ment or correspondence? In one way or another every thing is adjusted and corresponds to every other. The chemical elements are perfectly adjusted to one another. The coal corresponds beautifully to the oxygen which consumes it. The planets correspond most wonderfully to the sun and to one another. Every atom within the grip of gravitation is adjusted with perfect accuracy to every other. The parasite is adjusted to the organism which it devours. Correspondence and adjustment of some sort are universal, and unless all correspondence is intelligence, the mental correspondence must be of a peculiar kind. If we say that the peculiarity of this adjustment is that it is a mental adjustment, the definition includes the thing. It is not, then, adjustment in general which constitutes life and mind, but the adjustment of inner relations to outer relations. But what is an inner relation on this theory? If a living, thinking being is simply a combination of physical elements which are all as external to one another as are the members of the solar system, this notion of an inner relation is a suspicious one. As applied to a living thing, it secretly recog nizes a vital agent with a definite range of activity; and as applied to mind, it can only mean consciousness. Mind, then, is the adjustment of relations in consciousness to external relations. But what is a relation? Wherever there are relations, there must be things related. By internal relations Mr. Spencer seems to mean thoughts and their orders of co-existence and sequence. By external relations he seems to mean external things and their orders of co-existence and sequence. So, then, the formula for mind whittles down to the statement that mind is the adjustment of thoughts, and their order, to things, and their order; or, more briefly, it is the adjustment of thought to thing. With this clearing up, the eleven chapters devoted to the elaboration of the idea of adjustment or correspondence reduce to the commonplace statement that our knowledge of

reality grows from more to more. The air of awe and mys

tery which attends the use of unfamiliar terms for familiar things of course vanishes, but the meaning is the same. It is also plain that the formula contains an implicit abandonment of the theory that thought is only the powerless symbol of the physical series, for if that series goes along by itself, then the absence of thought, to say nothing of its maladjustment, would

be physically without significance. To bring in thought as effective cancels the physical completeness of the system, and to leave it out cancels the formula. That the formula has a different meaning when applied to life is evident. Its apparent identity for life and mind is due to the use of terms which are made to include every thing by excluding all definite meaning. Knowledge cannot fail to be unspeakably advanced by formulas of this kind.

In addition to this vagueness, a glaring defect of the formula, as has been ably pointed out by Dr. James, (“Journal for Speculative Philosophy," January, 1878,) is, that it takes account of the mind as knowing only, and not as feeling, or as moral, religious, and esthetic. For the development of this point we refer the reader to the paper in question. We next point out that nothing has been said as to how the adjustment is secured. Do the thoughts adjust themselves, or do the outer relations first produce the inner, and then adjust them? The latter is Mr. Spencer's view. Any other, he thinks, shows an insufficient belief in causation. To hold that his thought and purpose have had any influence on his philosophy would show an imperfect appreciation of causation. But when are inner relations adjusted to outer? In some sense they are always adjusted; hence by adjusted we must mean rightly adjusted. But what is a right adjustment? Here appears one of the most curious features of Mr. Spencer's system. The test of right adjustment is in every case survival, and true thoughts and right conduct are simply such as lead to continued existence. The ill-adjusted or non-corresponding animal dies, and the ill-adjusted mind also perishes. Although neither we nor our thoughts have any power over physical changes, yet when our thoughts are maladjusted the organism comes in conflict with reality, and destruction results. Survival is the only test of adjustment, and hence of truth and righteousness. Spencer assumes that there must be survival, and he often speaks almost as if it were a necessary aim with the unknowable, to secure the continuance of the organic world. At this point he borders on Hartmann's doctrine of the unconscious world-force which has aims without knowing any thing about them. Mr. Spencer recognizes ends in the most liberal fashion. He speaks (page 171) of "the naturally revealed end

Mr.

toward which the power manifested throughout evolution works." The individual and the species must live, and mind and morals are both brought in as means to this end, although it is hard to see how they could help the matter, since they affect nothing in the physical series. The individual could not live if it failed to correspond, hence the need of mind. The species could not continue without moral order, hence the need of ethics. In truth, Mr. Spencer's system is teleological through and through. From the conception of physical survival as an end he has deduced the need and thus the fact of mind and morals, and both are what they are be cause of the peculiar demands made upon them by the conditions of survival. Had these been different, truth and righteousness would have been different. Hence our conceptions in mind and morals properly express nothing but the conditions of survival. Where these conditions have not been observed, life and thought have come quickly to an end. Survival has been possible only along certain lines, and by heredity the thoughts and conduct fitted to secure it have been integrated and transmitted until at last our mental laws and moral instincts have been built up. To us they appear as first truths; but, in fact, they express only the conditions of existence. This principle is throughout assumed, but it is not as explicitly stated as we could wish. If utility is to be taken as the test and measure of truth, the belief in God, retribution, the future life, and even in Christianity, would make a respectable show. But as these beliefs do not agree with our own, it may be well to keep the principles for strictly private use. Indeed, if natural selection be the determining principle of belief, the faith of the future will not be materialism, atheism, agnosticism, or deism, but Christianity; for all other beliefs are relatively depressing and demoralizing.

