat in heaven uniting in himself the
functions of these two, and ruling nature accord-
ing to his arbitrary will ; this conception, I say,
was in harmony both with the best science and
32>^

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

with the most urgent social requirements of the
time, and the fact of its long duration shows
how profound was the harmony. While this
state of things lasted, there was but little room
for scepticism. But after a while the psychical
environment had so far altered as to be out of
balance with this conception of the world. The
Copernican revolution unseated Man from his
throne in the centre of the universe, and ad-
vancing physical generalization cast discredit
upon the theory of providential government,
and so arose the long line of " infidels '* from
Bruno and Vanini to Voltaire and Diderot.
While, on the other hand, the increasing power
of monarchy, especially in France, gradually un-
dermined the moral independence of the Papacy,
converting it from an upholder of equity and a
friend of the people into an unscrupulous ally
of regal usurpation and iniquity ; and thus arose
the Great Schism, followed by the Protestant
revolt, and the grand democratic movement
which culminated in the French Revolution.
Now what is all this infidel rebellion against
dogma and democratic rebellion against author-
ity but the intellectual and moral turbulence
caused by the growing conviction that the psy-
chical relations comprised in the authorized con-
ception of the world were out of balance with
the new aggregate of relations formed by the
discoveries of science and the altered require-
VOL. Ill 337

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

ments of social existence ? And this painful
attitude of the mind, prompting men to fresh
investigation of the order of nature and to new
social rearrangements, is the stimulus to a new
and closer adaptation.

Such is the function of scepticism in the
community, and such also is its function in the
individual. A person, for instance, is educated
in an environment of Presbyterian theology,
accepting without question all the doctrines of
Calvinism. By and by his environment enlarges.
Facts in science or in history, methods of in-
duction, canons of criticism present themselves
to his mind as things irreconcilable with his old
creed. Hence painful doubt, entailing efforts
to escape by modifying the creed to suit new
mental exigencies. Hence eager study and fur-
ther enlargement of the environment, causing
fresh disturbance of equilibrium and renewed
doubt resulting in further adaptation. And
so the process continues — until, if the person
in question be sufficiently earnest and suffi-
ciently fortunate, the environment enlarges so
far as to comprehend the most advanced science
of the day ; and the process of adaptation goes
on until an approximate equilibrium is attained
between the order of conceptions and the order
of phenomena, — and scepticism, having dis-
charged its function, exists no longer, save in
so far as it may be said to survive in the in-

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ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

grained habit of weighing evidence and testing
one's hypotheses.

Now to say that scepticism is one of the
causes of progress is to make a historical induc-
tion which is valuable as far as it goes ; but it
is at best an empirical generalization. To make
it a scientific law, we need to express the func-
tion of scepticism in terms of some formula
which covers all the phenomena of progress.
And who does not see that in so expressing it
we are obtaining a far more definite and accurate
and serviceable notion than when we merely
state vaguely that scepticism is a cause of pro-
gress ?

Just so with the statement that the protective
spirit is a hindrance to progress. By the collo-
quial phrase ** protective spirit," Mr. Buckle
means the control, or at least the undue con-
trol, of the community over its individual mem-
bers. Now in estimating the effect of this cir-
cumstance upon progress, everything depends
upon the precise amount of such control which
we are to regard as excessive. But this varies
with each epoch of civilization. What would
now be intolerable despotism was once needful
restraint. You cannot have a constitutional
democracy of Vandals or Moguls. So long as
men's altruistic feelings are not powerful enough
to make them spontaneously respect the claims
of their fellows, the only force which can make
339

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

society hold together is that hero worship which
enjoins impHcit obedience to the head of the
tribe or state. But as we have already seen,
the steady growth of altruism at the expense
of egoism, which renders possible a more com-
plete social aggregation, renders possible also a
more complete development of individual lib-
erty. So that what in one age is a needful con-
trol exercised by the community over its mem-
bers becomes in the next age an undue control.
All this is expressed in the law of progress, as
here formulated ; but it is not expressed, with
any approach to accuracy, in the crude state-
ment that the protective spirit is an obstacle to
civilization.

Indeed the longer we study this general for-
mula, the more we shall be convinced that it
includes and justifies all sound inductions which
can be derived from a survey of historical phe-
nomena. As we apply it to the facts of history
one after another, we shall see more clearly that
its very abstractness is its excellence, and that
the initial difficulty in thoroughly realizing its
import arises from its very fulness of meaning.
And we shall become ever more deeply im-
pressed with the belief that no amount of mere
historic induction can give us a universally ap-
plicable law of social progress, unless our results
be deductively interpreted as corollaries from
the general laws of life.

340

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

We are now in a position to examine the
claims of Comte to be regarded as the founder
of sociology. And first let us note that a law
of social progress answering so many require-
ments as are met by the law above expounded
could not have been obtained earlier than the
present generation or even than the present
decade.

