almost, or apparently, fixed laws of planetary revolutions. To the physicist, the laws of gravitation, of molecular activity, of electric force, are not in flux, or, at least, are not in any serial Evolution, but are statical. To the chemist, evolution of any kind is absorbed in the invariable action of the elements and their compounds. Can Evolution solve any problem of radium or of X-rays?
To me it is a sad thought that the Synthetic Philosophy was never completed by its founder, so as to fill up the enormous lacuna left in it by the gap of the whole range of the Inorganic Sciences. It leaps from First Principles, said to apply to the whole range of knowledge, to Biology, Psychology, and Sociology, jumping across this vasty deep of Mathematics, Geometry, Astronomy, Physics, with all its ramifications of Barology, Thermology, Electricity, and the rest. Nor does Chemistry appear at all. Spencer from time to time touches on Astronomy and on Geology, so far as the laws of evolution bear upon the origin of the Solar System, and the formation of the strata of the Earth. But I do not remember a word as to the regular and double movement of our planet, or the solar system viewed as a permanent scheme of invariable Mechanics. But these are of infinitely greater interest, both scientifically and for all human ends, than are hypotheses about the Nebular Universe and its gradual modifications. How the conceptions of Gravitation, of the volumes and combinations of gases, of the transmission of light, of heat, of electric energy, can be reducible to terms of Change and growth, apart from persistence and invariable action this is a mystery which at present seems buried with Spencer.
This attempt to reduce the essential laws of every
