Thus the whole scheme of universal Being is supposed, like the stone of Sisyphus, through millions of years or ages to be raised to a higher pitch of dignity, perfection, and multiplied vitality, and then when it has nearly reached some summit of ideal perfection, to bound downward, by a reverse process, and dash itself to pieces at the foot of the mountain, the whole creation resolving itself into diffused nebulous vapour and nothingness once more. This reverse pro

cess, it should be observed, is introduced purely by guess, in contradiction to all the laws of mechanics, to provide some escape from the dreary monotony of the first theory.

In "Social Statics," Mr Spencer propounds a third à priori theory of the universe distinct from, and inconsistent with, both the others. This is the self-perfecting theory of nature. It is embodied in these maxims:

"Advancement is due to the working of universal law, and, in virtue of that law, must continue till the state we call perfection is reached. These are the steps of the argument. All imperfection is unfitness to the conditions of existence. This unfitness must consist in having a faculty or faculties in excess, or deficient, or in both. A faculty in excess is one which has no opportunity for full exercise ; and a deficient faculty is one from which circumstances demand more than it can perform. The principle of life is, that a faculty which cannot obtain full exercise diminishes, and one on which excessive demands are made, increases; while this excess and deficiency continue, there must be decrease on one hand and growth on the other. Finally, then, all excess and deficiency, and unfitness and imperfection, must disappear. Thus the ultimate development of the ideal man is logically certain. Humanity must, in the end, become completely adapted to its conditions; progress therefore is not an accident, but a necessity;...As surely as a passion grows by indulgence, and diminishes when restrained, so surely must the things we call evil and immorality disappear, and man must become perfect." (S. R. from S. S., p. 50, 51.)

This demonstration, Mr Spencer says, removes the doctrine "out of the region of probability into that of

certainty." Let us now examine the data and premises of which this grand discovery consists. First, a novel definition of moral evil and immorality; that it consists in

living creature having one or more faculties with no opportunity for their exercise, or not having all the senses or faculties he could exercise if he had them. The ridiculous and entire falsehood of such a definition is so plain that it is needless to develope it further. The one grain of truth in the mock demonstration is, that a faculty is commonly strengthened by repeated exercise, “as the eye tends to become long-sighted in the sailor, and short-sighted in the student, and a clerk acquires rapidity in writing and calculation." But another assumption is required to set the argument on its feet; that every living creature acquires instinctively, and of course, all the senses and faculties for the exercise of which there is a present opportunity. By this rule all animals should have a faculty of articulate speech. According to all experience man alone has this faculty, while different kinds of beasts and birds have their distinctive notes, cries, and inarticulate sounds. Next, men so far as experience goes, have five senses only, sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste; and these within narrowly defined limits. If every one possessed, by natural necessity, every faculty he could exercise if he had it, every one must have a natural telescope for seeing objects more distant, and a microscope for seeing objects more minute, than come within the range of ordinary eyesight. He must have also a natural thermometer, hygrometer, anemometer, and micrometer. All these represent faculties which never would want opportunities for their exercise, but their spontaneous growth is flatly opposed to universal experience. If all living creatures had this prodigal supply of all conceivable senses and faculties, there would be nothing in this to secure their right use and applica

tion. Many senses and faculties must be still more liable to abuse than a few only. If circumstances underwent no change, some faculties might be enfeebled by lack of exercise, and others be quickened and made more perfect and acute. If circumstances changed, even this limited amount of variation would be suspended or reversed. The decay of faculties or senses, either by lack of opportunity or of will to exert them, would be likely to have a wider range than the perfecting of others under the concurrence of three conditions; the will to exercise them to the utmost, circumstances favourable to their exercise, and the continuance of those circumstances unaltered for a long course of time. The demonstration starts from a definition of moral evil so prodigiously absurd, and involves an assumption with regard to the senses and faculties of men and living creatures, so utterly opposed to all experience, that the acceptance on such grounds of a self-perfecting tendency in all nature, seems the furthest possible limit of unreasoning credulity. When propounded as an à priori demonstration by the same author who assures us, as another à priori truth beyond doubt, that all nature is progressing towards the reign of Omnipresent Death, and as another à priori truth, that the power working behind all phenomena is wholly "unknowable," and that it is the main defect of all religious creeds to pretend to know something of a Being of whom nothing can be known,-the ridiculous folly of these assertions seems scarcely to admit of increase. We may know, it seems, how "the unknowable" will act, through countless ages to come, and may know as "an à priori truth" that He or it will act in three different ways, each contradicting the two others. He will crush up the whole universe, with all its suns and planets, into one vast mass, which will cool down into icy frost and blackness of darkness, so that the self-perfecting

