cences which concern others than the writer of them; and widely diffused as is Mr. Mozley's interesting work, his statement will be read and accepted by thousands who will never see Mr. Spencer's Rectification.'" It appears to me that good service will be done to the cause of justice by helping to spread this rectification as widely as possible.

The passage which has called forth Mr. Spencer's rectification runs as follows: "I have indulged," says Mr. Mozley, "from my boyhood in a Darwinian dream of moral philosophy, derived in the first instance from one of my early instructors. This was Mr. George Spencer, (honorary) secretary of the Derby Philosophical Association, founded by Dr. Darwin,' and father of Mr. Herbert Spencer. My dream had a certain family resemblance to the 'system of philosophy' bearing that writer's name. There was an important and saving difference between the two systems, between that which never saw the light, and perished before it was born, without even coming to wither like grass on the housetops, and that other imposing system which occupies several yards of shelf in most public libraries. The latter makes the world of life, as we see and take part in it, the present outcome of a continual outcoming from atoms, lichens, and vegetables, bound by the necessities of existence to mutual relations, up to or down to brutes, savages, ladies, and gentlemen, inheriting various opinions, maxims, and superstitions. The brother and elder philosophy, for such it was, that is mine, saved itself from birth by its palpable inconsistency, for it retained a Divine original, and some other incongruous elements. In particular, instead of rating the patriarchal stage hardly above the brute, it assigned to that state of society a heavenly source, and described it as rather a model for English country gentlemen, that is, upon the whole, and with certain reservations."

It will be tolerably obvious that in this passage there is something more than Mr. Spencer-proceeding in his calm way by inquiring rather what others found in it than what he found himself-notes as its purport. It leaves the impression, he says, that the doctrines set forth in the system of Synthetic Philosophy, as well as those which Mr. Mozley entertained in his early days, were in some way derived from the elder Spencer. True, but it leaves also the impression that although the "brother and elder philosophy had been thus derived,”

It was "more than a dozen years," Mr. Spencer remarks, "after Dr. Darwin's death in 1802, when my father became honorary secretary. I believe my father (who was twelve years old when Dr. Darwin died) never saw him, and, so far as I know, knew nothing of his ideas."

it owed to Mr. Mozley whatever development it received; he speaks of it plainly as the "philosophy that is mine." It conveys very clearly (and also very cleverly) the idea that in Mr. Mozley's opinion the elder philosophy was altogether the nobler and better of the twain, however obvious it may be to sounder judgments that that opinion is altogether erroneous. And then, by saying that even this elder and better philosophy was so palpably unsound that its failure before birth saved it from its due fate, it leaves us clearly to understand what a great misfortune in Mr. Mozley's eyes has been the birth, growth, and development of the younger and inferior brother. That these palpable sneers (not to say these gross insults) escaped an attention so keen as Mr. Spencer's I do not suppose. It is evident, however, that he very justly regarded them as unworthy of notice they are, in fact, of the class of innuendoes which may properly be described as womanish (observe, I do not say womanlike). Mr. Spencer directs his whole attention to meet Mr. Mozley's implication that during the last five-and-twenty years he has been allowing himself to be credited with ideas which are not his own. "Since this is entirely untrue," he says, "I cannot be expected to let it pass unnoticed; if I do I tacitly countenance an error, and tacitly admit an act by no means creditable to me."

He then tells us, in admirably selected terms, just how far he believes himself to be indebted to his father. His indebtedness was general, he says, not special—and indebtedness for habits of thought encouraged rather than for ideas communicated. "I distinctly trace to him an ingrained tendency to inquire for causes-causes, I mean, of the physical class." And here, let me note in passing, is the great lesson which modern science is ever inculcating. It is here that science influences mental and moral culture most palpably. There is no more valuable safeguard against superstitions of all orders, from those which affect the whole conduct of life, the whole character, down to the paltry superstitions which relate to such matters as helping to salt, walking under ladders, and so forth, than the inquiry always for causes. Breaking a mirror means seven years of sorrow, says the ignorant believer in foolish fancies of the sort: In what way? through what relation of cause and effect? comes the question of common sense, and the notion is at once seen to be an absurdity. If I commit such and such offences, says the believer in a higher form of superstition, I shall be punished; science asks how and why, and in the answer finds the real reason for the moral law. Science finds that offences against right and justice bring always their punishment with them, and shows cause why; establishing thus a sounder and nobler

morality than any founded on the merely superstitious fear that some unexplained punishment will fall on us for wrong doing.

The elder Spencer says, his son was "far from having himself abandoned supernaturalism, yet the bias towards naturalism was strong in him, and was I doubt not communicated (though rather by example than by precept) to others he taught, as it was to me. But while admitting, and indeed asserting, that the tendency towards naturalistic interpretation of things was fostered in me by him, as probably also in Mr. Mozley, yet I am not aware that any of those results of naturalistic interpretation distinctive of my works are traceable to him."

