THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

HERBERT SPENCER 295
than some scattered reminders as to where the imperfections lie. Negative
criticism is always unpleasant, and most so in the face oi a great achieve-
ment; but it is part of our task to see what time has done to Spencer's
synthesis.
i. FmsT PRINCIPLES
The first obstacle, of course, is the Unknowable. We may cordially
recognize the probable limitations of human knowledge; we cannot quite
fathom that great sea of existence of which we arc merely a transient
wave. But we must not dogmatize on the subject, since in strict logic the
assertion that anything is unknowable already implies some knowledge of
the thing. Indeed, as Spencer proceeds through his ten volumes, he shows
"a prodigious knowledge of the unknowable." 108 As Hcgd put it: to limit
reason is by reasoning like trying to swim without entering the water. And
all this logic-chopping about "inconceivability" how far away that seems
to us now, how like those sophomoric days when to be alive was to debate!
And for that matter, an unguided machine is not much more conceivable
than a First Cause, particularly if, by this latter phrase, we mean the sum
total of all causes and forces in the world. Spencer, living in a world of
machines, took mechanism for granted; just as Darwin, living in an age
of ruthless individual competition, saw only the struggle for existence.
What shall we say of that tremendous definition of evolution? Docs it
explain anything? u To say, 'first there was the simple, and then the complex
was evolved out of it,' and so on, is not to 100
explain nature." Spencer,
says Bergson, repieees, he does not explain; 130 he misses, as he at last
perceives, the vital element in the world. The critics, evidently, have been
irritated by the definition; its Latinized English is especially arresting in a
man who denounced the study of Latin, and defined a good style as that
which requires the least effort of understanding. Something must be conceded
to Spencer, however; no doubt he chose to sacrifice immediate
clarity to the need of concentrating in a brief statement the flow of all
existence. But in truth ho is a little too fond of his definition; he rolls it
over his tongue like a choice morsel, and takes it apart and puts it together
again interminably. The weak point of the definition lies in the supposed
"instability of the homogeneous." Is a whole composed of like parts more
unstable, more subject to change, than a whole composed of unlike parts?
The heterogeneous, as more complex, would presumably be more un-
stable than the homogeneously simple. In ethnology and politics it is
victorious assertion of the claims of science as against letters and the arts. Of the
essays, the best arc those on style, laughter, and music. Hugh Elliott's Herbert
Spencer is an admirable exposition.
"*Browne: Kant and Sp*nctirt p. 253*
**Ritchie: Darwin and Htgcl, p. 60,
mCrtative Evolution, p. 64.