To conceive of sociogeny as a specialized
branch of psychogeny, itself a specialized branch
of biogeny, was not possible until a general sci-
ence of genesis had been at least partially insti-
tuted. The very idea of a science of genesis as
applied to organic phenomena was not elabo-
rated until the appearance of Von Baer's great
treatise in 1829. And the conception was then
altogether too novel to be worked into the web
of philosophy which Comte was weaving. Con-
sidering how, throughout the latter part of his
life, he steadfastly refrained from the study of
contemporary scientific literature, I do not think
it likely that Comte ever became aware of the
growing prominence of this conception of gen-
esis ; and if he had become aware of it he
would doubtless have scornfully repudiated it,
as he repudiated almost every new conception
which was distinctly in advance of the limited
scientific knowledge of 1830. The knowledge
which Comte was not prepared to utilize at that
date, he was certainly not in a condition to util-
341

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

ize at any later period of his life. It was in
1857, the year of Comte's death, that Mr. Spen-
cer, in an essay entitled " Progress : its Law
and Cause," first definitely extended the law of
organic development to historic phenomena ;
although he had ever since 1851 been visibly
working toward that result, and had in 1855
reached that grand generalization of the devel-
opment of both life and intelligence, regarded
as processes of adjustment, which underlies the
law of social progress here expounded. It was
this splendid series of researches, culminating
in the announcement of the universal law of
evolution, in 1861, which supplied a new basis
for all the sciences which treat of genesis, and
rendered possible the discovery of the special
laws of sociogeny. And finally, in 1861, the
further clew to these special laws was given by
Sir Henry Maine, whose immortal treatise on
** Ancient Law " threw an entirely new light
upon the primitive structure of society, and
demonstrated — what before could only have
been surmised — that human society, as earli-
est organized, consisted of a congeries of tribal
communities, by the integration of which have
arisen the various orders of states and federa-
tions known to history.

When, therefore, we inquire whether Comte
did or did not create a science of sociology, we
need not be surprised if it appears that he did
342

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

not create such a science. For in sociology,
even more than in any other science, the prime
requisite is to formulate the law of evolution —
in this case, the order of sequence of historic
events from epoch to epoch. So far as a science
of society could be founded upon purely statical
considerations, the work had already been per-
formed— by Adam Smith, as regards political
economy, by Bentham, as regards jurisprudence,
and by both these great thinkers, as regards
ethics. But ethics, jurisprudence, and political
economy, put together, do not make up a sci-
ence of society, as Comte clearly saw. For in
sociology the historical element — the question
whence we started and whither we are bound —
is the element which takes precedence of all
others. Even ethics, jurisprudence, and politi-
cal economy cannot be placed upon a truly ra-
tional basis until we understand the order of
intellectual and moral change from epoch to
epoch. To understand the " tendencies of the
age " Is an indispensable prerequisite for sound
sociological thinking as well as for sound polit-
ical acting. Thus that portion of sociology which
treats of genesis Is, relatively to the whole sci-
ence, even more important than the correspond-
ing portions of biology and psychology. In bio-
logy pure and simple, we can, as we have seen,
obtain a tolerably complete notion of the order
of changes in the organism, with but occasional

343

COSxMIC PHILOSOPHY

reference to the comparatively stable and un-
changing environment. In psychology we have
to take the environment into account at every
step ; but unless we are studying the quite spe-
cial problem of the growth of the mental facul-
ties, we do not need to refer to a definite and
persistent succession of changes in the environ-
ment. But in sociology we cannot work in this
way. As M. Littre has well pointed out, when
we come to study humanity we are met by a
new phenomenon unknown in biology or in
psychology pure and simple. That new phe-
nomenon is Tradition, or the bequeathing of all
its organized intellectual and moral experience
by each generation to its successor. Here for
the first time we have an environment which is
rapidly changing in a definite order of sequence,
and changing by the very activity of the com-
munity itself. The organized experience of
each generation becomes a part of the environ-
ment of its successor, and since in each succes-
sive age " the empire of the dead over the liv-
ing increases," the environment of each genera-
tion consists to a greater and greater extent of
the sum total of traditions bequeathed by all
past generations. Hence we cannot hope sci-
entifically to comprehend the simplest feature
in any given state of the community without
reference to ancestral states. The religious phe-
nomena of the present day, for example, cannot
344

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

be understood without previous knowledge of the
whole history of Christianity, and indeed of hu-
man speculative thought since men began to be
aware of the universe about them. Our political
organization can be scientifically interpreted only
as the offspring of ancestral political organiza-
tions in a series reaching back to the primitive
tribal community.^ And so with all the aspects
of society. Whether we are studying a creed, a
code of laws, a dialect, a system of philosophy,
a congeries of myths, or a set of manners and
customs, we can arrive at the rational solution
of our problem only through a historical in-
quiry. Hence the doctrine of genesis, indispen-
sable as it is in the other two organic sciences,
becomes, if one may say so, even more indis-
pensable in sociology. Here the whole science
rests upon sociogeny,and until we have reached
a scientific conception of progress we cannot stir
a step.

Thus, in addition to the unparalleled com-
plexity of its phenomena, and to its general
dependence both for doctrine and for method
upon the simpler sciences, we perceive still an-
other reason why the science of sociology has
been the last to be constituted. Resting as it
does upon the law of progress, it has had to

1 See Mr. Freeman's book. Comparative Politics, — the
work of a great scholar who inherits the gift of Midas, and
makes gold of every subject that he touches.