What is specially noticeable about this part of Mr. Spencer's communication to the Athenæum, as bearing on the nature of the Spencerian philosophy, is, that he shows Mr. Mozley's statement to be necessarily erroneous. The cardinal ideas discussed throughout the series of volumes published by Mr. Spencer were necessarily of much later origin than the period to which Mr. Mozley's account refers. The great generalisation respecting the correlation and equivalence of the physical forces had not as yet been even thought of. This doctrine and others which are absolutely indispensable elements of the general theory of evolution, were not heard of for years after the time mentioned by Mr. Mozley, so that, unless his statement be regarded as simply untrue, it is manifest that he has (even now, when Mr. Spencer's views have long been before the public) no adequate conception even of the general doctrines of evolution as formulated in our time, far less of those special doctrines with which Mr. Herbert Spencer's name is identified.

Nay, it will be manifest to all who have carefully studied Mr. Spencer's own writings, that he himself had not adopted the views now forming the Spencerian philosophy until long after his father's death. "In the earliest of them," he says, "Letters on the proper Sphere of Government,' published in 1842, and republished as a pamphlet in 1844, the only point of community in the general doctrine of evolution, is a belief in the modifiability of human nature through adaptation to conditions (which I held as a corollary from the theory of Lamarck), and a consequent belief in human progression. In the second and more important one, 'Social Statics,' published in 1850, the same general ideas are to be seen, worked out more elaborately in their literal and political consequences. Only in an essay published in 1852 would the inquirer note for the first time a passing reference to the increase of heterogeneity as a trait of development, and a first recognition of this trait as seen

in other orders of phenomena than those displayed by individual organisms. Onwards through essays published in several following years, he would observe further extensions in the alleged range of this law, until, in 1855, in the 'Principles of Psychology,' it begins to take an important position, joined with the additional law of integration, afterwards to be similarly extended. Not until 1857, in two essays then published, would he find a statement, relatively crude in form, of the law of evolution, set forth as holding throughout all orders of phenomena, and joined with it the statement of certain universal physical principles which necessitate its universality. And only in 1861 would he come to an expression of the law approximating in definiteness to that final one reached in 1867." This, of course, conclusively disposes of the implication in Mr. Mozley's statement; for, were this true, the earlier writings would have contained traces of the doctrines set forth in the later ones.

So much premised, we are prepared to examine Mr. Spencer's summary of the cardinal principles developed in his successive works. So far as the refuting of Mr. Mozley's unfair implication is concerned, nothing more could be needed; but Mr. Spencer thought it might be well to enable the reverend gentleman who had somewhat rashly attacked him, to compare the propositions of "the younger philosophy" with that which, because-by his own accountit was unborn at an earlier date, Mr. Mozley has called "the elder.” The summary was written out some twelve years ago, for an American friend. Let us take the propositions seriatim.

1. Throughout the universe in general and in detail, there is an unceasing redistribution of matter and motion.

This statement scarcely needs explanation. It means simply that the arrangement of matter in space, whether we consider large masses or small, is ever varying, and that the movements among the different portions of matter, large as well as great, are constantly changing in rate and in direction. In the way of illustration we have a wide field for selection. Amid stellar space stars or suns are rushing hither and thither with motions varying according to the attractions at work in various parts of each star's course. We see that in vaporous matter, or widely distributed cosmical dust, similar motions are continually taking place. The expansive tendencies of gaseous matter are found to be due to the rush of minute molecules in all directions. So that, in the universe of matter as revealed to the astronomer, the same general laws affect the suns which people space, the largest discrete masses we know of, and the molecules which form the intimate substance of gaseous matter, bodies so minute

as to lie hopelessly beyond the range of any conceivable increase of microscopic power. In organic matter the same law holds. All the physical processes which are most obvious and familiar, all those which form the subject of the most recondite scientific research, are in reality illustrations of the constant redistribution of matter and motion.

2. This redistribution constitutes evolution where there is a predominant integration of matter and dissipation of motion, and constitutes dissolution where there is a predominant absorption of motion and disintegration of matter.

Unfortunately the words in this statement are not altogether well chosen or used in their strictly correct sense-evolution is set against dissolution as if the two were contrasted processes, whereas dissolution is a form of evolution. Moreover, the word integration' is not commonly understood, whether in its technical sense (which is almost purely mathematical) or in ordinary language, in the sense in which it is here used. It is rather understood ordinarily to mean the restoration of that which had been made imperfect, than as the converse of disintegration. "Absorption" also is here used by Mr. Spencer to mean what might rather be described as "assumption." The statement may be thus translated into ordinary language :

This constant change in the distribution of matter and motion, results in some cases in the aggregation into one whole, of portions of matter which before had been apart from each other, the motions of these several portions inter se coming to an end, or greatly diminishing, as they thus gather into a single mass. In such cases we have the formation of new masses. In other cases portions of matter which had been aggregated into a single mass are separated from each other, and begin to move freely inter se. In such cases we have the dissolution of the masses thus separated into their component parts.

We may select our first illustrations of these converse processes from the celestial spaces, though so far as is yet known these tell us of few cases of dissolution or dissipation, nearly all the processes actually observable being instances of aggregation or of the formation of new masses. We know that in the solar system there are multitudinous systems of meteoric bodies-and we know further that our own earth gathers in many millions of these bodies in each year. The same is doubtless true of the moon, Venus, Mars, and other planets. It must be true in yet greater degree of the sun. Every fall of a meteor is a process of aggregation. When a meteor falls on

This also is the sense in which the Romans used the word integratio. Thus the familiar saying of Terence, Amantium iræ amoris integratio est, is properly translated, "The quarrels of lovers are the renewing of love."