Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 1 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy
Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative; Vol. 1 of 3: Library Edition (1891), Containing Seven Essays not before Republished, and Various other Additions.
Spencer, Herbert
Philosophy; Political science; Science
This classification, here roughly indicated and capable of further
expansion, will be found in harmony with the results of detailed
analysis aided by development. Whether we trace mental progression
through the grades of the animal kingdom, through the grades of mankind,
or through the stages of individual growth; it is obvious that the
advance, alike in cognitions and feelings, is, and must be, from the
presentative to the more and more remotely representative. It is
undeniable that intelligence ascends from those simple perceptions in
which consciousness is occupied in localizing and classifying
sensations, to perceptions more and more compound, to simple reasoning,
to reasoning more and more complex and abstract--more and more remote
from sensation. And in the evolution of feelings, there is a parallel
series of steps. Simple sensations; sensations combined together;
sensations combined with represented sensations; represented sensations
organized into groups, in which their separate characters are very much
merged; representations of these representative groups, in which the
original components have become still more vague. In both cases, the
progress has necessarily been from the simple and concrete to the
complex and abstract; and as with the cognitions, so with the feelings,
this must be the basis of classification.
The space here occupied with criticisms on Mr. Bain's work, we might
have filled with exposition and eulogy, had we thought this the more
important. Though we have freely pointed out what we conceive to be its
defects, let it not be inferred that we question its great merits. We
repeat that, as a natural history of the mind, we believe it to be
the best yet produced. It is a most valuable collection of
carefully-elaborated materials. Perhaps we cannot better express our
sense of its worth, than by saying that, to those who hereafter give to
this branch of Psychology a thoroughly scientific organization, Mr.
Bain's book will be indispensable.
THE SOCIAL ORGANISM.
[_First published in_ The Westminster Review _for January,_ 1860.]
Sir James Macintosh got great credit for the saying, that "constitutions
are not made, but grow." In our day, the most significant thing about
this saying is, that it was ever thought so significant. As from the
surprise displayed by a man at some familiar fact, you may judge of his
general culture; so from the admiration which an age accords to a new
thought, its average degree of enlightenment may be inferred. That this
apophthegm of Macintosh should have been quoted and requoted as it has,
shows how profound has been the ignorance of social science. A small ray
of truth has seemed brilliant, as a distant rushlight looks like a star
in the surrounding darkness.
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