THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

HERBERT SPENCER 297
Aside from lesser difficulties, like the failure to reconcile his illuminat-
ing principle that reproduction decreases as development advances
with such facts as the higher rate of reproduction in civilized Europe as
compared with savage peoples, the major defects of his biological theory
are his reliance on Lamarck and his failure to find a dynamic conception
of life. When he confesses that life "cannot be conceived in physicochemical
terms," 114 the "admission is fatal to his formula of evolution, to
his definition of life, and to the coherence of the Synthetic Philosophy." 115
The secret of life might better have been sought in the power of mind to
adjust external to internal relations than in the almost passive adjustment
of the organism to the environment. On Spencer's premises, complete
adaptation would be death.
The volumes on psychology formulate rather than inform. What we
knew is reshaped into an almost barbarously complex terminology, which
obscures where it should clarify. The reader is so fatigued with formulas
and definitions and questionable reductions of psychological facts to
neural structures that he may fail to observe that the origin of mind and
consciousness is left quite unexplained. It is true that Spencer tries to
cover up this gaping chasm in his system of thought by arguing that mind
is the subjective accompaniment of nerve processes evolved mechanically,
somehow, out of the primeval nebula; but why there should be this subjective
accompaniment in addition to the neural mechanism, he does not
say. And that, of course, is just the point of all psychology.
3.
SOCIOLOGY AND ETHICS
Magnificent as the Sociology is, its 2000 pages give many an opening
for attack. Running through it is Spencer's usual assumption that evolution
and progress are synonymous, whereas it may well be that evolution
will give to insects and bacteria the final victory in their relentless war
with man. It is not quite evident that the industrial state is either more
pacific or more moial than the "militant" feudalism that preceded it.
Athens' most destructive wars came long after her feudal lords had
yielded power to a commercial bourgeoisie; and the countries of modern
Europe seem, to make war with blithe indifference as to whether they
are industrial or not; industrial imperialism may be as militaristic as
land-hungry dynasties. The most militaristic of modern states was one
of the two leading industrial nations of the world. Further, the rapid industrial
development of Germany seems to have been aided, rather than
impeded, by state control of certain phases of transport and trade.
Socialism is obviously a development not of militarism but of industrial-
ism* Spencer wrote at a time when the comparative isolation of England
made her pacifist (in Europe), and when her supremacy in commerce
, i, mo. **J. A, Thomson, Herbert Spencer, p* 109,