345

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

wait not only until the preceding sciences were
founded, but until they were sufficiently ad-
vanced to supply it with the general formula of
organic development, from which alone the law
of social progress could be deduced. It was
not enough that Bichat had laid the foundations
for a general theory of nutrition, reproduction,
and innervation, or that James Mill had estab-
lished the fundamental laws of association —
though this was indeed much. The new sci-
ence had to wait until Von Baer had traced the
order in which organisms develop, until Mr.
Darwin had shown how through heredity and
natural selection organisms become adapted to
their environments, and until Mr. Spencer had
shown how associated ideas and emotions are
slowly generated and modified in conformity to
surrounding circumstances.

All this, of course, could not be foreseen by
Comte. But he nevertheless clearly saw-^-and
it does honour to his philosophic acumen —
that a comprehensive theory of social changes
can be obtained only by studying them in the
order of their historical dependence. He saw
that the laws of sociology are at bottom the
laws of history. And especially, from the prac-
tical point of view, he saw that no general the-
ory fit to serve as a basis for the amelioration
of society could be deduced from mere abstract
reasonings about human nature, or obtained in-
346

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

ductively from the mere observation of contem-
porary social phenomena. All theories formed
in this way, without reference to the order of
historic progression, are in danger of being
stated too absolutely, and are wont to give birth
only to Utopian projects. Comte was never
weary of pointing out the errors of those polit-
ical economists who deduce general laws of ac-
cumulation and distribution from the industrial
phenomena presented by a single country at a
particular epoch ; or of those moralists who base
their theories upon that absurdest of aphorisms,
that " human nature is always and everywhere
the same ; " or of those legislators who, in igno-
rance of the fact that humanity is travelling
in a definite and partially ascertainable direction,
fondly hope to turn it hither and thither by
shrewdly concocted acts of parliament. Nor, in
maintaining this last position, did he ever fall
into the opposite error, — characteristic of super-
ficial writers like Macaulay and Buckle, — that
individual genius and exertion is of little or no
account in modifying the course of history. He
did not forget that history is made by individual
men, as much as a coral reef is made by indi-
vidual polyps. Each contributes his infinites-
imal share of effort ; nor is the share of effort
always so trifling. Considering the course of
history merely as the resultant of the play of
moral forces, is there not in a Julius Caesar or

347

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

a Themistokles as large a manifestation of the
forces which go to make history as in thousands
of common men ? Nevertheless the fact re-
mains that civilization runs in a definite path,
that the sum total of ideas and feelings domi-
nant in the next generation will be the offspring
of the sum total of ideas and feelings dominant
in this, and that only by understanding the gen-
eral course of the movement of humanity can we
hope to make our volitions count for much as
an item in the resulting aggregate of effects.

Holding such views as these, Comtesaw that
the first aim of the sociological inquirer must
be to ascertain the law of progress. And accord-
ingly he set himself to work to perform this
task, with the only instrument then at his com-
mand, — that of historical induction. I have
already remarked upon his wonderful skill in
the use of that instrument of research. I doubt
if any one has ever lived who had a keener sense
of the significance of historic events, so far as
such significance could be perceived without the
aid of conceptions furnished by the sciences of
organic development. The fifth volume of the
" Philosophic Positive " is certainly a marvel-
lous tableau of the progress of society. I know
of no concrete presentation of universal history
which can be compared with it. The general
excellence of the conception is matched by the
excellence of the execution even to the smallest

348

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

details. And amid the host of pregnant sugges-
tions concerning Greek and Roman, and espe-
cially concerning mediaeval history, the great fact
that there has been and is a determinate order
of sequence in human affairs is placed quite
beyond cavil on the highest plane of inductive
demonstration.

To achieve so much as this was to show that
a science of sociology is possible, and to prepare
the way very thoroughly for the creation of
such a science. But Comte professed to have
done more than this. He regarded himself as
the founder of sociology, and is so regarded by
his disciples. It is part of our business to de-
termine, if we can, whether the claim is a valid
one ; and in order to do this, we must examine
the theorems which Comte propounded as the
fundamental laws of progress.

These theorems are two in number, — the
first relating to the intellectual, the second to
what we may call the material, development of
mankind. The first is an old acquaintance, be-
ing nothing else than the generalization that all
human conceptions must pass through three
stages — the theological, the metaphysical, and
the positive. We have already (Part I., chapter
vii.) examined this theory upon its own merits.
Tried by a psychological analysis, we have found
it to be only partially true. We saw it to be
correct in so far as it asserts that the prevailing
349

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

conception of the world becomes less and less
anthropomorphic from age to age ; but incorrect
in so far that it asserts that in this deanthro-
pomorphizing process there are three radically
distinguishable stages, and also, in so far as it
asserts that the process must end in Positivism.
We saw that, although without doubt men be-
gan by seeing volition everywhere and must
end by seeing an inscrutable Power everywhere,
nevertheless the mental process has throughout
been one and the same, and any appearance of
definite stages can be only superficial. Never-
theless, between the primeval savage who prays
to his fetish and the modern philosopher who
recognizes that he must shape his conduct ac-
cording to invariable laws or pay the penalty
in some form of inevitable suffering, the differ-
ence in mental attitude is so vast that we may
well have a distinction in terms to correspond
to it. It is for this reason that I have frequently
contrasted Anthropomorphism and Cosmism as
the initial and final terms of a continuous pro-
gression. This, however, is not the Comtean
doctrine. Again, metaphysics, as Comte under-
stands it, being merely imperfect scientific in-
quiry conducted by the aid of the subjective
method bequeathed by anthropomorphism, can-
not be regarded as the peculiar possession of
any particular stage.

