a view which has not obtained the assent of most competent biologists.
I face the inevitable question—Does Philosophy really mean ' a science of the sciences '? Is any harmony or correlation of all human knowledge either possible or needful? Well, if not, then cadit quaestio, and Spencer's claim to be a philosopher falls to the ground, whatever his claims to acute thoughts on biology, sociology, and ethic. We well know the energy and ability of the many schools of thought—theological, idealist, and ontological (or it may be sceptical)—which would maintain that the only Philosophy is one that is concerned with the mystery of the Universe and the soul of man; that human science cannot attain to the higher knowledge or to any generalized truth; that each branch of knowledge rests independent by itself, incapable of any ultimate generalization or real co-ordination at all. With such schools the true Spencerian does not dispute. He awaits the verdict of the ages—securus iudicat orbis terrarum. By their fruits you shall know them!
If there were indeed a final bar to synthesis, how do we account for the deep reverberation through the civilized world of the name and ideas of Herbert Spencer? That name, those ideas, have permeated East and West, science, philosophy, and literature, wherever culture exists. It is an illuminating influence that may be compared with the influence upon subsequent thought of the ideas of Bacon, of Hume, of Kant. His works have been translated into nearly all European languages. They are read and studied in India, in China, in Japan. In the vast reading public of America they are far more widely known and esteemed than even in our own country. At his death the journals,
