phenomena were brought under this large principle, while in the first edition of the Psychology not only was this same principle shown to comprehend mental phenomena, but there was also recognized the primary law of evolution—integration and increase of definiteness. What followed may best be given in Mr. Spencer's own words: "Then it was that there suddenly arose in me the conception that the law which I had separately recognized in various groups of phenomena was a universal law applying to the whole Cosmos: the many small inductions were merged in the large inductions. And only after this largest induction had been formed did there arise the question—Why? Only then did I see that the universal cause for the universal transformations was the multiplication of effects, and that they might be deduced from the law of the multiplication of effects. The same thing happened at later stages. The generalization which immediately preceded the publication of the essay on Progress: its Law and Cause—the instability of the homogeneous—was also an induction. So was the direction of motion, and the rhythm of motion. Then having arrived at these derivative causes of the universal transformation, it presently dawned upon me (in consequence of the recent promulgation of the doctrine of the conservation of force) that all these derivative causes were sequences from that universal cause. The question had, I believe, arisen, Why these several derivative laws? and that came as the answer. Only then did there arise the idea of developing the whole of the universal transformation from the persistence of force. So you see the process began by being inductive and ended by being deductive; and this is the peculiarity of the method followed. On the one hand, I was never content with any truth remaining in the inductive form. On the other hand, I was never content with allowing a deductive interpretation to go unverified by reference to the facts."
It remains for us now, so far as space will permit, to pass in rapid review a few of the most salient features of the evolutionary philosophy thus wrought into a firmly knit, logical whole a philosophy which, as a science of the sciences resting upon universal law, is properly called Synthetic.[1]
To the exposition and elaboration in their broadest aspects of the all comprehensive truths above epitomized, Mr. Spencer devotes the initial volume of his series—First Principles. Such a presentation of arguments and results constitutes what he defines
- ↑ Readers who desire to know something of Mr. Spencer's reasons for the selection of the term Synthetic Philosophy as the general title of his system will find a good deal of information in Mr. John Fiske's extremely interesting life of Edward Livingston Youmans. See especially pages 233, 290, and 291.