But while Comte's theorem, in spite of these

3S^

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

radical defects, contains a germ of truth and has
been found to be eminently useful as a formula
for intellectual development, I cannot but be
surprised that Comte should have regarded it
as the fundamental law of social progress, and
still more that such able writers as Mr. Mill
and Mr. Lewes should at the present day be
found countenancing such an opinion. Does
this " law " explain how it was that Greek civi-
lization prematurely failed ? Does it throw any
light upon the causal connection between Ro-
man universal dominion and the Christian senti-
ment of the brotherhood of men ? Does it re-
cognize the distinction between the growth of a
community in size and its growth in structure,
or hint to us that the differences between Chi-
nese and European civilization may be summed
up in the statement that China is only a stu-
pendous tribal community, while Romanized
Europe is virtually a federation of exceedingly
heterogeneous national aggregates ? And while,
as we shall presently see, it unconsciously re-
cognizes that intellectual development is a con-
tinuous process of adaptation, does it say any-
thing about that slow process of emotional
change by which the more harmonious coopera-
tion of societies and the more perfect freedom
of individuals are alike rendered possible ? In-
deed it says nothing about any of these things ;
and I must think that these are very extensive

35^

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

lacunae in a theorem which professes to be the
fundamental law of social progress.

But this formula, as it stands, is not the
whole of Comte*s fundamental law of history.
With the advance from theological, through
metaphysical, to positive conceptions of the
world, Comte couples an advance from military
to industrial life, through an ill-defined inter-
mediate stage — inserted, doubtless, to complete
the threefold parallelism — which he calls the
" legal " stage. Thoroughly to explain what he
means by this " legal *' stage of society would
require more detail than I can here well indulge
in. We must be content with observing that he
means to designate that epoch, which indeed we
have not yet left behind us, in which parliamen-
tary legislation is thought competent to renovate
society artificially, — in which it is supposed
that legislatures can make men rich by giving
them paper money, intellectual by patronizing
literature, temperate by closing dram-shops. As
this phase of opinion was very conspicuous in
the eighteenth century, coupled with metaphy-
sical systems of political ethics deduced from
revolutionary theories of the " inherent rights
of man," Comte links this whole set of doctrines
together, and makes a so-called metaphysico-
legal stage in social progress. But I cannot
think this a happy generalization. This " legal '*
stage is, at the best, a phase of intellectual de-

2S'^

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

velopment, and to introduce it into the midst
of a purely social progress from military to in-
dustrial life, seems too much like committing the
logical fallacy known as cross-division. Omit-
ting this stage, then, and reducing Comte's
double formula to its lowest terms, — the only
ones, I think, upon which he himself would in-
variably have insisted, — we have the following,
as the Comtean law of progress : —

The progress of society is a gradual change from
anthropomorphic to positive conceptions of the
worlds and from military to industrial modes of
life ; and the latter kind of change is determined
by the former.

Such is the form of statement most favour-
able for Comte, and at the same time I believe
it to be the one which best represents his per-
manent opinion. We shall presently see that
the generalization of the change from military
to industrial modes of life is one of great value,
and it is to the thorough elaboration of it that
much of the merit of Comte's social philosophy
is due. But I must first call attention to the
fatal defect in the above formula, the defect
which destroys its claim to be regarded as the
law of progress. That fatal defect is its total
omission of moral feeling as a factor in social
evolution. Though he is far from committing
Mr. Buckle's absurdity of denying that there
has been any improvement in moral feeUng,
VOL. Ill 2SZ

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

Comte nevertheless falls into substantially the
same error with Mr. Buckle, in attempting to
explain all social progress as due simply to a
progressive alteration of opinion. The error is
one which seems to be shared by two other
eminent writers, — Mr. Mill and Mr. Lewes.
Here are the statements of the four : Mr. Mill
says, " We are justified in concluding that the
order of human progression in all respects will
mainly depend on the order of progression in
the intellectual convictions of mankind." ^ Mr.
Lewes says, somewhat more vaguely, " The
evolutions of Humanity correspond with the
evolutions of Thought." ^ Mr. Buckle says,
" The progress of mankind depends on the
success with which the laws of phenomena are
investigated, and on the extent to which a know-
ledge of those laws is diffused." ^ Comte says,
"It is not to the readers of this work that I
think it necessary to prove that ideas govern
the world, and that the social mechanism re-
poses ultimately upon opinions." *

Now it is not so much because of what these
propositions assert as because of what they
omit, that they must be pronounced unsatisfac-
tory and misleading. It is beyond question that

^ System of Logic y 4th edition, vol. ii. p. 517.
2 Philosophy of the Sciences y p. 23.

* History of Civilization y vol. ii. p. i .

* Philosophie Positivey torn. i. p. 48.

