thetic. It purports to give us a synthesis of life, a commanding view of reality. This word synthesis springs from a fact of perception. The physical or objective side of the phenomenon of perception, it will be remembered, is in itself a vast synthesis, or building up of parts into a whole. The outposts of the understanding, known as the senses, are merely channels of agitation leading to the great central structure of the nervous system, called the brain. Light, heat, the effluences known as odors, the relative rigidities called resistances, are simply different kinds of agitations of the nervous system centring in the brain. Mr. Du Bois-Reymond tells us that the chief distinction between the two substances known as the muscles and the nerves, and hence between body and mind, lies in the amount of activity of which each is capable. Again Lewes, in a study of the relations of physiology to psychology, and the incidental examination of the nervous system, has removed many of the superstitions which have crept into these sciences under the guise of the arbitrary localization of functions, and has demonstrated the inseparable nature of the two aspects of physiological phenomena known as structure and function. From the simple organic substance known as protoplasm, which, under analysis, discloses a very high molecular multiplicity, to the synthesis of organic life instanced in the individual of our own species, structure and function are shown to be but obverse aspects of each group of facts, which again are merged in the larger fact of organic life. Hence the co-ordination of activities is another name for organic life. When we use the word life in a wider sense than that indicated by this co-ordination or organization, it becomes applicable to that wider range of activities known as mechanical or chemical, usually regarded as distinct from vital.

Again: the science of organic chemistry, which is yet in its infancy, has placed beyond dispute the great fact that the distinction between vital and chemical activities is but superficial. This discovery points to the conclusion, illustrated

by Lewes, that the structures or substances of the human organism, as of all organisms, are directly accountable for the type of activity which each organism displays. This gives us the startling fact that the four organic elements, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, simply assert their natures in all the phenomena of organic life; in other words, that the affinities or activities of these and allied elements account for all vital functions, from the primordial assimilation, growth, and reproduction observed in the structureless speck of protoplasm to the moral sentiments and the most extended perceptions of man.

It is in the light of this fact that I object to Spencer's definition of Life. For if organic life is accounted for by those activities which outside of the vital sphere we call chemical and mechanical, then the word life, in its broadest sense, means activity; organic life means organized activity; and no definition of organization, however extended, can illuminate the meaning of the general principle which we call Life. To say, therefore, that "Life is the definite combination of heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences," is to say that an organism is an instance of the adjustment of its internal activities to its external related activities, and that organic life is organic life. Again: to ask the question, Does life produce organization, or does organization produce life? is equivalent to asking whether cause produces effect, or whether effect produces cause. The only answer that can be given is to be found in the nature of perception, which proceeds inevitably from simplicity to complexity, from unity to variety, from the one to the many, from cause to effect, from the principle of activity, or motion, to the facts or realities of life.

That this metaphysical incompleteness of Spencer's phi losophy vitiates his whole system, is true only in a limited. sense. When so vast a body of data is organized into a picture of life and its surroundings, the failure to strike the key-note of the nature of perception is certainly pro

ductive of minor discords, of unnecessarily involved explanations which lead to no useful results. But these lesser defects are overwhelmed by the comprehensive plan, the consummate skill, the tireless research, and the earnestness and noble purpose, of the work. Spencer's philosophy constitutes an education in itself. No one can really study it without feeling its elevating influence, and being benefited by the splendid intellectual discipline which it imparts. But it is further to be remarked: The tenor of Spencer's system is sociological; his illustrations are continually rising to the level of social phenomena, and his originality is to be found almost exclusively in this field.

Before looking on this bright side, however, it is incumbent upon us to examine the psychological department of his work, which, we are compelled to admit, has the disadvantage of demanding the most study and yielding the least in return of any of his writings. The scope of this subject of psychology has been outlined, from an independent standpoint, in the preceding part of this chapter, and in the one which follows we propose to examine carefully the method of treatment which it receives at the hands of our author.

CHAPTER XI.

HERBERT SPENCER (CONTINUED).

The Analysis of Reason-The Fundamental Intuition-The Contrasted Theories of Perception.

IN the second volume of Spencer's "Principles of Psychology," the author apologizes for the abstruseness of the opening portions of the work, and explains that the method which he adopts, namely, that of a systematic analysis, requires that it should begin with the most complex and special forms of intellectual activity, and progress in stages to the simplest or most general. He further says that this method will tax the powers of even the habitual student; and to those who are unaccustomed to introspection (or the study of the operations of the mind) he recommends patience, and holds out the reward of an ultimate comprehension of the subject if they will but persevere.

The first words of the second chapter are these: "Of intellectual acts, the highest are those which constitute Conscious Reasoning-[or] called conscious to distinguish it from the unconscious or automatic reasoning that forms so large an element in ordinary perception. Of conscious reasoning, the kind containing the greatest number of components definitely combined is Quantitative Reasoning. And of this, again, there is a division, more highly involved than the rest, which we may class apart as Compound Quantitative Reasoning. ✶✶✶ Even in Compound Quantitative Reasoning itself there are degrees of composition, and to initiate our analysis rightly we must take first the most composite type. Let us contemplate an example."

*

The example given is the method of reasoning pursued

by an engineer in estimating the comparative strength of bridges of different sizes. The vast amount of experience, or special knowledge, concerning the comparative strength of different materials, which the ability to solve such a problem would pre-suppose, is reduced to a minimum by taking, for example, an iron bridge, and the problems of strain are simplified by limiting the example to the tubular class of bridges. By these means the whole bearing of the example, which is made to represent, as the foregoing quotation shows, the most complex form of " Compound Quantitative Reasoning," is the joint application of two problems in mechanics. to the building of bridges. The first of the propositions can be stated as follows: The bulks of similar masses of matter are to each other as the cubes of their linear dimensions, and consequently when the masses are of the same material their weights are also to each other as the cubes of their linear dimensions. This proposition, stated and explained in language familiar to all, is this: to determine the differences between masses, agree upon a unit of mass, the most convenient form of which has been found to be a cube, or a solid of equal linear dimensions. Since the length, breadth, and thickness of this unit of mass are equal, its edges or lines are equal, so that a comparison between the total number of the cubic-shaped units in each mass can be made by comparing the linear dimensions, providing the number of linear units in the linear dimensions is first made to agree with the number of cubic units in the respective masses. The problem states that the number of linear units in the three dimensions multiplied together (or cubed in case the dimensions are equal) will equal the number of cubic units in the respective masses, or that the masses are to each other as the cubes of the linear dimensions. The stages, therefore, in this first of the two problems, the joint use of which is cited as furnishing an example of the most complex order of "Compound Quantitative Reasoning," are progressions of equations, or equalities. All mathematical progressions are steps from one equality to another, beginning always with