ganic, organic, physical, vital, psychical, social, have to be interpreted.
In order to deprive the law of evolution, hereupon formulated, of any merely empirical character, Mr. Spencer shows at length that there are all pervading principles underlying the all pervading process. But of this reduction of inductive results to the deductive form we shall find it more convenient to speak presently when we come to deal with the general method of the Spencerian philosophy. Our immediate concern is to understand a little more clearly what we mean by evolution.[1]
We have already stated the matter in a broad and general way. Dissolution is disintegration; evolution is integration. But this definition takes note only of the primary element in the evolutionary process. Evolution means always an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion, or, in other words, increasing coherence to definiteness; but it commonly implies much more than this. We must recognize the secondary changes by which this primary change is habitually complicated before the formula of evolution can be set down as complete.
These secondary changes are indeed the most conspicuous characteristics of the evolutionary process; and it is not surprising, therefore, that it was from these that Mr. Spencer started, that it was with these that he remained for a long time preoccupied, that it was these which he first defined in philosophic terminology. A simple plan for us to adopt in the present exposition will be to follow him very rapidly along the line of investigation by which the full law of evolution was gradually reached.
Approaching, as he did, the general problem of things by way of ethical and sociological inquiries, Mr. Spencer found himself confronted at the outset by the special fact of the development of man individually and in society—that is, with the fact of progress. What, then, is progress? This was the specific question to
- ↑ It is, of course, a necessary corollary from the doctrine of the rhythm of motion that the processes of evolution and dissolution are continually in conflict, locally and generally: and in no theory of the evolution of things—whether we consider individual existences, or aggregates of such, or the total aggregate that we call the cosmos—is it possible, therefore, to leave the process of dissolution out of the account. Individuals die, organisms disintegrate, societies collapse, races and civilizations are extinguished; while we are bound to acknowledge that for our earth itself, and the system of which it forms a part, and the universe in its entirety, the hour of dissolution must at length be sounded—the disintegrating force must finally begin to undo the work of eons upon eons of slow and gradual integration. In the life and death of a gnat we find a tiny symbol of the pulsations that produce the rise and decay of worlds. But in our own system and on our planet, however certain the ultimate course of things may seem to be, the process of evolution has long predominated, and still predominates, over the process of dissolution; and it is upon the former process, therefore, that we fix attention, though the rhythm of motion and the flux of existence reveal themselves wherever we look.