per

tendency of Nature will result in the extinction of all life, leaving behind utter wasteness and desolation. Or He will peradventure assume the task of Sisyphus, and go on through countless ages laboriously raising the universe near to some mountain summit of ideal fection, only to see it roll down and bury itself in an abyss of ruin and darkness in a later period of utter dissolution. Of such theorists it may well be said in the indignant words of the Prophet, "They have rejected the word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them.”

Mr Spencer's third theory of the universe is further unfolded in the following passage, in which a great truth of Scripture is so misconstrued, as to change it into its

own exact reverse.

"The survival only of the fittest is the stern decree of nature. The invariable action of law of itself eliminates the unfit. Progress is necessary to existence, extinction is the doom of retrogression. The highest effect contemplated by the supposed revelation is to bring man into perfect harmony with law, and this is ensured by law itself acting upon intelligence. Only in obedience to law is there life and safety. Knowledge of law is imperatively demanded by nature. Ignorance of it is a capital offence. If we ignore the law of gravitation, we are dashed to pieces at the foot of a precipice, or are crushed by a falling rock; if we neglect sanitary law, we are destroyed by a pestilence; if we disregard chemical laws, we are poisoned by a vapour. There is not, in reality, a gradation of breach of law that is not followed by an equivalent gradation of punishment. Civilization is nothing but the knowledge and observance of natural laws. The savage must learn them or be extinguished: the cultivated must observe them or die. The balance of moral and physical development cannot be deranged with impunity. In the spiritual as well as the physical sense, only the fittest eventually can survive in the struggle for existence. There is, in fact, an absolute upward impulse to the whole human race supplied by the invariable operation of the laws of nature acting upon the common instinct of self-preservation. As on the one hand, the highest human conception of infinite wisdom and power is derived from the universality and invariability of law, so that universality and invariability, on the other hand, exclude the idea of interruption or occa

sional suspension of law for any purpose whatever, and more especially for the correction of supposed original errors of design, which cannot have existed, or for the attainment of objects already provided for in the order of nature." (S. R. from S. S. 51, 52.)

Now in a scheme which pronounces God to be unknowable, and minds and material objects unknowable also, so that what are called phenomena of matter or of mind, are only "faint" and "vivid" manifestations of "the unknowable," (which is a self-contradiction,) so that human action is the fatal and inevitable result of material circumstances, there are no laws but those of matter and physical change. Now these laws are never broken, and never can be. The man who is dashed to pieces at the foot of a precipice, or crushed by a falling rock, obeys the law of gravitation just as much as the person who lies quietly in his bed. The laws of chemistry are obeyed as much by the choke-damp or fire-damp which causes the death of hundreds, as by the atmosphere which sustains the life of millions. Physical laws, the only laws which exist under the theory, are never broken, and never can be, because their subjects are atoms or masses of matter devoid of choice and reason. The only laws which can be broken are those which the theory excludes as unreal fictions, moral laws imposed by God on rational, conscious, and responsible creatures. Transferred to these real laws which can be broken, and have been broken on the largest scale, the remark is true, "only in obedience to law is there life and safety." Such is the statement of Christ Himself. "I know that His commandment is life everlasting." Ignorance of these real laws of God for man is "a capital offence." Such ignorance, utter and complete, is the starting-point and boast of this wretched mock philosophy. Breaches of the laws which it admits, are impossible, and have never occurred; breaches of the moral law which it