must have been held in fusion in the heat of the imagination. Must not philosophy pass through a similar process in the crucible of the reason? But this is a process Mr. Spencer's speculations have not been sufficiently subjected to. Philosophically he is a riveter-and a rare workman at the craft; nay, at times, by the deftness and persistence of his stroke he may succeed in welding sundry pieces of his material; but he is not a founder. His thought wants solidarity. This defect is not peculiar to the book with which our attention is specially concerned, but is apparent in the author's works generally: it belongs to the man, and not to any individual performances. A critic of the Principles of Psychology' has very lucidly and forcibly exposed its presence in that division of his system. of Philosophy, and showed that the author's outlook is materialistic, idealistic, and dualistic by turns.

'Mr. Spencer's system,' says the writer alluded to, has the incurable defect of fundamental incoherence; or, rather, it is not a system at all; it is a composition of fragments belonging to different systems. Most of the different points of view, principles, and methods that are now competing and conflicting in the arena of philosophical discussion appear to have been unreservedly adopted-each in its turn-in one part or other of Mr. Spencer's exposition. Nor yet can we call him an Eclectic, for an Eclectic means to reconcile the different methods that he combines, whereas Mr. Spencer has not perceived the need of any reconciliation. But, again, in speaking of his system as incoherent, we must not be understood to imply that Mr. Spencer's treatment is ever vague or confused. In fact it is just the clearness and precision, even the boldness and originality, with which he expounds each principle in its own place, the thoroughness with which he pursues each method for a certain stage of his course, that presents his incoherence in the clearest form, and brings the reader's bewilderment to its height. . . . The truth is, that though Mr. Spencer's mind is so far eminently philosophical that it is always striving after universality of view and completeness of synthesis, in another sense it shows signs of an imperfect philosophical (or perhaps we should rather say dialectical) training. He has laboured much to penetrate and inform with general ideas the large masses of fact accumulated by empirical observation; but he has not laboured equally at the more delicate, though not more difficult, task of harmonising the different aspects of his own fundamental notions, as they present themselves in varying relations in the different parts of his system.' *

We shall mention only one more mental proclivity. It might almost half-fancifully be considered as a sort of instinctive

'Spectator,' June 21, 1873, p. 798.

effort to control the operation or to neutralise the effects of the one last alluded to. As if to hold all together and to insure consistency, there seems an aim to make the same thoughtand in the same form-run right through. All shall be made connected and sequent by hanging all on a central stem, like beads on a string. What we refer to is no doubt an application of the principle of generalisation-a principle essential to all scientific thought, and indeed to all advance in knowledge beyond merely rudimentary stages. But it is hardly a fair or legitimate application of it. It is a tendency to seek an interpretation of the higher in the lower, and to impose upon the former the terms of the latter.

There is, it may be, some connection between Mr. Spencer's procedure in this respect and his leading conceptions of Evolution, in which the more complex and affluent is ever made to appear to be but the simplest and poorest in ampler development; substantially and genetically the same, only moulded under advancing conditions. This scientific idea he seems so filled and possessed with, that it utterly dominates his thought and determines its character. It is thus that he attempts to apply the laws and conceptions, which are found to be a more or less adequate rendering of those modes of existence which suggested them, as no less true, in all their rigidity and limitation, to other modes. Instead of construing high and low alike by the great containing thought which is partially manifested in each, he seizes upon the fragmentary and limited expression which the simplest and humblest can yield, and would reduce all else to varieties and modifications of that. Thought is vital, and lends itself to every grade and condition. But to take it in the stiff mould and limitation of one condition, especially the less elevated, and thrust that upon all others, as their type and spirit, is to do violence to nature in her infinite modulations. That the law of any one province has its analogy in others is not to be doubted; but the formula obtained by study of the one will not, even in the most abstract terms, fit the requirements of the other. The great central truth that underlies and animates all, when we attain to it, can alone, with its living and elastic capabilities, do that.