354

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

the progress of mankind does depend upon the
progressive conformity of the order of their
conceptions to the order of phenomena ; but,
after the inquiry contained in the preceding
chapter, I believe no further proof is necessary
to convince us that the progress of mankind
also depends upon the progressive conformity
of their desires to the requirements arising from
their aggregation in communities. If civilization
is a process of intellectual adaptation, it is also
a process of moral adaptation ; and the latter I
believe to be the more fundamental of the two.
The case is well stated by Mr. Spencer, in the
following passage : " Ideas do not govern the
world ; the world is governed by feelings, to
which ideas serve only as guides. The social
mechanism does not rest finally upon opinions ;
but almost wholly upon character. . . . All so-
cial phenomena are produced by the totality of
human emotions and beliefs : of which the emo-
tions are mainly predetermined, while the be-
liefs are mainly post-determined. Men's desires
are chiefly inherited ; but their beliefs are chiefly
acquired, and depend on surrounding condi-
tions ; and the most important surrounding
conditions depend on the social state which the
prevalent desires have produced. The social
state at any time existing is the resultant of all
the ambitions, self-interests, fears, reverences,
indignations, sympathies, etc., of ancestral citi-

355

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

zens and existing citizens. The ideas current
in this social state must on the average be con-
gruous with the feeUngs of citizens ; and there-
fore, on the average, with the social state these
feelings have produced. Ideas wholly foreign
to this social state cannot be evolved, and, if
introduced from without, cannot get accepted
— or, if accepted, die out when the temporary
phase of feeling which caused their acceptance
ends." This statement, I may observe in pass-
ing, is well illustrated by the abortive attempts
of missionaries to civilize the lower races of
mankind by converting them to Christianity.
Though they sometimes succeed in procuring
temporary verbal acceptance for Christian ideas,
they almost always fail in effecting a genesis of
Christian feeling, and such civilization as they
are able to produce is apt to be both superficial
and transient. This is simply because civiliza-
tion is not a mere process of external acquire-
ment, but is a process of slow adaptation or
breeding, which requires many generations to
effect a permanent modification of character.
The Fiji, whose language contains no words
expressive of the higher emotions or the more
exalted principles of action, cannot be made
into a Christian. You may cover him with a
very little of the external varnish of civilization ;
you may astonish him into accepting a few for-
mulas, to him quite unintelligible, concerning

3S^

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

the relations of man to his Creator ; but after
all he remains a savage still, in feelings and in
habits of thought, bloodthirsty, treacherous, and
superstitious, with a keen appetite for human
flesh. Or suppose you could resuscitate a me-
diaeval baron — one of those innumerable free-
booters who lived entrenched in the romantic
castles of the Rhine and levied blackmail on
every luckless wayfarer — suppose you could
resuscitate such a man, and were to endeavour
to expound to him in the simplest language
a few of the most self-evident modern axioms
concerning political rights and the interdepend-
ence of human interests : would he understand
you ? By no means. So vast would be the dif-
ference in mental habit, that in all probability
he could not even argue with you. " Hence "
— to continue with Mr. Spencer — "though
advanced ideas when once established act upon
society and aid its further advance ; yet the es-
tablishment of such ideas depends on the fitness
of the society for receiving them. Practically,
the popular character and the social state deter-
mine what ideas shall be current ; instead of
the current ideas determining the social state
and the character. The modification of men's
moral natures, caused by the continuous disci-
pline of social life, is therefore the chief proxi-
mate cause of social progress."

It is worthy of note that Comte, in his later

357

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

period, comes partly around to this very point
of view. At the beginning of the " Politique
Positive," we find him announcing that the in-
creasing tendency in the altruistic impulses to
prevail over the egoistic impulses is the best
measure by which to judge of the progress of
society.^ Yet the unsteadiness with which he
grasped this principle is revealed by the some-
what misty statement, a few pages further on,
that " the coordination of human nature as a
whole depends ultimately upon the coordination
of intellectual conceptions." A similar fluctua-
tion in opinion may be noticed in Mr. Buckle;
and it was indeed hardly possible for the func-
tion of moral feeling as a factor of progress
to be thoroughly understood by writers unac-
quainted with the laws of adaptation upon which
the scientific interpretation of that function is
based. But whatever Comte's latest opinions
may have been, since he never formulated any
law to include the action of moral feeling as a
factor of progress, his claims to be regarded as
the founder of sociology must rest entirely upon
his theory of progress as announced and elabo-
rately illustrated in the " Philosophic Positive."
That theory, as we now see, is much too in-
complete to serve as the foundation for a scien-
tific study of history. Civilization cannot be
summed up in the correct formula that men's
1 Politique Positive y torn. i. p. i6.

358

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

occupations begin by being military and end by
being industrial, or in the incorrect formula that
men's conceptions of the world begin by being
anthropomorphic and end by being positive ;
nor is it true that the former change is deter-
mined by the latter. We need to add the for-
mula that men's feelings begin by being almost
purely egoistic and must end by being altruistic
to a considerably greater extent than will suffice
to prevent individual interests from clashing.
And even with all three formulas before us, we
need something more before we can say that
we have obtained the Law of Progress. These
formulas are historical generalizations of great
value ; but as thus announced, they are too iso-
lated with respect to each other. The progress
of society is not moral progress, or intellectual
progress, or material progress ; but it is the
combination of all the three. Our three for-
mulas, therefore, must be integrated in a single
formula. And this is done, and satisfactorily
done, when it is shown that they are all involved
in that law of adaptation or adjustment which
underlies sociology, as well as psychology and
biology.

