Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/373

DR. WARD'S REFUTATION OK DUALISM. :'..">'.) all which we perceive of external objects is due wholly and solely to energy and energy alone, matter seems to vanish and nothing remains but energy and its transformations. Of the several forms of energy, it is only quantitative equivalence that can be asserted we have neither a priori nor a posteriori grounds for concluding that forms of energy qualitatively dis- tinct are of fundamentally the same nature that is, that they are at bottom mechanical. And, moreover, we are not justified in supposing that there are no qualitatively different forms of energy except those already known to us. As to the doctrine of the Conservation of Energy, on which Mr. Herbert Spencer tries to base his Theory of Evolution, it is shown (i., 172) that the two grounds on which this doctrine is assumed are (1) that it is borne out by experience as far as we know, and (2) that it seems the simplest and best working hypothesis it " tells us nothing about the quantity of energy in the universe as a whole, and does not even allow us to say that such quantity is an amount eter- nally fixed " (i., 171). In Dr. Ward's view the principle of the Conservation of Energy regarded as a postulate, is the principle of Causality in a quantitative form applied to physical changes. It is a real principle, but it is only the quantitative relations of physical processes that it renders intelligible. To the qualitative differences in physical pro- cesses the Conservation of Energy has nothing to say (i., 176). The difficulty of dealing with qualitative differences from the mechanical standpoint is at its height when we come to psychical phenomena ; and in chapters ix. and x. of Part ii., in which Herbert Spencer's treatment of Life and Mind and Biological Evolution as understood by Lamarck and Darwin and their successors, are discussed, we turn to the consideration of such phenomena, and especially to the 'juestion, how it is possible to get from Inorganic to Organic Evolution and from Life to Mind, by help of the single principle of Conservation of Energy. Dr. Ward shows that Mr. Spencer in his doctrine of Evolution confuses (1) energy and work, (2) evolution with guidance and evolution withmit guidance, and that as a result of his rejection of a " definite primitive collocation," the cosmos can be for him but a chance hit among many misses. He points out the impossibility of deducing the phenomena of celestial, organic and social evolution from the principle of Conservation of Energy taken alone, and criticises Mr. Spencer's three principles of interpretation the Instability of the Homogeneous, the Multiplication of Effects (= the