It is true, Mr. Spencer denies creation, and relegates all causative power to the dark region of the unknowable, and calls the origin of the universe in the creative act of being or God “an hypothesis,” and rejects it with ill-concealed scorn; yet creation is not “an hypothesis,” but a scientific fact, and a necessary principle of all science. Without it the cosmos would not be cognizable, for it would have no dialectic constitution. It could not even be thought, for every thought is a judgment, and no judgment is possible where there is no copula that joins the predicate to the subject. Rejecting creation, the author cannot assert the relation of cause and effect; rejecting cause and effect, he cannot assert even the cosmic phenomena. They are not able to stand on their own bottom, and therefore not at all, unless the Something of which they are, as he says, manifestations, is a cause producing and sustaining them. We submit, then, that Mr. Spencer’s doctrine
of the unknowable, and the relativity of all knowledge, estops him from asserting anything as knowable, for it really denies all the knowable and all the real—omne scibile et omne reale.
The second part of Mr. Spencer’s work on “The Knowable” we might well omit, but as it is that in which he claims to be original, and in which he supposes he has made most valuable contributions to the philosophy of the cosmos, an omission to examine it might seem ungracious. Besides, the inventors of new systems of philosophy must not be held too rigidly to the logical consequences of their own doctrines, non omnia possumus. It is impossible for the founder to foresee all that his doctrine involves, and it is but fair, if he really has said anything new that is true, that it should be recognized, and he receive due credit for it, even if it is an anomaly in his general system of philosophy. We proceed, therefore, to consider Part II.
In this second part, the author professes to treat the knowable, not indeed in its several details, but in its first principles, or ultimate generalizations. The generalization of a group of phenomena is science; the generalization of the several groups of phenomena observable in the cosmos constitutes the several special sciences; and the combination of these special sciences into one higher and more comprehensive generalization, which embraces them all, is philosophy. In constructing philosophy, the author, be it observed, like the coral insect, begins below and works upward, and bases the universal on the particular.
The great point, or novelty, in this second part, however, is unquestionably, as the author claims, the doctrine of Evolution. By evolution, the author does not understand evolving
or unfolding, as do ordinary mortals; but the aggregation or contraction and diffusion, according to certain laws which he has determined, of matter, motion, and force. Evolution consists, therefore, of two processes, contraction and diffusion, and is either simple or compound. Simple evolution is where concentration and diffusion follow each other alternately; compound evolution is where the two processes go on simultaneously in the same subject, which may be said to be growing and decaying, or living and dying, at one and the same time.
Minerals, plants, and animals, including man, are all formed by the evolution of matter, motion, and force. The elimination or loss of motion, mechanical, chemical, or electrical, is followed by the concentration of matter and force, which may assume the form of a pebble, a diamond, a nettle, a rose, an oak, a jelly-fish, a tadpole, a monkey, a man. Life is simply the product of “the mechanical, chemical, and electrical arrangement of particles of matter.” The concentration of motion is followed by a diffusion or dispersion of matter and force, and the disappearance of the several groups of phenomena we have just named; but as matter is indestructible, and as there is always the same quantity of motion and force, they disappear only to reappear in new groups or transformations. The diffusion of the mineral may be the birth of the plant; of the plant, the birth of the animal; of the ape, may be a new concentration which gives birth to man. Nothing is lost. The cosmos is a ceaseless evolution; is, so to speak, in a state of perpetual flux and reflux, in which diffusion of one group of phenomena is followed by the birth of another, in endless rotation, or life from death, and death
from life. Dissolution follows concentration “in eternal alternation,” or both go on together. This is not a new doctrine, but substantially the doctrine of a school of Greek philosophers, warred against both by Plato and Aristotle, that all things are in a state of ceaseless motion, of growth and decay, in which corruption proceeds from generation, and generation from corruption, in which death is born of life, and life is born of death. Our cosmic philosophers only repeat the long since exploded errors of the old cosmists. But pass over this.
The author is treating of the knowable. We ask him, then, how he contrives to know that there is any such evolution as he asserts? He assumes that matter, motion, and force are the constituent elements of the cosmos; but he can neither know it nor prove it, since he maintains that what matter is, or what motion is, or what force is, is unknown and unknowable. He denies the relation of cause and effect, or at least that it is cognizable; how, then, can he assert the cosmic phenomena are only concentrations and diffusions of matter, motion, and force? A certain elimination of motion and a corresponding concentration of matter and force produces the rose, another produces an ape, another produces a man, says the author of this new system of philosophy. Does he know that he is only a certain concentration of matter and force, resulting from a certain diffusion or loss of motion? Can he not only think, but prove it? But all proof, all demonstration, as all reasoning, nay, sensible intuition itself, depends on the principle of cause and effect; for, unless we can assert that the sensation within is caused by some object without that affects the sensible organism, we can assert
nothing outside of us, not even a phenomenon or external appearance. How does the author know, or can he know, that he differs from the ape only in the different combination of matter, motion, and force?