That the progress from egoism to altruism is
involved in that fundamental law was proved
in the preceding chapter, and has been illustrated
throughout the whole of this discussion. But
the law of adaptation equally involves the pro-

359

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

gress from Anthropomorphism, not to Positiv-
ism, but to Cosmism, as a necessary corollary.
For what does that progress depend upon ?
What is the underlying process of which it is
the necessary symptom and result ? Why is it
that men begin by investing the unknown causes
of phenomena with quasi-human attributes and
end by recognizing a single Cause which is in-
scrutable ? In treating of deanthropomorphiza-
tion (Part I., chapter vii.) we examined this point.
We perceived the primitive anthropomorphism
to be a corollary from the relativity of all know-
ledge. We saw that, to interpret phenomena at
all, men must interpret them in terms of their
own consciousness. We saw that before the
dawn of science, when events seemed isolated
and capricious, the phenomenon itself was by a
natural inference — which only the progress of
science has taught us to correct — endowed with
a quasi-human personality. We traced the man-
ner in which, as phenomena become generalized
in wider and wider groups, the causes of phe-
nomena become conceived as more and more
abstract, and become stripped by slow degrees of
their anthropomorphic vestments. Until finally,
when generalization has proceeded to such an
extent as to give us a single grand science of
Cosmology, dealing with the Universe as an
integral whole, there comes to be recognized a
single Cause of phenomena, which, as being in-
360

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

finite, cannot be in any anthropomorphic sense
personal, and which, as being absolute, must be
inscrutable.

Thus we see that Comte's formula is not
fundamental, even as a formula for intellectual
development. The process of deanthropomor-
phization is not the fundamental fact. The con-
tinuous organization of knowledge and general-
ization of phenomena is the fundamental fact,
of which the continuous deanthropomorphiza-
tion is the necessary symptom and result. Now
in Part I., chapter ii., we traced the outlines of
this continuous organization of knowledge ; and
we found that the advance from incomplete to
complete knowledge consists in the continuous
establishment of groups of notions which are ever
more coherent within themselves, while they are
ever more clearly demarcated from one another.
Now what is all this but a continuous process
of differentiation and integration ? When we
say that from first to last, from the simplest cog-
nitions of infancy to the widest generalizations
of science, we cognize phenomena invariably
through difference and likeness, we mean that
we are continually differentiating notions an-
swering to unlike phenomena and continually
integrating notions answering to like pheno-
mena. Or, to express the same thing in other
words, we are continually establishing relations
of likeness and unlikeness among our concep-
361

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

tions, that in some way or other definitely cor-
respond to relations of likeness and unlikeness
among phenomena. Thus our intellectual pro-
gress is at bottom a process of adaptation. And
when treating of the Test of Truth (Part I., chap-
ter iii.), it was shown that Truth, the goal of in-
tellectual progress, is nothing else than the com-
plete adaptation of the order of conceptions to
the order of phenomena, — the establishment
of inner relations that are in equilibrium with
outer relations. Thus we obtain a veritable
law of intellectual progress — whereas to say
that men's conceptions pass from Anthropo-
morphism to Positivism is merely to enunciate
an empirical generalization, which, besides being
empirical, is also radically imperfect.

The gradual change from a military to an in-
dustrial life must also seek its rational explana-
tion in the law of progress as above formulated.
The diminution of warfare and the concomitant
increase of devotion to industrial pursuits are en-
tailed by the growth of communities in size and
structure. Among the primitive tribal societies
there is no industrial life save that implied in
hunting and fishing, and at a somewhat later
date in the rearing of domestic animals. Settled
agricultural pursuits require \ a greater power
of continuous application and a more devel-
oped ability to subordinate present enjoyment
to the anticipation of future needs than is to be
362

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

found in the primitive savage. It is only the
mental habit produced by long-continued social
discipline which enables us to work to-day that
we may enjoy the fruits of our labour at a dis-
tant period. The primeval tribe wanders from
spot to spot, seeking ever a better hunting-
ground or richer pasturage, leading a predatory
life which differs in little save in its family or-
ganization from that led by the lower animals.
In this stage of society constant warfare is in-
evitable, since each tribe must fight or be crushed
out of existence by neighbouring tribes. Over
a large part of the earth's surface, such has been
the monotonous career of savage man from the
earliest times until the present day. Such ap-
pears to have been, in its main features, the
ancient history of our own country before its
conquest by Europeans, as it. is admirably de-
lineated in the writings of that acute observer
Mr. Parkman.