Nor is it a quite satisfactory answer to say that, inasmuch

as the higher provinces embrace the elements of the lower, the principles regulative here must, so far as these same factors go, rule there also. This might be true if we really knew the principle. But by investigation of limited spheres we can obtain only proximate expressions of the principle-expressions which, in greater spheres, the presence of the higher constituents must temper and modify. It would be a rash and unwise obtrusion of conceptions appropriate to one sphere into another and superior, were we to conclude that the formula for evil and injury, so far as material and inanimate things are concerned, must also be the law of evil and detriment to man, on the ground that material existence and animal life enter into his composition. For what is most essential, what chiefly makes him man, introduces new elements into the problem, and the conditions of what is most characteristic must not only modify, but may override, those of what is accidental, temporary, or subordinate. Amputation would be fatal to a limb, but might be salutary, or even necessary, to the life of the body as a whole. The higher considerations must therefore not only be taken into account, but must prevail. The physically good may be the morally and spiritually bad, and that which is right for the body may be wrong for the soul. It would be nearer the truth to reverse the order of consideration, to read the lower in the light of the higher, and seek the law for all in that which answers to the supreme and complete, which might then be untrue or inappropriate only in proving, as regards some of its bearings, simply noneffective in more limited cases, where they could find no application. As Professor Frohschammer says of Darwinism :Even supposing that man really had his origin in this uni'versal natural process, he must not be regarded as the mere 'product of eternal matter and force, but as the realisation and 'revelation of the original idea of humanity, which is the de'termining principle for which all external things served only as means. Instead of making man the product of the animal 'world, it is far more likely that the animal world is evolved 'from the idea of humanity.'

A literal and unidealistic extension of notions beyond their native province is unphilosophical and perilous to truth. can be pursued only in disregard of the new facts-the differ

It

entia of the new province; and the synthesis must be untrue because the analysis is incomplete.

'The spirit of the woods and hills,

Of all of life, of now, of yore,

Its function yet in me fulfils:

I am them all—and something more.'

To sum up, then, we say Mr. Spencer seems wonderfully absolute in spirit for one who would disown such a principle. His method, phenomenalist as he is, is subjective, à priori though without metaphysical basis, deductive; and while he overwhelms us with examples from actual life, he approaches the concrete only in illustration after he has developed his conclusions from the most general and abstract principles. It is well, no doubt, that in corroboration of his results he should liberally adduce arguments drawn from his reading of fact and history; but coming in the wake, instead of in advance, of the propositions they are summoned to support, it is sometimes difficult to shake off the suspicion that these facts may have been selected and their significance explained in the light of a foregone conclusion. That there is much that calls for admiration in the subtlety of his analysis and the boldness of his unflinching application of results, as well as that there are valuable and weighty truths in his teaching, though sometimes it may be partial and exaggerated, we should be the last to call in question. But the very keenness and ingenuity of his dialectic-though sometimes as narrow and partial as it is sharp and clever-is apt to captivate and mislead himself, no less than to enslave his readers or to startle them into antagonism. His tone and attitude are too much those of the doctrinaire ; and in the application of a high abstract principle he sometimes seems to ignore or forget patent facts or obvious enough considerations. A certain flexibility of mind and openness to receive impressions is no less important in the student of science than a genius for divining the underlying principles by which facts are connected and explained, and it is in that direction Mr. Spencer's deficiency appears to lie. He seems first to seize his principles and then seek out his facts; and there is in such a method a danger that the theoretic principle may act the part of a loadstone among the facts, and attract

those of them only which have affinity for it, and that whatever will not range itself round such a centre may be denied to be fact, and denied on that account rather than for any independent evidence.

That Law reigns in the social sphere as truly and completely as in the mechanical or chemical, is a prerequisite admission to his subject: otherwise there could be no social science. But his notion of Law is too much formed on the material and physical type, and his scientific conceptions are applied to living and moral beings with the same directness and untempered rigidity as to stellar masses or chemical atoms, without due regard to the variety, subtlety, and complexity of the conditions, of which he is nevertheless so careful to remind all would-be expediency philosophers, in urging the need there is for the study of Sociology. Whether in mere disregard of the involved and recondite character of the data he has to deal with, or can it be ?-in the belief that they are so involved and recondite that it is hopeless to look for light and direction from their study till they are first illuminated, he ascends to what he considers First Principles-which the data can hardly be said to have suggested-and thence confers on them an order and significance they do not possess. Retiring into the region of the abstract, he becomes so powerfully and exclusively possessed by a scientific conception, once firmly apprehended, as to overlook considerations which might not fail to strike a mind of far inferior grasp, and which, while not invalidating the conclusion otherwise arrived at, might nevertheless point to a rectified form of the truth it but imperfectly expresses.

ART. II.-Among the Prophets.

IN spite of the tendency of modern progress to sweep away all traces of ancient usage, many customs, superstitions, and festivals still exist among the Christian nations of Europe, which, though little understood by those who practise and celebrate them, are really the perpetuation of some pagan rites or observances, the origin of which is lost in the remotest antiquity. But of all things which withstand the