as General Philosophy. The nine following volumes of the system are devoted to Special Philosophy—that is, to the task of carrying these universal truths, as an organon, forward into the particular phenomena which form the subject-matter of biology, psychology, sociology, and ethics, and of interpreting such particular phenomena by them.
Strictly speaking, of course, at the very opening of this serial undertaking a large gap remains unfilled, since the application of the fundamental principles already established should first of all be made to inorganic Nature. But this great division is passed over entirely, "partly," to quote the words of the prospectus, "because, even without it, the scheme is too extensive; and partly because the interpretation of organic Nature after the proposed method is of more immediate importance." We thus enter at once, in The Principles of Biology, the field of organic life; the purpose of the two volumes composing this work being, as stated in the preface, "to set forth the general truths of biology as illustrative of and as interpreted by the laws of evolution." Due notice should be taken of the phrase here employed—"the general truths of biology." To write a detailed and exhaustive treatise on the subject was manifestly no part of Mr. Spencer's plan, which called only for such a co-ordination and synthesis of fundamental principles as, expressed in terms of the universal laws of the redistribution of matter and motion, and finally affiliated upon the ultimate truth, the persistence of force, would present in broadest outline the science of life.
From the historical point of view no part of this masterly work is of greater interest than the closing division of the first volume, in which Mr. Spencer, after dismissing the special-creation theory of things as untenable, displays at length the a priori and a posteriori evidences of organic evolution. To appreciate the full significance of his arguments, it is necessary to remember that at the time when the chapters containing them were written, the doctrine of development was currently regarded, even by the large body of naturalists, as a more or less fantastic hypothesis. But while thus presenting the case for evolution in its inductive and deductive aspects, Mr. Spencer did much more than this. He showed that the processes observable in the world of organic life are but phases of the universal cosmical processes formulated in First Principles; and that thus the deepest laws of morphological and physiological development are, deductively viewed, necessary corollaries from the doctrines already established. Even the Darwinian principle of natural selection (or, as Mr. Spencer called it, the survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence) is exhibited as falling into its place as a single manifestation of a far wider law—the law of equilibration.