The exigencies of warfare, however, of them-
selves facilitate that integration of tribal com-
munities which we have seen to be the indis-
pensable condition of progress. A considerable
step toward civilization is taken when tribes be-
gin to aggregate for mutual defence over a wide
tract of country. When America was discovered,
an aggregation of this sort had apparently be-
gun to be formed among the Iroquois; and
such was the highest organization reached by
3^3

b

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

the ancient Turanian tribes of Central Asia.
A far more important step is taken when war-
fare ceases to be purely destructive and becomes
acquisitive ; or, in other words, when the vic-
tors, instead of massacring the vanquished, be-
gin to make slaves of them. By this step agri-
cultural industry is fairly brought into existence,
and the tribal confederacy becomes fixed in
location and enabled to increase indefinitely in
size at the expense of the less highly organized
communities in the neighbourhood. Under
these conditions the tribal confederacy may
grow until it takes on the semblance of an "ag-
gregate of the third order," as in China,^ or in
ancient Egypt, Assyria, Media, Lydia, and Per-
sia. I am expressing something more than an
analogy — I am describing a real homology as
far as concerns the process of development —
when I say that these communities simulated

1 *« In every respect the Chinese constitution of society may
be regarded as a gigantic amplification of the constitution of
the family. The family is no doubt the constituent element of
which all societies are composed ; just as, in the body, all
tissues, nervous or muscular, are generated from the primitive
cellular tissue ; but whereas in other societies we find dif-
ferentiation into classes and institutions which have no direct
analogue in the family, in China we find far less of this, far
more of adherence to the primitive social tissue, to the patri-
archal type. On this type the village and the empire are
alike moulded." Bridges, in Essays on International Polity,
p. 401.

364

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

modern European nations much In the same
way that a tree-fern of the carboniferous period
simulated the exogenous trees of the present
time. The vast growth and the considerable
civilization obtained by such communities were
rendered possible only through the institution
of industrial slavery in place of the primeval in-
discriminate slaughter of captives. Only through
enforced labour did the continuous culture of
the soil and the consequent stability of society
become possible ; a point which Comte clearly
saw, and has brilliantly illustrated.

Thus we see how the exigencies of self-pro-
tection entailed by the primitive state of uni-
versal warfare furnished of themselves the con-
ditions for the rise of industry. We need not
trace in detail the slow growth of the industrial
spirit at the expense of the military spirit in
the ancient civic communities, in the ancient
and mediaeval Empire, and in modern times.
That has been done, with a masterly hand, by
Comte. We may only note briefly how indus-
try — the offspring of slavery, itself the oflF-
spring of warfare — has all along, by aiding the
differentiation and integration of society, been
draining the vitality out of its primeval parent.
Let us note, then, that the kind of differentiation,
known as " division of labour," by rendering the
various portions of the community more and
more dependent on each other, renders a state of
365

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

warfare ever less easy to sustain, and therefore
continually, though slowly, diminishes the fre-
quency and shortens the continuance of wars.
The statement that in early times a community
is, on the whole, better able to endure protracted
warfare than in later times, may be illustrated by
a comparison between the Punic Wars of Rome
and the War of Secession in our own country.
The horrible destruction of life and property
occasioned by the first and second Punic Wars
is minutely described in Mommsen's " Roman
History." The first of these desperate strug-
gles lasted twenty-three years, during the five
severest of which the census of Roman patri-
cians was diminished by one sixth of the whole
number, — a fact terrible to contemplate when
its full significance is realized. After twenty-
three years of comparative quiet began the still
more deadly struggle against Hannibal, which
lasted seventeen years. During this war the
total loss of life in all the communities engaged
— Italian, Spanish, Sicilian, and African — can-
not be estimated at less than 600,000 persons
actually slain ; a Iqss which I believe somewhat
exceeds that of the Northern and Southern
States in the American war. But to make a fair
comparison, we must include the circumstance
that the population of these ancient communi-
ties was not more than one sixth as great as the
population of the United States ; and that in

366

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

ancient times the normal rate of increase of
population was very much slower than in such
a community as ours. The second Punic War
was, therefore, relatively as murderous as our
Civil War would have been had it continued
until between three and four million lives were
destroyed. And if we would appreciate the
direct damage to industry which it entailed, we
have a sufficient datum in the fact that during
those seventeen years more than four hundred
flourishing towns and villages in Italy alone
were blotted out of existence.^

Now opinions may difl^er as to the possibility
of our carrying on for seventeen years a war
which should drain our resources as the Hanni-
balic war drained the resources of Italy. Prob-
ably no country could so well sustain such a
trial as the United States, owing to the favour-
ableness of our social conditions for exceedingly
rapid growth in wealth and population. Never-
theless, even omitting foreign interference from
the account, I do not believe the thing would
be possible. I believe it perfectly safe to assert
that a war like the one we have lately passed
through would, if prolonged to seventeen years,
entail social disintegration throughout the com-
munity. Yet the absolute military power of the
United States is incomparably greater than that

^ Mommsen, Romische Geschichtey torn. i. p. 671 ; see
also p. 536.

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

of ancient Rome ; wherein, then, lies the differ-
ence ?