Mr. Spencer's ethics is little more than an exposition of this conception. If the individual should perish, the species would also perish; for it exists only in the individual. Hence there must be egoism. But pure egoism would make society, and thus the individual, impossible; hence there must be altruism. Pure altruism, on the other hand, by condemning all egoism, would lead to non-survival. Hence there must be "conciliation" and "compromise." We must be neither too egoistic nor too.

altruistic. In all things the golden mean seems to be the rule of life which will most probably lead to survival.

This view is interesting from its novelty. Never before was there a system so amazingly teleological. Much as Aristotle and Leibnitz made of the notion of final cause, they still admitted some things as unconditionally true and right, or as such without any reference to an end. But with Mr. Spencer the true and the right are conditioned entirely by their relation to the particular end of survival. It is not entirely plain what would become of many scientific and philosophic speculations if they were tested by this standard; and as we have an interest in both, we forbear to inquire. Another interesting feature of the theory is, that its possibility is a striking testimony to the truth that "the power, not ourselves, makes for righteousness." Whether we regard the laws of righteousness as expressing only the conditions of existence, or as the expressions of an august and holy Will, in either case we admit that they are our life. But as a moral theory, apart from the author's fatalism which reduces all theories to necessary impertinences, this view is lamentably imperfect. In the first place, the scheme will have no authority at all with one who does not recognize physical survival as the end of conduct. On the one hand, the Christian and the theist insist that there are things better than living, and other things worse than dying. The law of righteousness must never be abandoned, though the fagots be gathered and the instruments of torture be spread. This conviction has left indelible marks in human history; indeed, pretty much all that is noble and reverend in history has sprung from it. On the other hand, the pessimist will repudiate survival as an end, alleging that he sees no value in the end. Considering the misery and irrationality of being, he thinks that non-survival would be vastly more desirable. To Mr. Spencer's claim that we must survive, he answers that he knows of no such need. To the threat that failure to adjust or correspond will lead to destruction, he replies that such a consummation is devoutly to be wished. Mr. Spencer points out that moral principles are necessities of social equilibrium; and the pessimist replies that he sees no necessity for social equilibrium. If there were any essential sacredness in righteousness, or any inalienable obligation, he might think otherwise; but since it is only a matter of survival or non-survival,

he inclines to non-survival as the most desirable. It may be said that no moral theory can do any thing with a pessimist; but it is also true that some theories lead directly to pessimism, and to abandon them is to discharge the pessimism. One need not be incorrigible in order to deduce pessimism from fatalistic materialism. Mr. Spencer seems to have no conception of the spread of pessimism since the dawn of advanced science. He has always been such an ardent apostle of progress as to forget to inquire whether the progress was worth having. Others have made the inquiry. The world turns out to be only a large machine which has ground us into being, and which, after having tortured us awhile to no purpose, will grind us to powder. Goodness is due to the viscera. There is nothing reverend or noble in existence. We have nothing to be proud of, for the viscera have managed every thing. We have nothing to hope for except annihilation, and even that will not come until the bungling mechanism has racked and mangled and butchered us. We can only stand at bay and wait for the end. This being the case, men are beginning to sneer at progress. The very word is greeted with moody and scornful laughter. Reason will no longer be stupefied with the cordials and soothing syrups of the apostles of progress; and men are growing indignant at the apostles' attempts to cover up the death's-head which grins horribly through all their theories. And so they stand up and swear that the world is worse than none. A ghastly and haggard pessimism is rapidly seizing upon all the earnest minds in the ranks of advanced scientists. They see clearly that whoever may have words of eternal life, the new science and the new philosophy have them not. But of this state of affairs, Mr. Spencer seems not to have the least conception. In spite of his fatalism, in spite of his materialism, in spite of the annihilation toward which the race is hurrying, he still pipes and sings of "that grand progress which is bearing humanity onward to a higher intelligence and a nobler character."

A second defect of Mr. Spencer's ethical theory is that, from making success the standard of right, it leaves the question of right forever open or forever subject to revision. Taken in strictness, it would say that we do not know the right until the event has declared itself. It would then always be allowable for us to do our utmost to make our side succeed. The right