The explanation will be found, and the par-
ticular conclusion reinforced, when we consider
the enormous increase of heterogeneity and in-
terdependence in the modern as contrasted with
the ancient community. In ancient Italy there
was but little division of labour, — it required
but a few simple occupations to supply the
wants of the whole community. In the United
States considered as a whole, the division of
labour is perhaps not quite so extreme as in
western Europe, owing to the sparseness of
population and the purely agricultural activ-
ity of large sections of the country : still, the
industrial differentiation is very great, and to
supply the wants of each portion of the com-
munity a vast number of mutually dependent
and highly complicated occupations is indis-
pensably necessary. Obviously the heterogene-
ous community cannot so well bear the abstrac-
tion of units from its mutually dependent parts,
as the homogeneous community could bear the
abstraction of units from its relatively independ-
ent and self-sufficing parts. The difference is
much the same as the difference between cutting
off portions of a worm and cutting off portions
of a vertebrate animal. You may take one of
the lower worms and slice away at it for some
time without destroying it, but in the case of

368

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

the vertebrate a comparatively small loss of
parts entails destruction. In society the prin-
ciple is the same. The Romans could lose
army after army, while the few who remained
at home could carry on all the agricultural and
commercial operations necessary to the main-
tenance of the community. There were no
great organized industries, manufacturing or
commercial, so linked together that the destruc-
tion of any one might cause general financial
disaster. But in any large modern community
industry has become so heterogeneous that it
is difficult for one part to take on the functions
of another part, and so completely integrated
that a sudden and considerable withdrawal of
men from the ordinary pursuits of life can
hardly take place without causing widespread
suffering. And the contrast is made still greater
by the industrial federation of modern commu-
nities as compared with the industrial isolation
of ancient states. Though the time has per-
haps never been, since Mediterranean civiliza-
tion began, when a war could continue very
long in one community without tending to set
up disturbance in some other, yet this interac-
tion of different states was far less conspicuous
in ancient than it is in modern times. The
Hannibalic war might go on for seventeen years,
and Athens or Alexandria not be much the
worse off for it. But before the war of secession

VOL. Ill 3^9

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

had continued twelve months, the consequent
suffering in Lancashire was manifesting itself
in riots, and England for a time seemed willing
at all hazards to interfere and check the contest.
This single example — out of hundreds that
might be taken — must suffice to illustrate the
way in which the ever-increasing interdepend-
ence of human interests, itself both the cause
and the effect of industrial progress, is ever
making warfare less and less endurable. To
this it must be added that both moral and in-
tellectual factors contribute to bring about the
general result. As human interests in various
parts of the world become more and more inex-
tricably wrought together, and as communities
which lie apart from each other come ever into
closer contact, the ancient antagonisms of senti-
ment between them slowly disappear, and inter-
national friendship grows at the expense of the
old hostility or distrust. Thus the moral adap-
tation due to long-continued social discipline
diminishes the warlike feelings and strength-
ens the feelings which maintain an industrial
regime ; while on the other hand, intellectual
adaptation, ever adding new complication to
industry, arrays the opinion of society more and
more decidedly against war, as against an in-
tolerable source of disturbance. Besides which,
the very heterogeneity of the military art, the
increasing complication both of the implements
370

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

and of the methods of warfare, due to scientific
and industrial progress, renders war ever more
costly, and makes the community less willing
to engage in it. And these cooperating pro-
cesses must go on until — probably at no very
distant period — warfare shall have become ex-
tinct in all the civilized portions of the globe.

In so far as the present chapter has dealt with
the claims of Comte to be regarded as the
founder of Sociology, I believe it is sufficiently
proved that these claims cannot be sustained,
though in many ways he did more than any one
else to prepare the way for such an achievement.
If a man can ever be properly said to create or
found a science, it is only when he discovers
some fundamental principle which underlies the
phenomena with which the science has to deal,
and which thus serves to organize into a co-
herent ratiocinative body of knowledge that
which has hitherto been an incoherent empirical
body of knowledge. It was in this way that
Newton may be said to have created a science
of celestial dynamics, and that Bichat is some-
times, and more loosely, said to have been the
founder of modern biology. In no such sense
can Comte be said to have created sociology.
Standing on the vantage ground of contempo-
rary science, which enables us to discern in out-
line the law of progress, we can see not only
that Comte was far from detecting that law, but
371

COSMIC PHILOSOPHY

that, with the limited appliances at his com-
mand, he could not have been expected to dis-
cover it. Nevertheless his contributions to
sociology were exceedingly brilliant and valu-
able, and he did perhaps all that the greatest
thinker could have done forty years ago. He
arrived at a double generalization of the phe-
nomena of intellectual and material progress, as
wide as could then be reached by unaided his-
torical induction ; and he verified this double
generalization by an elaborate survey of ancient
and modern history, which, even had he written
nothing else, would alone suffice to make his
name immortal. It entitles him, I think, to be
ranked first among those sociologists who have
proceeded solely on the historical method, —
on a somewhat higher plane, perhaps, than Vico
or Montesquieu, Turgot or Condorcet. That
generalization, in both its branches, and in so
far as it is correct, we have here seen to be a
corollary from the fundamental law of social
evolution obtained in the preceding chapter.
We have seen that the continuous adaptation,
both moral and intellectual, of the community
to its environment, involves, as necessary con-
comitants, both the progressive deanthropomor-
phization of men's conceptions of Cause, and
the gradual change from military to industrial
habits of life. And the harmony between the
results thus obtained by pursuing two wholly
372

ILLUSTRATIONS AND CRITICISMS

independent lines of inquiry adds fresh support
both to the fundamental law and to its historic
corollaries. In the very act of proving that
Comte did not achieve the whole, we do but
place what he did achieve upon a deeper and
firmer basis.

END OF VOLUME III

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